Chain gang

“ To which the nonchalant answer was, “Oh, nothing, he was a good cotton hand.”
The great majority of negro convicts are sentenced for petty crimes, stealing, vagrancy, and the like, and for rather short terms; but the name for this punishment, “the chain gang,” points to a system practically unknown in the North. There are literal chain gangs, with real shackles and balls, working in the streets of cities, white and black together; and large bodies of convicts are worked in the open, stockaded, and perhaps literally chained at night. ”

“ The actual spoken threat of an individual employer who makes his laborer stay at work against his will by fear of the chain gang, and the threat of the State to send him to the chain gang whenever his employer chooses to have him arrested, are the same in result and do not seem to me very different in any other way. ”

“ About this period, there was much excitement, caused by the frequency of night robberies, and no trace of the thieves could be found, by which they could be detected. The most vigilant means were used, and many were sent to the jails and penitentiary, but still the rob [Pg 143] beries went on. Among those committed at this period, was the fifth brother, who for a short period had enjoyed his liberty. The eldest brother served out his time in the chain gang, and after being liberated, suddenly disappeared; and, which surprised many, the driver of the chain gang disappeared at the same time. ”

“ The police judges have suggested establishing a chain gang and putting all vagrants and petty offenders at work clearing up the ruins.
Perhaps never in the history of the city has there been so little crime in San Francisco. With the saloons closed, Chinatown, the Barbary Coast, and other haunts of criminals wiped out, and soldiers and marines on almost every block in the residence districts, there have been few crimes of any kind. It is the opinion of the police that most of the criminal element has left the city. ”

“ Who are these close-nudged folk and whither away?
She who runs may read them for hard-headed, white-handed men in search of "prospects"; brown-throated homesteaders; real-estate agents out for talking points and for snap fortunes; mining engineers with dunnage bags—young fellows all in the full force of life—these, and "the gang," who are ill-looking men and rather dirty. The gang fare forth to work on the railway grades. They are always ganging—that is going—for the words are strictly synonymous. The gang going to the city meet the gang coming out. ”

“ The gang is an institution in New York. The police deny its existence while nursing the bruises received in nightly battles with it that tax their utmost resources. The newspapers chronicle its doings daily, with a sensational minuteness of detail that does its share toward keeping up its evil traditions and inflaming the ambition of its members to be as bad as the worst. The gang is the ripe fruit of tenement-house growth. ”

“ Six murderous assaults were made at one time by these gangs within a single week. One who is caught and does his "bit" or "stretch" is a hero, and when a leader is hanged, as has sometimes happened, he is almost envied for his notoriety. A frequent ideal is to pound a policeman with his own club. The gang federates all nationalities. Property is depreciated and may be ruined if it is frequented by these gangs or becomes their lair or "hang-out." ”

“ The impulses to loyalty, fidelity, coöperation, self-sacrifice, justice, which are at the basis of gang psychology, are powerfully reinforced, as we have already seen, by nearly all the typical gang activities.
149 Even collective stealing is a lesson in coöperation. Thieving expeditions are often definitely planned; one boy watches while the others steal; one engages the attention of the storekeeper while another annexes his property; one member of the gang plagues the victim to get chased, and then the rest loot his goods. ”

“ Where the girl plays with dolls, the boy plays with bats and balls.
Among other divergences, the boy forms gangs. Girls do not form gangs. They belong to sets, and sets and gangs are quite different institutions. The set is exclusive, undemocratic. It has no organization, leaders, history, and it owns no property. The set snubs its rivals; the gang fights them. The members of a set also snub one another, quarrel, and backbite. There is none of the deep-seated, instinctive loyalty which the members of a gang have for each other. The normal boy may fight his friend ”

“ For them and for all of us, it is past time to end the violence.
At younger and younger ages, boys and girls are turning to gangs. For a child without an involved family, a gang offers a feeling of belonging. For a young person without options for tomorrow, a gang offers a sense of purpose. For all those born in a home cordoned off against danger, with bars on the windows and chains on the doors, life on the streets seems all too often a taste of freedom they have never known. ”

“ Generally little [Pg 24] gangs associate together and work in company; but it is rare that they do so on communistic principles. More often, each member of the gang works entirely for his own hand, though they may have food and so on in common. ”

“ Let her organize the collecting on the basis of the boys’ natural groups; let her work, in short, less with individuals and more with gangs. She can set one group to collecting one set of objects, and another group another set. But185 her groups should be like the natural gangs in size, and each should have one member, though not commonly more than one, who is already the natural leader in some permanent group. Thus, as before, the instinctive, spontaneous gang loyalty will unconsciously attach itself to the school and the school work. ”

“ When the necessity presents itself for a descent upon the gang after some particularly flagrant outrage, the police have a task on hand that is not of the easiest. The gangs, like foxes, have more than one hole to their dens. In some localities, where the interior of a block is filled with rear tenements, often set at all sorts of odd angles, surprise alone is practicable. Pursuit through the winding ways and passages is impossible. The young thieves know them all by heart. ”

“ The gang is a distemper of the slum that writes upon the generation it plagues the recipe for its own corrective. It is not the night stick, though in the acute stage that is not to be dispensed with. Neither is it the jail. To put the gang behind iron bars affords passing relief, but it is like treating a symptom without getting at the root of the disease. ”

“ Curiously, too, boys from the better class of homes more often form their social groups de novo to suit their individual social needs; while boys whose home training is deficient tend more to become members of gangs already29 formed. For this reason the permanent and long-lived gangs are apt to be tough, with fixed and dangerous traditions. Thus, while among well brought up boys a gang rarely survives the boyhood of the group which formed it, among delinquents of my acquaintance hardly more than a quarter were original members of their gangs, or could tell how their gangs started. ”

“ Their unformed dread took shape at the cry from the outside of the crowd, from where men were still coming down the eastern side of Bridge Street. 'The gang! the gang!' shrieked out some one. 'The gang are upon us! Help! help!' Then the fire-bell had been a decoy; a sort of seething the kid in its mother's milk, leading men into a snare through their kindliest feelings. ”

“ At first but little notice was taken of these depredations, as they were, for a time, on a very small scale, but the losses being continually reported, aroused a suspicion in the minds of the officials of the road that the goods were more than one man could comfortably get away with, and hence they reasonably concluded that a gang was engaged in the business. ”

“ Gangland is not dull, and will overlook even a want of courage in one who, for bed and beef stews, freely places his purse at its disposal.
There are two great gangs on the East Side. These are the Five Points and the Monk Eastmans. There are smaller gangs, but each owes allegiance to either the one or the other of the two great gangs, and fights round its standard in event of general gang war.
There is danger in belonging to either of these gangs. But there is greater danger in not. I speak of folk of the Bottler's ways and walks. ”

“ Then one thing led to another, until he was face to face with dealing that took on crooked form. To protect himself he bound men to him. And so the gang developed. Many powerful gangs have developed that way out here. ”

“ Doubtless, too, the boys’ grief when a hostile gang wrecks their property or runs off with their bats and balls reinforces powerfully the law of meum et tuum. Certain it is that experienced educators regard as vastly more serious the case of the lad who goes off to steal by himself for his own profit than that of the one who steals in company with his fellows and for the advantage of the gang.
The predatory activities of the gang do, then, in no small measure, tend to cure themselves. So far as they do not, they will naturally have to be put down by force in the interests of law and order. ”

“ Their inordinate vanity is well called the slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. A young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of foreign descent, who come to speak our language better than their parents, early learn to despise them. Gangs emulate each other in hardihood, and this is one cause of epidemics in crime. ”

“ The gang demands fair play and fidelity among its members, and it usually gets these. The gang demands devotion and self-sacrifice of its members, and the boy who cannot show these qualities becomes more effectually ostracized than any defaulting bank official or corrupt politician. These fine virtues, then—loyalty, honor, devotion—are cultivated by the gang just at the time when the instincts for them are strongest, and at a time when no other agency is prepared to do the work. ”

“ Moving in the same direction under a common impulse and intent upon a laudable enterprise, race and class distinctions are considered negligible, if, indeed, they are not entirely overlooked or forgotten. The group is, in truth, a sublimated gang with the undesirable elements eliminated and the potential qualities of the gang retained. The gang spirit when impelling in right directions and toward worthy ends is to be highly commended. In the gang, each member stimulates and reënforces the other members, and their achievements in combination amply justify their coöperation. ”

“ It may be that the leader is neither thief nor thug, but ambitious. In that case the gang is headed for politics by the shortest route. Likewise, sometimes, when he is both. In either case it carries the situation by assault. When the gang wants a thing, the easiest way seems to it always (p. 243) to take it. There was an explosion in a Fifth Street tenement, one winter's night, that threw twenty families into a wild panic, and injured two of the tenants badly. There was much mystery about it, until it came out that the housekeeper had had a "run in" with the gang in the block. ”

“ Each exists for the sake of a definite set of activities—to play games, to seek adventure, to go swimming, boating, and playing Indians in the woods, to make mischief, to steal, to fight other gangs. Few are the groups which do not, at one time or another, do all these things. Especially noteworthy is the desire of the gang for a local habitation—its own special street corner, its clubroom, its shanty in the woods. ”

“ A gang has seized a tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost literally as well as metaphorically the “ninth part of a man,” and his captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. ”

“ The Legs are associated in [Pg 198] gangs, have a system perfectly organized, and possess a large capital invested in this pursuit; they are seldom alone, always armed to the teeth, bound to sustain each other, and hold life at a pin's fee. Upon the banks of these great waters they most commonly rendezvous; and not a steamboat stirs from any quarter, but one or more of the gang proceed on board, in some guise or other, according to the capability or appearance of the agent ”

“ The Old Guard at Waterloo, the Spartans at Thermopylæ, the Boy on the Burning Deck, the Roman Guard at Pompeii, Horatius, Arnold von Winkelried,—who of us was not brought up on these stories? The manly virtues are instinctive in proper men, but men first learn their practice in the gang.
Almost every activity of the gang is a lesson in coöperation. Not only the group games and the fighting, but the peaceful tribal occupations,—the hunting, fishing, exploring, hut-building, swimming, skating,—all have to be done more or less in common. ”

“ The gunpowder was just a "bluff" to frighten the housekeeper, an installment of the kind of politics it meant to play when it got its chance. There was "nothing against this gang" except a probable row with the saloon keeper, since it applied elsewhere for house-room. Not every gang has a police record of theft and "slugging" beyond the early encounters of the street. "Our honored leader" is not always the captain of a band of cutthroats. He is the honorary president of the "social club" that bears his name, and he counts for something in the ward. ”

“ As a general rule, the different divisions of a gang used to encamp near each other at the various halting grounds, and were always in frequent communication with one another. No sooner had one of them fallen in with a party of travellers than the intelligence was conveyed to all the others, and every one was on the alert. Their leaders, travelling as merchants, gentlemen, soldiers, or peasants, usually succeeded by their [Pg 63] plausible manners in ingratiating themselves with the strangers. ”