The Nation Behind Prison Bars Part 17

-------- "For G.o.d so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life."--John 3:16.

To Brother George L. Herr

By Joseph M. McGuire

The days are long and dreary, And the hours go slowly by, While the prisoner, sad and weary, Longs for the time to fly.

But one brings joy and suns.h.i.+ne To the prisoners sad at heart, And it is but a short time 'Till with him we'll have to part.

We cannot find another, Search, I care not where, Who will do as much for a brother As our Bro. George L. Herr.

He comes early in the morning, And never leaves till night; He always seems untiring, Helping wayward men do right.

He is always up and willing Whene'er a prisoner call, To go and do the bidding Of a man behind the wall.

And then there is another, Who shares his joy and strife; She is called by the prisoners "Mother,"

And is Bro. Herr's good wife.

Early Sunday morning, In rain, snow, sleet, or hail, You will find him holding meeting In the Jefferson County Jail.

I love to hear him tell the story Of the "Prodigal Son,"

And of the "Mighty Prince of Glory,"

From whom salvation sprung.

Round his good face there seems a halo, His work is for One on high, He makes suns.h.i.+ne out of sorrow, Whenever he is nigh.

Success of Reformed Criminals

After Blotting Out the Past

"Once a Thief, Always a Thief," has been disproved in thousands of cases according to Mr. William A. Pinkerton.

"Do criminals ever reform, really turn over a new leaf and become good citizens?"

I fired the question at random, little dreaming what a wealth of interesting and convincing anecdote it would evoke. I expected the time honored cynical reply, something to the effect of "Once a thief, always a thief," But I was disappointed--agreeably disappointed. For my answer was a quick, emphatic, earnest "Yes."

And the man who said "Yes" was William A. Pinkerton, and he knows.

Probably no living man knows more intimate details about the individual members of the underworld, those who are active criminals to-day, as well as the notorious crooks of the past, than the head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. And every crook will tell you, what every honest man who knows Mr. Pinkerton will tell you, that when he says "Yes" there is no possibility that the correct answer should be "No."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM A. PINKERTON

Head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency

New York]

"I know what the average man thinks--that a real crook never turns straight. But it isn't so. Thousands of crooks--and I don't mean one-time offenders, but men in the cla.s.s we call hardened criminals--have become honest men to my knowledge. It is not true, as some recent writer said, that as many crooks turn honest as there are honest men turn crooked, but I believe that one of the reasons is that so few men are willing to lend a helping hand. I don't mean that every crook is ready to reform if he is encouraged, but I do mean that society makes it hard for any man who has once been a criminal to lead an honest life.

"And I'll tell you another thing," continued Mr. Pinkerton: "I'm prouder of the fact that I have helped a few criminals to become honest men than of all the work I have done in putting criminals behind the bars. I'm proud of the fact that every crook knows that Pinkerton will deal squarely with him if he will deal squarely with Pinkerton--that I believe it is as important to keep faith with a bank thief as with a bank president.

"I know a score of business men in Chicago--not saloonkeepers, but reputable merchants--who have criminal records. These men have done time and have paid their debt to society for their crimes. I cannot tell you their names, for it would be unfair to them and to their wives and families, many of whom have no suspicion that there is anything wrong in the pasts of their husbands and fathers. Besides, when society discovers that a man is a former criminal it is not content to cancel the debt no matter how much imprisonment at hard labor the former crook may have given in expiation of his sin.

"I know men in trusted positions in New York who were convicts. In many cases only the man himself and his employer know the secret and sometimes the employer does not know it. I know men scattered all over the West--business men, professional men, many of them wealthy and prominent citizens--who have seen the inside of Joliet, Moyomensing, Sing Sing or Leavenworth. They have sons and daughters who never have suspected and never will suspect the truth.

"These are good men--as good men as any living. They have turned away from their old ways, in many cases have changed their names, and who shall say they are not as much to be respected as the honest man who never was tempted, never was forced into crime? I'll tell you about some of them.

"When I was a boy in Chicago there were two brothers, neighbors, about the age of myself and my younger brother, and we were friends. When the civil war broke out I went into the army secret service at the age of fifteen, and the older of these two boys, John, enlisted in an Illinois regiment. Jerry, the younger, was not old enough, but a little later, when the government began offering a bounty for soldiers, he became a bounty jumper. He would enlist, get the bounty money, then desert and enlist over again under another name. He was with a band of young fellows who were engaged in that way of getting easy money, and who found it so easy that they turned to other kinds of crime.

"When the war was over John came back to Chicago and settled down as a rather plodding sort of a mechanic. He tried to get Jerry to straighten out, but the younger brother was too far along the road to prison.

"In those days the Northwestern Railroad used wood for fuel, and the wood agent of the road was Amos Snell--the same Snell who was later murdered by 'Willie Tascott.' He lived in a suburb of Chicago, and one night Jerry and his crowd went out there and 'stuck' up the whole family--robbed them of everything they had. John was along with them, lying in the bottom of the hack. The police got a clew through the hack-driver and rounded up the whole band. All of them, including John, were sentenced to five years each except Jerry. When he came into the hands of the police a citizen who had been held up on the street some time before identified him as the hold-up man, and on the strength of that the Judge gave him fifteen years. It was an unjust sentence, for Jerry had not committed the hold-up--that was found out later.

"Well, John's old Colonel and some other army men and my father got together and got a pardon for John, who had merely gone along with the crowd and had taken no part in the robbery. He went back to work at his trade of bra.s.s finisher, but Jerry stayed in Joliet, rebelling against those long unjust years of his sentence.

Jerry was put to work in the engine room of the prison and soon displayed great apt.i.tude for machinery. He served out his term with time off for good behavior and finally got out. I met him in Chicago. He was despondent. He felt that he had no chance to be anything but a crook, but he knew the terrible chances a once convicted man runs if he returns to crime. I told him the best thing for him to do was to go to New York, and I sent him on to my brother Robert, who had also known him as a boy.

Reform of Jerry.

"Now, here's a part of this story that will interest you. Robert had a friend who was chief engineer of a building in Ann street. He told this friend about Jerry, and the engineer said he'd take a chance on him. He put Jerry to work stoking the boiler at a dollar and a half a day. After a year or so there was a vacancy and Jerry became a.s.sistant engineer. A little while later the chief engineer resigned and Jerry after awhile, the ex-crook, became chief engineer. He left there after awhile to take charge of a big plant on Long Island, and he sent for his brother John and gave him a job.

"A few years later the two brothers called on me in Chicago. They had saved about $6,000 between them and were on their way to a new town in the West to start a manufacturing business of their own. Each had married a girl who knew nothing of their prison record and had children.

They prospered exceedingly. John died several years ago, but only a few months ago, when my brother Robert died, an old man, whom n.o.body but myself recognized, came from the West for the funeral and shed tears at the grave. It was Jerry. He is still living, and is the leading citizen of his town and worth at least half a million dollars.

"Criminals who reform? There are thousands of them. I remember a little Liverpool Irishman who was a pickpocket around New York. He was known as 'Jimmy the Nibbler'. The police picked him up in Tennessee, where he lifted somebody's pocketbook, and he was sent to Nashville for seven years. In the prison they put him to work in the hospital. Then the cholera epidemic broke out. "Jim" helped the doctors and nurses, and when the doctors got sick he nursed them and the warden and his family and helped save a good many lives. After the epidemic was over the warden and the Prison Board were so grateful they got "Jim" a pardon and made up a purse of $350 for him. With the money in his pocket he came right to Chicago to see me. I began to lecture him on the futility of going back to the life he had led before.

"'I've cut that all out,' he said. 'I'm not going to be a gun any more.

I've been studying medicine down there in Nashville. The doctors have been telling me things and giving me medical books to read and now I want to get into one of these colleges where I can get a diploma quick.'

"There were a number of diploma factories, as the lower cla.s.s of medical colleges were called, running in Chicago then, and Jim found he had money enough to go through one of them--in the front door and out the back. But he got his diploma and license to practise and started for one of the new towns in the West. I looked him up a while ago. He comes pretty near being the most prominent citizen in the town. He is a director in a national bank and the leading physician, and has officiated at the births of half the present population. Moreover, he is an enthusiastic church member. But how long do you think it would take for the whole town to turn against him if they should ever learn out there that he is 'Jimmy the Nibbler'?

"Crooks that turn straight? Your next door neighbor, your family physician, even your clergyman, may be one of them. The world is full of them. There was one man, a professional thief, a fellow who had done time in half a dozen State prisons and penitentiaries, whom I used to labor with earnestly every time he got out, but he apparently never tried to reform. He was always doing time, it seemed.

"I lost track of him for several years. Then two years ago, when the National a.s.sociation of Chiefs of Police was in session in Buffalo, I found a note in my box in my hotel signed by this man's name. He said he was going to call at seven o'clock. There was a banquet on for that evening, and hundreds of police officials from every part of the United States were there. I wondered if he knew what sort of a lion's den he was walking into. Sure enough he came into the hotel and spoke to me.

"'Don't you know that you are surrounded by policemen, some of whom are sure to spot you?' I asked him.

"'You're the only man in the world who knows me,' he said, 'My name now is So and So'--giving me another name--'and I'm a respected and prosperous man. I just wanted to let you know before you found it out for yourself, for I knew you'd be on the square with me.' And I was. So far as I knew he was not wanted for anything, and what good would have come of exposing him?

"Thieves who resist the temptation to steal? Hundreds of them. There's one right here, only a few blocks from where we are talking. He's the watchman in a big silk warehouse--and if there's anything your professional thief likes to steal, short of money or diamonds, it's silk, for you can get so much value into so small a package. This man was a professional safe blower, and did several big jobs. When he got out of prison I helped him to get the job he has now. His employer knows his record. I told it to him on the man's own request. When work stops for the day this man is left alone in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of valuable silks. He isn't bonded, for he couldn't get a bondsman if he wanted to. He has held the job seven years now, and not a cent's worth has been taken from the warehouse in that time.

"You may say that he does not dare to steal--that he knows a single false move on his part will bring instant punishment. But I say he has no desire to steal--that he has reformed. And thousands of other criminals would reform if society would give them half a chance.

Baffling Hotel Robberies.