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FOOTFALLS

  In the cell over mine at night
  A step goes to and fro
  From barred door to iron wall--
  From wall to door I hear it go,
  Four paces, heavy and slow,
  In the heart of the sleeping jail:
  And the goad that drives, I know!

    I never saw his face or heard him speak;
    He may be Dutchman, <DW55>, Yankee, Greek;
    But the language of that prisoned step
    Too well I know!

    Unknown brother of the remorseless bars,
    Pent in your cage from earth and sky and stars,
    The hunger for lost life that goads you so,
    I also know!

  Hour by hour, in the cell overhead,
  Four footfalls, to and fro
  'Twixt iron wall and barred door--
  Back and forth I hear them go--
  Four footfalls come and go!
  I wake and listen in the night:
  Brother, I know!

  _(Written in Atlanta Penitentiary,
  May, 1913.)_



THE SUBTERRANEAN BROTHERHOOD


By JULIAN HAWTHORNE


CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I INTRODUCTORY
   II THE DEVIL'S ANTECHAMBER
  III THE ROAD TO OBLIVION
   IV INITIATION
    V ROUTINE
   VI SOME PRISON FRIENDS OF MINE
  VII THE MEN ABOVE
 VIII FOR LIFE
   IX THE TOIL OF SLAVERY
    X OUR BROTHER'S KEEPER
   XI THE GRASP OF THE TENTACLES
  XII THE PRISON SILENCE
 XIII THE BANQUETS OF THE DAMNED
  XIV THE POLICY OF FALSEHOOD
   XV THE FRUIT OF PRISONS
  XVI IF NOT PRISONS--WHAT?
 APPENDIX



PREFACE

These chapters were begun the day after I got back to New York from the
Atlanta penitentiary, and went on from day to day to the end. I did not
know, at the start, what the thing would be like at the finish, and I made
small effort to make it look shapely and smooth; but the inward impulse in
me to write it, somehow, was irresistible, in spite of the other impulse
to go off somewhere and rest and forget it all. But I felt that if it were
not done then it might never be done at all; and done it must be at any
cost. I had promised my mates in prison that I would do it, and I was
under no less an obligation, though an unspoken one, to give the public an
opportunity to learn at first hand what prison life is, and means. I had
myself had no conception of the facts and their significance until I
became myself a prisoner, though I had read as much in "prison literature"
as most people, perhaps, and had for many years thought on the subject of
penal imprisonment. Twenty odd years before, too, I had been struck by
William Stead's saying, "Until a man has been in jail, he doesn't know
what human life means." But one does not pay that price for knowledge
voluntarily, and I had not expected to have the payment forced upon me. I
imagined I could understand the feelings of a prisoner without being one.
I was to live to acknowledge myself mistaken. And I conceive that other
people are in the same deceived condition. So, with all the energy and
goodwill of which I am capable, I set myself to do what I could to make
them know the truth, and to ask themselves what should or could be done to
end a situation so degrading to every one concerned in it, from one end of
the line to the other. The situation, indeed, seems all but incredible.
Your first thought on being told of it is, It must be an exaggeration or a
fabrication. On the contrary, words cannot convey the whole horror and
shamefulness of it.

I am conscious of having left out a great deal of it. I found as I went on
with this writing that the things to be said were restricted to a few
categories. First, the physical prison itself and the routine of life in
it must be stated. That is the objective part. Then must be indicated the
subjective conditions, those of the prisoner, and of his keepers--what the
effect of prison was upon them. Next was to come a presentation of the
consequences, deductions and inferences suggested by these conditions.
Finally