The Subterranean Brotherhood

Chapter I

INTRODUCTORY

Conspiracies of silence—it is a common phrase; but it has never been better illustrated than in regard to what goes on in prisons, here and in other parts of the world. The conspiracy has been attacked sometimes, and more of late than usual, and once in a while we have caught a glimpse of what is occurring behind those smug, well-fitting doors. But they have been mere glimpses, incoherent, obscure, often imaginative, or guesswork based on scanty, incorrect, at any rate secondhand information; never yet conclusive and complete. In England, Charles Dickens and Charles Reade have personally visited prisons, talked with prisoners, written stories that have stirred the world, and forced improvements. Great prisoners like Kropotkin have related their experiences in Russia, and our own George Kennan prompted us to congratulate ourselves, in our complacent ignorance, that our methods of generating virtue out of crime were not like those of the Russians. It was annoying, after this, to be assured by writers in some of our magazines—called muckrakers by some, pioneers by others—that after a sagacious, eager, well-equipped investigation into our own prison conditions, peering into depths, interrogating convicts, searching records, they had found little difference in principle between our way of handling offenses against law, and that of our Cossack neighbors. The latter are more sensational and red-blooded about it, that is all. These revelations compelled some removals and a few reforms; but they too failed to bring home livingly to public knowledge and imagination the whole ugly, sluggish, vicious truth.