UC-NRLF PS 3537 T313 L4 1910 MAIN B M IDE THE LEAST OF THESE BY LINCOLN STEFFENS iRARY > RNIA [SIDENT. RAY t . THE LEAST OF THESE THE LEAST OF THESE A FACT STORY BY LINCOLN STEFFENS HILLACRE BOOKHOUSE RIVERSIDE, CONN. 1910 Copyright, 1908, by The Ridgway Company Copyright, 1910, by Frederick C. Bursch P535: DEDICATION. y^^HIS little book is made ) for bad people : sinners who know that they sin. And it is meant, not to correct but to comfort them; as they understood from the start, they and their friends; and no one else ^* apparently. Everybody s Mag azine published the story original ly, in the January number, 1909, and you can see, from the first line to the last, that I thought every body would rejoice with me over 5 714 DEDICATION the very personal good news I was reporting. And many letters came, and some of them showed an understanding that was pro found. But others asked to know more. Most of these were from good men and women who said that they couldn t see the good in my good news. Had they failed to find the news in it, I should not have been so instructed, since the gospel of " the least of these " was just about 1909 years old when I reported this example of it. I cannot help these people. They need help. I feel sincere ly that good people need more DEDICATION help than any other kind of people; they are sinners who do not know that they sin. But for that reason, perhaps they don t know enough of the evil in the world to know so much of the good as there is in Bailey s story. I can satisfy them upon one point, however. All the readers who missed my "moral" (so to speak) were interested in my hero, and they all asked the question the children always ask : "And what became of Bailey ?" The story found Bailey. He had disappeared, leaving no trace behind. (He had "correspond ed" with others; there was no 7 DEDICATION one to " correspond " with him.) But I hoped and feared that he might see his story in the magazine ; and he did. Along in August seven months later he wrote me from the sunny Southwest. "Dear Friend/ he began and, I imagine, he hesitated. But he decided for me. " I think I may [call you that]/ he said. " Your article has just come to my attention by chance. I could not help but recognize Bailey and the Director. Let me thank you for it, for the * heart in the story, the help and the courage it will give to many, and for understanding Bailey a little/ DEDICATION That was all. Nothing about himself, but he signed his right name and he gave his address, so I asked the children s question. He answered, and this second letter, like the first, is reproduced in facsimile on another page. If this were a fiction story and I had invented it, these sunny letters might be polished into a happy ending. But a fact- story never ends ; never ; nor the battles of life. Bailey s final battle isn t fought and won. No man knows that better than Bailey. He will have other battles to fight and, even if he wins them all, there will be other fellows with battles to win, 9 DEDICATION and lose. And some of these losers wrote to me, and I noticed that not one of them asked me what had become of Bailey. They didn t dare, I guess; they assumed that Bailey, like them, had fought and lost. And they didn t mind, evidently. The story ended well enough for them. It comforted them, and since God is the author of it, I may say they "love it," as they wrote; and had "cut it out to keep." And these are the people for whom this book is cut out and put in shape to carry in a hip pocket or under a shirt. It will lie well between a bare breast 10 DEDICATION and a "jimmy/ for example; and I would not have any son of man leave the book behind just because he was going to break into a house at night, or get drunk, or preach half the truth, or write a lie, or employ little children, or sell bad goods, or accept, or even offer, a bribe. That s the very time to have it by. For the comforting truth Bailey has brought to book here is that there will be hope for us, even after we shall have done the wrong we are planning pre sently to do ; any wrong by any body : you, I, even Bailey ; and that even after he or I or you shall have fought our last fight, ii DEDICATION even though we lose it, even then there still will be hope, and faith, and love to give. L. S. Little Point, Riverside, Conn. May ist, 1910. 12 THE LEAST OF THESE HET me present to you, as a Christmas gift, a jewel I picked up once when I was wading around on the bottom of a city. If you accept it in the spirit in which it is offered, you shall see that beautiful things lie buried in the muck of life. Not truth alone, and misery; faith is to be found there, and service, hope, and charity. They look dirty and they often are polluted, but so is the pearl unclean when 13 THE LEAST OF THESE the diver brings it up, and dia monds in the mine are rough. The city I refer to seemed to be well governed, and I was troubled. Good is hard to be lieve ; to prove it is harder still. I was working anxiously to be sure, therefore ; searching deep for my evidence, when I came upon the jail. That stood wide open, both the cell doors within and the gate to the world outside ; and no prisoner escaped. None had ever tried to since the day a fellow who declared he was going was caught, as he started, by the other prisoners and quietly thrashed. On the other hand, I heard that prisoners had been known to weep "4 THE LEAST OF THESE when, having done their time, they were sent away. Now, the jail of a city is not ordinarily the place where con victs are kept. "Bad men" are committed there, but not for long. The jail is for the weak: men and women and children, " drunks and disorderlies," loafers, bums, vagrants, sneak thieves and petty criminals generally. They are despised by the police; they will obey the whistle like dogs. They are shunned by professional crim inals ; they don t dare help on a " good job," and, if compelled to, will " peach on a pal." And, in deed, they are beneath contempt. They do weak things weakly, 15 THE LEAST OF THESE and are without respect either for themselves or for one another. They are lost souls. They have surrendered. They breathe, but they are dead. The jail is the tomb where we bury out of sight of the living world these ends of men and women, them and their shuffling, slinking, harmless, all- enveloping despair ordinarily. The moment you entered, un noticed, its open doors, you felt that there was something out of the ordinary about this particular jail. The prisoners were the same, but there was a smile on their vice-formed faces, a wan but natural smile. It vanished at sight of a natural human being; the 16 THE LEAST OF THESE cowardly eyes shifted, the mean, soft feet shuffled, the useless hands the whole thing got away somehow. And so does the healthy visitor. I never really saw that jail; I couldn t "look into" it. But that smile on those faces having seen, I had to account for that. It was proof positive of the presence there of somebody out of the ordinary, so I searched for "the man/ I asked questions of the officials that had to visit and know about the jail. These were not many, and the few didn t know very much. The Mayor, whose personality and administration made possible this wide-open jail, didn t know it was 17 THE LEAST OF THESE open, and he didn t seem to care. "What of it?" he said. "It s pretty, and I guess it s good, but it doesn t prove good government and it doesn t prevent bad govern ment." He referred me to the Direc tor of the Department of Chari ties and Correction, which had jurisdiction. That gentleman was out; he hardly ever was in, and his staff " understood, in a way," that there were " queer doings " in the jail ; they " really couldn t say" what they were, nor who did them. The Director knew that much. He said, when I found him, that the jail was left open as a part of the policy of an 18 THE LEAST OF THESE under-jailor, one Bailey, but that the department didn t discover the practice till experience had proved it safe. " Something keeps the prison ers there/ he said. "Something" is the word he used, and yet he knew, he must have known, I thought, that it was " somebody. " I asked him what the "thing" might be that chained those prisoners there. "Honor?" I suggested, with some sarcasm. And why not? Honor may be a slight virtue, and primitive, but, as I urged upon the Director, " it is vigor ous, and jail-birds are not vigor ous." THE LEAST OF THESE "True/* he answered me very quietly, " you are altogether right; jail-birds are not vigorous, but as you also say honor is. Honor lives even through dishonor." Intent upon my search for one Bailey, "the" man I was after, it was annoying to be stopped thus by another man. But men, real men, who see things from their own angle and play off their own bat, are too rare to overlook one, so when it appeared that the Director also was " some body," I let the interview wan der far enough to discover that Bailey s superior was wise and very gentle. He had been a clergy man, but his wisdom was of his 20 THE LEAST OF THESE religion, not of his church. He knew this world. He knew it well. He knew so much of it that he was sure he didn t know much. He never was sarcastic, for example; nor enthusiastic. He had faith ; he believed in God. " Things grow," he said. We all believe that, or say it; but when a man knows it, when the sense of gradual growth and natural change is an inherent part of every thought and feeling of his conscious life, why, then that man becomes patient. And the Director was as patient for good as he was with evil. He was patient even with my impatience. 21 THE LEAST OF THESE "Good isn t created," he said, "not even by God, and, as for us humans, all we can do is to find it growing and, by protect ing and cultivating the sprouts and pulling up the weeds, give the good a better chance." And he was satisfied that this should be so. He went on to say contentedly that he wasn t of any importance, and that Bailey wasn t. "Bailey and this department," he said, " are only relieving pain. We are weeds ourselves. The Mayor is tending the good seeds; he is cultivating conditions that will prevent pain. He is labor ing to make jails and Departments 22 THE LEAST OF THESE of Charities and Correction un necessary. That s what he meant by his remark to you about Bailey. We all want to abolish Bailey and me or put ourselves at real work." "And Bailey ?" I asked. "I don t know, yet," he said. " Sometimes I fear Bailey is mak ing himself necessary; that he is building something upon his own personality ; and anything a man roots solely in his own per sonality dies when he dies. But, as I say, I don t know, yet. I don t need to know, yet. I m looking into the jail now and then and letting the thing grow. It seems to have some roots in " 23 THE LEAST OF THESE "Things?" I suggested, and I could not help being bitter. "Things like honor?" " Yes," he said sweetly,"There s something of that in it. But honor isn t all." There were schools in the jail, he said ; not one, but several schools or classes. It was the policy of the under-jailor to have a carpenter come in at night and teach carpentry ; an electrician to teach electricity. A bum who had gone through college taught another bum geography, while he, the college graduate, belonged to a class of two that studied plumbing. It was a curious cur riculum. There was a Bible class, 24 , <? THE LEAST OF THESE but that likewise was small. The only course they all took together, apparently, was litera ture ; the under-jailor read aloud to them any clear English that carried thought he could under stand. The list of his selections was odd, modern, but, on the whole, noble. "But what about this under- jailor?" I asked impatiently. "And what is his policy?" The Director answered patient ly. "Bailey?" he said. "Bailey was a mission worker. I had a mission church once. Mission workers are queer people ; there s usually something wrong with them. But Bailey I saw much 25 THE LEAST OF THESE of him ; he seemed to be all right. When the Mayor made me head of this department, Bailey asked for a place in the jail; any place. He didn t say what he wanted it for; I didn t ask him. I thought it over and I decided to see. I suppose that was the way the Mayor felt about me. I had Bailey appointed a night guard. He did very well. He came to have an in fluence over the prisoners. They obey his slightest word; and when they go away they corres pond with him. He teaches them to help one another. It s very good. Bailey was promoted to be under-jailor." 26 THE LEAST OF THESE "But what s the man s idea?" I asked. "What s his theory?" The former clergyman didn t know, exactly. "It isn t my idea, you see," he said quietly. "It s Bailey s. So I probably couldn t understand it perfectly. You would better see Bailey." Of course I had to see Bailey, but I explained that I needed first the key; some clue to the man ; some notion of that about him of which he himself might not be conscious. "What s his hold on the pris oners?" I asked. "I don t know, exactly," the Director said, incuriously. He went on to suggest, however, 27 THE LEAST OF THESE that, for one thing, Bailey "seemed never to give a man up for lost; never." Persuading a drunkard not to drink, a thief to stop stealing, a loafer to work, he forgave backsliding not only "until seven times " but "until seventy times seven." No mat ter how often, no matter how low a fellow might fall, Bailey told him there still was hope. Hope for the hopeless! That was a clue. But the desire how did Bailey awaken the thought, the wish to hope? "N-n-o," the Director said, "it isn t exactly religion." The fact was, he couldn t say just 28 THE LEAST OF THESE what it was, unless it was that Bailey had hope to give, and faith. And, as if it were re lated, he added: "He does give service, you know. Bailey per forms the most menial offices for these people; tasks they won t do for one another." The Director told me what some of these services were, and they were, indeed, menial. They were horrid; necessary, but im possible. My perplexity made the Direc tor smile, but he couldn t or wouldn t at any rate he didn t help me to understand. And the insight I got from him was pro found as compared with that fur- 29 THE LEAST OF THESE nished by all others. I had to see Bailey. Bailey did not shake hands when we met. I offered to, but he looked away and led me to the desk where he kept his cor respondence with his discharged prisoners. He was a small man, young, not well, evidently, and very serious. Bailey never smiled. Having been directed to show me some sample letters, he did so. They were rude, penciled, often incoherent writings from many, many places ; for, of course, the writers were tramps and petty thieves. One note ran through them all, however endeavor, dull hope and an affectionate re- 30 THE LEAST OF THESE spect for Bailey. "I fell in Pittsburg, but got out and moved on. Was pulled in Scranton on suspicion. When I got out, I got that way again. I ain t no good, Mr. Bailey, but I remember what you says to me that time. I ll never quit trying." Bailey remarked uneasily, by way of explanation, that these men were "tired." They had no strength, and it was a "rest for them to give up; to quit trying." "What s the use of tiring them?" I asked. Bailey fussed with the papers, put some letters carefully away, got out others before he replied. 3 1 THE LEAST OF THESE " It seems like suicide when they give up the last hope," he said. "It s like dying. And anybody will try to save anybody that is dying, I think." There was no rebuke in the tone of the reply, as there was in the substance. Bailey evi dently did not expect either sympathy or understanding. I guess he was used to my atti tude. I did not alter it, how ever; not then. "But what makes them tired?" I asked, and I suppose I sneered when 1 suggested "Work?" " Yes," he answered directly, " work and vice. Vice weakens them. Work tires them very 3 2 THE LEAST OF THESE much." "How do they know that?" I asked. "Did they ever try it? " Bailey fussed with those letters, keeping his eyes fixed upon them, but he answered: "Yes; most of them did, as children." As children ! Were bums the products of child labor? Was that the genesis of the good-for- nothing ? "Yes," said Bailey, simply. "A large percentage of our pris oners are exhausted human be ings, devitalized by early work. They have no energy left, no spirit, no strength. Early vice explains others. The rest are 33 THE LEAST OF THESE born so." "Born tired! " I almost laugh ed forth the well-worn phrase, but Bailey did not notice. "Yes," he said, "born of tired or vicious parents." He spoke like Fate, without resentment, without sorrow,with- out purpose. He wasn t trying, he evidently did not expect to convince me. He saw that I was an educated ignoramus and he simply handed out to me, as a weary salesman will, what ever I called for. And this fact crushed me. Reading such things in books is one thing; taking them direct from a man that knows is another. Hearsay some- 34 THE LEAST OF THESE how convinces one. I changed my tone. " What can you hope to do for them, Bailey ?" I asked gently. He noticed the change. He glanced up at me, but his eyes couldn t stand my gaze. They dropped. "I kind o hope," he said softly, " to make them hope. Men smile when they hope, and there s strength in a smile/ Stabbing at his vitals, as a re porter must, to get the news, I said : "But you, Bailey, you don t smile?" He ceased fussing with the 35 THE LEAST OF THESE papers; he was still a moment. Then he seemed to speak the truth. " There is no hope for me," he said. I made him go on by keeping silent myself, silent and expec tant. " There isn t much hope for them either, really, but I can do something for some of them/* he said. " But," he concluded after an interval, " nobody can do anything for me." It would be hard to say what it was that was so convincing in this statement by this man. His humility was obvious; it shroud ed his whole attitude, physical 36 THE LEAST OF THESE and mental. As a matter of fact, it was more like shame than re signation. I felt that I was near a knowledge and a philosophy which I never could fathom, and I did not wonder any more that the Director "didn t know/ To gain time and the man s confidence, and so get his story, which the Director said Bailey never had told and never would tell, I drew him out about his work. His " method JJ was to meet the new prisoners as a friend ; not as a jailor, and yet "not ex actly " with kindness; but "more on a level, man to man." Tak ing them in, he made them com- 37 THE LEAST OF THESE fortable. He cleaned them, as a nurse would clean them ; washed them; treated their bruises; bathed their sores ; clothed them warm ly ; put them to bed and to sleep. " Sometimes they are brutal, yes," he said. " And they have hurt me. But I never mind. I understand that they do not understand such treatment. But they remember. Most of them have had a mother or somebody who was that way with them, and by and by, when they are tired of resisting, they remember that way. I have seen the tears come then. I have seen them sob as little children do when they are tired sob, and sigh, and so fall 38 THE LEAST OF THESE asleep, smiling. That s always good ; the first clean sleep like that is a great deal to them/ The odd curriculum of the school came about in this way, he said : He searched the new pris oners minds as the police searched their pockets, and, though he found as little, there was always something : some interest, some poor, starved, dying interest. The only hold the man who studied electricity had left on all the in terests of this world was a curi osity about the theory of that subject. He had had it as a boy, but never could satisfy it. Bailey was trying to satisfy it. "Maybe he is a genius," I 39 THE LEAST OF THESE said, "and will do something great after all." Bailey shook his head. "No/* he said, " he is no use any more. He was put to work at nine in a glass works; pushed a little car from the hot room into the cold room, and back, many times a day, for years. He is almost blind, bent, and tired. No, he can t do anything in electricity. But I thought electricity might do something for him, give him an interest hope a false hope good only for his " "Soul," I finished, to get over it. "Yes, I see. You think these funny little interests of theirs are the way to their minds 40 THE LEAST OF THESE or souls, and so you teach them anything they want to learn geography, plumbing, the Bible/ "Yes," said Bailey. "And you don t teach them anything they don t want to learn?" "No," said Bailey. "That s a mistake which is often made with such people." " You mean it s wrong to try to teach them what we think they ought to know?" " Yes," said Bailey. "They are sick people, sick of soul, and very low, and sick souls must be fed like sick stomachs with any thing they can take in and keep down." 41 THE LEAST OF THESE I shifted the subject to the "bad men/ the prisoners who were not vagrants, but petty criminals. Bailey s face bright ened. "There s hope for them," he responded eagerly, almost cheer ily. " Crime takes some strength, courage, enterprise yes, even petty crime as compared with vagrancy." And Bailey told how he "let" them help one another and the vagrants. Finding that they formed little groups of two, three and more, he encouraged these "gangs" and, suggesting (without seeming to) that they hang together after they were 42 THE LEAST OF THESE released, he developed a practise which has become an institution. The first gang that went forth consciously organized to look for honest work agreed among them selves that the first to find a job was to divide equally with the others. The second was to do the same, and the third, and so on till they all had "landed/* None of them landed till Bailey had used secretly a political pull for one man. That man hired a room where they all slept. They hadn t food enough, but there was the jail, like a home, in the background, and though Bailey saw to it that the gang did not lose the fascinating sense 43 THE LEAST OF THESE of independent self-help, he car ried the scheme through. And then, when other prisoners and "gangs * came out, they were assisted by the first, and so merg ing, grew like a trust. Not rapidly, of course, for the mem bers kept falling, old and new, again and again. Nobody but Bailey, I guess, could have put up with the dis appointments of that organiza tion. The members themselves couldn t at first. The drunkards couldn t see why an habitual thief had to steal, and the thief lacked sympathy with the drunk ard. Sometimes their disgust with one another was amusing. THE LEAST OF THESE One reformed " drunk and dis orderly" used to curse, and urge the expulsion of every other re formed drunkard or thief that lost a job, though all the while he himself was backsliding periodically and costing more than he contributed. Bailey s patience shamed them gradually into a rough tolerance till they, too, learned "never to give a man up; never. " Well, as the gangs came out of the jail and joined the trust, more rooms were hired, and more, till finally the city took cognizance and rented a house; then the house next door; and the last time I was there it had 45 THE LEAST OF THESE three houses strung together by doors cut in the walls. "There had to be a place for them to fall back on as a home," Bailey said, when he concluded his account. "And a house like that is better than a jail." "And there must be some body," I suggested, " some friend somewhere to visit and write to ? " "Yes," said Bailey. "Somebody that believes in them?" I pressed, prying. "Yes," said Bailey. "Somebody that knows the worst in them and still believes." "Yes," said Bailey. "And what sort of a man is that, Bailey?" 4 6 THE LEAST OF THESE He began fussing with his papers again, and that wouldn t do. I went at him direct. "How do you do it, Bailey ?" He looked up for just a second, then down went his eyes. But he answered. "Their friend cannot be a superior person," he said, squirm ing. " He cannot be better than they or he couldn t stand it, and they couldn t, either." He hesi tated before he went on. " I tell them that I am as low as they are, and and that s true." He hurried on to tell me some of the awful things his prisoners had done, things I had never heard of. One should 47 THE LEAST OF THESE know of them to understand fully the man and his work, but it is better not to understand fully. It s enough that after he had told enough he repeated his humilia tion. " I can talk to any of them, help them all, because I am as low as they are/ It was time for his story, and I asked for it. He told it. The first thing he remembers of his life is standing as a little boy on the bar of a dive, singing. He can see that scene vividly. He seems to have had a pretty child s voice ; learned songs easily; and his father, a drunken bum, took him around, making him 4 8 *v.^w- */A^Myv- &SiS(stS-S /^^~J\- *,&r sL^ s~l>*-^-^S~ ^ l ^- ^Z / W^^--<^<^-*--; ( ^^ ^x^^/^t^A^f ffl 7 x ^/ THE LEAST OF THESE perform for drinks. And the child sang till the man was drunk; then they both slept in alleys, boxes, empty cars where they fell. This went on for years. Often the child was drunken, too ; whenever the barroom drunkards said, " Give the kid a drink," he was made to drink. It was amusing to see the kid get drunk, sing wildly, reel and, finally, drop. The father died. The boy woke up one morning to find him cold and, knowing nothing else to do, went on singing for pennies and food and the drinks, till his voice cracked. Then, his friends being tramps, the boy 49 THE LEAST OF THESE took to the road. He did what tramps did : begged, stole, drank, rode on car trucks and in empty freights. He was debauched at four or five, degraded and dis eased at twelve. And yet, as he told the story, I could see that a spirit that may have been his mother s (whom he never saw or heard of) a soul that must have been fine and strong orig inally had lived through it all. The mission caught it first. He reformed. He learned to read, and also somehow this he never could explain some how Bailey rose above the emotion to an understanding of religion and of his world. 5 THE LEAST OF THESE It is given to few really to understand Christianity ; Bailey seemed to. His life the worst of it, I mean seems to have made possible such an utter comprehension as he had of the doctrine of humility, for giveness, love and service. In deed, he said as much indirectly. " Christ must have been di vine/ he reasoned once, "be cause, being pure, he understood my kind of people. The only others that do are my kind of people. And," looking up he added rather naively, "I think we understand Him. Why, He said that unless ye do it unto the least of these ye do it not 5 1 THE LEAST OF THESE unto me. 3 Bailey s eyes widened as he spoke, as if to comprehend a justice as big as that. "So you, Bailey, are doing it unto the least of these. Why aren t you happy?" "Oh, you don t understand," he said, shocked at my interpre tation. "I am the least of these. That s why I can help them as no other can ; but, you see, there is nobody can help me." Seeing in my face the doubt and annoyance I felt, he repeated the singular remark he made be fore. "That s true," he said. Was it ? I recalled his avoid ance of my hand when we met; 52 THE LEAST OF THESE his humility that was so much like shame; and, studying him there painfully before me, I was half convinced. I could not be wholly convinced because, you see, I realized that if a spirit that was as beautiful as his; that could do a service as loath some, hopeless, loving and patient as that which he did there in that jail, day in and day out; if such a soul could live and work in a low body that was still low, why, then then there was hope for all and forever. And it was true. Year by year I looked in upon Bailey s city ; al ways inquiring about Bailey s jail. His work was growing, expand- 53 THE LEAST OF THESE ing, and the Director, wonderful man, was letting it grow. Till this year. When I called there in the spring and asked about the jail, the Director said that the jail and its organization were doing very well. He went into detail. He went with unwonted eagerness into great detail. The schools had developed; the in struction was better, and, yes, the curriculum was determined strict ly by the wishes of the prisoners, each prisoner. And the houses had increased in number; that was the time I learned that there were three. "Bailey built well/ 1 the Direc tor concluded. "It was something 54 THE LEAST OF THESE that wanted to be done, a good that existed and he cultivated it so well that it could go on with out him. Bailey made himself unnecessary/ "Bailey is gone, then/ I in ferred. " Yes," the Director lied kindly, "he left us." Bailey had been discharged. And for cause. I had to drag forth the good news. The Di rector didn t want to tell me the cause. He thought I had ideal ized Bailey, and he didn t care to destroy anybody s idols. Let ting things grow, the Director was willing also to let them wither and die of themselves. 55 THE LEAST OF THESE But my interest, as you know, was other than he thought; it was in the news, not the man, so I challenged the Director. "I think/ I said, "that I would not have discharged that man for any cause. " "You would if you knew what the cause was," he answered. And remembering that the Director, knowing more evil, was more merciful than I, and wiser and more patient, I was convinced. It was true. It is true. It is true that there is hope for all and forever; it is true that the spirit of an angel can live in a body that is low; it is true that beautiful things, 56 THE LEAST OF THESE polluted but precious, lie buried in the muck at the bottom of the cities. 57 BERKELEY, CA 9,