But surely in the jail, so I reasoned, I shall meet the "confirmed criminal." In this prison are fourteen hundred convicts--men who, under the law, have been found guilty of robbery, arson, forgery, murder--all kinds of crime; men condemned to live apart from the rest of mankind, to be caged within walls. And now in the jail--in this place of punishment of last resort--here where the refuse of the System is gathered, I must certainly come in contact with the vilest and most hopeless. Men who will submit to no law, no control--men without faith in God or man--men who even in prison will still pursue their violent and evil ways; now I shall get to know what such creatures are like.
Farthest away, at the other end of the row of iron cells, is Number Eight. He is a big, good-natured, husky chap from the enamel-shop; sent down to this place of supreme punishment because he had talked back to one of the citizen instructors. For what reason he is placed in Cell Eight, which has no wooden floor, so that its occupant has to lie on the bare iron plates covered with rivets, I am unable to state. Formerly none of these cells had wooden floors, and everyone slept on the rivets, rolling over and over through the night as each position in turn became unbearable.
In Cell Four is my sociable friend, whose name I learn is Joe; and in Cell Five is the man he referred to as his partner, with whom Joe was having a friendly little scrap when they were interrupted and sent down here. The two fellows are, apparently, on perfectly good terms, but Number Five thought Joe had done something, which Joe hadn't; so he punched Joe, and Joe punched him back. It was nothing more than a slight breach of discipline, for which a minimum punishment should have been inflicted--if anything more than a separation and a word of caution were necessary.
In Cell Three is the fellow with a bad cold. He is being punished for hitting another inmate over the head with a crowbar. This sounds rather serious, but the other fellow had called him an ugly name--a name which any man considers himself justified in resenting; and one effect of confinement being to make tempers highly inflammable, Number Three had resented the epithet with the nearest weapon handy.