every
convict there we implanted the ambition to become even as we and run a
graft. Saviours of society--I guess yes.

Here was a hungry man without any tobacco. Maybe he was a profligate
and had used it all up on himself. Very good; he had a pair of
suspenders. I exchanged half a dozen rations of bread for it--or a
dozen rations if the suspenders were very good. Now I never wore
suspenders, but that didn't matter. Around the corner lodged a
long-timer, doing ten years for manslaughter. He wore suspenders, and
he wanted a pair. I could trade them to him for some of his meat. Meat
was what I wanted. Or perhaps he had a tattered, paper-covered novel.
That was treasure-trove. I could read it and then trade it off to the
bakers for cake, or to the cooks for meat and vegetables, or to the
firemen for decent coffee, or to some one or other for the newspaper
that occasionally filtered in, heaven alone knows how. The cooks,
bakers, and firemen were prisoners like myself, and they lodged in our
hall in the first row of cells over us.

In short, a full-grown system of barter obtained in the Erie County
Pen. There was even money in circulation. This money was sometimes
smuggled in by the short-timers, more frequently came from the
barber-shop graft, where the newcomers were mulcted, but most of all
flowed from the cells of the long-timers--though how they got it I
don't know.

What of his preeminent position, the First Hall-man was reputed to be
quite wealthy. In addition to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on
us. We farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-man was
Farmer-General over all of us. We held our particular grafts by his
permission, and we had to pay for that permission. As I say, he was
reputed to be wealthy; but we never saw his money, and he lived in a
cell all to himself in solitary grandeur.

But that money was made in the Pen I had direct evidence, for I was
cell-mate quite a time with the Third Hall-man. He had over sixteen
dollars. He used to count his money every night after nine o'clock,
when we were locked in. Also, he used to tell me each night what he
would do to me if I gave away on him to the other hall-men. You see,
he was afraid of being robbed, and danger threatened him from three
different directions. There were the guards. A couple of them might
jump upon him, give him a good beating for alleged insubordination,
and throw him into the "solitaire" (the dungeon); and in the mix-up