Slipper charged that the money had been put into his account on Feldman’s insistence, and that in return he was to render Feldman such services as Feldman saw fit to require of him, and to impart whatever informations affecting Feldman that he as trusty might be privy to.
Slipper, who is himself a “bad man” but who was, in accordance with prison custom and policy, declared an “ancient” and made trusty on his seventy-fifth birthday, insists that he has made use of only seven dollars and sixty cents of the forty dollars placed in his account in eight monthly five-dollar installments. He declared that he has rendered Feldman no services and that he asked Feldman to stop the checks months ago but that Feldman declined. (At present no machinery exists whereby a convict can turn down monies deposited to his account by an outside source, though Warden’s Office has revealed that a rule to that effect is now being considered as a result of this case.)
Slipper has asked that the funds be turned over to the prison infirmary for the purchase of additional medicines.
An editorial in the same edition offered commentary on the affair and disclosed some surprising additional facts:
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
That the moral atmosphere of this institution has markedly improved, no one who has witnessed the changes of the past few months can doubt. Yet there remain certain private pockets of pollution which, for all that, smell the worse and offend the more.
A recent fact-finding committee, charged with bringing to light vestigial episodes of corruption among the prisoners at this institution, has stated that while exact figures are unavailable, there is considerable evidence to support a conservative assertion that at least two dozen permission slips are still forged monthly, along with a like number of passes; that while absenteeism is down fortyseven percent, a check with the infirmary has revealed that only eighty-one percent of the current absenteeism is legitimate; that there are perhaps two or three warden’s-flag missions subverted to private ends each month; and that there are even now a handful of convicts who do not observe the proper seating arrangements in the dining hall. All this, capped by the recent frightful disclosure of attempted bribery in the Feldman/Slipper case, demonstrates that some — if admittedly only a few — convicts still seek to exploit their position.
Some good signs are likewise in the wind, of course. The same blue-ribbon committee has reported that attendance is up in Warden’s Forest and that on the whole most cons have responded encouragingly to Warden Fisher’s assembly plea that they keep a closer check on each other, but these ameliorating factors are tainted by the discouraging persistence of even a “little” corruption. Once again, the few bad apples have spoiled the barrel, and many are made to suffer for the mistakes of a few self-styled “privileged” characters. It is no accident, of course, that the bribery attempt, long known to Warden’s Office but only just now revealed by Slipper himself, was the work of a bad man. Perhaps the sad statistics in the committee’s report are largely the responsibility of bad men. Perhaps, too, Feldman himself will be discovered to have contributed even more to these statistics than is now known. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Meanwhile, it is only fair that we applaud Ed Slipper for his recent revelations, however belated they may have been. It is pertinent too, at this juncture, to encourage the frankness of others. Only with the cooperation of a vigilant population can this prison move closer to the ideals and goals articulated for it by its administration.
As yet, there have been no purges here among the prisoners themselves, and while history informs us that a climate of purge is often sticky, we would remind history that it has always been stickiest for the guilty.
Feldman flushed a greasy permission slip down the toilet while Bisch slept. He even wrote a letter to the editor of the prison paper:
Dear Sir:
All that was almost eight months ago, when I had been in this prison for barely more than a month. As Ed Slipper himself has said, no good ever came to me from the arrangement, and if I sought advantage none was realized. I have not even exchanged greetings with Mr. Slipper for the past half year, and if my “business associates,” as your reporter calls them, have continued to deposit money to the old man’s account — why, it’s no secret, I think, that I am a wealthy man as inmates go, and that I can well afford it. Indeed, I did not stop the deposits for these last six months simply because, advantage to me or not, I realized that he could use the money. While I do not claim fondness for Ed Slipper, his great age alone demands my respect (as does his status as an “ancient” of this institution, the prison’s own term for him), and I can assure you that it has been nothing darker than sympathy that has motivated the continuance of those funds. Now that I learn he means to turn them over to the infirmary for the purchase of medicine, I intend to continue these contributions.
Although Feldman destroyed this letter, he found that many of the expressions in it revealed an indignation that he actually felt. He knew it was best, however, to keep it to himself, best generally to lie low. There were only about four months remaining on his sentence, and then he would be freed. (Actually, he wasn’t sure exactly how much time he had yet to serve. He knew that two or three weeks would be added on to his sentence because of the time he had remained in his cell before asking for an assignment, and perhaps he owed an additional week for other days here and there. He had not bookkept his year well. He was waiting now for the official Statement of Remaining Obligation a prisoner received when he had just twelve weeks to go.)
His decision to lie low was consonant with the preparations he was making to renew his life on the outside. He wrote some letters to Lilly and even to Billy, though no replies came. He began also to direct inquires to the executives at his store — most, like Victman, had left when he went to prison, while others, seeing a chance to improve their position, had stayed on and taken the deserters’ places — but their replies, he discovered, held little interest for him. He had to force himself to follow the figures and detailed reports in the letters. He began to speculate about selling his store outright or merging it with one of the other department stores, and he wrote to his vice-president, asking him to look around for buyers. The reply came from Miss Lane:
Dear Mr. Feldman:
Mr. Nichols is on holiday now with his family, and due to the highly confidential nature of your inquiry, I thought it best to keep your letter here awaiting his return, and in the meantime to offer you some of my own thoughts about this matter. If I am out of line, Mr. Feldman, I hope you will understand that I make these remarks out of a sense of deep loyalty to you and to your store.
I think I know how terrible this past year must have been for you, how very frightful imprisonment would be for anyone like yourself, who has lived apart from violence and viciousness all his life. I have seen a drawn gun but one time in my life — I mean the time that detective came into your office to arrest you — and although I am not a cowardly woman, my mind still registers the terror of that shock. A pistol! Loaded and pointed at a man who, whatever his faults, would never have offered physical opposition! Surely the guns of justice are no less dangerous and insulting than the guns of chaos. That you would never draw one yourself, I know as certainly as that there was never any wild anger in you, but only an experimental sort of cruelty and a will that sought resistance where there was none to be found — in the market place. (And now I think that maybe you have finally found it. In the prison, in the rifles of the guards forever pointed and loaded as in some eternal stick-up. In the bars of your cell, in the stone and steel and lead and leather — that vicious handful of the fierce old elements of the civil world. Am I right?)