You Can’t Win by Jack Black

Author:Jack Black [Black, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Autobiography, Criminals, Escapes, Ex-convicts, Jewel thieves, Prison reform, Prison violence, Rogues and vagabonds, Thieves
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2022-10-31T03:15:38+00:00

XVI

Summer came and the memorable World’s Fair. I saw it all, but it put an awful dent in my bankroll and winter was coming. I heard wonderful tales of New York City and its opportunities, told by the hop smokers in California Jack’s, and had almost made up my mind to go there for the winter when I met an intelligent young chap who knew all about it. He advised me to stay away from New York.

“It’s the toughest town in the United States for an outsider to get by in,” he said in answer to my questions. “I’ll tell you what you’re up against. You go in there single-handed. If you get by the wise coppers and the hungry fences, you’ve still got the gangs to beat. Almost all the thieves belong to gangs⁠—the Irish, the Jews, and the dagoes. They fight each other, but they make common cause against an outsider, especially if he’s from the West, and they’ll know you in a minute with your soft hat and your Western talk.

“The gangs are made up of natives and home guards, and some of them are not above snitching on you if you go in there and get too prosperous. If you show up in any of the hangouts with money they will beat you up and take it away from you like any sucker. Of course if you got into a gang they would protect you. The gang protects you, and the ward alderman protects the gang, see? But even then you’d never have anything, for the money’s split too many ways.

“Those hop fiends are raving when they tell you New York is a simple spot to make a living in. Everything is simple and easy and rosy to them when they get a few pills under their belts; but you take my advice and stay away from it. I can get dollars in the West where I couldn’t get dimes in New York, and I wouldn’t go back there on a bet. I’m for Chicago and points west where you don’t have to wear a derby hat to get by a policeman,” he finished in disgust.

Turning this gloomy picture over in my mind for a few days, I decided to let New York alone and go back West. My spare clothes were left with the landlord, and after a soft, easy year I went back to the hardships of the road almost gladly. I made long jumps under fast trains into St. Paul and then on to the Dakota harvest fields.

Thousands of harvest hands were leaving with their season’s earnings and a horde of yeggs, thieves, gamblers and their women beset them on every side. Some of the more wary and experienced laborers bought tickets and got out of the danger zone unscathed; others dallied with the games of chance and were shorn, or fell into the yeggs’ clutches and got catted up.

Harvest workers were called blanket stiffs or gay cats, and the process of pistoling them away from their money was known as catting them up.

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