He was a ferocious man. He had
been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not
been helped any by the moulding he had received at the hands of society.
The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its
handiwork. He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless
so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous.
In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to
break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he
could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more
harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make
him fiercer. Straight-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings
were the wrong treatment for Jim Hall; but it was the treatment he
received. It was the treatment he had received from the time he was a
little pulpy boy in a San Francisco slum--soft clay in the hands of
society and ready to be formed into something.
It was during Jim Hall's third term in prison that he encountered a guard
that was almost as great a beast as he. The guard treated him unfairly,
lied about him to the warden, lost his credits, persecuted him. The
difference between them was that the guard carried a bunch of keys and a
revolver.
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