The Plea

by Susan Glaspell

Senator Harrison concluded his argument and sat down. There was noapplause, but he had expected none. Senator Dorman was alreadysaying "Mr. President?" and there was a stir in the crowdedgalleries, and an anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators.In the press gallery the reporters bunched together their scatteredpapers and inspected their pencil-points with earnestness. Dormanwas the best speaker of the Senate, and he was on the popular sideof it. It would be the great speech of the session, and the prospectwas cheering after a deluge of railroad and insurance bills."I want to tell you," he began, "why I have worked for thisresolution recommending the pardon of Alfred Williams. It is one ofthe great laws of the universe that every living thing be given achance. In the case before us that law has been violated. This doesnot resolve itself into a question of second chances. The boy ofwhom we are speaking has never had his first."Senator Harrison swung his chair half-way around and looked out atthe green things which were again coming into their own on theState-house grounds. He knew--in substance--what Senator Dormanwould say without hearing it, and he was a little tired of the wholeaffair. He hoped that one way or other they would finish it up thatnight, and go ahead with something else. He had done what he could,and now the responsibility was with the rest of them. He thoughtthey were shouldering a great deal to advocate the pardon in theface of the united opposition of Johnson County, where the crime hadbeen committed. It seemed a community should be the best judge ofits own crimes, and that was what he, as the Senator from Johnson,had tried to impress upon them.He knew that his argument against the boy had been a strong one. Herather liked the attitude in which he stood. It seemed as if he werethe incarnation of outraged justice attempting to hold its own atthe floodgates of emotion. He liked to think he was looking farbeyond the present and the specific and acting as guardian of thefuture--and the whole. In summing it up that night the reporterswould tell in highly wrought fashion of the moving appeal made bySenator Dorman, and then they would speak dispassionately of thelogical argument of the leader of the opposition. There was moresatisfaction to self in logic than in mere eloquence. He was even alittle proud of his unpopularity. It seemed sacrificial.He wondered why it was Senator Dorman had thrown himself into it sowhole-heartedly. All during the session the Senator from Maxwell hadneglected personal interests in behalf of this boy, who was nothingto him in the world. He supposed it was as a sociological andpsychological experiment. Senator Dorman had promised the Governorto assume guardianship of the boy if he were let out. The Senatorfrom Johnson inferred that as a student of social science hiseloquent colleague wanted to see what he could make of him. Tosuppose the interest merely personal and sympathetic would seemdiscreditable."I need not dwell upon the story," the Senator from Maxwell wassaying, "for you all are familiar with it already. It is said tohave been the most awful crime ever committed in the State. I grantyou that it was, and then I ask you to look for a minute into theconditions leading up to it."When the boy was born, his mother was instituting divorceproceedings against his father. She obtained the divorce, andremarried when Alfred was three months old. From the time he was amere baby she taught him to hate his father. Everything that wentwrong with him she told him was his father's fault. His first vividimpression was that his father was responsible for all the wrong ofthe universe."For seven years that went on, and then his mother died. Hisstepfather did not want him. He was going to Missouri, and the boywould be a useless expense and a bother. He made no attempt to finda home for him; he did not even explain--he merely went away andleft him. At the age of seven the boy was turned out on the world,after having been taught one thing--to hate his father. He stayed afew days in the barren house, and then new tenants came and closedthe doors against him. It may have occurred to him as a littlestrange that he had been sent into a world where there was no placefor him."When he asked the neighbours for shelter, they told him to go tohis own father and not bother strangers. He said he did not knowwhere his father was. They told him, and he started to walk--adistance of fifty miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, thathe was only seven years of age. It is the age when the average boyis beginning the third reader, and when he is shooting marbles andspinning tops."When he reached his father's house he was told at once that he wasnot wanted there. The man had remarried, there were other children,and he had no place for Alfred. He turned him away; but theneighbours protested, and he was compelled to take him back. Forfour years he lived in this home, to which he had come unbidden, andwhere he was never made welcome."The whole family rebelled against him. The father satisfied hisresentment against the boy's dead mother by beating her son, byencouraging his wife to abuse him, and inspiring the other childrento despise him. It seems impossible such conditions should exist.The only proof of their possibility lies in the fact of theirexistence."I need not go into the details of the crime. He had been beaten byhis father that evening after a quarrel with his stepmother aboutspilling the milk. He went, as usual, to his bed in the barn; butthe hay was suffocating, his head ached, and he could not sleep. Hearose in the middle of the night, went to the house, and killed bothhis father and stepmother."I shall not pretend to say what thoughts surged through the boy'sbrain as he lay there in the stifling hay with the hot bloodpounding against his temples. I shall not pretend to say whether hewas sane or insane as he walked to the house for the perpetration ofthe awful crime. I do not even affirm it would not have happened hadthere been some human being there to lay a cooling hand on his hotforehead, and say a few soothing, loving words to take the stingfrom the loneliness, and ease the suffering. I ask you to consideronly one thing: he was eleven years old at the time, and he had nofriend in all the world. He knew nothing of sympathy; he knew onlyinjustice."Senator Harrison was still looking out at the budding things on theState-house grounds, but in a vague way he was following the story.He knew when the Senator from Maxwell completed the recital of factsand entered upon his plea. He was conscious that it was strongerthan he had anticipated--more logic and less empty exhortation. Hewas telling of the boy's life in reformatory and penitentiary sincethe commission of the crime,--of how he had expanded under kindness,of his mental attainments, the letters he could write, the books hehad read, the hopes he cherished. In the twelve years he had spentthere he had been known to do no unkind nor mean thing; he respondedto affection--craved it. It was not the record of a degenerate, theSenator from Maxwell was saying.A great many things were passing through the mind of the Senatorfrom Johnson. He was trying to think who it was that wrote thatbook, "Put Yourself in His Place." He had read it once, and itbothered him to forget names. Then he was wondering why it was thephilosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people whohad never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment uponpeople who had known nothing but trouble. He was thinking also thatabstract rules did not always fit smoothly over concrete cases, andthat it was hard to make life a matter of rules, anyway.Next he was wondering how it would have been with the boy AlfredWilliams if he had been born in Charles Harrison's place; and thenhe was working it out the other way and wondering how it would havebeen with Charles Harrison had he been born in Alfred Williams'splace. He wondered whether the idea of murder would have grown inAlfred Williams's heart had he been born to the things to whichCharles Harrison was born, and whether it would have come within therange of possibility for Charles Harrison to murder his father if hehad been born to Alfred Williams's lot. Putting it that way, it washard to estimate how much of it was the boy himself, and how muchthe place the world had prepared for him. And if it was the placeprepared for him more than the boy, why was the fault not more withthe preparers of the place than with the occupant of it? The wholething was very confusing."This page," the Senator from Maxwell was saying, lifting the littlefellow to the desk, "is just eleven years of age, and he is withinthree pounds of Alfred Williams's weight when he committed themurder. I ask you, gentlemen, if this little fellow should be guiltyof a like crime to-night, to what extent would you, in reading of itin the morning, charge him with the moral discernment which is thefirst condition of moral responsibility? If Alfred Williams's storywere this boy's story, would you deplore that there had been no oneto check the childish passion, or would you say it was the inborninstinct of the murderer? And suppose again this were AlfredWilliams at the age of eleven, would you not be willing to look intothe future and say if he spent twelve years in penitentiary andreformatory, in which time he developed the qualities of useful andhonourable citizenship, that the ends of justice would then havebeen met, and the time at hand for the world to begin the payment ofher debt?"Senator Harrison's eyes were fixed upon the page standing on theopposite desk. Eleven was a younger age than he had supposed. As helooked back upon it and recalled himself when eleven years ofage--his irresponsibility, his dependence--he was unwilling to saywhat would have happened if the world had turned upon him as it hadupon Alfred Williams. At eleven his greatest grievance was that theboys at school called him "yellow-top." He remembered throwing arock at one of them for doing it. He wondered if it was criminalinstinct prompted the throwing of the rock. He wondered how high thepercentage of children's crimes would go were it not forcountermanding influences. It seemed the great difference betweenAlfred Williams and a number of other children of eleven had beenthe absence of the countermanding influence.There came to him of a sudden a new and moving thought. AlfredWilliams had been cheated of his boyhood. The chances were he hadnever gone swimming, nor to a ball game, or maybe never to a circus.It might even be that he had never owned a dog. The Senator fromMaxwell was right when he said the boy had never been given hischance, had been defrauded of that which has been a boy's heritagesince the world itself was young.And the later years--how were they making it up to him? He recalledwhat to him was the most awful thing he had ever heard about theState penitentiary: they never saw the sun rise down there, and theynever saw it set. They saw it at its meridian, when it climbed abovethe stockade, but as it rose into the day, and as it sank into thenight, it was denied them. And there, at the penitentiary, theycould not even look up at the stars. It had been years since AlfredWilliams raised his face to God's heaven and knew he was part of itall. The voices of the night could not penetrate the little cell inthe heart of the mammoth stone building where he spent his eveningsover those masterpieces with which, they said, he was more familiarthan the average member of the Senate. When he read those thingsVictor Hugo said of the vastness of the night, he could only lookaround at the walls that enclosed him and try to reach back over thetwelve years for some satisfying conception of what night reallywas.The Senator from Johnson shuddered: they had taken from a livingcreature the things of life, and all because in the crucial hour therehad been no one to say a staying word. Man had cheated him of thethings that were man's, and then shut him away from the world thatwas God's. They had made for him a life barren of compensations.There swept over the Senator a great feeling of self-pity. Asrepresentative of Johnson County, it was he who must deny this boythe whole great world without, the people who wanted to help him,and what the Senator from Maxwell called "his chance." If JohnsonCounty carried the day, there would be something unpleasant for himto consider all the remainder of his life. As he grew to be an olderman he would think of it more and more--what the boy would have donefor himself in the world if the Senator from Johnson had not beenmore logical and more powerful than the Senator from Maxwell.Senator Dorman was nearing the end of his argument. "In spite of theundying prejudice of the people of Johnson County," he was saying,"I can stand before you today and say that after an unsparinginvestigation of this case I do not believe I am asking you to doanything in violation of justice when I beg of you to give this boyhis chance."It was going to a vote at once, and the Senator from Johnson Countylooked out at the budding things and wondered whether the boy downat the penitentiary knew the Senate was considering his case thatafternoon. It was without vanity he wondered whether what he hadbeen trained to think of as an all-wise providence would not havepreferred that Johnson County be represented that session by a lessable man.A great hush fell over the Chamber, for ayes and noes followedalmost in alternation. After a long minute of waiting the secretarycalled, in a tense voice:"Ayes, 30; Noes, 32."The Senator from Johnson had proven too faithful a servant of hisconstituents. The boy in the penitentiary was denied his chance.The usual things happened: some women in the galleries, who had boysat home, cried aloud; the reporters were fighting for occupancy ofthe telephone booths, and most of the Senators began the perusal ofthe previous day's Journal with elaborate interest. Senator Dormanindulged in none of these feints. A full look at his face just thentold how much of his soul had gone into the fight for the boy'schance, and the look about his eyes was a little hard on the theoryof psychological experiment.Senator Harrison was looking out at the budding trees, but his facetoo had grown strange, and he seemed to be looking miles beyond andyears ahead. It seemed that he himself was surrendering the voicesof the night, and the comings and goings of the sun. He would neverlook at them--feel them--again without remembering he was keepingone of his fellow creatures away from them. He wondered at his ownpresumption in denying any living thing participation in theuniverse. And all the while there were before him visions of the boywho sat in the cramped cell with the volume of a favourite poetbefore him, trying to think how it would seem to be out under thestars.The stillness in the Senate-Chamber was breaking; they were goingahead with something else. It seemed to the Senator from Johnsonthat sun, moon, and stars were wailing out protest for the boy whowanted to know them better. And yet it was not sun, moon, and starsso much as the unused swimming hole and the uncaught fish, theunattended ball game, the never-seen circus, and, above all, theunowned dog, that brought Senator Harrison to his feet.They looked at him in astonishment, their faces seeming to say itwould have been in better taste for him to have remained seated justthen."Mr. President," he said, pulling at his collar and looking straightahead, "I rise to move a reconsideration."There was a gasp, a moment of supreme quiet, and then a mighty burstof applause. To men of all parties and factions there came a singlethought. Johnson was the leading county of its Congressionaldistrict. There was an election that fall, and Harrison was in therace. Those eight words meant to a surety he would not go toWashington, for the Senator from Maxwell had chosen the right wordwhen he referred to the prejudice of Johnson County on the Williamscase as "undying." The world throbs with such things at the momentof their doing--even though condemning them later, and the part ofthe world then packed within the Senate-Chamber shared the universaldisposition.The noise astonished Senator Harrison, and he looked around withsomething like resentment. When the tumult at last subsided, and hesaw that he was expected to make a speech, he grew very red, andgrasped his chair desperately.The reporters were back in their places, leaning nervously forward.This was Senator Harrison's chance to say something worth puttinginto a panel by itself with black lines around it--and they weresure he would do it.But he did not. He stood there like a schoolboy who had forgottenhis piece--growing more and more red. "I--I think," he finallyjerked out, "that some of us have been mistaken. I'm in favour nowof--of giving him his chance."They waited for him to proceed, but after a helpless look around theChamber he sat down. The president of the Senate waited severalminutes for him to rise again, but he at last turned his chairaround and looked out at the green things on the State-housegrounds, and there was nothing to do but go ahead with the secondcalling of the roll. This time it stood 50 to 12 in favour of theboy.A motion to adjourn immediately followed--no one wanted to doanything more that afternoon. They all wanted to say things to theSenator from Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they wereusually afraid of him, anyhow, they kept away. All but SenatorDorman--it meant too much with him. "Do you mind my telling you," hesaid, tensely, "that it was as fine a thing as I have ever known aman to do?"The Senator from Johnson moved impatiently. "You think it 'fine,'"he asked, almost resentfully, "to be a coward?""Coward?" cried the other man. "Well, that's scarcely the word. Itwas--heroic!""Oh no," said Senator Harrison, and he spoke wearily, "it was aclear case of cowardice. You see," he laughed, "I was afraid itmight haunt me when I am seventy."Senator Dorman started eagerly to speak, but the other man stoppedhim and passed on. He was seeing it as his constituency would seeit, and it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage ofhis convictions, that he was afraid of the unpopularity, that hisjudgment had fallen victim to the eloquence of the Senator fromMaxwell.But when he left the building and came out into the softness of theApril afternoon it began to seem different. After all, it was not healone who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees--they werepermitted another chance to bud; there were the birds--they wereallowed another chance to sing; there was the earth--to it was givenanother chance to yield. There stole over him a tranquil sense ofunison with Life.

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