Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/36

CHAPTER 2. ANTI-WAR AGITATION 23 in the week I would be taken across the hall to be shaved. It was summer time and I asked to have my hair shaved off to make my head cooler. I could not see myself and whatever the trusty or Johnson thought of my appearance did not make any difference to me.

Once when I was going to get a shave I saw Popoff entering his cell with his head bandaged. This must have been the result of the blows which I had heard faintly the day before. He was mistreated for a year or more until he went insane. Selma and I visited him in 1921 at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. He did not recognize me until I said "Johnson, the guard." I sent notes to my sister Lola for the newspapers about the treatment of Popoff. I heard the chains fall which bound him to the bars and then the thump of his body to the floor I would curse the damned capitalist system and the guards and everyone connected with the government and the prison.

Once in a while I would crouch by the door of my cell, on bright sunny mornings, and see the top of Berkman's bald head as he worked at his regular table by the west window of the tailor shop on the second floor of the building next to my solitary. I thought that if he did 3 1/2, years in solitary, in Allegheny prison, in a cell with slimy walls, I could do the balance of my time in this comparatively clean dry cell.

It was now nearly three months that I had been in solitary. Fred Zerbst, the warden, came in and asked me to sign a paper. It was registration for the second war-draft. I told him I had not changed my mind about the war. He said I wouldn't get anything around here acting that way. I told him that I wasn't asking for anything around here; I was just doing time. He said I would get another year back in the hole for this second refusal to register. I told him that was o.k.

It was September 21, 1918. The warden came in again and said this was all the longer they kept prisoners in solitary and that he would let me out the next day; that I would not plot to blow up any more prisons.

"You know I didn't do that," I said.

"I know you didn't," he replied, "but what do you suppose I am warden for? If I had told the prisoners that you were put in solitary for leading in that food sit-down, all of them would be your friends. When you are accused of planning to blow up the prison they are all afraid to know you. Why didn't you come and tell me about the food?

"Why didn't you come into the kitchen and find out; no one but stoolies go to your office," I answered. He left hurriedly.

In about five minutes he returned, saying: "I forgot to ask you something, Hennacy. I'll leave you out tomorrow just the same."

"What is on your mind?" I asked.

"Have you been sneaking any letters out of this prison?" he asked in an angry tone.

"Sure," I replied, smiling.

"Who is doing it for you?" he demanded.

"A friend of mine," I answered.

"What is his name?" was the query.