Opium was the medium of exchange in the prison. About three hundred men used it habitually and a hundred more, occasionally. Incoming prisoners smuggled money in and we bribed the poorly paid guards to buy hop at Sacramento. No prisoner was allowed to buy anything through the office. The trusties stole every movable article they could from the guards’ and warden’s quarters and peddled them to us in the prison for their rations of hop. The cons were divided roughly into three groups. One group played the officers’ game, working in the offices or holding down other soft jobs where they could loaf about the place and spy and snitch on the others. Murphy rewarded them all. He gave the best snitches the biggest beefsteaks. Another and larger group openly antagonized the officers, engineering hop deals, planning the murder of stool pigeons, and promoting escapes.

Between these two groups was a small bunch of convicts who did not handle hop or curry favor with the officers. They were the best conducted prisoners there, yet they were ground to pieces by the two stronger factions. They got fag ends of food in the convict mess and wore the patched-up clothes of the others.