With a little urging his story came in a rush. He was an old-timer, had done three bits in state prison, but coming out four years before he had decided to "square it." He wanted to die "on the outside." He had no trade, but had wrung out a meagre living, stuffing straw into mattresses. In the rush season he earned much as a dollar a day. Sometimes only twenty cents. And sometimes there was no work at all. He slept in a ten-cent lodging house, ate ten cent meals—forty cents a day, plus twenty cents a week for tobacco. What was left went into the Bowery Savings Bank. He wanted to have enough so he would not be buried in the Potters’ Field. It had been a barren life. But the fear of prison—the fear which only an old-timer, who wants to die outside, knows—had held him to it. Coming home from work one night he had stopped to watch a fire. As the crowd broke up he saw on the sidewalk several bags of tobacco and some boxes of cigarettes. He picked them up and almost immediately was grabbed by two detectives. While the crowd had been watching the fire, someone had broken into a tobacco store and looted it. The detectives led Jerry to Central Office, identified him by the Bertillon records, and charged him with burglary in the second degree, for which the maximum sentence is ten years. Jerry said that he knew nothing of the burglary. When he had been brought into court the district attorney had told him that if he would consent to plead guilty of burglary in the third degree, for which the maximum is only five years, he would intercede with the judge and ask for a light sentence. Jerry had been hopeless of proving his innocence in the face of his previous record and the fact that some of the proceeds of the burglary had been found on his person. He had no friends. He did not believe that a poor man had any chance in court. So he had pled guilty in the hopes of a short sentence. His story rang true, but I took great pains to verify it. The police believed that Jerry was one of three or four who committed the burglary. One hundred dollars in money and twice as much stock had been taken. They had no evidence against Jerry except the packages of tobacco found in his pockets, and his record. Mr. Kaufman, his employer, spoke highly of him. Jerry had been a regular applicant for work, and a preferred employee. If there was any work at all it was given to him. And sometimes in slack seasons, he had been employed out of charity. Kaufman said he would be glad to come to court and testify to Jerry’s regular habits during the last three years. The lodging house keeper was also willing to appear on his behalf. Jerry had earned a definite reputation for quietness and sobriety. He had kept very much to himself and certainly had not been associating with professional criminals.