The Price of Loyalty in the Mill
A convict's poem reflects on his friend's sacrifice after a desperate act of theft to feed a starving family.
Stranger, I ain't much of a hand to talk, but I'll try to tell why I’m shut in here. I was a hand at the factory just across, and Bill White was a working there too. My wages were small and took every cent. Then the fever came into town and my wife and little girl took sick. I forgot it was wrong, a crime to steal, so I went to the mill at night to take money from the till. Bill saw me. He knew something was wrong. I thought I’d take the money and drove the wolf away in time. The next day, the men talked low and solemn, and I asked for Bill, but he wasn't there. Then one said: 'The thief who stole the gold confessed it all; you can't guess who it was.' They answered: 'Twas Bill!' Bill knew it was me. He had no family and he knew mine was in want. He just thought he’d bear my blame. I stepped back and spoke loud: 'Boys, that’s a lie, and if any man says Bill is a thief, he dies where he stands.' I confessed it myself. Bill is working over there yet, and he spends his wages for my helpless ones. I shall work to pay back the mill, but I cannot pay in a thousand years the interest on what I owe Bill.
“Do you think Bill White was my friend? Why, sir, he’d gone and said he was the thief so I wouldn’t be caught in the end.”
This 1883 narrative captures the crushing weight of poverty in early Seattle, where a factory worker's medical emergency led to theft and incarceration. Today, the story rhymes with ongoing debates about the 'poverty trap' and how the criminal justice system disproportionately penalizes survival-driven offenses.
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