STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: CONVICT CULTURE IN THE FIRST ERA OF MASS IMPRISONMENT, 1919-1940 By ALEX TEPPERMAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Alex Tepperman To my wonderful wife, the best dogs in the world, and others ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would be remiss not to begin by thanking Dr. Jeffrey Adler, my advisor and academic mentor since 2011. Dr. Adler has given me more of his time and patience than I have had any right to expect and has been an outstanding intellectual steward for seven years. He was the first person I made contact with at the University of Florida when I inquired about transferring from the University of Rochester in 2009 and it has been my great pleasure to develop as a scholar under his tutelage. Dr. Joe Spillane has similarly been a powerful force in my development, serving at various times as my teacher, my advisor, and my career counselor. Success has many fathers and I would like to acknowledge other UF faculty members who have been critical to my success. Dr. Elizabeth Dale has been a continuously supportive presence in my time at Florida, not only serving as a valued committee member, but as a frequent and effective advocate for my best interests while Graduate Coordinator. Dr. Ben Wise was my much-needed square peg, pushing me toward considering fiction and poetry as constructive elements of academic work (I have often thought about J. Alfred Prufrock in the last two years, much to my benefit as a historian). Similarly, Dr. Jodi Lane's insights about the nature of academia, research, and job hunting have always been candid, hilarious, and constructive. In addition to my University of Florida community, I cannot emphasize enough the influence Rosemary Gartner and Ashley Rubin have had on my academic development. Rosemary took me on as a student at the University of Toronto's Centre for Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies at a time when I felt disillusioned by academia. I will never be able to repay her fully for helping me rediscover my intellectual curiosity. As for Ashley, I made the life-changing decision to reach out to her in 2013, when we 4 met for a ten minute conversation at the SSHA annual meeting. Space limitations and my natural disposition prevent me from explaining in any meaningful detail how critical that decision was, and how important Ashley has been to my development as a scholar in the years I have known her, but I could not have succeeded in the academy without her support. For that reason and others, she will always be a dear friend. Learning is not always a top-down experience, of course, and I have taken as much from my peers at the University of Florida Department of History as from any faculty member. I could not ask for a better community in which to learn, and I would like to give specific kudos to Mallory Szymanski, Chris Woolley, Rob Taber, Adrienne DeNoyelles, Andrew Welton, Kyle Bridge, Lexi Baldacci, Michael Gennaro and Alana Lord, Amanda Beyer-Purvis, Brenden Kennedy and Erin Zavitz, Brandon Jett, Johanna Mellis and Greg Mason, Elyssa Gage, Matt Simmons, Derek Boetcher, Matthew White, Jennifer Lyon, Nick Foreman, and the first two friends I made within the department, Chris Salamone and Matthew Delvaux. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the incredible experiences I have had knowing Hazel Phillips, Paul Ortiz, Katheryn Russell- Brown, Steve Noll, Sean Adams, and Michelle Campos, as well Michael Jarvis at the University of Rochester and Rick Halpern at the University of Toronto. Lastly, as always and above all else, my wife Elena deserves all of the love and admiration I could ever afford her and more. And double for the dogs. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 11 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 12 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 14 Literature Review .................................................................................................... 24 Methods and Sources ............................................................................................. 28 Outline .................................................................................................................... 31 2 THE OLD NEW PENOLOGY: REIMAGINING THE PRISON, 1870-1940 .............. 35 The New Penology ................................................................................................. 36 Brockway's Reformatory ................................................................................... 40 Progressive Penology ...................................................................................... 42 New and Enduring Practices ............................................................................ 45 New York's Ambitious Failure ................................................................................. 48 A Very Modern Crime War ...................................................................................... 53 World War One Fallout ..................................................................................... 53 Anti-Crime Measures and the Punitive Turn ..................................................... 56 Crime Commissions ......................................................................................... 58 Federal Law and Order ........................................................................................... 60 Federal Laws and Policies................................................................................ 63 The Great Experiment ...................................................................................... 64 Crime Fighting in the Great Depression ........................................................... 66 Penal Adaptations in the 1930s .............................................................................. 67 Finding the Capacity of Capacity ...................................................................... 69 Laying Off Prison Labor .................................................................................... 74 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 79 3 DOWNWARDLY MOBILE MEN: CONVERGING AND DIVERGING PRISONER EXPERIENCES IN THE FREE WORLD ................................................................. 83 Free World Identities ............................................................................................... 86 Race, Ethnicity, and Nativity Behind Bars ........................................................ 87 Moving Within the System ................................................................................ 91 From Place to Place In American Life ..................................................................... 96 Interwar Urban Life ........................................................................................... 99 The Crisis of Pluralism.................................................................................... 103 The New Americans ....................................................................................... 105 6 The Great Migration ....................................................................................... 108 The American Prisoner Class ............................................................................... 110 Class, Work, and Unemployment ................................................................... 111 Convict Work Histories ................................................................................... 113 Divided Brotherhood ............................................................................................. 119 Race and Ethnic Divisions in the Workplace .................................................. 119 Labor Identity Behind Bars ............................................................................. 127 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 130 4 YARD WORK: THE IMPORTANCE OF PRISON RECREATION SPACES ......... 140 Muscular Christianity and the Playground Movement ........................................... 145 Sport and Americanization .................................................................................... 151 The Evolution of Prison Sport and the Recreation Yard........................................ 154 Developments in the Late Nineteenth Century ............................................... 157 Breakthroughs in the Early Twentieth Century ............................................... 159 Sports, Recreation, and the Interwar Prison ................................................... 161 The War on Coddling ............................................................................................ 165 Baseball, The Penitentiary’s First National Pastime ............................................. 169 The Origins of Organized Prison Baseball...................................................... 172 Marketing