My Life

The Lake Shore Railroad for some reason or other has been infested with box-car robbers, hold-up men, for about the number of years suggested. For some reason, the Lake Shore gang found it convenient to organize itself in so far as organization is possible in criminal life. Criminals of different types got together, and said: "We will run this road as we think it should be run according to our ways of looking at things." The management of the road had nothing to say that was of any use.

So the Lake Shore gang proceeded, and robbed cars, even threw a steer off a car when it wanted to hold a barbecue, held up the polite Ohio politician beating his way to the extent of forty cents, had all those plants supposed to be between Buffalo and Chicago, and generally made themselves a criminal nuisance.

The Lake Shore gang consisted of the following types: the desperate laboring man (?) who is willing to grapple with your throat on account of a dollar or two – I mean the hold-up man that you hear so much about in the Middle West; the discouraged criminal who knew that he was discouraged, but thought he might possibly, under spurious cover, get a "stake" on professionally criminal lines; the hard-up man who was led along by the other conspirators in the game; the boy of eighteen, who had made some miserable mistake in his home, had to get away from that home, and had fallen into the hands of scheming men; and the woman of the street who had her reasons for knowing anything about the Lake Shore gang. The Lake Shore gang, it can be said, grew out of the idea that when you can be imposed upon, you will stand for it. What they are doing now I do not know. It may be that they are amusing themselves as in days of old. All I want to say here is that this was the company I had good chances of falling in with when striking the general manager's terminals on the lakes. The Lake Shore Railroad and the Nickel Plate, as it was called, took up the full responsibility of all tramp nonsense after certain department heads had done their best to relieve both of these roads of pronounced deficiencies and crimes.

As I have said, I found that, at Ashtabula, the tramps were burning up the Lake Shore Company's coal, the Nickel Plate Company's coal – put the two together and call them the Vanderbilt lines if you like – and that the Lake Shore gang were robbing people right and left on every freight train that went over the Vanderbilt lines. I found also that the Vanderbilt lines did not pay the slightest respect to the protection of their patrons, as regards pickpockets and other gentry of that character, on their passenger trains, otherwise than by employing a man who feverishly ran up and down their territory – let us say between Toledo and Cleveland – took his lunches where he could buy them for from ten to twenty-five cents, and tried to carry out the whole game for the Vanderbilt interests between the points mentioned. This man was supposed to be the police force of that district. The reason he took so many quick lunches is because he had too much to do. In some ways, I believe that he tried to serve the Vanderbilt interests. But no man can cover such a district, if he be all alone – as it is alleged that he was – and attend to all of the details that will come up in police life on the Vanderbilt lines or on any other line.

This man I did not meet. I heard about him, from time to time, taking hungry lunches on the Lake Shore trains, passenger and freight.

This man, so far as the public is concerned, passenger or freight, did no more to protect the public than does a mosquito in New Jersey when it tries mercenary intentions upon an innocent suburbanite. In my opinion, the Lake Shore Railroad, in its employ of this one man to cover so much territory, did not honestly stand up as a citizen in our United States.

My employer, the general manager, had in mind something else.

He is the man, who, when the Johnstown flood occurred, built the railroad bridge over the turbulent river in twenty-four hours. In saying that he built it, I mean that he knew how to get men to help him build it.

The same determination that he had in building that bridge, the same character, came out in his determination that his railroad line, so far as he could effect it, must be free of the riffraff population which was disturbing it. So he organized a police force and therewith proceeded to take care of that riffraff population. He did it to a nicety. He put a man at the head of it whose name I shall mention later on. He got hold of this man through the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

The big fellow went into the game prepared to fight his particular game to a finish. The general manager sat off and wondered.

The whole world knows, more or less, the history of the Pullman strike. It was a strike fought, perhaps, with certain rightful labor interests in view. It was a strike, however, which was as cruel as any that has been known in this country. It was a mean thing on the part of employer, and on the part of employees. The wonder is that there was not more bloodshed. Men who undertake what the strikers of the Pullman Company did undertake, are most certainly considering trouble in its worst features. However they went ahead, as a last forgiveness, they asked the sympathy of the public and were by the mercy of the then considerate, all-wise, all-grasping Pullman Company, turned over to the mercies of the United States Government troops.

General Miles appeared in Chicago with his troops.

He was approached by the general manager, and asked this question: "What are your troops out here for if they are not going to stop the ruin of our property?"

"That is my business," said General Miles.

"True enough, but they are burning up my cars, and so far as I can see, your troops are not doing one thing to defend United States property."

Again General Miles replied that what he was doing was wholly within his province. The general manager did not attempt to indicate to General Miles that his line of business conflicted with the general's.

Here were two men, both of them masters in their own lines. Mr. Cleveland had ordered the United States troops to Chicago. General Miles had nothing else to do but to obey. He went to Chicago with his troops. There was no shooting done. The question is, whether there should not have been some shooting done. Labor in this country has arrived at a point where it is so arrogant that it must be shot at. If it thinks that trade unionism will protect it, it is much deceived.

I must tell a story of something that happened during the Pullman strike at Chicago.

A big man thought that he could proceed against one of the regulars. He started to do so. The regular said to him: "You must keep off this property."

The big man said: "Huh! You don't run the whole world."

The regular said: "Get off this property, or I will make trouble for you."

The big man said: "Huh! You have another guess coming."

The regular said: "Get off this property quick."

The big man seemed to want to linger, and the regular went after him with his bayonet and struck him where he understood that he had received his due attention.

The strike was finished. Millions of dollars had been lost. The general manager returned to his ordinary business, and settled down to ordinary work again.

General Miles doubtless retired to his retreat.

There is a point to be made here about the efficiency of the militia and the regulars. What did the militia do during all this unfortunate experience? Not enough to let an ordinary suburban train go on its quiet way. Mr. Grover Cleveland saw the necessity of immediate protection for the United States mail, and ordered the regulars to Chicago. The regulars, merely by their presence, did more than the whole militia of the State of Illinois could have done or would have done. The militia are too afraid of shooting brothers and sisters. The regulars are soldiers, and obey the commands. My friend, the general manager, later on had to take care of the body of President McKinley. What did he do? The special train was there, the special policemen were there, and the special orders were there. President McKinley's body went to Washington with as cleverly appointed a bodyguard as one can ordinarily find. Poor man, he lay in his coffin not caring whether he was protected or not. A man stood on the front of the train, a man was on a middle platform, a man was on the rear end, and one or two men were inside. So this man was taken home, guarded by Democrats, and I think Socialists in theory.

This is what the general manager of a road did to get an assassinated President to the National Capital. It was only a small courtesy, because the man was dead. But it was one of those courtesies which can never be forgotten by a man's friends, and by any whom we have taken an interest in. To have done this thing efficiently was something worth doing. There are people who, to-day, think that they can rob the tomb of Lincoln. They tried it not so very long ago. Their intentions were most completely balked.

To frustrate people who might try to do any injury to a President of the United States while in transit over his road strikes me as being a highly creditable proceeding on the part of any general manager.

During my acquaintance with the general manager I learned to know his then chief of police, Mr. C. E. Burr. Mr. Burr had kept track of me during my investigations for the general manager, but had not made any particular effort to locate me. He knew his men pretty well, he knew his idea of railway police organization pretty well, and, after that, believing that he was giving a square deal to his employer, he did not care who was looking over his territory.

More about Mr. Burr, whom I have to thank for my first genuine introduction to graft and its practitioners. Without him and his assistance I could have hardly gotten so quickly into this subject.

My report to the general manager delivered, after two months of pretty hard work, I returned to New York City to take up the next promising thing that came to hand.

CHAPTER XXIV

TRYING TO LIVE BY MY PEN

As I have said, my friends and acquaintances in New York were comparatively few at the start. As I hark back over the beginning year in that city I do not believe that I knew intimately more than six men, and they, like myself, were also beginners so far as New York was concerned. Strangely enough nearly every one of us came from somewhere in the West, a fact which leads me to ask whether in such a city as New York Westerners, Southerners and Easterners do not inevitably drift together through some strange law? Certainly that little coterie of young men of which I had the honor to be a part, came together, for better or for worse, unannounced, not caring whom they met and yet pushed on by circumstances to band together as Westerners.

We were called the Griffou push. Nearly every member of this organization was a writer of some kind, or intended to be. Perhaps I was the first of the original intimates in this little gathering to take up residence at the Griffou Hotel in Ninth Street, which for several years was our regular rendezvous and from which we got our corporate appellation. I began to live there almost immediately after my preliminary work for the Pennsylvania Company. There was something quaintly foreign about the place at that time that satisfied my soul, and it was located in the Washington Square neighborhood, which will never be outdone in my affections by any other in New York. Although I have lived all over the city, somehow on leaving the ferry, coming back to New York on a journey, my steps naturally turn toward lodgings near the Washington arch. I think that several of the other young men have always felt likewise about this locality. Anyhow, here I began my fight for a place in the city's business. I have said that we were writers, or rather aspirants for distinction, as such. Why all of us should have picked out this activity as the one in which we thought we could do best I can hardly explain. That we were overweaningly literary on first coming together does not seem to me to be the case. One or two had written what were called academic essays at the time, but none, I think, had done much money-making writing. For some reason – perhaps it looked like the easiest thing to do – we all threw our lot in with that army of men and women in New York who try to make their living with their pens.

I tried first for a position as a police reporter. I thought that if my experience and training had prepared me to write about anything in a big city they had fitted me for reportorial work as an observer in police and criminal circles. My ambition in this direction came to nothing. I honestly tried for the position in question on several newspapers, but the editors did not see their way clear to be enthusiastic about my ability. For several years after starting out in New York I continued to annoy editors with my notions on their police reporting, but without avail. As I had once been ambitious to be foreign correspondent, and thought that with perseverance I could fill the bill, so, during the years that I begged to be made a police reporter, another disappointment and chagrin had to be jotted down in my notebook. Perhaps it is just as well now that I did not succeed in my efforts with the editors along these lines. But whether this be so or not I propose here, in what is my own book and nobody else's, to give a short outline of what I believe police reporting could be developed into if undertaken seriously.

In late years I have become convinced that that daily newspaper which will keep a careful record of criminal goings on in this country – not locally, but taking in all of the country that it can cover – doing this day after day conscientiously, presenting to the public the criminal facts about ourselves as we make them – will be doing a work which will make its police reporting invaluable and will earn for it the grateful thanks of all students of crime.

In a way I have in mind for a daily record of the nation's crime, the presentation of our annual crime as found in the Chicago Tribune when it makes up our debit and credit account along these lines. It seems to me perfectly feasible for a newspaper to gather the daily news in the criminal world, so far as it should be given to the public, in as interesting and as useful a way as that of the Tribune and certain other newspapers. I firmly believe that it would do good for us to see ourselves just as we are in the criminal looking-glass every morning of the year, not excepting Sundays. Statistics, quiet accounts of crimes committed, anecdotes, illustrative incidents proving no theories, but merely making graphic the volume of crime in our midst and its intensity – all these factors would probably have to come into the scheme I have in mind. The essential factor, however, must be that inexorable display of our criminality as a people. There is no gainsaying the fact that we are all ready, or are soon going to be, if jail and court records tell the truth, the most criminally minded nation on earth. This is not a pleasant fact or prospect. The function of the police reporter, as I understand it, should be to keep this forlorn state of affairs ever present in our minds until we wake up and say that this can no longer be. Such a man, if he does his work well, is deserving of as high a salary as his managing editor. High crime in the United States is one of the most appalling problems staring us in the face and demanding a solution. The description of it, its awful significance, its menacing proportions – these things are not yet treated daily, as they ought to be, by any newspaper known to me.

To all this there are those who will reply: "But our children read the newspapers, our mothers, wives and sisters read them. Why increase the criminal copy in the papers which must go into our homes? Why not suppress as much as possible all reference to what is criminal and sinful?"

My reply to these queries is that crime has become such a part of our national character that it is high time that we have a criminal thermometer indicating to us honestly and fairly our criminal feverishness. The police reporter as here considered may be likened unto the orderly in our hospitals, who puts a thermometer somewhere in or about us and attempts to determine our physical temperature. The orderly comes to us regularly, according to the physician's orders throughout the day; and at night, or on the following morning, the attending physician receives an accurate report of how our pulse has beaten for twelve or twenty-four hours, as the case may be.

I throw out the suggestion that our well-trained police reporter acquainted with police conditions and police departments, should be able to tell us every night and morning how we are getting along as criminals and as citizens of the republic, with our welfare at heart.

But to return to the Griffou push and to those early years of struggle with editors and what-not. Perhaps the finest sensation I experienced during those years was found in weekly trips to Park Row, usually to the Sun office, where I handed in my bill for space and collected such money as was due me. I shall never forget how proud I was one Saturday, when, with seventeen dollars' space money in my inside pocket, I strolled back to Ninth Street, through the Bowery – or the Lane, as "Chuck" Conners prefers to call it. I remember passing a dime museum. That old boyish fever to see the animals and the wheels go round came over me. It is impossible to tell now how much the visit to this miraculous institution cost me. I do recall, however, that on arriving later on at the haunt of the Griffou push my seventeen dollars were in a strangely dilapidated state. I have never seen several of them since this experience, but on looking back upon it I cannot say that I regret their loss. To be able on a Saturday night to foregather with the push and tell a story about how you had been "done" in the Lane or elsewhere caused much merriment, and I think healthy criticism. As beginners in the great city, as stragglers fighting to make our way, as men who knew that the years were passing by altogether too rapidly – who does not feel this way, say after thirty? – we were decidedly critical of one another, and were very prone to tell an alleged delinquent member of our company what we thought he ought to do to make a success of himself. But, after all, we were youngsters in spirit and temperament, and were far more given to laughing at our gatherings than to moping or solemnizing.

It hardly seems fair for me to mention here the names of the others in this aggregation, although I would be inclined to say only friendly things of them. Our original four, as the Griffou push was constituted as far as I am concerned, have remained staunch friends, if not boys, to this day. Later the push developed into a larger collection of men, and I am sorry to say that some of these newcomers have passed on into another world.

The men that I began with I will call Hutch, Alfred and Morey. Morey now owns an automobile, and, when I send him copy, is in a powerful position to turn said copy down. Hutch is writing books, and every now and then writes us how glad he is that the days of the push are no more and that he can bask under the Italian sun in his own righteousness. Alfred has become a literary philosopher and thinks that beginning in New York, as we did, looks better at a distance.

CHAPTER XXV

WITH THE POWERS THAT PREY

It has been my experience, and I suppose that of most men, that the attainment of a purpose is always accompanied by a touch of disappointment, weariness of spirit, even disgust, and such is in proportion to the amount of effort that has been put forth in order to attain. This, by the way, is but one of the penalties that Wanderlust imposes on those who listen to and obey its compelling call. I know whereof I speak, you must remember. Time and again when reaching the goal appointed by my vagabond instincts I have had a mauvais quatre d'heure of it when trying to overcome this reaction of thought and feeling that was sure to set in and last for a longer or shorter period, according to what lay ahead of, or around me. At such junctures, do what I would, there came the insistent queries: "Well, and what have you gotten in return for it all?" "Have your efforts brought you a single thing that is of real value to you?" "How about the time and strength that you have wasted in securing – what?" "What next and why?" "How is it all going to end?" – and many more disturbing suggestions of a similar sort. Of course, the spell of the "blues," as I was pleased to call these promptings of conscience or common-sense – I think the terms to be interchangeable – would be followed by my taking to the road again, literally or otherwise. But the inquisition of myself by myself was so certain to be waiting for me at the close of the tramp or exploit, that I often half-dreaded, rather than welcomed, the termination of the latter.

These things are said because I am reminded that, during all my wanderings, I never felt the "chill of achievement" strike me so sharply as it did on that April afternoon, when the liner on which I had returned to America left quarantine and began to steam slowly up the bay. Around and ahead were sights that I had been dreaming of and longing for many moons to again feast my eyes on. The Staten Island and Bay Ridge shores, flushed with tender green, slid by us; Liberty lifted a high beckoning hand of welcome, the Brooklyn warehouses, Governor's Island, New Jersey's fringe of masts and funnels, the fussy tugs, the blunt-nosed, business-like ferryboats, and Manhattan itself, with its line of sky-scrapers like unto jagged teeth, chewing the upper air, were all so familiar and had been so much desired! And yet came a sudden apathy regarding them and a dissatisfaction with them and myself that seemed to sicken and palsy. I actually began to wish that I need not get off the boat at all, but, instead, might stay on her until she turned her nose again toward the lands in which, a week or so before, I had been so utterly discontented. And why? Who can explain the hidden springs of the human mentality?

You would hardly believe it, if I were to tell you, that a like attitude or condition of mind is by no means uncommon in the case of a crook (commonly called a "gun") who has finished a long "bit" or term in prison. Naturally, the man puts most of his time in thinking and planning about what he will do when the day comes for him to shake hands with the governor and to take train to where he may be going. But the reaction sets in with the hour of release, and there comes a more or less marked distaste for, or dislike of, the very things to which the ex-prisoner has been looking forward for years perhaps. Sometimes the man has been working out a way by which he can "square it," or live an honest life in the future. I am sorry to say, however, that the "guns" who, having "done their spots," keep on the square thereafter, are few indeed. Usually the thoughts of the "lagged" criminal are directed toward perfecting means and methods of "nicking a swell swag and doing the get-away" – in other words, of stealing a considerable amount of money or valuables without being arrested. But, as with the rest of us, the "gun" seems to suffer from temporary brain-fag when he comes into physical contact with things and affairs that before had been known to him mentally. So, instead of his plans being put in action, a newspaper item like this not infrequently appears:

John Smith, no address, was arrested last evening at Broadway and Fortieth Street, charged with being drunk and disorderly and assaulting an officer. In court this morning, Policeman Jones said that the prisoner had insulted and annoyed a number of citizens, had kicked over[Pg 301][Pg 302] the outside showcases of a tobacconist, and had struck Jones several times before he could be subdued. Smith was recognized in court as "Conkey," otherwise John Richardson, a crook, who was released from State Prison only a few days since at the termination of a four years' sentence for burglary. In view of his record, he was held in default of $2,000 bail for trial at Special Sessions.

It is well for us, who claim to belong to the respectable classes, that this pruning of intention in the presence of fact is the rule rather than the exception. The public would be in a pretty pickle if the Powers that Prey invariably gave practical expression to their prison-fed fancies; for these last, as I have reason to know, if they are put in operation, rarely fail to accomplish their purpose. Perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the really big "jobs" that are successfully "pulled off" have their inception in the "stir" or penitentiary, or in State prison, the details being worked out by the "mob" or gang with which the discharged "gun," the author of the "plant," is affiliated. As the crook who gets a term of years generally gets it on the score of his professional ability, and as there is little or nothing during his "bit" to interfere with his thinking of thoughts, it is no wonder that his schemes seldom miscarry if they ever reach the stage of actual test.