Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
by Clifton R. Wooldridge · English · Gutenberg #47445 · 972,684 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Author: Clifton R. Wooldridge
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY YEARS A DETECTIVE IN THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD ***
[Illustration: CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.]
Twenty Years a Detective
IN THE WICKEDEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
20,000 ARRESTS MADE
12,900 CONVICTIONS ON STATE AND CITY LAWS
200 PENITENTIARY CONVICTIONS
The Devil and the Grafter
AND
HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER TO DECEIVE,
SWINDLE AND DESTROY MANKIND
AN ARMY OF 600,000 CRIMINALS AT WAR WITH
SOCIETY AND RELIGION
BY CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE
The World-Famous Criminologist and Detective
"THE INCORRUPTIBLE SHERLOCK HOLMES OF AMERICA"
After twenty years of heroic warfare and scores of hair-breadth
escapes, in his unceasing battle with the devil and the grafter,
Mr. Wooldridge tells in a graphic manner how Wildcat Insurance,
Fake Mines and Oil Wells, Turf Swindlers, Home Buying Swindlers,
Fake Bond and Investment Companies, Bucket Shops, Blind
Pools in Grain and Stocks, Pool Rooms and Hand Books, Fake
Mail Order Houses, ordinary Gambling Houses, Panel Houses,
Matrimonial Bureaus, Fake Underwriting, Fake Banks, Collecting
Agencies, Fake Medicine Companies, Clairvoyants, Fortune Tellers,
Palmists and other criminals of all classes operate, and how their
organizations have been broken up and destroyed by hundreds.
THE WORK ALSO CONTAINS
Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge's "Never-Fail" System
_For Detecting and Outwitting All Classes of
Grafters and Swindlers_
COPYRIGHT, 1908,
BY
CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE.
Chicago Publishing Co.,
83-91 Plymouth Place,
Chicago.
PREFACE.
In presenting this work to the public the author has no apologies to
make nor favors to ask. It is a simple history of his connection with
the Police Department of Chicago, compiled from his own memoranda,
the newspapers, and the official records. The matter herein contained
differs from those records only in details, as many facts are given
in the book which have never been made public. The author has no
disposition to malign any one, and names are used only in cases in
which the facts are supported by the archives of the Police Department
and of the criminal court. In the conscientious discharge of his
duties as an officer of the law, the author has in all cases studied
the mode of legal procedure. His aim has been solely to protect
society and the taxpayer, and to punish the guilty. The evidences
of his sincerity accompany the book in the form of letters from the
highest officers in the city government, from the mayor down to
the precinct captain, and furnish overwhelming testimony as to his
endeavors to serve the public faithfully and honestly. No effort has
been made to bestow self-praise, and where this occurs, it is only a
reproduction, perhaps in different language, of the comments indulged
in by the newspapers of Chicago and other cities, whose reporters are
among the brightest and most talented young men in all the walks and
professions of life. To them the officer acknowledges his obligations
in many instances. Often he has worked hand-in-hand with them. They
have traveled with him in the dead hours of the night, in his efforts
to suppress crime or track a criminal, and have often given him
assistance in the way of suggestions.
He now submits his work and his record to the public, hoping it will
give him a kindly reception.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Preface 7-8
Testimonials 11
Biography of the Author 27
Graft Nation's Worst Foe 51
The "Never-Fail" System to Beat the Get-Rich-Quick Swindles 112
The Best Rules for Health 116
Matrimonial Agents Coining Cupid's Wiles 119
The Great Mistake. Our Penal System is a Relic of Early Savagery 192
Vagrants, Who and Why 204
The Young Criminals and How They Are Bred in Chicago 230
Wiles of Fortune Telling 246
Wife or Gallows 267
A Clever Shop Lifter (Fainting Bertha) 272
Front 284
The Criminal's Last Chance Gone 288
Burglary a Science 311
Cell Terms for "Con" Men 341
Panel-House Thieves 348
Gambling and Crime 358
A Heartless Fraud 401
The Bogus Mine 409
A Giant Swindle 418
Quacks 426
Fabulous Losses in Big Turf Frauds 448
Fake Drug Vendors 462
Bucket-Shop 471
On "Sure Things." How to Learn Their Real Character 482
Huge Swindles Bared 487
The Social Evil 500
Suppress Manufacture and Sale of Dangerous Weapons 508
Getting Something for Nothing 517
Want Ad. Fakers 527
Millionaire Banker and Broker Arrested 533
Dora McDonald 551
Mike McDonald 581
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
The two arch enemies of happiness and prosperity are the Devil and the
Grafter. The church is fighting the Devil, the law is fighting the
Grafter. The great mass of human beings, as they journey along the
pathway of life, know not the dangers that lie in wait from these two
sources. Honest themselves, credulous and innocent, they trust their
fellow man.
Statistics show that four-fifths of all young men and women, and
nine-tenths of the widows are swindled out of the money and property
that comes to them by inheritance. Every year thousands of laboring
men spend their hard earnings and beggar their families by falling in
traps laid for them. Thousands of innocent girls and women, struggling
for a respectable livelihood, fall victims to the demons who traffic
in human honor.
The Grafters spend millions upon millions of dollars annually in
advertising in America alone. There is not a Post Office in the land
where every mail does not carry their appeals and thieving schemes;
and they collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the
trusting public. The State and National Governments spend millions of
dollars a year in trying to catch and curb these grafters. Some of
Satan's worst grafters are found in the church, working the brethren;
and he has them by thousands in every walk of life.
The object of this book is to protect the public by joining hands with
the church and the government in their work against the Devil and the
Grafter. The author reveals and exposes the Grafter with his schemes,
his traps, his pitfalls and his victims. The reader of this book will
be fortified and armed with knowledge, facts and law, that should
forever protect him, his family and his friends from the wiles of the
Grafters.
It is with the confidence that this work fills an imperative need, and
that it should be in the hands of every minister, every physician,
every teacher and every mother and father in the land, that the author
and publisher send it forth on what they believe to be a mission of
good to the world.
WORDS OF COMMENDATION.
=From Chas. S. Deneen, Governor of Illinois:=
"It is with pleasure that I am able to say that Detective
Wooldridge has conducted all his cases with zeal and
intelligence."
=J. M. Longenecker, former State's Attorney, says:=
"Mr. Wooldridge has thorough knowledge of evidence and is
an expert in preparing a criminal case for trial. I have
found him to be one of the most efficient officers in the
Department."
=R. W. McClaughrey, Warden of U. S. Prison at Leavenworth, Kans.,
Ex-Warden of Illinois State Penitentiary and Ex-Chief of Police of
Chicago, says in a letter to the author:=
"You were not only subject to bribes, but also frequently
a target of perjurers and scoundrels of every degree. You
came out from every ordeal unscathed, and maintained a
character for integrity and fearlessness in the discharge
of your duties that warranted the highest commendation. It
gives me pleasure to make this statement."
=J. J. Badenoch, Ex-General Supt. of Police, writing Mr. Wooldridge,
says:=
"Dear Sir--Before I retire from the command of the Police
Department, I desire to thank you for your bravery and
loyal service. The character of your work being such that
bribes are frequently offered by the criminal class, it
becomes necessary to select men of perfect integrity for
the purpose, and I now know that I made no mistake in
selecting you for this trying duty. It affords me great
pleasure to commend you for your bravery and fidelity to
your duties."
=Nicholas Hunt, Inspector Commanding Second Division, says:=
"I have known Clifton R. Wooldridge for the last ten years.
As an officer he is par-excellent, absolutely without
fear and with a detective ability so strongly developed
it almost appealed to me as an extra sense. If I wanted
to secure the arrest of a desperate man, I would put Mr.
Wooldridge in charge of the case in preference to any one I
know, as, with his bravery, he has discretion."
=Geo. M. Shippy, Chief of Police, of Chicago, writing Mr. Wooldridge,
says:=
"Your heart is in the right place, and while I have
always found you stern and persistent in the pursuit
and prosecution of criminals, you were very kind and
considerate, and I can truthfully say that more than one
evil doer was helped to reform and was given material
assistance by you."
=Luke P. Colleran, Chief of Detectives, says:=
"His book is most worthy and truthful and commendable; and
I take pleasure in commending it to all."
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN REAL LIFE.
_From The Chicago Tribune of November 25, 1906._
"Chicago may be surprised to learn that it has a Sherlock
Holmes of its own, but it has; and before his actual
experiences in crime-hunting, the fictional experiences
through which Poe, Doyle, and Nick Carter put their
detectives pale into insignificance. His name is Clifton R.
Wooldridge.
"Truth is stranger even than detective fiction, and in the
number of his adventures of mystery, danger and excitement
he has all the detective heroes of fiction and reality
beaten easily.
"He has personally arrested 19,500 people, 200 of them were
sent to the penitentiary; 3,000 to the house of correction;
6,000 paid fines; 100 girls under age were rescued from
lives of shame; $100,000 worth of property was recovered;
100 panel houses were closed; 100 matrimonial bureaus were
broken up.
[Illustration: Disguised as a JEW IN THE GHETTO]
"Wooldridge has refused perhaps 500 bribes of from $500
to $5,000 each. He has been under fire forty-four times.
He has been wounded dozens of times. He has impersonated
almost every kind of character. He has, in his crime
hunting, associated with members of the '400' and
fraternized with hobos. He has dined with the elite and
smoked in opium dens. He has done everything that one
expects the detective of fiction to do and which the real
detective seldom does.
"When occasion requires he ceases to appear as Wooldridge.
He can make a disguise so quickly and effectively that even
an actor would be astonished. Gilded youth, negro gambler,
honest farmer or lodging house 'bum,' it requires but a few
minutes to 'make-up,' to run to earth elusive wrong-doers."
The pictures which appear here are actual photographs taken from life
in the garb and disguises worn by the author in several famous cases.
[Illustration: "HECK HOUSTON"--STOCK-RAISER FROM WYOMING
In this garb the author makes himself an easy mark for the crooks
and grafters of the Stock-Yard district. The hold-up man--the
card-sharp--the bunco-steerer--the get-rich-quick stock-broker fall
"easy game" to the detective thus disguised.]
[Illustration: ASSOCIATING WITH THE STOCK AND BOND GRAFTERS
Disguised as an Englishman who has money and is looking for a good
investment, Mr. Wooldridge is easily mistaken for a "sucker." The
trap is set. He apparently walks into it; but, in a few minutes, the
grafter finds himself on the way to prison.]
[Illustration: POLICY-SAM JOHNSON
This is a favorite disguise of the author when doing detective duty
among the lowest and most disreputable criminals. Unsuspectingly
the crooks offer him all sorts of dirty work at small prices for
assistance in criminal acts.]
[Illustration: WE NEVER SLEEP
Detectives disguised as tramps: "I am made all things to all men,"
says St. Paul. The Detective must also make himself all things to all
men, that he may find and catch the rascals. To be up-to-date it is
necessary to be able to assume as many disguises as there are classes
of people among whom criminals hide.]
[Illustration: POLICY-SAM JOHNSON SHOOTING CRAPS
An illustration of the way the detective employs himself in the
gambling dens. It is often necessary to play and lose money in these
places that he may get at the facts. Observe that he is watching
proceedings in another part of the room while he is throwing the
dice.]
[Illustration: SHADOWING ONE OF THE FOUR HUNDRED.
Some of the most dangerous grafters in the world hobnob with the
elite. Here we have our author in evening dress, passing as a man of
society at a banquet of the rich, shadowing a "high-flyer" crook.]
[Illustration: CRAPS AND CARDS
The gambling house is a station on the road to crime. In proportion to
population there are, perhaps, more negro gamblers than of any other
race.]
[Illustration: A LITTLE GAME IN THE ALLEY AT NOON
Many boys and young men spend their noon hour in cultivating bad
habits that lead to nights of gambling; and then come crimes to get
money that they may gamble more.]
[Illustration: A RESTING PLACE ON THE ROAD TO CRIME.
The gilded saloon is the club-room of the crook. Here he hatches his
plots; here he drinks to get desperate courage to carry them out; and
here he returns when the crime has been committed to drown remorse and
harden conscience.]
[Illustration: YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE]
[Illustration: A GAME OF POKER FOR "A SMALL STAKE"
This is a clangorous stop. Many a ruined man traces his downfall
to the day he began in youth to "bet" a little "to make the game
interesting."]
[Illustration: Emma Ford (Sisters) Pearl Smith
Mary White, Flossie Moore
FOUR FAMOUS NEGRO WOMEN GRAFTERS
As confidence workers, highway robbers, and desperate criminals they
were the terror of officers and courts. Together they stole and robbed
people of more than $200,000.00. They were finally run to earth and
put in prison. Our author followed one of them across the continent
and back.]
[Illustration: THE DESTINATION OF THE GRAFTER.
"The way of the transgressor is hard." "Be sure your sin will find
you out." The penitentiary is full of bright men who might have
been eminently successful--an honor to themselves and a blessing to
mankind, if they had only heeded the old adage--"Honesty is the best
policy."]
[Illustration: WOOLDRIDGE'S CABINET OF BURGLAR TOOLS.
At the police headquarters in Chicago, one of the most attractive
curios is the above cabinet of burglar-tools and weapons taken by the
author from robbers and crooks during his eighteen years of service.]
[Illustration: TURNING THE BOYS FROM CRIMINAL PATHS
This is a photograph of the Juvenile Court in Chicago, where boys
who commit crimes are tried and sent to the Reformatory, instead of
to prison with hardened criminals. The author claims that our prison
system is filling the country with criminals.]
[Illustration]
CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE
AMERICA'S FOREMOST DETECTIVE.
Clifton R. Wooldridge was born February 25, 1854, in Franklin county,
Kentucky. He received a common school education, and then started out
in the world to shift for himself. From 1868 to 1871, he held the
position of shipping clerk and collector for the Washington Foundry
in St. Louis, Missouri. Severing his connection with that company,
he went to Washington, D. C., and was attached to the United States
Signal Bureau from March 1, 1871, to December 5, 1872. He then took up
the business of railroading, and for the following nine years occupied
positions as fireman, brakeman, switchman, conductor and general yard
master.
When the gold fever broke out in the Black Hills in 1879, Mr.
Wooldridge along with many others went to that region to better his
fortune. Six months later he joined the engineering corps of the
Denver & Rio Grande railroad and assisted in locating the line from
Canon City to Leadville, as well as several of the branches. The
work was not only very difficult, but very dangerous, and at times,
when he was assisting in locating the line through the Royal Gorge
in the Grand Canon of the Arkansas, he was suspended from a rope,
which ran from the peak of one cliff to the other, with his surveying
instruments strapped to his back. This gorge is fifty feet wide at
the bottom and seventy feet wide at the top, the walls of solid
rock rising three thousand feet above the level of the river below.
The work was slow and required a great deal of skill, but it was
accomplished successfully.
Mr. Wooldridge went to Denver in 1880 and engaged in contracting
and mining the following eighteen months. He then took a position
as engineer and foreman of the Denver Daily Republican, where he
remained until May 29, 1883. The following August he came to Chicago
and took a position with the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway.
In 1886, he severed his connection with the railroad and founded the
"Switchman's Journal." He conducted and edited the paper until May
26th, when he was burned out, together with the firm of Donohue &
Henneberry at the corner of Congress street and Wabash avenue, as
well as many other business houses in that locality, entailing a
total loss of nearly $1,000,000. Thus the savings of many years were
swept away, leaving him penniless and in debt. He again turned his
attention to railroading and secured a position with the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy railroad and had accumulated enough money to
pay the indebtedness which resulted from the fire, when the great
strike was inaugurated on that road in February, 1888. The strike
included the engineers, firemen and switchmen, and continued nearly
a year. On October 5th of that year Mr. Wooldridge made application
for a position on the Chicago police force, and having the highest
endorsements, he was appointed and assigned to the Desplaines Street
Station. It was soon discovered that Wooldridge as a police officer
had no superiors and few equals. Neither politics, religion, creed,
color, or nationality obstructed him in the performance of his police
duties, and the fact was demonstrated and conceded times without
number that he could not be bought, bribed, or intimidated. He
selected for his motto, "Right wrongs no man; equal justice to all."
His superior officers soon recognized the fact that no braver, more
honest or efficient police officer ever wore a star or carried a club.
The mass of records on file in the police headquarters and in the
office of the clerk of the municipal and criminal court demonstrate
conclusively that he has made one of the most remarkable records of
any police officer in the United States if not in the world. Mr.
Wooldridge has seen twenty years of experience and training in active
police work. Ten years of this time he was located in what is commonly
known as the Levee district, a territory where criminals congregate
and where crimes of all degrees are committed.
BORN IN KENTUCKY.
Mr. Wooldridge is therefore of Southern extraction. And in spite of
the "big stick" which this terror of the grafters has carried for
twenty years, he still "speaks softly," the gentle accent of the old
South. But behind that soft speech there is a determined soul. The
smooth-running accents of the South are in this case the velvet which
hides the glove of iron.
The following are some of the deeds of valor, work and achievements he
has accomplished:
AN UNPARALLELED RECORD.
20,000 arrests made by Detective Wooldridge.
He keeps a record of each arrest, time, place and
disposition of the case.
14,000 arrests made for violation State and city
misdemeanors.
6,000 arrests made on criminal charges.
10,500 of these prisoners paid fines.
2,400 of these prisoners were sent to jail or the house of
correction.
200 of these were convicted and sent to the penitentiary.
1,000 get-rich-quick concerns were raided and broken up.
60 wagon loads of literature seized and destroyed.
A conservative estimate of the sum contributed annually
by this highly civilized nation to "safe investment" and
"get-rich-quick" concerns is $150,000,000.
300 poker, crap and gambling games raided and closed;
$1,000,000 lost.
200 wine rooms closed up. These wine rooms were the
downfall and ruination of hundreds of innocent girls.
185 wildcat insurance companies raided and closed.
2,500,000 bogus securities and 10 patrol wagon loads of
books, papers and literature seized. These companies paid
no losses, and there were, it is estimated, 1,000,000
persons who had taken out fire insurance policies in these
wildcat companies.
They had sustained fire losses and were not indemnified.
The conservative estimated loss by these wildcat insurance
companies is $10,000,000.
$200,000 of lost and stolen property was recovered and
returned to the owners by Detective Wooldridge.
129 slot machines seized and broken up; valued at $10,000.
130 policy shops raided and closed: $100,000 would be a
conservative estimate of the amount lost by the players.
125 matrimonial agencies raided and broken up.
4,500,000 matrimonial letters seized and destroyed.
1,500,000 matrimonial agencies' stock letters seized and
destroyed.
1,400,000 matrimonial stock photographs seized and
destroyed.
500,000 photographs sent to the matrimonial agencies by
men and women who were seeking their affinities seized and
destroyed.
40 wagon loads of matrimonial literature seized and
destroyed.
110 turf frauds raided and closed: $8,000,000 lost by the
public.
$20,000 bribe was offered Wooldridge by the turf swindlers
to let them run, but he refused to take it.
105 panel houses raided and closed.
$1,500,000 was stolen annually from 1889 to October, 1896.
At that time there were 64 uniformed officers stationed
in front of the panel houses. Detectives Wooldridge
and Schubert were assigned to break them, which was
accomplished in three weeks' time.
100 bucketshops raided and closed; $5,000,000 lost through
them.
July 31, 1900, Detective Wooldridge, in charge of 50
officers, arrested 415 men and landed them in the Harrison
Street Police Station, and dismantled the following
bucketshops:
10 and 12 Pacific avenue, 25 Sherman street, 14 Pacific
avenue, 10 Pacific avenue, 210 Opera House Block, 7
Exchange court, 19 Lyric Building, and 37 Dearborn street.
It was one of the largest and most sensational raids ever
made in Chicago, and will be long remembered.
73 opium joints raided and closed; $100,000 spent, and hundreds of
persons were wrecked and ruined by the use of opium.
75 girls under age rescued from a house of ill fame and a life of
shame, and returned to their parents or guardians, or sent to the
Juvenile School or the House of Good Shepherd.
50 home-buying swindles raided and closed; $6,000,000 lost.
48 palmists and fortune tellers raided and closed; $500,000 lost.
45 spurious employment agencies raided and closed; $200,000 lost.
40 bogus charity swindles raided and closed; $300,000 lost.
38 blind pools in grain and stock raided and closed; $500,000 lost.
35 bogus mail order houses raided and closed; $3,000,000 lost.
34 sure-thing gambling devices raided and closed; $2,500,000 lost.
33 fraudulent and guarantee companies raided and closed; $900,000 lost.
30 fraudulent book concerns raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.
28 panel-house keepers were indicted and convicted.
15 owners of the property were indicted and convicted.
This broke the panel-house keepers' backbone and they never recovered
to resume business again.
Emma Ford, sentenced to the penitentiary April 5, 1902,
for five years. Pearl Smith, her sister, sentenced to the
penitentiary June 19, 1893, for five years. Mary White, May
20, 1893, for two years. Flossie Moore, March 27, 1893, for
five years. Seventy-five thousand dollars is said to have
been stolen by her in eighteen months.
$8,000 bribe was offered Detective Wooldridge to let Flossie Moore
slip through his fingers.
$3,000 bribe was offered by the same woman for the address of Sadie
Jorden, who was an eye witness of the robbery of E. S. Johnson, a
retired merchant, aged 74 years.
28 wire tappers were raided and closed. These men secured the
quotations from the Board of Trade and pool rooms, and hundreds of
thousands of dollars were secured from the speculators who were
victimized; $200,000 lost.
27 dishonest collecting agencies raided and closed; $200,000 lost.
25 swindling brokers raided and closed; $800,000 lost.
23 lotteries raided and closed; $1,700,000 lost.
$100 per month bribe to run his lottery was offered Detective
Wooldridge, April 21, 1900, by J. J. Jacobs, 217 Dearborn street, who
conducted the Montana Loan & Investment Co. He was arrested and fined
$1,500 by Judge Chetlain, June 21, 1903.
22 promoters raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.
22 salted mines and well companies raided and closed; $2,000,000 lost.
20 city lot swindles raided and closed; $1,000,000 lost.
20 spurious medicine concerns raided and closed; $300,000 lost.
* * * * *
$30,000 worth of poison and bogus medicines seized October 29, 1904,
as follows:
$12,000 worth of spurious medicines seized by Detective
Wooldridge from Edward Kuehmsted, 6323 Ingleside avenue.
$5,000 worth of spurious drugs seized from J. S. Dean, 6121
Ellis avenue.
$2,500 worth of spurious drugs seized from Burtis B.
McCann, 6113 Madison avenue.
$500 worth of spurious drugs seized from J. N. Levy, 356
Dearborn street.
$2,000 worth of spurious medicines seized from W. G. Nay,
1452 Fulton street.
* * * * *
17 women arrested for having young girls under age in a house of
prostitution.
16 fraudulent theater agencies raided and closed; $100,000 lost.
15 procurists of young girls for houses of ill fame and
prostitution arrested and fined.
$8,000 bribe offered Detective Wooldridge, September 27,
1895, by Mary Hastings, who kept a house of prostitution
at 128 Custom House place. She went to Toledo, O., and
secured six girls under age and brought them in the house
of prostitution.
One of the girls escaped in her night clothes by tying a
sheet to the window. There were six in number, as follows:
Lizzie Lehrman, May Casey, Ida Martin, Gertie Harris,
Kittie McCarty and Lizzie Winzel.
After Mary Hastings was arrested and she found out that she
could not bribe Wooldridge she gave bonds and fled. Some
months later she was again arrested, and the case dragged
along for two years.
The witnesses were bought up and shipped out of the state.
The case was stricken off, with leave to reinstate. It is
said it cost her $20,000.
Four notorious negro women, footpads and highway robbers,
arrested by Detective Wooldridge, whose stealings are
estimated by the police to have been over $200,000. The
following are the names of the women arrested:
5 mushroom banks raided and closed; $500,000 lost.
Detective Wooldridge has been under fire over forty times, and it is
said that he bears a charmed life, and fears nothing. He has met with
many hair-breadth escapes in his efforts to apprehend criminals who,
by means of revolver and other concealed weapons, tried to fight their
way to liberty.
He has impersonated almost every kind of character. He has in his
crime hunting associated with members of the "400" and fraternized
with hobos. He has dined with the elite and smoked in the opium dens;
he has done everything that one expects a detective of fiction to do,
and which the real detective seldom does.
Wooldridge, the incorruptible! That describes him. The keenest,
shrewdest, most indefatigable man that ever wore a detective's star,
the equal of Lecocq and far the superior of the fictitious Sherlock
Holmes, the man who has time and again achieved the seemingly
impossible with the most tremendous odds against him, the man who
might, had such been his desire, be wealthy, be a "foremost citizen"
as tainted money goes, has earned the title given him in these
headlines. And if ever any one man earned this title it is Clifton R.
Wooldridge.
It is refreshing to the citizenship of America, rich and poor alike,
to contemplate the career of this wonderful man. It fills men with
respect for the law, with confidence in the administration of the law,
to know that there are such men as Wooldridge at the helm of justice.
The writer of this article has enjoyed intimate personal association
with the great detective, both in the capacity of a newspaper
reporter, magazine writer and anti-graft worker. The ins and outs of
the nature of the greatest secret service worker in Chicago, Clifton
R. Wooldridge, have been to me an open book. And when I call him
Wooldridge, the incorruptible, I know whereof I speak.
I have seen him when all the "influences" (and they are the same
"influences" which have been denounced all over the country of late)
were brought to bear upon him, when even his own chiefs were inclined
to be frightened, but no "influence" from any source, howsoever high,
has ever availed to swerve him one inch from the path of duty.
CANNOT BE BRIBED.
He has been offered bribes innumerable; but in each and every instance
the would-be briber has learned a very unpleasant lesson. For this
man, who might be worth almost anything he wished, is by no means
affluent. But he has kept his name untarnished and his spirit high
through good fortune and through bad, through evil repute and good.
Wooldridge does not know the meaning of a lie. A lie is something so
foreign to his nature that he has trouble in comprehending how others
can see profit in falsifying. It has been his cardinal principle
through life that liars always come to a bad end finally. And he has
seen his healthy estimate of life vindicated, both in the high circles
of frenzied finance and in the low levels of sneak-thievery.
TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF WORK DONE.
But the most remarkable thing to me about Wooldridge is the work he
has done. Consider for a moment the record which heads this article.
Could anything shout forth the tremendous energy of the man in any
plainer terms? There are men in the same line of work with Wooldridge,
who have been in the service for the same length of time, who have not
made one arrest where he has made thousands.
Twenty thousand arrests in twenty years of service, a thousand arrests
every year, on an average. A thousand get-rich-quick concerns,
victimizing more than a million people, raided and put out of
business; thirteen thousand one hundred convictions; hundreds upon
hundreds of wine rooms, gambling houses, bucketshops, opium joints,
houses of ill fame, turf frauds, bogus charity swindles, policy
shops, matrimonial agencies, fraudulent guarantee companies, spurious
medicine concerns, thieving theater agencies and mushroom banks
brought to the bar of justice and made to expiate their crimes.
That is the record of the almost inconceivable work done by Clifton
R. Wooldridge on the Chicago police force. The figures are almost
appalling in their greatness. It is hard for the mind to comprehend
how any one man could have achieved all this vast amount of labor,
even if he worked twenty-four hours a day all the time. And yet it is
the bare record of the "big" work done by Wooldridge, aside from his
routine.
LIFE HISTORY OF WOOLDRIDGE.
Detective Wooldridge from March, 1898, until April 5, 1907, was
attached to the office of the General Superintendent of Police and
worked out of his office. During that time over 1,200 letters and
complaints were referred to him for investigation and action.
April 5, 1907, Detective Wooldridge was relieved of this work and
transferred, and crusade and extermination of the get-rich-quick
concerns ceased.
September 20, 1889, Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of
twenty-five picked detectives, who were placed in charge of the
suppression of hand-books and other gambling in Chicago. He remained
in charge of this detail for three years.
On December 13, 1890, at the residence of Charles Partdridge, Michigan
avenue and Thirty-second street, while three desperate burglars were
trying to effect an entrance into the house, Detective Wooldridge
espied them and in his attempt to arrest them was fired upon by the
trio. One shot passed through his cap, clipping off a lock of his hair
and grazing his scalp. The next shot struck him squarely in the buckle
of his belt, which saved his life.
NUMBERLESS HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES.
August 20, 1891, he met with another narrow escape at Thirtieth and
Dearborn streets, while attempting to arrest Nathan Judd, a crazed and
desperate colored man. Judd threw a brick at him, striking him over
his left temple, and inflicting a wound two inches long.
Judd was shot through the thigh, and afterwards was sent to the house
of correction for one year.
Detective Wooldridge, alone in a drenching rainstorm at 4 o'clock on
the morning of June 23, 1892, at Michigan avenue and Madison street,
intercepted three horsethieves and hold-up men in a buggy trying to
make their escape.
At the point of a revolver he commanded them to halt. As they
approached him no attention was paid to him, or to what he was saying.
Seizing the bridle of the horse, he was dragged nearly a block before
the horse was checked. A twenty-pound horse weight was hurled at him
by one of the robbers, which just missed his head. Another one of the
robbers leaped upon the horse and rained blow after blow upon his head
with the buggy whip.
Detective Wooldridge shot this man in the leg; he jumped off the horse
and made good his escape while Wooldridge was engaged in a desperate
hand to hand encounter with the other two robbers. Wooldridge knocked
both senseless with the butt of his revolver. They were taken to the
police station and gave their names as John Crosby and John McGinis.
Both were found guilty a month later and sent to the penitentiary by
Judge Baker.
SAVES WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN FIRE.
March 4, 1892, Detective Wooldridge by his prompt and courageous
actions, and the immediate risk of his own life, succeeded in rescuing
from the Waverly Hotel (which was on fire), at 262 and 264 S. Clark
street, two ladies who were overcome by smoke on the second floor of
the burning building: also a lady and two children, aged two years and
five months, respectively, from the fourth floor.
This act was performed by tying a silk handkerchief around his mouth,
and on his hands and knees crawling up the winding stairs to the
fourth floor, where he found Mrs. E. C. Dwyer unconscious. Placing
the two children in a bed quilt, he threw it over his shoulder, and
seizing Mrs. E. C. Dwyer by the hand, dragged her down the stairs to a
place of safety, where medical assistance was called.
Sept. 21, 1902, Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of the
Get-Rich-Quick concerns with which Chicago was infested. He also
had charge of the suppression of gambling at parks and other places
of amusement, the inspection and supervision of picture exhibitions
in penny arcades and museums, and the inspection and supervision of
illustrated postal cards sold throughout the city for the purpose of
preventing the exhibition, sale and circulation of vulgar and obscene
pictures, the work of gathering evidence against and the suppression
of dealers in "sure thing" gambling devices, viz., loaded dice, marked
cards, roulette wheels, spindle faro layouts, card hold-outs, nickel
slot machines and many other devices.
Oct. 25, 1893, Detective Wooldridge had a narrow escape while trying
to arrest Charles Sales, a desperate colored man, for committing a
robbery at State and Harrison streets. Sales whipped out his gun
and fired four shots at Wooldridge at short range; two of the shots
passing harmlessly through his coat. Sales was arrested and given one
year in the house of correction.
RIDES TO STATION ON PRISONER'S BACK.
June 6, 1894, Detective Wooldridge arrested Eugene Buchanan for
committing a highway robbery at Polk and Clark streets. A few days
prior he had held up and robbed Philip Schneider and kicked out one
of his eyes. Buchanan was met in the alley between Clark street and
Pacific avenue, where he resisted arrest and fought like a demon,
using his hands, club and head. In the scuffle he ran his head between
Wooldridge's legs and tried to throw him, but Wooldridge was to quick
for him and fastened his legs around Buchanan's neck like a clam.
Buchanan could not free himself. Wooldridge pulled his gun and placing
it in the ear of Buchanan compelled him to carry him to the Harrison
street police station on his shoulder. It was one of the most novel
sights ever witnessed, and will be long remembered by those who saw it.
Buchanan was convicted and sent to the penitentiary for three years.
Upon his release he applied to Wooldridge to assist him in securing
a position. Wooldridge took him to his home, fed him and secured
employment for him with Nelson Morris & Co., where he remained three
years. He afterwards committed a highway robbery in Washington Park
and is now serving an indefinite term in the penitentiary.
HANGS ON WINDOW SILL.
May 16, 1895, Detective Wooldridge, accompanied by Officers Kern,
O'Connor and Cameron, located Matt Kelly at 411 State street, who was
wanted for a criminal assault. Kelly was a hold-up man, ex-convict
and a notorious safe-blower, who several years prior to this shot two
officers in St. Louis, Mo. Kelly was found behind locked doors on the
second-floor and refused to open the doors. Detective Wooldridge went
to the adjoining flat, opened a window and crawled along the ledge
until he had reached Kelly's room; with a revolver in his mouth he
pushed up the sash and was faced by Kelly and his wife.
"Go back or I'll kill you," said Kelly as he pushed his revolver in
Wooldridge's face.
Wooldridge had meanwhile secured a good hold on the sill of the
window, but was not in a position to defend himself. The Kelly woman
tried her best to shove him off; she succeeded in loosening one of
his hands, and for an instant Detective Wooldridge thought he would
have to fall. With an almost superhuman effort Wooldridge broke in the
window and covering Kelly with his own revolver ordered him to throw
up his hands, which he did. He was taken to the police station and
heavily fined.
A PLOT TO KILL DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE.
A dozen of the highwaymen and robbers on whom Wooldridge was waging a
relentless warfare gathered together on the morning of July 4, 1895,
and formed a plot to kill Wooldridge and get him out of the way.
They concluded that the night of July 4, when everyone was firing
off revolvers and celebrating, would afford the best opportunity.
They imagined it would be an easy thing to shoot him from one of the
windows or from a housetop while he was on duty patrolling his post,
and no one would know where the shot came from, as there was shooting
from every direction.
An oath of secrecy was taken by all present, and lots drawn to see
who was to do the deed. In all probability their plan would have been
carried out had it not been for a colored woman, who was watching them
and heard the whole plot, and who went with the information to the
Harrison Street Police Station.
Captain Koch and Lieutenant Laughlin were notified and upon
investigation found the report to be true. They took immediate steps
to protect Wooldridge by placing three additional officers in full
uniform with him, and also placing six men in citizen's clothes on his
post. Every man they met was searched for a gun; every crook, vagrant
and thief that they could lay their hands on was placed under lock
and key in the station, and by 11 o'clock that night there was no
square in the city quieter than the one this officer patrolled, and
in two weeks' time "Coon Hollow" and the whole neighborhood for half
a mile in every direction had undergone the most remarkable change
known to police history, and this change was apparent for a long time
thereafter.
February 11, 1896, Detective Wooldridge, while trying to arrest a
panel-house keeper and three colored hold-up men at 412 Dearborn
street, was fired upon by one of the trio, Kid White, the shot
striking the bar of his watch chain, which was attached to the lower
button of his vest. When the bar was struck the bullet was diverted
from entering Wooldridge's stomach, and it glanced off and passed
through his overcoat.
DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE ROUGHLY HANDLED.
In 1896 Wooldridge's fiercest fight came when he arrested George
Kinnucan in his saloon at 435 Clark street. A dozen roughs, henchmen
of Kinnucan, who were in the saloon at the time, came to the
saloonkeeper's rescue. The officer was knocked down, his billy taken
from him and himself beaten unconscious with it, and his face and
head kicked into one mass of bruises. Through it all he managed to
hang on to his revolver. This alone saved him. He finally managed to
shoot Kinnucan through the hand and forearm, and a moment later a
uniformed man burst in and evened up the battle. Six of the toughs
were arrested, and Wooldridge was left alone by them for a long time.
FINE WORK IN A THIEVES' RESORT.
In the same year of 1896, Detective Wooldridge, disguising himself
as a cheap thief, entered a Clark street criminals' resort and
fraternized with thieves, murderers and vagabonds of all kinds, in
order to obtain information, leading Wooldridge into the most amazing
school of crime ever witnessed by a Chicago police officer. He was
accepted in good faith as a proper sneak thief by the brotherhood,
and for his benefit the "manager" of the den put his "pupils" through
their "lessons."
These lessons were in shoplifting, pocket picking, purse snatching
and other forms of larceny requiring skill and deftness. When he had
seen enough Wooldridge generously volunteered to "rush the growler"
and went out--and called the patrol wagon. Twenty-three crooks were
arrested this time. Each one of them swore he would have killed the
detective had his makeup or conduct for an instant directed suspicion
toward him.
MAKES HIGH DIVE.
November 20, 1896, Detective Wooldridge made a high dive.
To offset his aerial stunt he took a high dive from the top of a
building, landing on his head in a pile of refuse with such force as
to go "in over his head" and stick there so tightly that it required
the combined strength of two officers to pull him out by the legs.
It was near Twelfth and State streets while pursuing two women across
a roof that his remarkable stunt took place. The women jumped from
the roof into a pile of refuse. They landed on their feet. Wooldridge
came after them. He landed on his head. As he landed he grasped a
woman with either hand, and held them until the arrival of his brother
officers effected his release and their capture.
But these are only humorous incidents, things to laugh over when the
day's work is done. In the parlance of the detectives, they belong to
"straight police work." As a direct antithesis to them is the story
of the murder and the black cat, which is in real life a weirder and
more startling affair than Poe's fantastic tale of the same subject. A
black cat helped solve a murder in a way which puts a distinct strain
on the credulity of the uninitiated.
STORY RIVALS POE'S "BLACK CAT."
A rich man had been murdered in a certain part of the city. He was in
his library at the time of the crime. His family was in an adjoining
room, yet none of them heard any noise, or knew what had been done
until they found him lifeless on the floor. Investigation proved that
he had been shot, but not with an ordinary weapon. The missile in
his heart was a combination of bullet and dart, evidently propelled
from a powerful air rifle or spring gun. But no clew was left by
the perpetrator of the crime, and Wooldridge carried the strange
missile in his pocket for several months before a single prospect of
apprehending the murderer appeared. Then it was the black cat that did
it. What strange coincidence or freak of fate it was that impelled
the cat to literally lead the detective to a little pile of dirt in
an alley that night Wooldridge never has attempted to explain. But
lead him it did, and when he dug into the disturbed ground he found
something entirely new in the gun line, the weapon that had discharged
the fatal bullet in his pocket. Eventually he traced the gun to its
inventor, and from there to the man who had purchased it, a young
fellow named Johnson, and a supposed friend of the murdered man's
family. The consequence was that this man proved to be the murderer.
When arrested he at first denied his guilt, broke down under the
sweatbox ordeal and confessed, and--killed himself in his cell next
morning.
For mystery and good fortune in bringing an apparently untraceable
criminal to justice this incident perhaps has never been equaled in
Chicago's police records.
ON DUTY IN GREAT STRIKE.
In 1900 Chicago's great building trade strike occurred in which
60,000 men were thrown out of employment. Many acts of violence were
committed. Several men were killed and many maimed and injured.
Detective Wooldridge was placed in charge of thirty picked detectives
from the detective bureau with orders to suppress these lawless
acts and arrest the guilty offenders. Through his vigilance and
untiring efforts law and order were soon restored, and he was highly
complimented by Chief of Police Joseph Kipley and the public press.
Literally speaking, the darkest situation into which his experiences
have led him was the tunnel by which inmates of Mattie Lee's famous
resort at 150 Custom House place escaped when the place was raided.
Mattie had decided that it was a nuisance to go to the station every
time the police wanted to arrest her, so she had the tunnel dug.
After that when the police called on her Mattie greeted them with
an empty house and a sweet smile, while underground the inmates
were crawling on their hands and knees to safety. Wooldridge found
the tunnel and, crawling in, "snaked out" six colored men and women
whom he found in the darkness. Versatility is a requisite with the
successful detective.
REMARKABLE WORK AS A RAGPICKER.
May 28, 1905, perhaps, his appearance in the role of a ragpicker,
which led to the arrest and conviction of two negro highwaymen,
Henry Reed and Ed Lane, was his most daring and successful effort at
disguise. Lane is at present serving a life sentence in Joliet for the
murder of Robert Metcalfe.
The assault and robbery of a contractor named Anderson was the
occasion for Wooldridge's assumption of the guise of ragpicker.
Anderson had described Lane so accurately that the detective was sure
of recognizing him once he put his eyes upon him, but in those days
a detective to go into the black belt looking for a criminal was to
spread a wide alarm over the whole district. Consequently he "made
up." A pair of large, worn overalls, a coat three sizes too large, a
bunch of papers between his shoulder blades to give him a hunch back,
burnt cork, a curly wig, a bag and a piece of telegraph wire, and the
erstwhile shrewd-looking detective was in ten minutes the typical
negro ragpicker who shambles up and down alleys on the south side in
hope of picking up enough for his day's bread.
While thus pursuing his way Wooldridge not only discovered the
presence of Reed and Lane, but actually worked through the refuse
in a garbage box upon which Lane was sitting quarreling with some
confederates over the division of the previous night's spoils. He
even went so far as to pick up an old coat which Lane had discarded.
Thereupon Lane ordered him to get out of the alley or get his throat
cut from ear to ear. Wooldridge went humbly out, and waited.
HERO OF SOME FIERCE FIGHTS.
Presently Lane and Reed appeared and went south on State street.
Wooldridge followed, and at an opportune moment seized them both from
behind. The fight that followed is historic. Only sheer luck and the
threat to kill both antagonists on the spot if they did not cease
resistance saved the detective's life. After knocking both men down
with his billy he succeeded in holding them until a fellow officer
came to his rescue. They were arrested and convicted June 25, 1905,
and sent to the penitentiary for three years.
May 19, 1906, Detective Wooldridge raided the following places: H. C.
Evins, 125 S. Clark street; George Deshone, 64 N. Clark street; E.
Manning Stockton, Bar & Co., 56 Fifth avenue, seizing some $30,000
worth of gambling paraphernalia.
Disclosures of conditions which so seriously threatened the discipline
of the United States army and navy that the secretaries of the two
departments and even President Roosevelt himself were called upon to
aid in their suppression.
It was charged that a coterie of Chicago men engaged in making and
selling these devices had formed a "trust" and had for years robbed,
swindled and corrupted the enlisted men of the army and navy through
loaded dice, "hold-outs," magnetized roulette wheels and other crooked
gambling apparatus.
CROOKED GAMBLING TRUST.
The "crooked" gambling "trust" in Chicago spread over the civilized
world, had its clutches on nearly every United States battleship, army
post and military prison; caused wholesale desertions, and in general
corrupted the entire defensive institution of the nation.
TRY TO CORRUPT SCHOOLBOYS.
Besides the corruption of the army, these companies are said to have
aimed a blow at the foundation of the nation by offering, through a
mail order plan, for six cents, loaded dice to schoolboys, provided
they sent the names of likely gamblers among their playmates.
This plan had not reached its full growth when nipped. But the
disruption of the army and navy had been under way for several years
and had reached such gigantic proportions that the military service
was in danger of complete disorganization.
Thousands of men were mulcted of their pay monthly. Desertions
followed these wholesale robberies. The war department could not find
the specific trouble. Post commanders and battleship commanders were
instructed to investigate.
The army investigation, confirmed after the raid and arrests, showed
that the whole army had been honeycombed with corruption by these
companies. Express books and registered mail return cards showed that
most of the goods were sold to soldiers and sailors.
DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE SECURES EVIDENCE IN NOVEL WAY.
In August, 1890, complaints had been made at the Stanton Avenue Police
Station for several weeks concerning the establishment of a disorderly
house at 306 Thirty-first street, but try as they would uniformed
officers were helpless so far as securing evidence enough to convict
was concerned. Wooldridge at that time a uniformed man, was put in
plain clothes and detailed on the case. One of the great stumbling
blocks in the way of the police had been the high basement under the
house, which made it impossible for any one to look in the windows of
the flat without the aid of the ladder. As the presence of a ladder
would arouse suspicion, the problem of viewing the inside of the flat
was a difficult one.
One thing the other men on the case had overlooked. This was the
presence of a beam jutting out from the top of the building to which
a rope, pulley, and barrel were attached, used as a means of lowering
garbage and ashes from the second floor to the alley. Wooldridge saw
the possibilities of the rope and barrel trick. Attaching to the rope
a vinegar barrel with holes bored in it at convenient intervals, he
awaited an opportune time, curled up in the barrel, and had himself
drawn up to the level of the windows by two officers. The lowering and
raising of the barrel being a customary thing in the building, excited
no suspicion in the minds of those in the flat, and Wooldridge, with
his sleuth's eye at one of the holes, saw what served to drive the
place out of existence and secure the conviction of its keeper.
ACTS AS VENDOR OF FIGHTING "CHICKENS."
One of the last exploits of Detective Wooldridge before his
completion of the twenty years of service, was the breaking up of the
cock-fighting mains, which infested Chicago during the latter part of
1906 and the early part of 1907.
The story savors of the burlesque. Wooldridge obtained information as
to the whereabouts of a cock-fight which was to be pulled off. Then he
sought out and purchased a pair of decrepit old roosters, that would
not fight an English sparrow, bundled them into a sack and started for
scene of action. Arrived in what he knew to be the neighborhood of the
fight, he declared that he had been sent to deliver some "fightin'
chickuns." He was directed to an old, abandoned building. Here he was
admitted and left the antique roosters. Then he said he was going for
more birds. Instead he went for a patrol wagon. And that was the end
of the chicken fight.
The trapping of the Wildcat Insurance companies furnishes one of the
most dramatic chapters in the financial history of the United States,
if not in the world. It involves millions of stolen dollars, brutal
filching from the poor, heartless commercial brigandage and finally
the running to earth and conviction of the ringleaders and promoters
of the "WILDCAT INSURANCE COMPANIES" OF CHICAGO, by Detective
Wooldridge.
The police and postal authorities worked together. Two thousand eight
hundred letters were sent out asking for information and gathering
evidence.
At the trial of Dr. S. W. Jacobs, on one of these cases, there were
200 witnesses present. Five of these witnesses were victims, and
lived in tents. Three were living in wagons: One, Samuel James, of
Westfield, Illinois, a carpenter, 64 years of age, had a wife and six
children. He had built his house morning and evening.
BRIBERY TACTICS OF NO AVAIL.
James accomplished the end of his heart's desire. It cost him $900 and
his health, for he was in the clutches of consumption when the cottage
was finally paid for. Fearing lest the fruit of his life-work should
be swept away by fire, James took out an insurance policy in one of
Dr. S. W. Jacobs' Wildcat Insurance companies. The house burned down
and he was not indemnified. With his wife and six little children
James was forced to take shelter in a chicken coop, where they were
living when the broken-hearted father came to Chicago as a witness
against Dr. S. W. Jacobs.
Twenty-five thousand dollars was tendered to an attorney to bribe
Wooldridge in the case.
The breaking up of the drug ring, however, was a delicate task.
It was strongly backed financially, and it was aided and abetted
throughout the United States by political rings galore. Chicago was
the headquarters.
A ten thousand dollar bribe was offered Detective Wooldridge, October
29, 1904, by the spurious medicine concerns to return their goods and
stop the prosecution; this failed. Then false and malicious charges
were filed with the Civil Service Commissioners against Wooldridge,
which was taken up and the trial lasted nineteen sessions.
Detective Wooldridge was exonerated by the entire board of
commissioners, and complimented by the press and public-spirited
citizens.
Detective Wooldridge secured four indictments against the above four
men, which was returned by the Cook county grand jury May 25, 1905. J.
S. Dean turned state's evidence and assisted the prosecution.
J. H. Carson promoted and run eighteen different matrimonial agencies.
He was arrested eighteen times. He offered Wooldridge a bribe of $100
per month not to arrest him. This failed and he brought suit in the
Superior Court against Wooldridge for $5,000 damages, thinking this
would stop him. The next day after filing the suit he was arrested
again, and was finally driven out of Chicago.
From $10,000 to $20,000 has been offered at a time for his discharge
or transfer by these get-rich-quick concerns. Every political pressure
was brought to bear, but to no avail.
Ex-Chief of Police Francis O'Neill, in his annual report of 1905,
states that Detective Wooldridge accomplished more work in breaking
up the get-rich-quick concerns in Chicago, in the year 1904, than the
whole Chicago police department had in its lifetime. He did equally as
much work, if not more, in the years of 1905, 1906 and 1907.
The day is never too long nor the night too dark for Detective
Wooldridge to find time to succor or save a young girl who has gone
wrong or strayed from the path of rectitude.
Detective Wooldridge, without fear or favor, for many years
inaugurated crusades and waged wars against the hosts of criminal
enterprise. Whenever a man or concern could not show a "clear bill
of health" he forced him to "disinfect, depart, or submit to the
quarantine of the county jail."
By vigilance and hard work he succeeded in obtaining good results.
Units, scores, and legions of fraudulent concerns have been exposed
and driven out of existence. Owners of others, anticipating exposure,
did not wait, but closed their places and fled. Many headquarters of
contraband schemes have been raided and their promoters arrested,
fined, and forced to cease operations. During that time retributive
justice has been visited upon countless heads that were devoted to
devising criminal schemes.
Detective Wooldridge permits no creed, color, religion or politics to
interfere with him in his sworn duty. He wants and exacts the truth,
and a square deal for himself, and accords the same to his fellow men.
He has never been known to wilfully persecute any man or to lie or
strain a point to convict him, neither will he suffer the same to be
done by any man if he can prevent it.
Wooldridge's motto is equal justice to all--be sure you are right,
then go ahead.
JAMES P. WILSON.
[Illustration: What Are YOU Going to Do About It?]
GRAFT NATION'S WORST FOE.
THE REIGN OF GRAFT.
Recent Exposures That Show How Strongly It Is Intrenched.
ARE YOU A GRAFTER?
Those Shocked at Exposures May Not Be Clean Themselves.
"A 'grafter' is one who makes his living (and sometimes his fortune)
by 'grafting.' He may be a political boss, a mayor, a chief of police,
a warden of a penitentiary, a municipal contractor, a member of a town
council, a representative in the legislature, a judge in the courts,
and the upper world may know him only in his political capacity; but
if the under world has had occasion to approach him for purposes
of 'graft' and found him corrupt, he is immediately classified as
an 'unmugged grafter'--one whose photograph is not in the rogues'
gallery, but ought to be. The professional thief is the 'mugged
grafter'; his photograph and Bertillon measurements are known and
recorded.
The world of graft is whereever known and unknown thieves or
bribetakers congregate. In the United States it is found mainly in
the large cities, but its boundaries take in small county seats
and even villages. A correct map of it is impossible, because in a
great many places it is represented by an unknown rather than by
a known inhabitant, by a dishonest official or an unscrupulous and
wary politician rather than a confessed thief, and the geographer
is helpless until he can collect the facts, which may never come to
light. The most that one man can do is to make voyages of discovery,
find out what he can and report upon his experiences to the general
public.
Within the last year or two it has become practically a synonym for a
thief who filches public money and money of large enterprises. It has
been so largely used in the public prints and periodicals, and more
recently in books, that it has spread abroad; and London and Paris
and Berlin, in referring to many American disclosures, adopt the word
without any translation. So today no American word is better known
either in this country or in Europe.
When men in office take a bribe and give away what does not belong to
them, it is more than the double crime of extorting and stealing; it
is treason. Graft is the worst form of despotism. It is a usurpation
of government by the forces of crime. There have been many virtuous
kings and honest feudal lords, but the despotism of graft never
founded its rule upon a semblance of the moral law.
Graft in its highest personification is the king of the American
nation in political, commercial and social life.
GRAFT IS OVERLORD.
Overlord of 80,000,000 people in the greatest republic of history,
commanding his tens of millions of dollars annually as tribute to
graft in a million of his impersonations--was Solomon in all his glory
to be compared with this?
Nine states in the union of forty-five states recently have declared
that graft exposures have not been in their categories of political
publicity for a year. They are Maine, North Carolina, Mississippi,
Iowa, Michigan, Colorado, New York, Illinois and California. But who
shall say what another six months may bring forth?
[Illustration: 30 CENTURIES OF GRAFT LOOKS DOWN UPON ITS HEADLESS
VICTIMS]
In industrial, commercial and social life of the American people
there is not a state in which King Graft has not his court and his
following. In the capital of capitals at Washington for generations
the powers of government as dreamed of for the republic have been
superseded by King Graft time after time, and the impeachment of his
princes, grand dukes and courtiers generally have not threatened his
reign in future generations.
SCORES OF PROUD NAMES SMIRCHED.
Within the last few years names that have stood honored for a
generation in financial, political and social life have been dragged
down from high places perhaps as never before in America. The court of
King Graft has been attacked and threatened as never before, and with
greater showing. There is war in the open against this pretender king,
and his legions everywhere are retiring behind their breastworks,
broken but not defeated.
Graft in its nakedness, has been exposed and the people are aroused,
fearing that the grafter has sucked the life blood of the republic.
What they have seen is but a glimpse of real conditions--the ulcer
spots where the rottenness beneath has broken through--but they have
seen enough to realize the peril and attack it. While the conditions
revealed are astounding and alarming, they are signs of improvement.
The nation is better than it was a decade ago, since tens of thousands
of grafters have been stamped out, since the leaders of the greatest
grafts of the land have been exposed to the withering light of
contempt of all decent Americans.
LIFE OF NATION IMPERILED.
Also, born of the conditions, there has arisen a little army of
leaders willing to engage the enemy and lead the people against the
grafters. They have been raised up to meet the crisis of the nation's
life, and with every blow they strike new recruits are joining them in
the war against graft.
They are still weak, and King Graft and his votaries are still
strong, but during the last year the leaders have won some remarkable
skirmishes and routed the grafters.
[Illustration: WHICH ROAD SHALL HE TAKE?
A GRAFTER IN EVERY ROAD.
The Public stands at the crossing of the roads, wondering which way he
shall go with his money. Wherever he turns he sees a grafter in the
road before him. The labels on these seven grafters give the names of
a few of those that beset every honest man's pathway. The grafters
spend twenty million dollars a year advertising; and they swindle the
people out of one hundred and sixty million dollars annually.]
NATION, STATES AND CITIES AROUSED.
Senators and congressmen at the national capital have been impeached,
and indicted, and tried, and convicted of grafting.
Bureau officials, as in the cotton scandal, the postoffice frauds,
and other of the departments, and civil service exposes have been
arraigned by their own democracy for traitor intrigues with King
Graft, and have been beheaded.
State senators, representatives, treasurers and the innumerable "small
fry" of official life, together with the millionaire briber and his
henchmen at state capitals, have been uncovered and convicted of
debauching democracy in behalf of a pretender sovereign.
Great cities have been shaken with the inquisitorial rounds of
investigations. Philadelphia of Independence memories has been
weighed in the balance and found wanting; in St. Louis the prosecutor
governor, Folk, has stirred corruption to the depths; New York
has been moved as it has not been since the overthrow of Tammany;
Minneapolis has been cleansed; and the spectacular "graft hunt" in
Milwaukee has been a lesson in "how to do it." Perhaps never before
in the history of America have so many grafters been scattered to the
winds, in hiding or locked behind the bars of prisons.
PRESIDENT LEADS FOES OF GRAFT.
But King Graft wears the crown of the pretender still, and there are
few of his fighting enemies who are disposed to rest upon their arms
in either truce or armistice.
The war against graft is led by the president of the United States,
who stands as the foremost foe of grafting--political, financial or
social--in the world, and behind him is a phalanx led by Folk, Jerome,
Riis, Lawson, Hadley, Miss Tarbell, Deneen, Monnett and others of
their type, fighting the nation's most crucial battle.
The grafters have declared that the objects of some of these men were
selfish, but, no matter for what object they fight, they are routing
the grafters in many fields and showing to the awakening public the
peril of the situation; revealing to a commonwealth the worms gnawing
at the vitals of the republic.
FORCES OF GRAFT HARD PRESSED.
Never were the forces of money and commercial and industrial power so
bewildered and so uncertain of the way to turn as they are now. Graft,
to their best interests, is still covertly a necessity to them, but
covert graft never was so hard to keep covert, now that briber and
the bribed are the common quarry of the law. The time was when the
rich man who bought political power to his uses was unnamed, standing
apart. The grafter legislator was the cause and the consequence.
Beginning and ending with the corrupt official whose official place
was grafted upon corruption, the official became immune from the
consequences.
"Grafting in this state never has cost the taxpayer a dollar," was one
of the slogans of a machine government in its attempts to perpetuate
that machine for the purposes of King Graft and his court.
But this false philosophy slowly was undermined. Not only was it found
that graft did cost money to the state, but it became a certainty that
it was costing something even more valuable than money. Graft became
the one object of the political seeker after office. The impersonal
graft-giver was a hanger-on at lawmaking centers, and the political
graft-seeker was insisting upon election or appointment to the
machine positions.
HIDEOUS PERIL IS REVEALED.
The result, first, was a campaign upon the man who had the graft
to dispense. He was sought out, and was found in high places. His
lobbyists were more easily marked than was the principal. So the law
and the law's executive began also to campaign against the lobbyists.
Suddenly the "good fellow" at a state capitol who had with him the
perquisites of good fellowship in graft measure found himself facing
the interrogation:
"What are you doing here?"
The scope of the query has grown, and it is still growing, in some
quarters even to the point of requiring the man who is elected to
office to render the cost figure of his successful campaign. All
over the country, and touching nearly every relation in official,
commercial and financial life, men have been put on the griddle of
publicity by courts and commissions, and with backs to the wall have
been sitting in the witness chair, holding to the one surly response
to an irritating, penetrating cross-examination: "Decline to answer on
advice of counsel."
But for all purposes of publicity have not these refusals to answer
carried light enough?
"The public be d----d!" was the original first utterance of the
millionaire, designed to stop interrogations which would not down.
"What are you going to do about it?" was the counter question of the
political grafter who once was charged with grafting.
"Where did he get it?" came to be a question of the politician
for political purposes, and within a year the country has heard
non-political bodies asking the same question of the millionaire
philanthropist who has been trying to give it away. Under the
growing interrogations of the time, names have been thrown from
pedestals within a year as names never before were juggled by the
fates.
[Illustration: THE CAVE OF DESPAIR.]
IDOLS COVERED WITH SLIME.
Depew, once a candidate for nomination for the presidency, a United
States senator still by some grace of toleration, and at one time
referred to in European royal circles as a "representative American
citizen."
United States Senator Mitchell became a derelict, politically and
socially.
United States Senator Thomas C. Platt was wrecked in the wreckage.
United States Senator Burton became blackened in the charges of graft.
Depew is a name no longer to conjure with.
Then followed a long list of the commercially and financially
prominent civilians, blackened, and with such blackness as never to be
white again by any of the old processes which once sufficed.
Graft is still king. But, truer than of any other monarch, it may be
repeated: "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."
THE UNCONSCIOUS GRAFTER.
It was a rhetorical and sensational sentence in which a recent speaker
in this city declared that the worst grafter is the man who does not
vote. But there is much more than a kernel of truth in the words. The
citizens of a republic need constant stimulus to the fulfillment of
the plainest duties of life. The better the working of the machinery
of government, the less the average man is affected. He rarely feels
the pressure of taxation. He lives in a generation from which no
military service is demanded. He is permitted freedom of thought,
speech and religion, and almost insensibly, as a result, he loses
sight of the supreme obligation which is due his country. He forgets
that that country, in time of public stress, may demand his time, his
property and his life, drafting him for its armies if he does not wish
to volunteer, governing him under martial law, which sets aside the
usual privileges accorded him, and exercising over him, if need be, a
tyranny ordinarily associated with despotism among the older peoples.
The very fact that the American citizen does not often feel the
exercise of the sovereign power, and is not called upon to pay the
supreme obligation of service, makes him careless of his civic duties,
when, it might be thought, he would feel the utmost gratitude for the
privilege of living under such favoring conditions. This carelessness
becomes chronic, and there is abundant need for the constant
reiteration of the call to duty. If, then, a citizen is content to
enjoy the comforts and the quiet of American life without rendering
any return therefor, he may justly be called a grafter, and a grafter
of that worst sort, who robs his benefactor. For, with duty faithfully
performed by the citizen, public opinion is readily shaped, laws
quickly secure enforcement, and public servants are kept clean and
true. It all comes back at last to the individual citizen, upon whom
must rest the responsibility for failure or success of government. It
is easy enough to cry out against the grafter in official position who
puts his hand into the public treasury. Perhaps, after all, the worst
offender is the citizen who does not vote, who does not take a lively
interest in the selection and election of his rulers, who fails to
recognize the underlying obligation of service which his country has a
just right to demand of him.
WAR ON GRAFT JUST BEGINNING.
But, thus far, only the beginning of the truth has been shown. There
remains the senate of the United States, the railway companies, the
Standard Oil Company, the great trusts, the multimillionaires, to be
investigated. All of them now are in the limelight. The courts of
law are under suspicion and must clear themselves by their acts, for
undoubtedly the revelations of the last year have shaken the faith of
the people in their judges.
After these, the huge powers of the land, cleansed states, counties
and cities must join the Augean stable-cleaning, for graft is
everywhere. The fight against graft is only beginning, and it will end
only when a new generation learns that honor is above money, and that
"grafting" is the most disreputable form of theft.
WHOLESALE SWINDLING GRAFTERS.
A chain of stores in various cities for no other purpose than the
obtaining of goods under false pretenses from wholesale merchants is
the latest novelty in the swindling line. It has often been remarked
that the originators of plans to dupe the public might coin their
brains into cash without nearly the draft upon their originality that
is called for by the devising of a swindling game. But the criminal
instinct or incentive seems to lay its hold upon persons who might
otherwise fill a leading and respected place in honorable avocations.
The men who conceived the system of credit for goods to the value of
many thousands of dollars, which they quickly disposed of in different
cities by auction and attractive sales, closing up their stores and
decamping when they had converted the credited stock into cash, were
swindlers of unusual calibre.
The police of several cities now have the task of unearthing the
frauds and bringing them to justice. They may or may not succeed in
so doing, as the scheme was craftily laid and carried out. A harvest
of $100,000 as the returns for a daring exploitation of the credit
system will be regarded, even by the gilt-edged among the robbing
fraternity, as a fine stroke of craftsmanship. The ingenuity of these
cormorants calls for constant readjustment of honest persons to the
conditions created. The lesson of the so-called bargain-house fraud
will be conned, and for a long time to come it may be practically
impossible for the same scheme to be worked again. But the feature of
such enterprises is that they are designed only for the one operation.
After that they become worthless to their originators.
RELIGIOUS GRAFT PAYS.
"Fake" religion as a business may have a fanciful sound, but there are
plenty of men, and women, too, in this day and age who have found it
to be an extremely practical, well-paying proposition. The readiness
with which a good share of the people are always anxious to receive
any new religion, or an old religion revamped in new fashion, makes
the road of the charlatan whose trade is the promulgation of a fake
religion one strewn with roses and money. Women are principally his
victims, although there are plenty of men with a penchant for adopting
strange religions, and from them the faker manages to reap a harvest
that makes the pay of the average minister look like the earnings of
an office boy. While the manner of securing money through the cloak of
a false new sect is generally so hidden that the votaries of the cult
are never aware of its existence until after their leader is exposed,
the main object is never lost sight of by the leader, and the main
object is always, "Get the money."
Out of the great mass of religions or NEW THOUGHT sects started each
year in this country, it is declared that but extremely few are
started with any idea other than that of separating a lot of people
from their money. Occasionally there is a man who sincerely believes
that he has discovered something new and precious in the way of a
religion, and establishes a cult with the motive only to help people
according to his own lights. But the mass of the new religions, sun
worshipers, psychists, Brahmins, Hindus, theosophists, mystics, etc.,
are promoted with the same object in view as that of the old negro
voodoo doctors--get the money.
FINANCIAL YIELDS ARE LARGE.
The financial yields of the new religions are incomparably higher than
is the voodoo man's gain. His followers, who believe in black art and
other foolish, old-fashioned things, are nearly always drawn from the
poorer, even the indigent classes--classes that have but little to
spend, even on a religion. But the East Indian religionist, or the
sun worshiper, draws his clientele from the better classes, and his
followers have the money to reward him in a way that is astounding.
He dabbles not with the poor--neither, it must be confessed, entirely
with the ignorant. His victims come from the upper walks of life,
sometimes from near the top, and their name is legion.
There is a Hindu who has now left this country to go back to spend the
rest of his days in luxurious idleness, the while chuckling over the
gullibility of the smart American people, who came here with a new
religion and made a fortune.
This man was an educated, cultured man of high caste. Sent at an early
age to England to attend school, he returned to his native country at
the age of 28, wise in the things of two worlds, that of his own and
that of the occidentals. For a while he buried himself in the native
life of a loathsome colony of Fakers. There he learned much of their
religious style by rote, and, putting this along with a smattering of
Buddhism, psychology and sun worship, he managed to appear in America
with a new religion, fairly reeking with the essentials required by
those who want mysticism served along with their religious beliefs.
MYSTICISM DRAWS MANY CONVERTS.
He had a new god, a new heaven and forty different and distinct ways
of torturing one's self while worshiping his deity. Mortifying
the flesh through fasting and self-denial, torturing one's self by
standing with the hands above the head, etc., all were included in the
new creed, besides such things as astral bodies and the other things
that go with a new religion. He first held forth in a sumptuously
furnished city flat, where he managed to draw to him a small gathering
of the select who love to dabble in mysterious oriental affairs.
The flat was a dream in itself, and when to it was added a tall,
ascetic young Hindu, with the look of the fanatic burning brightly
in his eyes, and mystic rites of a religious nature, the effect was
irresistible; at least it proved to be to those foregathered under
the tutelage of the young oriental. There were incense burnings and
incantations galore. At first these things did not cost anything.
No. The young mystic was simply working for the enlightenment of the
world, working to spread light into the stygian darkness of the old
and false dogmas and creeds.
After those who flocked to his standard had been so thoroughly imbued
with the sincerity of his teachings that his word was law to them,
the money question came to the fore. He, the missionary, wanted
nothing for himself--oh, no. But there was need for funds for the
establishment of the cult in India. A school and home must be founded
for the young devotees of the new religion in that country, a place
where they could go and live and be trained in the tenets of the creed
and prepared to go out in the world and teach. And it was for this
that the Hindu had come to this country, to permit the chosen ones
here to acquirement with the new deity by subscribing to the school
fund.
Since the beginning of things, when man first beheld the sun and bowed
humbly before it, it has been the custom to heap offerings on the
altar of worship. So the Hindu went back with funds enough to start
half a dozen schools if he had been at all inclined that way, which he
wasn't, and the people who were his followers are still living in the
hope that he will return.
AMERICAN FAKER GETS THE COIN.
Then there is another kind of charlatan, the American fake
religionist, of which, perhaps, there are just as many as of the
foreigners with the weird doctrines of the orient. This type of faker
is coarse compared with the soft-shod, incense-burning Hindu, but
he "gets the money" without much trouble. He is generally a ranter
as far as preaching goes. His methods are those of the shouter, his
religion includes visitation of spirits, shaking of bodies and other
manifestations of divine power. He boldly asks for contributions, not
for a school to be established for the training of missionaries for
his faith, but for the furtherance of his own work right here in this
country.
"It takes money to fight the devil," is a favorite cry with this type
of sacrilegist. The stronghold of the religious faker is that the
people who follow him believe in him implicitly. One faker recently
proclaimed himself the son of God, come to revisit earth, and, when
assailed by a paper for it, stood up in an audience of his believers
and asked them who they thought him to be and how they regarded him.
The answer was that he was the son of God, and his mission was to
save all mankind from sin. It is obvious that, when a man with such a
hold on a clique asks for money, it is sure to be forthcoming without
question. At times he does not have to ask for it, one man of this
kind having had money showered upon him at a meeting by the hysterical
women of his flock.
FAITH IN CHARLATAN STRONG.
This man has operated in at least four sections of this country, has
served a term in state's prison for alienating a wife's affections
along with the husband's money, has been driven out of two towns by
angry husbands; but now he is again in possession of a following which
believes implicitly that through him, and through him only, is it
possible to obtain eternal salvation.
In appearance this man is a human shark, long-faced, thin of jaw and
nose, and with a mouth that is nothing but a straight line cut in the
face. In repose he might be taken for a shyster lawyer, but when he
begins to speak and the artificial frenzy is burning in him it is easy
enough to see why impressionable women may be drawn to him. Even a
strong-willed man, observing his actions and the degree of enthusiasm
in him, is apt to feel that he can be nothing other than sincere in
his beliefs. But, if he is sincere, his sincerity runs only towards
making of his beliefs a good business proposition, and avarice is one
of his strongest points.
The persistency with which women will take up and practice the
cruelest of religious customs is evidenced by the manner in which a
Chicago girl tortured and starved herself to death in an effort to
obtain salvation through the mortification of the flesh. She was not
of an ignorant type, either, as might be imagined, but fairly well
educated and extremely intelligent, with running to intellectuality.
But the thrall of a new religion got her in its power, and, believing
she was sinful, she strove to cast out her sins and died in the
attempt.
It is seldom that pernicious practices of religion fakers carry
persons to this extreme, but deranged mentalities, wrecked homes and
depleted pocketbooks are of such frequent occurrence as to merit a
wholesale crusade against this type of fraud, even without raising the
question of religious scruples.
PAWN TICKETS ON DIAMONDS.
Another instance: Some working man or washing woman, having saved up
a little money for a rainy day, reads an alluring advertisement in a
newspaper that a party was looking for a small loan on valuable family
jewelry and diamonds. The interest offered is much higher than that
allowed by any savings bank. Diamonds, as everybody knows, are just
as good as money and offer perfect security. In hopes of profiting
a little more on their savings, such prospective victims respond to
the advertisement. The party looking for the loan appears to be a
well-dressed, smoothly-talking man, who represents himself to be the
scion of a wealthy or aristocratic family temporarily in hard luck. He
produces a pawn shop ticket, on the face of which appears that some
pawn broker had advanced on certain diamonds a large sum of money, say
$500.
[Illustration:
Two minds with but a single thought;
Two heads that beat us all.
]
Now, it is a matter of common knowledge that pawn brokers know their
business, and that no pawn broker would advance more than one-third,
or, at the highest, one-half of the actual value of the articles
pledged. It is that common belief which the swindler makes, as it
were, the psychic basis for his operations. The victim having once
jumped at the conclusion that the diamonds offered as security must be
worth at least $1,000 or thereabouts, the rest becomes easy.
VICTIM ANXIOUS FOR INTEREST.
The victim naturally considers a further loan on such diamonds of $200
or $250 a desirable risk. The offer of 10 per cent or more interest on
the loan is another allurement which makes the transaction still more
desirable. The pawn broker recognizes his ticket, and the diamonds,
when redeemed, turn out to be worth considerably less than the amount
which the broker was supposed to have advanced on them. The victim
loses some more by redeeming the diamonds.
Complaints by such victims have been coming thick and fast into the
state's attorney's office in Chicago and other large cities. The
conspiracy between the swindler and his accomplice, the pawn broker,
is almost self-evident. In some instances indictments have been
returned against the perpetrators of the fraud, but the prosecution
could not succeed. The reason is obvious. On the face of the
transaction everything seemed to be regular, and the defendants could
not be made criminally responsible for an erroneous conclusion arrived
at by the victims as to the business sagacity of the pawn broker or
the probable value of the diamonds. And yet who would doubt, in view
of the many identical complaints, that the plans in connection with
the fraudulent transaction had been laid carefully in pursuance of a
conspiracy to defraud the public?
NEW LAW BADLY NEEDED.
On the civil side of legal practice there is the writ of injunction
to prevent threatened irreparable injury to property by one person to
another. But in case of organized fraud upon the public in general our
modern legislatures have not yet grown to the proper appreciation of
the wise and ancient saying that comes from the orient, "The rat hole,
not the rat, is the thief." Our laws punish the thief when caught, but
leave the "hole" intact and ready to give shelter to other "rats."
The authorities may know well the fraudulent character of a concern
organized and existing for the express purpose of fleecing the public,
and yet, in the absence of a complaining victim, they are absolutely
helpless and unable to prevent victims from being ensnared by that
concern.
Suppose the legislature would enact a law making it a felony for
persons to set in operation any scheme to defraud the public and fix
adequate punishment for such offense, would not such a law enable the
authorities to anticipate and prevent a great deal of that misery
which is caused by organized frauds of all kinds and descriptions, to
a class of people that least can afford it?
POSTAGE STAMP GRAFTER.
The postage stamp grafter is one of the most pestiferous of the
"toucher" genus. He bobs up in offices, on the streets, in hotel
lobbies, everywhere and at all times. Here is the song he sings:
"I'm broke, mister, but I don't want any money. I am
looking for work and have just answered an ad. in the
paper, but, to tell the truth, I have only got a nickel,
and if I break that to buy a postage stamp I can't get a
cup of coffee. Just a 2-cent stamp is all I ask."
It is too small a request to refuse, and besides there is a chance
that the fellow may be telling the truth. Anyway, it is only a stamp.
You produce the stamp, and may give the "toucher" several stamps
so that he can answer more advertisements for work. A half day of
industry at this scheme gives any competent "toucher" enough stamps
to buy a little food, a good deal of drink and a night's lodging.
There is no difficulty in disposing of stamps thus collected, for the
salonkeepers and others that buy them--sometimes at a discount--know
they have been given, and not stolen.
"You are the third man that has tackled me for a stamp today," said
a man in the lobby of a downtown hotel recently to a young man who
"wanted to answer an advertisement for work." "Here, give me the
letter; I'll stamp and mail it."
Whereupon, to use the vernacular of his kind, the young man made a
sensational "getaway" via the side entrance.
Akin to the postage stamp scheme is the one of "touching" for three or
some other odd number of pennies to make up the amount necessary "to
send a telegram home for money." The "toucher" in this case usually
admits frankly that he came to Chicago and got drunk, spending all
his money. For victims he picks the men that look like they might
sympathize with a fellow in his predicament.
THE CLERK GRAFTER.
It may or may not be so that a sucker is born every minute. Doubt as
to the exactness of this has been expressed, the consensus of opinion
being that the average runs higher than Barnum's estimate. But as to
the natural increase of devious and various ways for making, or trying
to make, suckers out of the world's inhabitants there can be little or
no just doubt. A new one is born every time the old one gets stale.
Here is the latest:
The scene of operation, which is guaranteed to be harmless when
performed, but sure to be painful when the reaction sets in, is a
small office, store, or shop, any place where the total number of
employees is small.
Preferably it is a place where a young woman stenographer, clerk, or
other worker is employed, and, preferably, the stenographer, clerk,
etc., is of pleasing and attractive appearance. The more so the
better, though this is not absolutely necessary.
PLAYS ON TARDY VICTIM.
In fact, the only condition actually necessary to the successful
prosecution of this new game is that one of the employees come
down to work later than others. This must be. The operator picks a
morning when said employee is late in arriving at his or her place of
employment. If the employee is a young woman stenographer, so much
the better. Operator may be either male or female, but should be of
prosperous appearance--sort of money-no-object appearance.
"Is the Stool Pigeon in?" he inquires. Of course, he doesn't call this
party "the Stool Pigeon," having first carefully informed himself
as to the individual's Christian name and surname, so as to be in a
position to rattle it off with becoming familiarity.
"Not yet, but soon," replies the Fall Guy. He doesn't know that he's
the Fall Guy, but he is, unless he happens to possess more than a
human average of suspicion and wariness.
FALL GUY TAKES BAIT.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Now, I wouldn't have come to deliver this package
if he hadn't promised to be here at this moment. And he wanted it so
badly--and I can't wait!"
"That's too bad," says Mr. Fall Guy. "But that's all right; you may
leave the package in my care and I'll see that he gets it the first
thing he comes down."
"So kind of you," purrs the operator. "The only difficulty in the way
of that is that I must see him when I deliver it."
Nothing coarse or abrupt, you will see; instead the smooth, purring
round of the wheels that grind artistically and well.
Here the operator begins to bite the under lip and look at the clock
with clouded brows.
"Hm! I can't wait, and he wanted it so much this morning!"
SUCKER DIGS OUT COIN.
Fall Guy being a friend of Stool Pigeon's (the operator has picked
him because of that qualification), gets solicitous. "Well, there's
a collection of a dollar on this package; that is all, really." If
Fall Guy looks burdened with money the charge may be as high as $2.50.
Hardly more than this. It may run as low as 25 cents. The package
contains, according to the operator, anything from a pair of cuff
buttons to a pair of shoes.
And Fall Guy pays at least often enough to make the game worth playing
for the operator.
FLEECING INVALIDS AND CRIPPLES.
This is a story of the most despicable graft extant. For, although it
has been broken up in Chicago, it still flourishes in nearly every
other large city in the country. It is not only despicable but it is
heinous, fiendish, unspeakable. It is the sort of a thing that causes
the blood of an honest man or of a manly rogue to boil, and long for a
chance to clutch its inventor by the throat. It is the letter-copying
scheme. Real criminals take chances on death, or the penitentiary,
and on personal encounters with those whose money they unlawfully seek
to acquire, but the vultures behind the "ads." promising lucrative
work at home content themselves with mulcting helpless invalids, aged
and infirm persons who seek to contribute to their own support and
persons whom poverty has driven to desperation, and who see in the
gilded promises of the cormorant an avenue of escape.
The public is familiar with the advertisements which constantly are
seen in the newspapers offering employment that will not necessitate
canvassing, or peddling, and which can be done in the home with great
profit. Occasionally the "ads." explain that the work is that of
copying letters.
[Illustration: AN ATTEMPT TO CATCH YOUR EYE]
WRITE SMOOTH LETTERS.
The victim answers the "ad." and in reply receives this stereotyped
letter--the form is the same in every instance:
ESTEEMED FRIEND:
Replying to your application to write letters for us at
your home during spare time, we beg to say that your
writing is satisfactory, and we have decided to offer you
the appointment.
The work we give out is simply writing letters from a copy
which we furnish, for which we pay you direct from this
office at the rate of twenty dollars ($20.00) per thousand.
You do not have to write any certain number of letters
before receiving pay, and all letters you write you return
to us. There is no mailing them to your friends, as most
other advertisers who advertise for letter writers demand,
neither is there any canvassing or selling anything, or
anything else to mislead you; you simply write from a copy
which we furnish, and we pay you direct. We are an old,
reliable firm, always state plainly what is required, do
exactly as we promise and treat our employes honestly.
The work is easy; the letters to be written are the length
of the ordinary business letter, and all we require is
neatness and correctness. We furnish all materials free of
charge, paper, etc., and prepay all costs of delivery to
your home. You work only when you desire or have leisure
time, and no one need know you are doing the work.
We pay spot cash for all work done the same day as
received. We use thousands of these letters for advertising
our business, because we receive better results from using
written letters than from plain printed circulars. We have
a large number of people all over the country working for
us, and if you desire to become one of our regular workers
we request that you send us one dollar, for which we will
send you our regular dollar package of goods you are to
write about.
This is all you are required to invest, there being no
other payments at any further time, and this deposit is
returned to you after doing work to the amount of two
thousand letters. We are compelled to ask for this small
deposit to protect ourselves against unscrupulous persons
who do not mean to work and who apply out of idle curiosity.
We also send you first trial lot of letter paper, copy
of letter to be written (as we desire all letters to be
written on our own letter paper), also instructions and all
necessary information. After receiving the outfit you start
to work immediately. More reliable workers are needed
at once, and we guarantee everything to be exactly as
represented. If you find anything different we will refund
the amount invested.
Fill out the enclosed blank and send it to us with one
dollar or express or postoffice money order (stamps
accepted), and we will immediately send everything, all
expenses prepaid. You can start to work the same day
you receive the outfit by simply following our plain
instructions.
Kindly reply at your earliest convenience. Fill out
enclosed blank and direct your envelope carefully. Trusting
to be favored with your prompt services, we remain,
Very truly yours,
LESLIE NOVELTY COMPANY,
Per C. C. KENDALL.
ROB BED-RIDDEN WOMEN.
In their investigation of this sort of swindle the police discovered
that almost invariably the victims were bed-ridden persons or women
in straitened circumstances who were in frantic search of some means
of keeping the wolf from the door. Many instances were found where
some unfortunate had taken up a collection in the neighborhood in
order to raise the necessary dollar to send for the "outfit." Persons
were found who were actually starving and who had pawned their last
possession to get the money that was to start them on the road to
affluence.
Of all the offices raided Detective Wooldridge did not find record of
one instance where a victim had been able to keep the requirements of
the swindlers. The supposed letter sent to be copied was generally
about 800 words in length, full of words difficult to spell, of
rude and complicated rhetorical construction and punctuated in a
most eccentric manner. The task imposed was practically a life-time
job, and even if anyone had fulfilled it there were a hundred
loop-holes whereby the thieves could escape payment by declaring their
specifications had not been heeded to the letter.
The "outfit" consisted of a cheap penholder, a pen and a box of fake
pills.
Imagine the joyous anticipation with which a starving cripple would
await the arrival of the "outfit" that was to give him the opportunity
of prolonging existence! The bright hopes of the work-worn widow who
expected by this genteel means to keep her little ones in bread!
Think of the despair of both upon discovering they had paid out
money so sadly needed--money which probably had been begged or
borrowed--only to discover that they had been victimized instead of
benefited!
"OPERATORS" CRINGING COWARDS.
Trembling, cringing, whining specimens of humanity were found in
charge of each of these fakers' dens when Detective Wooldridge swooped
down upon them. They were typical of their graft--small, mean,
snake-like, cowardly. None among them was found who would bid defiance
to the officers, who would resist intrusion by the law or who would
go into court and fight. All were cheap and dirty in mind, loathsome,
shrinking, snarling, but not daring to bite.
Among those driven out of business by Detective Wooldridge were the
Twain Novelty Company, the Leslie Novelty Company, the Illinois
Industrial Company and Blackney & Company.
"I have raided all classes of swindling institutions," said
Wooldridge, "but it gave me more pleasure to run down these fellows
than all the others put together. They did not dare try to get money
out of people who could afford to lose it, or who were out in the
world where they could talk with others of more experience. Their
dupes were in almost every instance the most pitiable objects of the
communities in which they lived. The facts disclosed by these raids
were enough to fill the heart of the blackest grafter with indignation
and a desire to trounce the perpetrators."
SHARKS RUIN BUSINESS MEN.
NEW LINE OF FINANCIAL GRAFT.
A new loan shark, or self-styled "financial agent," who preys on the
business man and manufacturer, robbing him of his money and business
more relentlessly than the old-time loan shark ever dared with the
helpless wage earner, has made his appearance in Chicago and says he
has come to stay.
[Illustration: MR. FIRST MORTGAGE; FIELD OF RISKY INVESTMENTS]
Under the guise of discounting a manufacturer's accounts at his usual
rate of discount, the "financial agent" secures his first hold on
the struggling manufacturer, who sees the opportunity to enlarge his
business by collecting cash for his merchandise as he sells it. But
the first step with the "financial agent" means entering the portals
of bankruptcy.
The loan shark first finds for his victim an industrious, hard-working
manufacturer or wholesaler, who by his push and perseverance has built
a business beyond his capital, and approaches him.
"You have a good business here," remarks the agent. "If your customers
all paid cash it would be pretty easy sailing. Life would be one long,
sweet song if everyone paid for goods as soon as they were ordered,
wouldn't it?"
OFFER OF CASH AROUSES INTEREST.
Even the largest manufacturer in the country could not but accede to
this.
"I have been watching your business for some time with a great deal
of interest," continues the suave grafter, "and I would be glad to
discount your bills at the regular rate of discount, so it would cost
you nothing and you would have an opportunity to double your business.
"I presume you give the regular trade discount of 1 per cent a month
for cash. On that I can save you a little money and help your credit
materially. You receive 1 per cent a month on your purchases.
"This you cannot take, as you are cramped for money, because your
customers do not pay their bills promptly. Thus you lose 2 per cent a
month by not buying and selling for cash."
GETS $800 FOR $1,000.
The manufacturer begins to see a thriving business on a cash basis
without exposing his weakness, and agrees to allow the banker to
discount his bills.
"In the morning," begins the agent in explanation of his system,
"you send us $1,000 worth of duplicate invoices of the goods which
you shipped today, with shipping bills attached. You attach to the
invoices a note for $1,000, so the account may be kept from the notes,
and not from the invoices which we hold. In return for the note we
will send you a check for $800, less our commission of 2 per cent
a month, just what you are paying now because your business is not
done on a cash basis. The $200, or 20 per cent, we have to deposit in
the bank which loans us the money which we in turn pass to you. When
any bills are paid we will refund your 20 per cent which we hold.
Any bank compels us to have a representative in your store to look
after our interests, as a matter of form. We will just appoint your
bookkeeper--a matter of form entirely. Once a month we will send a man
over to check up your books. He will see that none of our money has
been overlooked."
BEGINS TO SHOW HIS TEETH.
All this sounds businesslike and plausible, and the arrangement runs
smoothly for a time, probably six months, to allow the manufacturer
time to sell all his open accounts to the financial agent. Then
the loan shark sends in a statement of the account, and, if the
manufacturer complains, begins to show his teeth.
On the statement appears all money the manufacturer has received and
in addition an extra charge for $50 a month to cover the services of
their agent--the manufacturer's own bookkeeper. Also an additional
charge of from 1 to 2 per cent for additional service rendered,
although the agency has had absolutely nothing to do with the accounts
beyond holding them as security. All overdue accounts are charged
back to the manufacturer, and a request for a check to take them up
immediately accompanies the statement.
As few accounts, if allowed to mature at all, are received by a
manufacturer on the exact day when due, the check called for often is
a formidable one. The manufacturer is at his wits' end. He goes to the
agency post haste and, after they find it is impossible to hold him
up for a check, they say:
"Oh, well, never mind, the bank--always the bank--is pressing us on
those overdue accounts, but we can hold up the 20 per cent until these
accounts are taken care of. That will be satisfactory, we are sure."
[Illustration: DEBT]
LOSES HIS 20 PER CENT.
After this the manufacturer's chance of ever seeing anything more
of his 20 per cent has vanished. Each day the agency trumps up some
fictitious charge of stamps, new check books, extra labor, taxes,
additional fees or other charges that could originate nowhere but in
the brain of a financial crook.
Finally the manufacturer finds he has nothing on his books but
accounts belonging to the agency, on which he is paying carrying
charges of from 5 to 10 per cent a month. The agency refuses to return
his 20 per cent, which they claim has been charged off by the bank to
take care of the overdue accounts.
The victim, seeing the plight in which he is placed, demands an
accounting and threatens legal proceedings. The agency in turn demands
he give them an itemized statement of each account, which they have.
They agree to check them up, and, if found correct, promise to give
him a check for the 20 per cent which they hold. That night the light
burns late over the bookkeeper's desk in the manufacturer's office.
In the morning the statements go to the office of the loan shark, who
says:
"I'll have the auditor check them up and send you a check as soon as
we find out everything is straight."
TRADE STATEMENTS TO CUSTOMER.
The manufacturer leaves the office. The loan shark gets busy with the
statements, and stamps each of them:
"This account has been transferred to Killem's Mercantile Company. You
are notified to pay this account to no one else."
These statements are mailed to the customers. When the manufacturer
returns the loan shark greets him cordially and remarks:
"Unfortunately one of my clerks mailed out a lot of your statements
last night, but I guess that won't matter. He stamped on them that
they had been transferred to us and sent them out as he does everyone
else's. He didn't understand. I am sorry."
As expected, the manufacturer, when he sees his business and
confidence abused in this manner, flies into a rage. Then the suave
agent takes the bull by the horns and issues his ultimatum.
"Our bank"--always "our bank"--"thinks we are not getting all the
money coming to us from your account. They demand that in the future
you deposit all your checks with us. I am sorry, for I know everything
is straight, but your using us as a bank will last but a few days.
Everything will then run smoothly again."
And unless some friend comes to the aid of the manufacturer the
agency's prophecy comes true, and it does last but a little while.
SHREWD BEGGAR GRAFT.
Pretend to be Deaf, Dumb and Blind, Playing on
Sympathy--How Philanthropy is Humbugged--Begging for Money
to Reach Home--An Army of Frauds and Vagabonds--Mastering
the Deaf Mute Language for Swindling Purposes--The Public
Should be Careful in Disbursing Alms.
Speech is so common, eyesight so precious, that he who would appeal
for charity needs no better warrant than that he is dumb or blind.
In an age when words are multiplied and golden silence is seldom
found, the very fact that lips can give no utterance is so unusual
that their mute assertion of misfortune is seldom questioned. There
is nothing so pitiful in all the world as an asylum for the blind.
There is nothing which so draws one to share the burdens of another
as the appeal of him in whom the wells of speech are all dried up.
We sympathize with illness, we grieve at the misfortune which visits
our friends, we mourn with them when bereavement comes, but all these
things are in the course of nature. They are sad, but they may be
expected. But then a figure in health rises and asks for charity in
the hushed language of the mute, philanthropy halts and humanity gives
alms. But if the dumb can evoke assistance, assuring of sincerity and
disarming doubt, how hushed is the questioning when the blind apply!
How much stronger than speech or silence are the sightless eyes that
stare unblinking at a darkened world! How sad is the fate of that man
who was buried by demons when God cried out, "Let there be light"!
But not every man is mute who stretches out his hand in silence.
Laziness is such an awfully demoralizing vice that some who choose
to beg a living and decline work are even base enough to feign a
misfortune they ought to fear. Fellows who find the winter pinching
and the ranks of vagabonds full to repletion arm themselves with a
slate and pencil and haunt the public with appeals for help on the
untrue claim that they are dumb. One of the most persistent beggars
of this kind makes the rounds of residence districts with a printed
card on which is stated the bearer's desire to reach his home in some
distant city--the destination varies from time to time--together with
a long-primer endorsement by a group of names which no one knows. The
fraud always asks for some slight money offering--nothing can be too
small--with which to assist him in the purchase of a ticket.
Usually his paper shows that he needs but a very little more, and
he asks one, by a series of pantomimic signs, to enroll his name,
together with the sum advanced, in regular order on a blank list
which he tenders with his touching appeal. He is so well drilled as
never to be surprised into speech, and looks with such straight,
honest eyes into the faces of the women, who form much the larger
number of his victims, that they cannot question him and usually give
up a dime or a quarter without a struggle. The beggar can readily
collect a good day's wages in this manner, and it is a matter of
surprise if he does not receive an invitation to partake of food three
or four times a day. He never lets his list get full. However small a
margin he may lack of having raised the sum needed to buy his ticket
to his home, he never gets quite enough, for nothing is easier than to
stop in some secluded spot and erase the names of his latest donors,
thus proving to those on whom he shall presently call that their help
is not only needed, but will so nearly end the necessity for continued
appeals. This class of beggar never looks like a dissipated man, is
always polite, and bears refusal in so noble a way that nine times
out of ten the flinty-hearted women who refused him at the back door
hurry through to the front and give the more generously that they have
harbored suspicion.
Another set of leeches have mastered the deaf mute language, and
always ask with a pleading, painful face which meets you as your eyes
lift from his written questions, if anyone in the house can talk with
him. He supplements the penciled question and the eloquent glance of
eyes trained by long use in the art with a few rapid passes of his
hands, a few dexterous wavings of the fingers, in a language you have
heard of and read about, but cannot understand. If the unexpected
happens and a person be present who can converse with him, your beggar
is sure of some entertainment, and the usual scene of one you know to
be honest talking to one who may be equally so, and certainly seems
needy, will almost infallibly wring from you the coveted assistance.
It is like two minstrels at a Saxon court. You know your own has
seen the holy land, though you have not, and as he tells you, this
thread-bare guest talks familiarly and correctly of distant realms.
That is all any one can know to a certainty, but you give him the
benefit of the chance that he may be honest, and help him with such
loose change as comes to hand. Time and again the pretended mutes have
been detected in their imposture by men who pitied a misfortune and
gave money at their homes in the morning to see it spent for drink by
an arguing, contentious fellow in the evening.
Some beggars even assume the appearance of blindness, and haunt the
homes of comfortable people, led by a little girl and asking alms
in the name of an affliction that is always eloquent of need. He
will sometimes carry a small basket full of pencils, or other little
trinkets, and glazes over his evident beggary with the appearance of
sales. But he does not hesitate, once the money is in his hands, to
ask his patron to give back the pencils, as he cannot afford to buy
any more. These people can sometimes see as well as the child that
seems to lead them, and yet their eyes, when they choose to assume
their professional attitude, seem covered with a film through which no
light can penetrate.
The public should be chary in bestowing charity, and especially to
able-bodied men who appear blind, deaf and dumb, or are still claiming
to be victims of some recent disaster. Most any one who has charity to
bestow can easily think of some deserving and honest unfortunate in
their own neighborhood.
PARALYTIC A BAD ACTOR.
The most transparent fraud on the streets of the great cities is
the pseudo-paralytic. At almost any street corner can be seen what
purports to be a trembling wreck of a man. His legs are twisted into
horrible shapes. The hand which he stretches forth for alms is a mere
claw, seemingly twisted by pain into all sorts of distorted shapes,
trembling and wavering. The arms move back and forth in pathetic
twistings as if the pains were shooting up and down the ligaments
with all the force of sciatica.
The head bobs from side to side as if it were impossible to keep it
still. And the words which come from the half-paralyzed mouth are
a mere mumble of inarticulate sounds, as if the tongue, too, were
suffering torture.
A more pitiable sight than this could not be conjured up. And the
extended hat of the victim of what seems to be a complication of St.
Vitus dance, paralysis, sciatic rheumatism, and the delirium tremens,
is always a ready receptacle for the pennies, nickels and dimes of the
thoughtless. This is one side of the picture; now look on the other.
It is dusk. Just that time of day when the lights are not yet
brightening the streets, and when the sun has made the great tunnels
between the sky-scrapers, ways of darkness. Detective Wooldridge is
watching. He has been watching two of the deplorable fraternity for
two hours. As the dusk deepens he sees them both arise, dart swiftly
across the street and board a car. By no mere chance is it that they
are both on the same car. The detective follows. Before a low saloon
on the West Side the victims of innumerable diseases descend from the
car, walking upright as six-year soldiers on parade. They enter the
saloon. They seat themselves at a table behind an angle in the back
which conceals them from the street. The detective loiters down to the
end of the bar and watches. From every pocket, even from the hat rim,
pours a pile of coins.
The two sort out the quarters, the nickels, the pennies. The heaps are
very evenly divided over two or three cheap whiskies or a couple of
bottles of five-cent beer.
Then the real finale comes. Detective Wooldridge gets busy, and a
goodly portion of the spoil finds its way out of the hands of the
sharpers in the way of a fine.
But for every one of these paralytic frauds caught there are dozens,
even scores, who get away unscathed. It is the estimate of the best
detectives that not one in a thousand of these paralytic beggars is
genuine. It is one of the most bare-faced cases of deception of the
public which comes under the notice of the police.
EASY MONEY FROM KIND HEARTS.
Charity covers a multitude of sins, almost as many backs, and quite a
bit of graft.
Thoughtless giving is almost a crime. It serve to encourage idleness,
and idleness is at the bottom of more crime than any other one thing,
unless it is poverty.
Here is a story, given in the words of the man himself, which shows
how the charity graft is worked in a number of ways. It covers several
fields, and is so dramatic that it is given as the best example of
all-round charity grafting:
"In experience in charitable work last summer I discovered
some of these truths. It was the first time in all my life
that I ever engaged in any charitable enterprise, and the
needy that I sought to relieve was myself.
"Any one will beg, borrow, or steal in the name of charity.
They may be as personally honest as a trust magnate--and
they would be horrified at the idea of begging or stealing
for themselves, but charity makes them respectable. At
least this is the theory I worked on.
"I was broke and far from home. I decided that I would
starve or steal rather than beg. Then a fellow I met
accidentally put me on to a way of making a living.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE HEATHEN.
"He had a lot of literature either really from a big
church, charitable organization, or fraudulently printed,
and he explained to me that I was to sell these 25 cents
a copy for the benefit of the heathen somewhere, or home
missions. I was to get 25 per cent of the money resulting
from such sales.
"About a week later, when I had received $12 besides a
little expense money from him. I discovered that he was
keeping all the money. I took the rest of the literature
and destroyed it. Three days later, when I was hungry, I
rather regretted destroying it.
"I joined a circus that was moving toward my home town in
Western Iowa, intending to leave it there and quit being
a tramp. I was then down in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a
canvas hand. We went west by a tortuous route, and I never
could accumulate enough coin to pay my way home, so was
forced to stick to the place for many weeks.
"The second week one of the canvas hands came to me and
asked me to circulate a subscription paper among the men
for the benefit of one Will Turner, a member of the band,
who, he said, had dropped off the train while running over
from the last stop, and badly injured himself.
GAVE THE MONEY TO CANVAS BOSS.
"I circulated the paper. The man told me he already had
collected from the band on another subscription paper, so
I needn't go to them. The man subscribed over $40 to help
Turner, and I gave the money and the paper to the canvas
boss who asked me to make the collection.
"He took it, and remarked gratefully that he would make it
all right with me. I didn't catch the significance of the
remark then. About a week after that the same canvas boss
came again with another subscription paper for the benefit
of John Kane, who, he said, was a gasoline lamp tender and
had been horribly burned and taken to the hospital. He told
me a graphic story of the accident that aroused all my
sympathy. I took the paper and worked hard on it during the
afternoon and evening performances, and, as it was the day
after pay day, I collected nearly $100.
WORKED THE GAME ONCE A MONTH.
"I got a shock when I took the money to the canvas boss. He
gave me $50 and said:
"'That's your share. We'll work it again next pay day.'
"Then I went at him, and we had quite a fight. We were both
arrested, and at the hearing next morning I learned that
he had been working the game with that same circus about
once a month. There were so many with the outfit and so
few of them knew each other by name, and accidents were so
numerous, that no one suspected him. He had grown afraid to
work it for himself and used me for a tool.
"The show had pulled out and the boss and two others who
had been arrested with us took the first train back to it.
I used the $50 to pay my fine and get home, where I found
work and honesty--and, as soon as possible, I sent to the
chief horseman with the show $50, to be added to the fund
for the benefit of the next person really hurt, telling him
the entire story. He wrote that he had been among those who
helped kick the canvas boss out of the car after he read my
letter."
IN NAME OF CHARITY.
There are probably more "touches" perpetrated in Chicago by
professionals in the name of charity than under any other guise. In
this matter, more of the protection of honest charities than for the
protection of the public, the police have taken a hand and done a
great deal to weed out and punish the solicitors for fake charities.
An imaginary home for epileptics was one of the favorite plans. There
was a home for this class of unfortunates that was honestly run, and
the peculiar sympathy enlisted by the mention of the word epilepsy was
seized upon by dishonest schemers. Professional women solicitors were
garbed as "nurses" and sent forth. They were mostly austere-looking
women and silent. Their work of nursing epileptics was supposed to
produce this austere silence. This supposed charity appealed with
uncommon strength to most people because these "nurses" were supposed
to be performing the most unpleasant work imaginable amidst the most
grewsome surroundings. Large sums were collected in this way, the
promoter keeping everything above the liberal commission paid to
solicitors.
[Illustration: RACHEL GORMAN]
THIS ONE MADE FORTUNE.
Rachel Gorman was the originator of the "nurse for epileptics" graft,
and raked in thousands of dollars before she finally was rounded up
by the police. Not one cent of all the money collected by her and
her garbed and hired solicitors ever got past their pockets. In this
case the most shining marks were selected. William Jennings Bryan was
touched for $100. as was the Governor of Illinois, and many others.
This money for imaginary epileptics came so easily that the Gorman
woman confessed that it was almost a shame to take it.
There is little excuse, however, for Chicago men and women allowing
themselves to be talked out of money for charity. In no great city
are the charity working forces better organized or better known.
For virtually every form and case of need there is in Chicago a
distinct form of honest, well-organized charity. This condition grew
out of necessity, and promiscuous giving to "touchers" who plead as
qualification charity cases is dying out as the public comes to know
more of the comprehensive systems for the help of the worthy and
unfortunate.
It took the hotel detectives years to check the "toucher" with the
fake bank account that operated largely in the hotel lobbies. Now
he works in other places. He carries a bank book that has all the
superficial marks of genuineness. He engages you in conversation, and
at what he considers the right psychological moment, he drops a feeler
like this:
"It's h---- to be without money when you've got plenty, isn't it?"
If you have met this type of "toucher" before, you instantly see it
coming and chase off to a most important engagement. If not, you only
can agree. Being without money when you have none is bad; being broke
when you have money is worse.
"Look here," says the "toucher," "here is my bank book. Look at this
balance?"
OFTEN WORTH THE PRICE.
A glance seems to show that the bank owes your new acquaintance
many thousands. He then tells how it happened, how he came to be
without a cent when he was so far to the good with his banker. It's a
complicated tale, too long to tell here. There are lost letters, the
cashing of checks for friends and, confidentially, a touch of the pace
that flattens bank accounts. By this time you see your finish. When
you seek to escape you find yourself backed up to the wall with no
chance to sidestep. The best you can do is to scale the original touch
from $1 to 50 cents, thereby making 50 cents for yourself and 50 cents
for the "toucher."
To "stand for" all the "touches" that are made in Chicago one would
require an income far in excess of that enjoyed by most. Those that
are responded to are those in cases where the donor generously thinks
that the "toucher" really needs the money. Probably in the vast
majority of cases there is no delusion as to the fiction woven in
order to drag forth the nickel, the dime, the quarter or the dollar.
Often it is worth the price to hear the fiction.
But after all one feels refreshed when a frank but hoarse and
trembling hobo says:
"Say, Mister, me t'roat is baked and me coppers sizzlin'. Gimme de
price of a drink. Did you ever feel like jumpin' from de bridge fur
lack of a stingy little dime fur booze?"
Here, you feel, is no misrepresentation. Here you may invest a dime
without feeling that you have been stung.
RAFFLES BANK ROBBERY.
One of the most annoying of small grafts is the raffle, as conducted
for gain. It is bad enough to be held up for 25 cents or 50 cents for
a ticket which entitles you to a chance on a rug or a clock when you
reasonably are sure that the proceeds will go to charity, but no man
likes to be fooled out of his small change by a cheap grafter, even if
the grafter happens to need the money.
A story is told of two printers who lived for a month on a cheap
silver watch which they raffled off almost daily until they had
"worked" nearly all the printing offices of any size in town. These
typographical grafters are unworthy of the noble craft to which they
belong. They pretended to be jobless on account of last year's strike,
and unable to live with their families on the money furnished by the
union.
HOW SKIN RAFFLE IS WORKED.
During the noon hour, or about closing or opening time, one of the men
would saunter into a composing room and put up a hard luck story. He
had an old silverine watch that he wanted to raffle off, if he could
sell twenty tickets at 25 cents each. He usually managed to sell the
tickets.
About the time the drawing was to take place the confederate entered
and cheerfully took a chance and won the watch without any difficulty.
Thus, they had the watch and the $5 also. They would split the money,
and on the first convenient occasion the raffle would be repeated at
another place, and by some trick known to themselves the drawing was
manipulated so that the confederate always won the watch.
A South Side woman recently had 500 raffle tickets printed, to be sold
at 10 cents each, the drawing to be on Thanksgiving day, for a "grand
parlor clock," the proceeds to be for the benefit of a "poor widow."
As the woman herself happens to be a grass widow, and as the place of
the drawing could not be learned, neither could there be obtained a
sight of the clock, it is not difficult to guess the final destination
of $50 for which the tickets were sold.
POPULAR GAME IN SALOONS.
At many saloons and cigar stores there is a continuous raffle in
progress for a "fine gold watch." It is well for those who buy chances
to inspect the time piece with a critical eye. One of these watches
was submitted to a jeweler by the man who won it. "It's what we call
an auction watch," said the expert. "It is worth about 87 cents
wholesale. The case is gilded, and the works are of less value than
the movement of a 69-cent alarm clock. It was keep time until the
brass begins to show through the plate, and it may not."
One of the attractive forms of the raffle ticket game is valuing the
tickets at from 1 cent up to as high as desired. The man who buys a
chance draws a little envelope containing his number. If he is lucky
and draws a small number he is encouraged to try again. This is a
sort of double gamble, and many men cannot resist the temptation to
speculate upon the chances, simply in order to have the fun of drawing
the little envelopes.
Of course, many of the raffles are for cases of genuine charity, and
it is an easy way to raise a fund for some worthy object. Many a
person would not accept an outright gift, even in case of sickness
or death, will permit friends to raffle off a piano or a bicycle for
a good round price in order to obtain a fund to tide him over an
emergency. To buy tickets for this kind of a raffle is praiseworthy.
RAFFLE IS LOTTERY BY LAW.
But sharpers are not above getting money by the same means. If a
strange man, or a doubtful looking woman, wants to sell you a chance
for the benefit of "an old soldier," or a "little orphan girl," or a
"striker out of work," it might pay you to investigate.
But here is where the easy money comes in for the sharper. It is too
much trouble to investigate, and the tender-hearted person would
sooner give up the 10, 25 or 50 cents to an unworthy grafter than to
take chances of refusing to aid a case of genuine need.
Then, too, there is what might be called a sort of legitimate raffle
business. Of course, the raffle is a lottery under the law, and,
therefore, is a criminal transaction. But in many cases goods of
known value, but slow sale, are disposed of through raffles, and
the drawings conducted honestly. A North Side man disposed of an
automobile in this way. It had been a good wagon in its day, though
the type was old. He wanted to get a new one, and as the makers would
not allow him anything in exchange for the old. He sold raffle tickets
to the amount of $500, and the winner got a real bargain--the losers
paying the bill.
RAFFLES THAT ARE STEALS.
A group of young men who wanted to build themselves a little club
house in the Fox Lake region, resorted to a raffle that was almost a
downright steal. They had the printer make them tickets, and each one
went among his friends and organized a "suit club," selling chances
for a $30 tailor-made suit. Of course those who invested understood
that the suit probably would be worth about $18, but they were
satisfied to help build the club house on that basis, and besides they
thought they had a fair chance to get the suit.
It was learned afterward by accident that there were twenty "series"
of tickets sold by these young men, and instead of each series
standing for a suit, only one drawing was held, and only a single
suit made for the entire twenty series of tickets. In other words,
they sold $500 worth of tickets for a $30 suit of clothes. They built
their club house, however, and laughed at the man who kicked because
he thought he did not get a square deal for the half dozen tickets he
bought. They thought it was a good joke.
GRAFT OF TRAIN BUTCHER EASY.
In these days if anything gets past the up-to-date train butcher it
isn't because the public knows any more than it did in Barnum's time.
We get a customer every minute by the birth records.
For a genuine, all-round, dyed-in-the-wool separator of coin from its
proud possessor, the train butcher is the limit. Here is a word for
word story by a train "butch" of how the thing is done. He excuses his
tactics much the same way that the little rogue does who points out
that the giant malefactors are doing the same thing, but "getting away
with it." Enter Mr. Butch.
"I got back yesterday from a two days' trip--out and in.
I had $29.65 to the good, and the company satisfied, and
nary a kick from the railroad. At one little place down the
line, though, a railroad detective got aboard and tried to
detect.
"'Say, young feller,' he said to me, 'I saw you go through
here yesterday lookin' pretty spruce, and I thought I'd
better take a look through yer grips as you came back. What
yer got in there?'
"He kicked my grip, and I opened her up on the minute. He
went through it like an old goat through a cracker barrel,
but he didn't find anything--see? If he'd looked under the
cushion of a seat in the smoker he might have found a whole
lot of stuff that didn't look like a prayer meeting layout.
WHAT WAS HIDDEN UNDER SEAT.
"Say, I bet I had fourteen $2 gold watches, twenty
gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me 15 cents apiece, one
dozen books, tightly sealed in wrappers, that looked mighty
interesting to the jay who couldn't see into the books, and
yet who had to do it finally at $2 apiece, and, as a topper
of it all, my three-book monte game. Did you ever see the
game?
"I've got a line of wild west books about two inches
thick, each, and costing me 40 cents a volume. They've
got some great pictures on the cloth covers, and maybe
there's some hot stuff inside--I don't know. But here's my
unparalleled offer: I pick out my man and lay these three
volumes across his knees in the car seat and go after him
with some of the warmest kind of air about their interest,
the binding, and the illustrations.
"You pay me for the set," I explain, "but in doing it I
give you a chance to get the books for nothing and at the
same time double your investment.
HOW THREE BOOK MONTE IS PLAYED.
"I take out three small, thin spelling books, cloth bound,
all alike as the bindery and the presses can make them.
Then, careless like, I take a $10 bill out of my pocket,
fold it across in a sort of V-shape and slip it into the
middle of one of the spelling books, so that just one
corner will stick out, probably a quarter of an inch. Of
course, I haven't seen it! Sometimes the man on the cars
will try to say something about it, but I cut in and drown
him out with easy talk till he gets the idea that he might
as well have that ten and the books for five, and let it go
at that.
"But one corner all the time is torn off that bill, and
about a quarter of an inch of that bill is sticking out of
the center of one of the other books. Of course the jay
hasn't seen that!
SHOWS CORNER OF BILL.
"Well, I begin and shuffle the books on the payment of the
$5. As they are shuffled the corner of the bill that is
still attached gets turned around next to me, while the
corner that is torn off gets around next to the passenger,
whom I have cornered in the seat in a way that he can't see
everything that he really ought to see in order to save his
money. When I hold out the three books for the drawing I am
in a position where I couldn't possibly see the corner that
sticks out, while he is where he can't see anything else.
"And he draws the book with the corner sticking out!
"I take it from him instantly, and hold it up with the bill
corner at the bottom, flipping the leaves through from
front to back and forward again. In the act the corner of
the bill drops out on the floor, where he doesn't see. 'Not
here,' I says. 'You made a bad draw. Here's the bill,' I
says, taking up the book that holds it and turning to the
$10 bill, just where it lies. He doesn't know how it all
happened, but I console him that he has the three wild west
books for his library when he gets home.
ALL SUCKERS NOT IN DAY COACHES.
"I don't find all these suckers in the day coaches--not on
your life. I found two pretty boys in the smoking room of a
sleeping car a week ago, and I had $7.50 from one of them
and $5 from the other, and they didn't know a line about it
till they got together after I had gone.
"Friends of mine have kicked because I get $2, or $3, or
$4 apiece for gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me $1.80
a dozen. But where is the kick. I know men who have paid
$10 or $15 for glasses from an oculist when the glass was
cut out of a broken window pane. I save such people money,
don't I?
"I am not out after the old farmer with hayseed in his hair
and leaf tobacco in his mouth, chewing. There are a lot
of gay chaps traveling these days who think they've got
the bulge on the train butcher by a sort of birthright or
something. They are after me, sometimes, till I can't go to
sleep after I come in from a run. For instance, the other
day a chap got into the train out of a little country town,
intending to go to another little town twenty miles away
without change of cars. He had $2 cash and a guitar when he
got on the train, but I had both when he got off. He wasn't
mad at all; he just didn't understand it. For that reason
I'll see him again one of these days, and he will buck the
game harder than he did the first time. The trouble is he
wants to vindicate himself; he's one of these smart alecs
that you couldn't down with a crowbar--he don't think!
COUNTRY TOWN "SPORT" EASIEST MARK.
"Just give me the dead-game sport as he comes from the
country and the country town. He's as good as I want. It's
a sort of charity to take his money away from him before
he gets into real trouble with it. One of them thought he
had me the other day when I tried to sell him a pair of my
famous $4 glasses with the gold rims. His had silver, only,
but he told me mine wouldn't show a full moon after dark.
"I asked him to let me see his specs and he handed them
over. I had a bit of wax out of my ear on the tip of my
little finger. I touched each of the glasses with the wax,
smearing them a little with it. That fixed his glasses for
good, and don't forget it. You can't get ear wax off a
pair of spectacles with anything yet invented; it's got a
sort of acid that eats into the glass and won't ever clear
up again. The fellow got hot about it, but I didn't know
anything, of course, and finally sold him a pair of my
$1.80 a dozen glasses for $1.50 cash, net.
"O, some people are almost too easy--I get ashamed of my
calling!"
WOMEN VICTIMS OF OLD COUPON SCHEME.
There is another moss-grown swindle, which, like hope, seems to
"spring perennial" in the greater cities.
This is the old-time coupon swindle. A suave young man appears at the
door, inserts his foot in the crack, if you try to slam it in his
face, and rapidly begins to explain that he has something to offer
you for nothing. The housewife sighs with resignation, and admits the
suave young man, thinking that she might as well get it over. But let
the housewife herself talk. Here is the story of a good woman who was
caught by one of these pettifogging grafters:
"Since my husband died I have partly earned my living by
renting furnished rooms. This seems to be the first thing
a woman thinks of doing when she is left unprovided for,
but it isn't a business of large profits, and few of us
ever cut 'melons.' My furniture, of course, represented my
'plant,' and it was growing shabby.
"That is, perhaps, why the glib agent got a hearing from
me. He had a lovely proposition. Opening a catalogue he
showed me pictures of beautiful pieces of furniture, made
from expensive materials, just the kind that would make my
rooms attractive and easy to rent.
"'Now,' said he, 'I am soliciting subscriptions for a weekly
paper. This paper will cost you 10 cents a number, and with
each number you get a coupon. When you have accumulated
sixty-eight coupons you can bring them to our wareroom and
select any one of these elegant pieces of furniture.'
"'Why,' said I, 'if these articles are as represented, I
couldn't buy them at any store in town for three times what
sixty-eight coupons would cost me--$6.80.'
THE OLD "WAREROOM" TALE.
"'Call at our wareroom, lady, before you sign the contract,
and you will see they are just as described.'
"Well, I saw the articles, and they were all they were said
to be. They explained that they were practically giving
them away in order to build up the circulation of the
paper. Everything appeared to be all right, and I signed
a contract. So did my widowed sister; so did some of my
neighbors.
"The paper was worthless, but I didn't care. Sometimes I
would buy several copies of one issue so as to make haste
toward getting my sixty-eight coupons. The time came when
I went around to select my furniture. I selected it, all
right--a handsome chiffonier.
"'This chiffonier calls for 360 coupons,' said the man.
"'Why, your agent told me I could have any of these pieces
when I had accumulated sixty-eight coupons,' said I,
dismayed.
"'He couldn't have told you that,' said the man. 'Read
your contract. You will see it says that when you have
sixty-eight coupons you may select any one of these
articles, but that means we will then hold the article for
you until you have paid the rest. Why, we have goods here
that call for 600 and 700 coupons.'
"I saw how I had been swindled, and was furious. I told him
what I thought of him and his business, and he offered to
tear up my contract (which, it turned out, bound me to more
than I had dreamed of), if I would pay him an additional
$2.50. I refused. He said he would sue me if I didn't. I
told him to go ahead.
"Shortly afterward a constable served a summons on me to
appear at a justice court at the other end of creation.
I didn't go; and I don't know whether the concern got a
judgment against me or not.
"But I do know I haven't anything to show for the money I
paid for those coupons."
BOOK LOVERS EASY PREY OF FRAUDS.
BOGUS ART WORKS FINE GRAFT.
Some of our citizens are paying a high price for education in art and
book swindles. People, generally, are becoming experts in detecting
small frauds and attacks upon their pocketbooks, and are becoming wise
to pious dodges that run into spiritualism, clairvoyance and fortune
telling, but when a large, smooth scheme is broached, they get caught.
It may be that we have concentrated our minds upon so many trifling
schemes to part us from our money, that we have laid ourselves bare
to big operators in big frauds like that perpetrated upon the Patten
family of Evanston. The clever fakir reached for $40,000 in an "old
book" game and came very near gathering in the pot. He did get $2,600,
which was a very neat job.
It appears that there is a wide-spread system under the operations of
which Chicago book lovers, and others all over the country, have been
bilked out of a sum estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The same system is applied to paintings by the "old masters," for
which some Chicago men have paid fabulous sums, only to find them
imitations. The expert frauds are geniuses in their peculiar calling,
and would deceive the elect if listened to. A bright, smart, well
groomed man with letters of introduction from high quarters, often
forged, perhaps with a title, breaks into society and bides his time
to make a big haul. The vanity and foibles of the high-steppers and
nobility worshipers are pandered to with masterly skill, and then a
mere suggestion of untold values in books or paintings is breathed in
secret. Do the big fish bite? Some of them swallow the bait and it
has to be cut out of them before they will give it up. It is becoming
so easy to gull some people, that the crime should consist in the
betrayal of innocence rather than in the successful fraud. While
guillible people continue to parade their guillibility to the world,
there will always be frauds to take advantage of them. If anybody
doubts the fact that people can be easily defrauded, let him visit any
old book store, antique furniture dealer, oriental rug concern, even
junk shops. He will find an amazing army of faddists, who are willing
to pay any exorbitant price for some cheap fraud because a gentlemanly
man, or an opium-smoking Chinaman, tells him it is the real thing.
When business is dull at the shops, agents visit front doors, back
doors, or invade society with some bogus job of "art" works and
realize enormous sums.
MISERABLE LITTLE SHORT MEASURE THIEVES.
In the Municipal Court in South Chicago three extremely mean swindlers
have been fined $25 and costs. It is unfortunate that they could not
have been sent to the Bridewell without the alternative of paying the
fine.
For these swindlers were coal dealers who robbed the poor that bought
coal by the basket. They STOLE money from their customers, just as the
short-measure milk trust conspirators robbed their patrons. We repeat
that they ought to be in the Bridewell.
Giving short measure is the dirtiest, smallest, most cowardly form of
commercial rascality. The hold-up man who takes his life in his hand
and robs on the public highway is a model of decency and courage as
compared with the pitiful rascal who steals the pennies of the poor by
selling coal or milk or any other necessity of life by short weight.
Short weight is larceny. It ought to be treated as larceny by law.
CRIME A FINE ART.
Living by one's wits has become a fine art, and it is a profession
that is more liberally patronized than any other by the present
generation. One of America's leading detectives remarked that there
were about seventy-five thousand people in a city the size of Chicago
that would bear watching. There isn't a bank, insurance office, dry
goods store, restaurant or hotel that does not employ men to watch
their customers, and there is hardly a business house in the country
that has not some system of watching its employes. Everybody at this
day seems to be afraid of everybody else.
[Illustration: (Learn to paint)]
Professional criminals pride themselves quite as much upon their
ability as men engaged in legitimate occupations. A thief, for
instance, is as vain of his superiority over other thieves as a
lawyer, politician, or clergyman might be whose talents had elevated
him to a commanding position in the eyes of the people. And the
talented thief is as much courted and sought after as the successful
man in the honest walks of life. The other thieves will say: "He is
a good man to know; I must make his acquaintance." But the thief who
has earned a reputation is particular about the company he keeps,
and is scornful in his demeanor toward another thief whom he does not
consider his professional equal. Caste exists among criminals as well
as among other classes.
Men and women who are not living merely for today must be deeply
interested in the efforts which practical philanthropists are making
to discover the causes of crime and to remedy the mischievous
conditions which now prevail to such an alarming extent. Hidden away
to a considerable degree in the great mass of figures which came
into being through the operations of the census bureau, are facts
that should shock every good citizen. With all the warmth of eulogy
the story of wonderful progress has been told again and again, but
only a few references have been made to the abnormal growth of what
may be termed by the criminal class. Forty years ago there was but
one criminal to 3,500 good or reasonably good citizens. According to
the last census the proportion was one in 786.5, an increase of 445
per cent in a period during which the population increased but 170
per cent. Never in the nation's history has educational work of all
descriptions been nearly so active as at present, yet the increase in
the number of those who were confined in penitentiaries and jails and
reformatory institutions is almost twice as rapid as the growth of
population.
CITIES BREEDING SPOTS OF CRIME.
The true explanation of this unsatisfactory state of things is not
far to seek. It is almost entirely to be attributed to the growing
tendency of the community to become concentrated in large cities. A
highly concentrated population fosters lawless and immoral instincts
in such a multitude of ways that it is only an expression of literal
exactitude to call the great cities of today the nurseries of modern
crime. Statistics of all kinds show this, but it can easily be
ascertained without the aid of any figures. The aggregation of large
multitudes within a very limited area must increase the chances of
conflict, and consequently multiply the occasions for crime.
A population in this crowded condition has also to be restrained and
regulated at every turn by a huge network of laws, and as every new
law forbids something which was permitted before, a multiplication of
laws is inevitably followed by an increase of crime.
The prevention of crime should be the great object with the
philanthropist. The obvious remedy is, if possible, to aid the
individual in overcoming the temptation to evil or to crime. The
remedy must be general, gradual, and constant. It consists in
religious, moral, intellectual, and industrial education of the
children, especially of the poor and unfortunate and the weakling
classes. The most certain preventive is the early incarnation of good
habits in children, which, becoming part and parcel of their nervous
organization, are an unconscious force when passion, perplexity,
or temptation tend to make them lose self-control. Little can be
expected from palliative remedies for social diseases so long as this
educational remedy is not thoroughly carried out.
AMERICA'S EDUCATED CRIMINAL CLASS.
The great mass of the American people, aside from those who have had
experience in hunting and shadowing criminals, labor under the popular
delusion that the most daring criminals of today are a lot of tough,
ignorant men, with little or no education at all, who would do almost
anything else than work honestly for a living. If people would but
stop to consider the subject a moment they would readily discover
their error. There are, it is true, a large number of swindlers,
thieves, pickpockets, thugs and criminals of a like class who have but
a scant knowledge of books, or literature, but they are only to be
found among the lower class of criminals. The most notorious criminals
the world has ever produced have been men and women of high culture
and refinement, well educated and thoroughly posted on all that is
transpiring. It is this class of people who make the most successful,
and at the same time most dangerous, criminals. It requires men of
education to swindle, crack a safe, rob a bank, jewelry store or forge
a paper. To be a successful confidence operator requires the man to be
well educated in matters of all kinds, to be a fluent talker, a person
of refinement and polite address, and a good judge of character.
REFINED CRIMINALS MOST DANGEROUS.
Criminal history shows that the most successful jobs are always
planned and executed by men of education; the details of some of the
great forgeries that have taken place, of the numerous bank robberies
and burglar's exploits, all go to show the direction of a brain of no
ordinary person, being proof positive that the persons planning the
work possessed both education and talent. First class criminals are
exceedingly hard to cope with, and are the most dangerous to handle
by the officers. They do not generally do things in a rush or by
halves. Great care is given to all the minor details of their work,
and it often takes weeks and months before they are ready to put their
plans into operation. They study all the possibilities of the job;
the chances of success, and the way of escape in case of failure; how
they can cover all traces of the work and throw the guilt or suspicion
upon the more unfortunate of their class who have had reputations and
who are likely to be brought up and possibly convicted on suspicion
of being the guilty parties. Educated crooks are always to be feared,
not only by the public against whom they are constantly devising
ways and means to relieve of their valuables, but by detectives of a
lesser grade. This class of crooks do not hesitate to sacrifice the
detective if their desired ends can be successfully accomplished,
while the detective finds it a task of no little moment to gain even
the faintest clue to their operations.
PRISON POOR CURE FOR CRIME.
Locking a man up for committing a crime does not always cure him. It
is now proven that affixed penalties to certain crimes accomplishes
practically nothing, for it is based on a wrong principle. The length
of confinement ought, confessedly, to be adjusted to the needs of
the prisoner. He should not be discharged from his moral hospital
until there is reasonable assurance that he is cured. He certainly
should not be turned loose on society, on the mere expiration of a
formal sentence, when it is known he will begin anew on his old life.
Protection to society, as well as the reformation of the criminal,
call for the retention of the latter until he can be trusted with his
liberty, and affords proof that he is fitted to take his place in the
world as a useful, law-abiding citizen. This system alone permits the
fullest scope to reformatory methods, and leaves to the court the
right of sentencing indefinitely, and to the tribunal which has to do
with the prisoner's release, to say when there is reasonable ground
for faith that if discharged he will not prove either a burden or
menace to society. Where conduct and character afford no such grounds
he should be incarcerated for life, just as we would retain hopeless
lunatics in asylums.
MACONOCHIE'S EXPERIMENT.
This form of sentence was first put into operation in a modified form
by Maconochie, at Norfolk Island, in 1836, with a success in the way
of reformatory results from the start which was unequalled. Now the
best authorities in penology in all countries not only commend it, but
the opinion is fast becoming general that it is a necessary feature in
every reformatory system of prison discipline. Of course it implies in
prison management the highest wisdom and integrity, and especially the
banishment of partisan politics therefrom. It makes the dominant idea
of prison administration manhood-making, and not money-making.
FACES PORTRAY CHARACTER.
Every one knows that men's passions, propensities, and peculiarities,
as well as their calling, are reflected in their faces.
It is as impossible to disguise a face as a handwriting. When the
expert comes the disguise is torn off and the face tells the true
story of the spirit inside the body. One only needs to visit the
penitentiary to realize how undeniably vice writes its sign manual
on the features. It is not the drunkard only whose red nose, flabby
cheeks and rheumy eyes betray him; it is the senualist whose vice is
read in his lips, the knave whose propensity is revealed in the shape
of his mouth; the man of violence is surrendered by his eyes. An
experienced detective policeman, or a trained jailer seldom needs to
ask the crime of which the prisoner was guilty. He can tell it by his
face.
It is quite evident that in the future the study of physiognomy is
going to be pursued more vigorously than it has been. As a means of
preventing crime it may prove invaluable. How constantly do we hear of
men "falling from grace," as the phrase goes. Yet these men must have
carried their crime in their faces for a long time. If any one had
been able to read their features the mischief might have been averted.
It is well known that every man's face is more or less stamped by the
pursuit he follows. An experienced observer can generally detect a
lawyer, or a doctor, or a merchant, or a clerk, or a mechanic, or a
clergyman, by merely studying his face.
The instinctive criminal is a social parasite. The conclusion is
irresistible that he is organically morbid. He will proceed to any
extreme, and life and property, separating him from the accomplishment
of his wishes, are but barriers to be overcome. The occasional
criminal is largely a negative creature, who yields himself when
temptation and the stimulus of opportunity exceed his resistive power.
The habitual and professional criminal represents degree rather than
kind. Criminality is to him a profession, a fine art, and susceptible
of division into specialties.
CRIMINAL HEADS NOT EXTRAORDINARY.
The average heads of criminals and those of ordinary people probably
do not vary much in size. A large brain does not necessarily indicate
great intelligence any more than a small one mental deficiencies,
this being true, as little importance can be attached to the weight
of brains of criminals. The weight of Oliver Cromwell's brain was
82.29 ounces; Lord Byron's, 79 ounces; Cuvier's, 64 ounces; Ruloff's
(a thief and murderer), 59 ounces; adult idiot's, 54.95 ounces;
Daniel Webster's, 53.50 ounces, and Gambetta's, that of the size of a
microcephalic idiot.
A face may either attract or repel; its lines indicate firmness
and decision, or weakness and sensuousness. In physiognomy may be
traced fineness or brutality, surfeit or privation, gentleness or
irascibility; yet from a consideration of the face it is assuming
too much to predicate the form of criminal tendencies, if any, on
the subject. Criminal physiognomy is not yet an exact science. The
practical criminologist regards criminality as bred in the bone and
born in the flesh, and the ethology of crime to be looked for chiefly
is in heredity and environment, using the word environment in its most
liberal sense, ante and post-natal, and whatever cause, in whatever
way, that exerts a deleterious influence upon nutrition and the
functions of organic life, voluntary and involuntary.
Little is being done in this country in criminal anthropology that can
compare with the studies and researches that are being carried on in
Italy, France, and Germany. The student unacquainted with the language
of these countries pursues his studies at a disadvantage, owing to the
paucity of literature in English upon the subject.
The tide of crime is steadily rising. The level of criminality, it is
well known, is rising, and has been rising during the whole of the
Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, throughout the civilized world.
Its prevention and cure is a perplexing study, and is engaging the
thoughts and energies of the best intellects of the world.
DETECTIVE CLIFTON R. WOOLDRIDGE'S
_"Never-Fail" System_
THE ONLY SURE WAY TO BEAT:
TURF FRAUDS.
WILD CAT INSURANCE.
BOGUS SECURITIES, CONFIDENCE GAMES.
CITY-LOT SWINDLES.
HOME-BUYING SWINDLES.
DISHONEST DEBENTURE BOND COMPANIES.
FRAUDULENT PROMOTERS.
"SALTED" MINING AND OIL WELLS COMPANIES.
BUCKET SHOPS.
BLIND POOLS IN GRAIN AND STOCKS.
PANEL HOUSES.
BOGUS MAIL ORDER HOUSES.
POKER, FARO AND OTHER GAMBLING GAMES.
MATRIMONIAL BUREAUS.
COUNTERFEIT UNDERWRITERS.
FRAUDULENT BOOK CONCERNS.
DISHONEST COLLECTION AGENCIES.
ADULTERATED MEDICINE DEALERS.
WIRE TAPPERS.
FAKE BROKERS.
BOGUS CHARITIES.
SPURIOUS EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES.
SWINDLE PROMOTERS.
MUSHROOM BANKS.
CLAIRVOYANTS.
FORTUNE TELLERS.
PALMISTS.
$1,000 REWARD WILL BE PAID TO ANYONE WHO USES DETECTIVE CLIFTON R.
WOOLDRIDGE'S NEVER-FAIL SYSTEM AND FAILS TO BEAT THE ABOVE SWINDLES.
DO NOT RISK YOUR MONEY WITHOUT HAVING FIRST CAREFULLY INVESTIGATED
THE CHARACTER OF THE ENTERPRISE IN WHICH YOU ARE INVITED TO BECOME
FINANCIALLY INTERESTED.
BE CONVINCED BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT THAT THE MEN CONNECTED WITH
THE ENTERPRISE ARE ABOVE SUSPICION.
IF THEIR PROBITY, INTEGRITY OR RELIABILITY CAN NOT BE ESTABLISHED BY
PAST TRANSACTIONS IT IS CERTAIN THEIR HONESTY WILL NOT BE DISCLOSED BY
FUTURE DEALINGS.
DO NOT INVEST IN ANY COMPANY, CORPORATION, OR PRIVATE CONCERN UNTIL
THE MANAGEMENT HAS FURNISHED INDISPUTABLE PROOF OF ITS ABILITY TO
FULFILL EVERY PROMISE.
LEAVE SPECULATION TO THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.
LARGE GAINS ON SMALL INVESTMENTS USUALLY EXIST ONLY IN THE IMAGINATION
OF GULLIBLE INVESTORS AND UNSCRUPULOUS PROMOTERS.
LARGE RISKS INCUR LARGE LOSSES.
NO MAN WILL "LET YOU INTO A GOOD THING;" HE WILL KEEP IT FOR HIMSELF
AND HIS FRIENDS.
PROMOTERS ARE NOT IN BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY FOR YOU, BUT "OUT OF YOU."
CONTENT YOURSELF WITH LEGITIMATE INVESTMENTS AND SMALL BUT SAFE
RETURNS.
RATHER THAN SEEK GREAT PROFITS WITHOUT TOIL STRIVE FOR THE DESERVED
FRUITS OF INDUSTRY.
NO MAN WILL GIVE YOU A DOLLAR FOR FIFTY CENTS--UNLESS THE DOLLAR IS
COUNTERFEIT.
DO NOT PAY OUT YOUR OWN GOOD MONEY FOR ANOTHER MAN'S BOGUS DOLLARS.
IF THE PROMOTER COULD DO ONE-HALF OF WHAT HE CLAIMS, HE WOULD NOT NEED
YOUR MONEY, BUT SOON WOULD BE RICH BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE.
DO NOT INVEST YOUR HARD-WON SAVINGS IN VANISHING AIR CASTLES.
PROMISES WHICH PROCEED FROM A DESIRE TO GET YOUR MONEY ALWAYS MERIT
SUSPICION. SUBJECT THEM TO THE MOST CAREFUL AND RIGID EXAMINATION.
ADOPT THE BANKER'S RULE THAT: "ALL MEN SHOULD BE REGARDED AS DISHONEST
UNTIL THEIR HONESTY IS PROVED," RATHER THAN THE SUCKER'S THEORY THAT
"ALL MEN ARE HONEST."
THE BANKER WILL END LIFE POSSESSED OF WEALTH WHILE THE CREDULOUS
OPTIMIST WHOSE FAITH IS UNBOUNDED WILL WIND UP HIS DAYS "A POORER BUT
WISER MAN."
WHEN IN DOUBT DO NOTHING.
IF A PROMOTER CAN NOT DISPEL YOUR DOUBTS HE IS NOT WORTHY OF YOUR
CONFIDENCE.
DO NOT FOLLOW SIREN CHANCE. SHE WILL LEAD YOU INTO THE ABYSS OF
DESPAIR.
BEWARE OF THE DICE; THERE IS BUT ONE GOOD THROW WITH THEM--THROW THEM
AWAY. THEY WERE USED TO CAST LOTS FOR THE BLOOD-STAINED GARMENTS OF
JESUS CHRIST; THEY ARE USED TO GAMBLE AWAY THE HONOR OF MEN.
PLAY NOTHING, INVEST IN NOTHING, BUY NOTHING, TRUST NO MAN OR WOMAN
UNTIL YOU HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THE ENTERPRISE IS LEGITIMATE BEYOND
QUESTION.
AVOID THE MISTAKE OF THAT GREATEST FOOL OF ALL FOOLS, THE MAN WHO
THINKS HE IS TOO SMART TO BE FOOLED.
YOU ARE NOT SHREWD ENOUGH TO BEAT ANY MAN AT HIS OWN GAME; HE HAS
STUDIED ITS MANIPULATIONS; YOU ARE A NOVICE.
DON'T LET ANYONE STAMPEDE YOU INTO DOING ANYTHING. THE "RUSH" ACT
IS A FAVORITE TRICK OF GRAFTERS, FROM THE CHEAP CADGER WHO BORROWS
SMALL CHANGE TO THE INVESTMENT BROKER WHO OFFERS AN OPPORTUNITY TO
RISK A FORTUNE IN "THE CHANCE OF A LIFE-TIME" THAT MUST BE SNAPPED UP
IMMEDIATELY OR LOST FOREVER.
WHEN A MAN TRIES TO HURRY YOU INTO SPENDING YOUR MONEY PUT IT BACK IN
YOUR POCKET AND KEEP YOUR HAND ON IT.
USE CAUTION, REASON AND COMMON SENSE.
DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU. MOST OTHERS WILL
"DO" YOU IF YOU GIVE THEM A CHANCE.
IF YOU ARE MARKED AS ONE OF THE GEESE READY FOR PLUCKING BY
GET-RICH-QUICK SWINDLERS THEY WILL SEND YOU LITERATURE THROUGH THE
MAILS. SAVE EVERY CIRCULAR, LETTER OR OTHER COMMUNICATION TOGETHER
WITH THE ENVELOPES AND SEND THEM TO THE POSTOFFICE INSPECTOR IN THE
TOWN FROM WHICH THEY WERE SENT.
BE SURE TO SEND THE ENVELOPES WITH THE LITERATURE AS THE
COMMUNICATIONS CANNOT BE ADMITTED AS EVIDENCE UNLESS THE ORIGINAL
WRAPPERS OR ENVELOPES IN WHICH THEY WERE MAILED ARE OFFERED WITH THEM.
THE POSTMASTER WILL INSTRUCT HOW TO FORWARD THE COMPLAINT.
PROSECUTION OF THE SWINDLERS WILL SURELY FOLLOW.
IF YOU ARE IN DOUBT ABOUT THE CHARACTER OF THE CONCERN WHICH INVITES
YOU TO INVEST YOUR MONEY, CONSULT A LAWYER, BANKER OR REPUTABLE
COMMERCIAL AGENCY.
Intending investors should remember that:
"SURE TIPS" are sure bait for sure fools.
When you hear stocks have gone up and men who bought them cheap have
sold them at high prices and gained fortunes suspect your informant.
If he seeks to induce you to invest be assured he is a GET-RICH-QUICK
grafter.
Many swindlers wear the garb of respectability; they even cloak their
rascality with piety. Many men accepted by the world as honorable
members of society spend their lives living on the credulity of the
ignorant, and when they die go to the grave followed by hordes of
dupes who mourn their end.
These swindlers await you at every turn; on the race-track; in the
saloon; with the poker deck and the ivory dice; with watered stock
and fraudulent bonds; with prayers on their lips and designs in their
minds to defraud you.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN HONEST GAMBLER.
Every gambling game is a dishonest scheme. You seek to get the other
man's money without giving him anything in return.
You are not entitled to one penny unless you give value in return. If
you are in business you know that every promissory note, to be valid,
must bear on its face two words, "value received."
INDUSTRY, ENERGY, THRIFT! These are the dice that win. The lesson is
hard to learn for the young.
He has anxious days and feverish nights who risks at chance what
should be devoted to the nobler ends of life; who "makes throws" on
the green cloth; who watches the snake-like tape squirm out of the
ticker; or gazes at a bunch of horses running around a ring.
GIVE IT ALL UP AND ADOPT HONEST MEANS OF PROCURING WEALTH!
The Best Rules for Health, Happiness and Success.
THEY ARE WORTH THE ATTENTION AND THOUGHT OF ALL READERS.
1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don't want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of eating too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain the evils have cost us that have never
happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry,
count a hundred.
11. Watch the small things.
12. Laziness is a vice--fight it.
13. Do your honest best--it pays.
14. Without self-respect you cannot gain respect.
15. Trickery's triumph is fleeting.
16. Remember that opportunity waits only on worth.
17. Cultivate love, loyalty and respect for
work--especially your own work.
18. It is not enough to be honest and lazy.
19. Try to keep your mind clean--evil and success will not
mix.
20. If responsibility confronts you, seize it. Do not throw
it aside--responsibility represents opportunity.
Some of these sayings will strike you as very old and lacking in
novelty. But, old as these rules are, human beings have not yet
learned to follow them. And they won't learn for many a long year.
We shall not moralize about them all today, only one or two we want to
emphasize.
"Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly."
If you work willingly, if you make yourself realize that willing
effort is easy, AND THE ONLY KIND THAT MAKES YOU GROW AND SUCCEED, you
will solve one of your big working problems.
Did you ever see a small boy walking ahead of a band, with the music
playing?
And did you ever see the same small boy walking half the distance to
get a newspaper for his father? Walking with the band rests him; it
doesn't tire him at all, BECAUSE HE DOES IT WILLINGLY. And the other
kind of walking takes the very heart out of him and makes him almost
too tired to eat his dinner.
It is exactly that way with all the work we do in this world. When
you do things willingly, with the heart and the nerves and the brain
acting with one another cheerfully, work is easy AND SUCCESS FOLLOWS.
A willing FOOL may lag behind an unwilling man of intelligence. But
even a willing fool is happier in the end than an unwilling one, and,
all things being even, the employe working WILLINGLY will cease being
an employe and have others working for him sooner than the other man.
PRIDE COSTS MORE THAN HUNGER, THIRST AND COLD.
This applies to all kinds of foolish vanity. It applies to the young
man who never does anything, BECAUSE HE IS TOO PROUD TO DO WHAT HE HAS
THE CHANCE TO DO.
It applies to men and women who squander on dress and show the money
that they need for more serious purposes.
It applies to those that in old age have no money saved up, BECAUSE
PRIDE SPENT THEIR MONEY AS FAST AS THEY GOT IT.
The pride that keeps men honest, the pride that makes men truthful,
never kept a man back or hurt him.
The bad kind of pride is the pride which can be described as "the
coward's pride." Men are foolishly and cowardly proud BECAUSE THEY ARE
AFRAID OF WHAT OTHER MEN WILL THINK. Money that they cannot afford
they spend helping other men to drink too much, BECAUSE THEY ARE
ASHAMED TO BE THOUGHT STINGY OR MEAN.
Men squander in keeping up appearances money that should be saved for
another day, for a good business opportunity, because they are too
cowardly to be guided by their own judgment, and ignore what others
may THINK about them.
Self-respect is one thing; foolish pride, vanity, moral cowardice, are
very different. Get rid of them.
All the advice from these 20 rules is good advice. The man who can
keep his temper while he thinks--whether he count ten or a million--is
a lucky man.
A man in a rage is a man whose BRAIN IS NO LONGER WORKING. And the man
whose brain isn't working is at the mercy of the man whose brain IS
working.
Worry about the FUTURE troubles is a curse with many men. It prevents
their working well TODAY.
Overeating, and especially eating at the wrong time, is a great evil
in this country. If men would learn to eat heartily only when their
day's work is done, WHEN THEIR MINDS MUST NO LONGER BE CONCENTRATED,
THEY WILL SAVE THEIR STOMACHS AND ACCOMPLISH TWICE THE AMOUNT OF WORK
IN THEIR LIVES.
Read these rules over, and moralize on them for yourselves and for
your children.
COINING CUPID'S WILES.
How Matrimonial Agencies Prey on the Public--Their
Degeneration Into the Worst Forms of Crime.
$1,000,000 Secured by These Get-Rich-Quick Schemers
Discovered by Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge, Chicago's
Famous Police Detective.
125 matrimonial agencies in Chicago raided and closed in
the last five years.
4,500,000 matrimonial letters seized and destroyed.
1,500,000 matrimonial agencies' stock letters seized and
destroyed.
1,400,000 matrimonial stock photographs seized and
destroyed.
500,000 photographs sent to the matrimonial agencies by
men and women who were seeking their affinities seized and
destroyed.
40 wagon loads of matrimonial literature seized and
destroyed.
One of the most insidious forms of crime is the Matrimonial Agency.
Seemingly harmless, or at most merely foolish, is the Matrimonial
Agency at its inception.
But step by step within the past few years we have seen the
Matrimonial Agency turned into a volcano belching forth fraud,
swindling, bigamy, desertion, and finally ghastly wholesale murder.
We have seen the Matrimonial Agency sweep the whole range of the
world of crime from the petty thieving of a Carson to the almost
unbelievable horrors of the Gunness Farm.
[Illustration: THE SORROWS OF CUPID
"He Does Not See All the Rocks Ahead When He Brings Two Young People
Together"--Beatrice Fairfax.]
And this monster is hydra-headed. Stamp it out in one place and it
immediately reappears in another. Send a "manager" to prison once,
twice, ten times, and the minute the prison doors are open he is back
at the old stand doing business.
Something of the tremendous efforts being put forth to stamp out
this evil may be gained from the headlines of this story, where the
strenuous work of Detective Wooldridge of Chicago is summarized.
Chicago has been and is today infested by a formidable community of
matrimonial agencies who invade all ranks of life. They promote many
specious schemes to lure the elusive dollar from the pockets of unwary
victims. These operatives are sharp, smooth and unscrupulous--the most
dangerous of criminal perverts.
Were the census enumerators of the United States to compile a list
of the "sucker" public the gullible ones would aggregate tens of
millions. There is not a township in this great nation that does not
contain its portion of confiding persons who are ready to believe
anything, from the rankest catch-penny advertisement to a fallacy in
theological dogma.
They are willing to open up their hearts to unknown matrimonially
inclined correspondents; to accept as gospel the incredible statements
of impostors and to pay out money gained by hard toil for something
which the reason of a child should tell them it is beyond the power of
man to provide.
They are easy prey alike to religious and political impostors and
unscrupulous adventurers. Investigations for years past into the
innermost secrets of swindlers, and the observations incidental to
official experience disclosing how victims are drawn into the net of
the grafter, impel the belief that the faith of many persons passes
beyond the bounds of credulity into the domain of imbecility.
Men and women who are engaged in promoting matrimonial agencies are
guilty of crime. It is opposed to the fundamental principles of
society. Such a practice should under no circumstances be tolerated.
It is inconsistent with the highest ideals of what should constitute
the proper marriage relations.
HUMAN DERELICTS ARE DUPES.
Human derelicts of a low mental caliber are the dupes of these
matrimonial agencies. Few people know that such schemes as these are
carried out. Few know that advertisements by men of wealth, women of
culture and pretty widows who seek matrimonial alliances are merely
means by which scoundrels get a revenue.
MATRIMONIAL AGENTS' METHODS.
To describe adequately the technicalities of the marriage agencies
and bureau swindlers' methods would be impossible without presenting
actual copies of documents necessary to the system. Early in the
investigations the discovery was made that the scores of matrimonial
agencies, "introduction bureaux" and "marriage clubs" were using
practically the same literature. Few departed from the stereotyped
plan for "pulling the suckers on." For the most part the prospectuses
and "follow-up" letters were identical.
As often happened, however, when a victim was "landed right" and
ventured to Chicago from his distant rural retreat prepared to carry
out in earnest the game that had been worked upon him in a spirit of
mercenary recklessness, the methods of handling him were varied in
respect to both finesse and effectiveness.
Any person familiar with the uses of the typewriter easily could have
discovered that the "personal" letters received from time to time were
nothing more than circulars printed by the thousands. So vast was the
number of the gullible that seldom, if ever, was an actual, bona fide
letter sent in reply to those from the victims.
Space was left at the top of the stock letters for the insertion
of the name of the person to whom it was sent. In their haste the
swindlers often begrudged the time necessary to change the "Dear
Sir" to "Dear Miss" or "Dear Madam" when a woman was addressed on
stationery intended for male clients.
[Illustration: (Men on knees, arms stretched towards large image of
a heart-shaped lady)]
[Illustration: NOTICE! SHE'S ENGAGED BUT ENGAGEMENTS HAVE BEEN BROKEN
SO HURRY BEFORE THE WEDDING BELLS HAVE RUNG.... GOING! GOING! THIRD
AND LAST CALL!]
NO TRUST HERE.
The general uniformity of the literature was at first thought by
me to indicate that the matrimonial agencies were banded together
in a gigantic trust. But later I learned that as they increased in
number the newcomers exhibited conscienceless audacity in copying the
forms used by their predecessors. It was also found in some cases
several matrimonial agencies were operated from one address and
one or two men, or a man and his wife would represent half a dozen
concerns by changing names and locations every thirty or sixty days.
Because of these facts and the added fact that whoever compiled the
original forms from which the others copied, realized, he was in an
illegitimate business, the plagiarists were never prosecuted. Thus the
buncombe administered to the suckers became uniform in phraseology.
If a person desired to make assurance doubly sure for gaining wealth
and marital bliss and he applied to several agencies at the same
time, the same mail would bring him letters from each matrimonial
agency with which he communicated, worded identically. They would be
mimeograph copies, and the only difference in their appearance would
be in the printed heading indicating the name of the agency. The name
of the recipient would often be written at the top in ink different in
color from the body of the letter.
WORKING THE DOUBLE CROSS.
The usual beginning is a small subscription fee paid for a
"matrimonial" paper. This paper contains alleged descriptions of men
and women, principally the latter, who are claimed by the publisher
to be seeking wives or husbands through the matrimonial agency. The
subscriber who becomes interested in any of the descriptions is
made to pay a fee for more detailed information and alleged record
of the financial circumstances of the person. There is sometimes
an additional fee for a photograph. This picture may or may not be
one of the person described, but that matters little. Almost any
old photograph will serve the purpose. In all the raids made on
matrimonial agencies collections of photographs have been found.
That tens of thousands of otherwise intelligent men and women
should either entrust pictures of themselves to an agency by which
it is to be sent out to unknown persons, or should even begin such
negotiations as those carried on through the matrimonial agency, is
incomprehensible.
The money derived in the aggregate from subscriptions to the
matrimonial paper, the fees for particulars and those for photographs
and miscellaneous "services" amount to large sums. With many of the
agencies the services stop at this point, but many others undertake
personal introductions of lonesome maids and widows to the invariably
"honest and affectionate" bachelors and widowers, and when this is
done there are other fees, depending altogether on how much the
victims appear to be willing to stand.
A large number have been found and suppressed in which there was but
one lonesome maid or widow and one honest and affectionate bachelor
or widower, the former being the woman accomplice of the manager of
the agency and the latter the manager himself. They answer love-lorn
correspondents of both sexes and select for victims those believed
to have the most money. If the assistant to the manager is posing as
the possible bride in the case the wife hunter must make satisfactory
settlements with the manager for conducting the negotiations, and
this amount, with that which the accomplice is able to secure from
the victim, amounts often to a considerable sum. After the victim
is separated from his money something happens to prevent the happy
conclusion of the marriage negotiations.
TWO WELL-DEFINED FORMS.
There are two well-defined forms of the "matrimonial agent." The one
is the man who openly runs an agency, who advertises "golden-haired
young ladies, worth half a million dollars," "blue-eyed widows of
languishing temperaments" and "wealthy farmers." It is through
this class of "bureau" that the great crimes of the matrimonial
business have been engineered. Hoch, Mrs. Gunness, Holmes and other
arch-criminals made good use of this type.
The other type is just the plain swindler. The man who works along
the secondary lines, as they may be called, would scorn to be a
matrimonial agent. He is either a reverend gentleman of the cloth,
a minister to whom some languishing widow is looking for spiritual
direction, and he thinks that she "needs she should get married," to
quote the East Side phraseology; or he is a lawyer who has a wealthy
client, who, not being a business woman, is incapable of running her
own affairs, and he again thinks of marriage as a solution; or, again,
he is "an employment agency." This secondary type is generally a cheap
sort, grafting on the gullible for five or ten dollars, or even as
high as $100.
CONCRETE EXAMPLES.
TYPE NO. 1.
September 8, 1905, John H. Harris, 168 Hamlin avenue, editor and
publisher of The Pilot, a marriage agency paper, and manager of
a cheap mail order house, was raided and arrested by Detective
Wooldridge.
Among the letters seized were complaints from his patrons. They
received no returns for money paid him, and averred his paper was
being used to blackmail men and women. Complaints were also made that
many of the names which appeared in the paper were not authorized, and
other names attached to the order were forgeries.
The following is the copy of a letter dated September 1, 1906, and is
only one among hundreds of others sent out by the thousands by Harris.
Many more thousands were sent through the mail to his sub-agents, who
worked on a commission. This agent employed other agents, who started
an endless chain by copying the letter and having the friends do
likewise.
Chicago. Ill., Sept. 1, 1905.
Dear Sir:
We have a very recent application from a brown-eyed widow
of 41, medium size, musical, has no children. She informs
us that she has recently come into possession of a fortune
of over FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS, and that she wishes
to marry an honest, affectionate gentleman. We also have
a recent application from a pretty, blue-eyed lady of 20,
who estimates her present means at FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS,
and her inheritance at twenty thousand dollars. Her form is
graceful, her education good, her disposition gentle and
she desires a steady, honest husband. We believe she would
start her husband in business. And to accommodate those
ladies and quickly find a husband for them we make the
following SPECIAL OFFER:
Fill out the coupon at the bottom, and send it to us with
one dollar (and six postage stamps) and enclose a sealed
and stamped letter to either or both of the ladies referred
to above. We will immediately mail your letter to the lady
or ladies, and place your name on our books, and send you a
certificate of membership for six months, and send you the
full names and addresses of the handsome widow of means,
and the handsome blue-eyed maiden of means, and also send
you a list of names and addresses of other ladies of means
and otherwise. And until you are married, or until the
end of six months, we will, on or about the first of each
month, mail you a list of descriptions, names and addresses
of ladies of means and otherwise, without application from
you or any expense to you. We have good reason to believe
that either of the ladies mentioned above would make you a
good wife, but if they do not meet your approval you can
select one who will from the stream of ladies of means
and otherwise who are constantly requesting us to secure
husbands for them, which enables us to introduce you to
those whom you would be pleased to meet with a view to
marriage.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN H. HARRIS.
_Pub. of The Pilot._
JOHN H. HARRIS,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Sir:
I herewith enclose $1.12 as full payment on the above offer.
Name---- Postoffice----
Street, or Box No---- State----
United States Inspector of Mails at Chicago Postoffice R. W. McAfee
compelled John H. Harris to furnish him with the names and addresses
of the two women heiresses who were worth $40,000 and $500,000,
respectively, who were just dying for the want of a good, kind husband
to spend their money for them, and were seeking marriage through his
paper and matrimonial agency.
[Illustration: (Interest in Science; Marriage)]
Harris gave the name of Mrs. H. R. Adams, at Huntington, Md., as the
$40,000 woman and Jennie Ziehler, Lawrence, Mass., as the $500,000
woman. Upon investigation it was found that neither of the women was
worth a dollar. The $500,000 woman was in the insane asylum.
This letter, together with The Pilot, marriage paper and its printed
advertisements, was plainly intended to draw the unwary and deprive
the ignorant of their savings.
John H. Harris then appealed to ex-Mayor Edward F. Dunne of Chicago,
under the alias of A. Ingird, taxpayer, citizen and reputable business
man, to have Detective Wooldridge stopped from further interfering
with him or his business. Men who operate these frauds pretend to
be honest and high-minded; by constant practice of their wiles upon
others they develop self-deception and come to believe in their own
honesty to such an extent that when questioned they assume a good
counterfeit of honest indignation.
Mayor Dunne upon investigation learned the large mass of evidence
gathered, and ordered the investigation to go forward, which, resulted
in the arrest and holding over of John H. Harris to the Grand Jury.
COMMITS SUICIDE.
These complaints and evidence were turned over to Colonel James
Stuart, Chief Inspector of the Mails at the Chicago Postoffice, for
further investigation. A fraud order was requested. On August 18,
1907, Mr. Harris committed suicide by blowing out his brains at 168 N.
Hamlin avenue, Chicago, Illinois, after the mask had been pulled off
and his methods exposed.
One is unable to state whether John H. Harris is opening a mail order
house, paper and marriage agency in the other world. When he left he
did not leave word where he would make his next stop, but if he went
to the other world, we are not informed that wireless telegraph or
balloon companies have as yet perfected the lines of transportation
or communication.
Harris is a fairly representative and concrete expression of the
regulation matrimonial agent. It was through such agencies as his that
the great crimes eventually were pulled off.
SECONDARY TYPES.
But in the following letters we have an excellent example of the
second type, the little grafter who wants anything you can give, from
$5 to $100. From the text of the letters it will be observed that this
man was operating as a minister, a lawyer and an employment agency at
one and the same time, as the letters are all from one source.
In the case of the lawyer this scoundrel was trading upon the name of
Edward H. Morris, one of the foremost colored attorneys of the United
States, a man universally respected and admired by men in all walks
of life. When the fact of this trading on his name was brought to the
real attorney's attention he was furious, and he cheerfully gave all
the assistance in his power to Detective Wooldridge.
This smooth one was afterward arrested in New Orleans, convicted and
sent to prison for a term.
Here follows the text of the letters:
MATRIMONIAL AGENCIES' STOCK LETTERS UNDER THE GUISE OF MINISTRY.
REV. JOSEPH SPENCER,
80 Madison Street.
Manager of American Book Concern.
Dealer in Religious Books.
Chicago, Ill., July 26, 1905.
MR. O. W. ZINK,
Marshall, Mo.
Dear Sir:
For many years I have been a MINISTER of the GOSPEL and
during that time I have not only performed hundreds of
marriages, but have arranged many, and there are at the
present time among my acquaintances some half dozen wealthy
ladies, ranging in age from twenty to forty or fifty years,
one of whom is the handsome widow whose photo I enclose
herewith.
She is worth, in actual cash and negotiable securities,
fully $50,000, inherited from her worthy husband, who
departed this life a year ago and, as she is without
friends, relatives or children, her physician, a friend of
mine, has on account of her utter loneliness advised her
to marry, believing that marriage and change of scene will
prove for her a blessing in disguise, and naturally she has
turned to me, her spiritual adviser, in whom she has the
utmost confidence. I have several times talked the matter
over with her, and, knowing that she is very much averse
to advertising, I have undertaken to introduce to her some
gentleman who would make her a good husband, and to arrange
a marriage for her.
As her physician thinks it advisable for her to reside
elsewhere than Chicago, I have been somewhat perplexed as
to how to secure for her a suitable introduction and in my
dilemma consulted a matrimonial agency and, after several
conferences with them, I have decided to submit for your
kind consideration my proposition and manner of procedure.
I have studied the matter carefully, have gone thoroughly
into your description and instructions as filed with the
agency of which you are a member, and in my mind there is
not the slightest doubt as to you two proving mutually
suitable to each other. Of course, you cannot form the
proper idea of her from the small photo enclosed, but in
age, appearance, circumstances, etc., she is just what you
have been seeking in a wife.
She is in every respect a thoroughly good woman, unusually
bright and intelligent, but knows nothing of business, and
is in absolute need of a husband to look after her affairs,
but, TO BE CANDID WITH YOU, I am getting along in years,
and have a large family to support and as I only arrange
a few marriages at intervals, I must necessarily have
compensation adequate to the service I render.
Now, I can, by recommending you personally, cause her to
enter into a correspondence with you that will undoubtedly
lead to your marriage, if you are still desirous of such
a marriage, as I presume you are, from the fact that you
are registered with a matrimonial agency. I will, for the
consideration of $100, introduce you to her by letter and
after you have exchanged three or four letters, will have
you visit her at her expense, as you may mutually agree, if
you will follow my simple instructions.
I am not making you this proposition on the spur of the
moment, for I have spent much time and thought before
deciding to write you, and all I ask is that, AS AN
EVIDENCE OF YOUR GOOD FAITH and to cover the immediate
expense necessary thereto on my part (such as asking her
to dinner with me a few times in order that I may during
the good cheer that abounds at such times dwell at length
upon the matter without any unnecessary delay), that you
enclose me immediately upon receipt of this letter BANK
DRAFT, REGISTERED LETTER, or EXPRESS MONEY ORDER, for $10;
the balance, $90, you need not pay me until after you have
married her and assumed the management of her affairs.
Upon receipt of this small amount, $10, I will absolutely
guarantee your marriage to her within sixty days and, if
before that time you should feel that you do not care to
pursue the matter to a conclusion, I will positively refund
your money upon my honor as a MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL.
My standing in my profession is such that I could not do
otherwise and, as I have stated before, there are several
ladies to whom I could introduce you, now that I have
really taken the matter up with you, but I consider you two
really suited to each other, so will not go into further
particulars. Trusting to hear from you AT THE VERY EARLIEST
POSSIBLE MOMENT, I am, with assurance of my regards,
Very respectfully,
WANTED A RICH HUSBAND.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
July 15, 1905.
REV. JOSEPH SPENCER,
80 Madison Street,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Sir:
You asked me in your letter to give you a description of
the man that I would like to become acquainted with. I wish
him to be as tall as I am, to have dark hair and a very
good disposition. I would like him to be rich. His age to
be about 45 years, also have a good education. I want him
to be a temperate man, and to have a nice appearance, one
who is lovely at home, and does not care for society and
likes music. I do not care what his occupation is if he is
honest.
Hoping to hear from you soon, I remain
Yours truly,
MISS VERNIE ADAMS.
Oshkosh, Wis., July 20, 1905.
REV. JOSEPH SPENCER,
Chicago, Illinois.
Dear Sir:
You asked me in your letter to give you a description of
myself, which I take pleasure in doing: I am a young man 26
years of age, 5 feet 6 inches tall, weigh 140 pounds; blue
eyes, red hair; I am strictly temperate, do not gamble;
kind disposition, a farm hand; have no means; income $15
per month.
I would be delighted to make the acquaintance of several of
your prospective rich women who are seeking a husband. Send
me a list of those who are worth from $50,000 to $75,000,
also their photographs, whereby I can make a selection, and
I will send you your fee of $5. I remain,
Sincerely yours,
THOMAS FLINN.
MATRIMONIAL AGENCY UNDER THE GUISE OF AN ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
EDWARD MORRIS,
Attorney-at-Law.
82 Madison Street.
Trusts and Estates a Specialty.
Chicago, Ill., Jan. 4, 1905.
MR. GEO. FERLIN,
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dear Sir:
I have during my professional career arranged many
marriages for ladies of means, and at the present time
have among my clients some ten or twelve wealthy ladies,
ranging in age from twenty-five to fifty years, desirous of
marriage, one of whom is the charming widow whose likeness
I herewith enclose.
She is worth $60,000 ($25,000 in ready cash, the balance
in high-class tangible property inherited from her mother,
recently deceased). She is alone and childless and her
physician, on account of her bereavement, has recommended
a marriage and change of scene, and in her dilemma she has
consulted me, her legal adviser, and I, in turn, without
her knowledge, appealed to a matrimonial agency with which
I have for several years had business relations in a
professional way.
Out of the several names submitted to me I have, after much
thought and deliberation, selected yours, and I beg that
you will consider carefully my proposition and the fact
that I am not in business for my health, but for revenue,
together with a desire to please my clients and to give
them value received.
This lady, while unusually bright and intelligent, knows
little of the ways of the world, and nothing of business,
and, to be candid with you, needs a husband to manage her
estates, and I can, by recommending you personally, cause
her, through me as her attorney, to open negotiations with
you for a marriage; so if you desire a wealthy wife, as I
presume you do from the fact that you are registered with a
matrimonial agency, I will, for the consideration of $100
introduce you to her, have you visit her at her expense, as
you may mutually agree, and will absolutely guarantee your
marriage to her within sixty days, if you will follow my
instructions to the letter.
All that I ask is, as an evidence of your good faith and to
cover the immediate clerical expenses necessary thereto,
you enclose me immediately upon receipt of this letter,
BANK DRAFT OR MONEY ORDER for $10, the balance ($90) to be
paid after marriage, and when I have caused her to place in
your hands, or under your control, a goodly portion of her
worldly possessions.
Now, if you wish to accept my proposition, enclose me
immediately the small retaining fee ($10) and promise me
that you will follow carefully my instructions; otherwise
do not write me, as I positively will not enter into
further correspondence until you have engaged me as your
attorney upon the lines I have laid down.
If before the end of sixty days you feel that you do not
care to pursue the matter to a conclusion I will refund
your money. My standing as an attorney is ample evidence
that I will faithfully carry out my contract. Remember that
I have among my clients, as I have stated before, ten or
twelve wealthy ladies to my certain knowledge desirous of
marriage.
Awaiting your immediate reply, I am
Sincerely and professionally yours,
EDWARD MORRIS.
EDWARD MORRIS, Attorney-at-Law.
Chicago. Ill., Jan. 11, 1905.
MR. GEO. FERLIN.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dear Sir:
Your letter in reply to mine received, and I will say,
that as a leading attorney, and a prominent member of the
bar, I could not act for you until you have first retained
me as your attorney in this matter, and sent me the small
retaining fee of $10, as requested.
[Illustration: OH! OH!! OH!!!
AWFUL CONSTERNATION AT PIKES CROSSING! DIRECTORY GOWN IN TOWN. BY
JIMMINEDDY!!].
Now, my dear sir, if you really mean business and really
want to marry the charming and wealthy young widow in
question, I see no earthly reason why you should hesitate
for a single instant to retain my services in connection
with this matter. You may give me good references, and I
can give you the same, but that has no bearing on the case
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