When Robert A. Ammon, a member of the New York bar, was convicted, after
a long trial, on the 17th of June, 1903, of receiving stolen goods, he
had, in the parlance of his class, been "due" for a long time. The
stolen property in question was the sum of thirty thousand five hundred
dollars in greenbacks, part of the loot of the notorious "Franklin
Syndicate," devised and engineered by William F. Miller, who later
became the catspaw of his legal adviser, the subject of this history.
Ammon stood at the bar and listened complacently to his sentence of not
less than four years at hard labor in Sing Sing. A sneer curved his lips
as, after nodding curtly to his lawyer, he turned to be led away by the
court attendant. The fortune snatched from his client had procured for
him the most adroit of counsel, the most exhaustive of trials. He knew
that nothing had been left undone to enable him to evade the
consequences of his crime, and he was cynically content.
For years "Bob" Ammon had been a familiar figure in the Wall Street
district of New York. Although the legal adviser of swindlers and
confidence men, he was a type of American whose energies, if turned in a
less dubious direction, might well have brought him honorable
distinction. Tall, strong as a bull, bluff, good-natured, reckless and
of iron nerve, he would have given good account of himself as an Indian
fighter or frontiersman. His fine presence, his great vitality, his
coarse humor, his confidence and bravado, had won for him many friends
of a certain kind and engendered a feeling among the public that
somehow, although the associate and adviser of criminals, he was outside
the law, to the circumventing of which his energies were directed.
Unfortunately his experiences with the law had bred in him a contempt
for it which ultimately caused his downfall.
"The reporters are bothering you, are they?" he had said to Miller in
his office. "Hang them! Send them to me. I'll talk to them!"
And talk to them he did. He could talk a police inspector or a city
magistrate into a state of vacuous credulity, and needless to say he was
to his clients as a god knowing both good and evil, as well as how to
eschew the one and avoid the other. Miller hated, loathed and feared
him, yet freely entrusted his liberty, and all he had risked his liberty
to gain, to this strange and powerful personality which held him
enthralled by the mere exercise of a physical superiority.
The "Franklin Syndicate" had collapsed amid the astonished outcries of
its thousands of victims, on November 24th, 1899, when, under the advice
and with the assistance of Ammon, its organizer, "520 per cent. Miller,"
had fled to Canada. It was nearly four years later, in June, 1903, that
Ammon, arraigned at the bar of justice as a criminal, heard Assistant
District Attorney Nott call William F. Miller, convict, to the stand to
testify against him. A curious contrast they presented as they faced one
another; the emaciated youth of twenty-five, the hand of Death already
tightly fastened upon his meagre frame, coughing, hollow-cheeked,
insignificant, flat-nosed, almost repulsive, who dragged himself to the
witness chair, and the swaggering athlete who glared at him from the bar
surrounded by his cordon of able counsel. As Ammon fixed his penetrating
gaze upon his former client, Miller turned pale and dropped his eyes.
Then the prosecutor, realizing the danger of letting the old hypnotic
power return, even for an instant, quickly stepped between them. Miller
raised his eyes and smiled, and those who heard knew that this miserable
creature had been through the fire and come forth to speak true things.
The trial of Ammon involved practically the reproving of the case
against Miller, for which the latter had been convicted and sentenced to
ten years in State's prison, whence he now issued like one from the tomb
to point the skeleton, incriminating finger at his betrayer. But the
case began by the convict-witness testifying that the whole business was
a miserable fraud from start to finish, carried on and guided by the
advice of the defendant. He told how he, a mere boy of twenty-one,
burdened with a sick wife and baby, unfitted by training or ability for
any sort of lucrative employment, a hanger-on of bucket shops and, in
his palmiest days, a speculator in tiny lots of feebly margined stocks,
finding himself without means of support, conceived the alluring idea of
soliciting funds for investment, promising enormous interest, and paying
this interest out of the principal intrusted to him. For a time he
preyed only upon his friends, claiming "inside information" of large
"deals" and paying ten per cent. per week on the money received out of
his latest deposits.
Surely the history of civilization is a history of credulity. Miller
prospered. His earlier friend-customers who had hesitatingly taken his
receipt for ten dollars, and thereafter had received one dollar every
Monday morning, repeated the operation and returned in ever-increasing
numbers. From having his office "in his hat," he took an upper room in a
small two-story house at 144 Floyd Street, Brooklyn--an humble tenement,
destined to be the scene of one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of
man's cupidity and foolishness in modern times. At first he had tramped
round, like a pedler, delivering the dividends himself and soliciting
more, but soon he hired a boy. This was in February, 1899. Business
increased. The golden flood began to appear in an attenuated but
constant rivulet. He hired four more employees and the whole top floor
of the house. The golden rivulet became a steady stream. From a
"panhandler" he rolled in ready thousands. The future opened into
magnificent auriferous distances. He began to call himself "The Franklin
Syndicate," and to advertise that "the way to wealth is as plain as the
road to the market." He copied the real brokers and scattered circulars
and "weekly letters" over the country, exciting the rural mind in
distant Manitoba and Louisiana.
There was an instantaneous response. His mail required the exclusive
attention of several clerks. The stream of gold became a rushing
torrent. Every Monday morning the Floyd Street house was crowded with
depositors who drew their interest, added to it, deposited it again, and
went upon their way rejoicing. Nobody was going to have to work any
more. The out-of-town customers received checks for their interest drawn
upon "The Franklin Syndicate," together with printed receipts for their
deposits, all signed "William F. Miller," by means of a rubber stamp. No
human hand could have signed them all without writer's cramp. The
rubber stamp was Miller's official signature. Then with a mighty roar
the torrent burst into a deluge. The Floyd Street quarters were besieged
by a clamoring multitude fighting to see which of them could give up his
money first, and there had to be a special delivery for Miller's mail.
He rented the whole house and hired fifty clerks. You could deposit your
money almost anywhere, from the parlor to the pantry, the clothes closet
or the bath-room. Fridays the public stormed the house _en masse_, since
the money must be deposited _on that day_ to draw interest for the
following week. The crush was so enormous that the stoop broke down.
Imagine it! In quiet Brooklyn! People struggling to get up the steps to
cram their money into Miller's pockets! There he sat, behind a desk, at
the top of the stoop, solemnly taking the money thrown down before him
and handing out little pink and green stamped receipts in exchange.
There was no place to put the money, so it was shoved on to the floor
behind him. Friday afternoons Miller and his clerks waded through it,
knee high. There was no pretense of bookkeeping. Simply in self-defense
Miller issued in October a pronunciamento that he could not in justice
to his business, consent to receive less than fifty dollars at one time.
Theoretically, there was no reason why the thing should not have gone
on practically forever, Miller and everybody else becoming richer and
richer. So long as the golden stream swelled five times each year
everybody would be happy. How could anybody fail to be happy who saw so
much money lying around loose everywhere?
[Illustration: One of Miller's Franklin Syndicate Receipts.]
But the business had increased to such an extent that Miller began to
distrust his own capacity to handle it. He therefore secured a partner
in the person of one Edward Schlessinger, and with him went to
Charlestown, Mass., for the purpose of opening another office, in charge
of which they placed a man named Louis Powers. History repeated itself.
Powers shipped the deposits to Miller every day or two by express. Was
there ever such a plethora of easy money?
But Schlessinger was no Miller. He decided that he must have a third of
the profits (Heaven knows how they computed them!) and have them,
moreover, each day _in cash_. Hence there was a daily accounting, part
of the receipts being laid aside to pay off interest checks and
interest, and the balance divided. Schlessinger carried his off in a
bag; Miller took the rest, cash, money orders and checks, and deposited
it in a real bank. How the money poured in may be realized from the fact
that the excess of receipts over disbursements for the month ending
November 16th was four hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
Hitherto Miller had been the central figure. Col. Robert A. Ammon now
became the _deus ex machina_. Miller's advertising had become so
extensive that he had been forced to retain a professional agent, one
Rudolph Guenther, to supervise it, and when the newspapers began to make
unpleasant comments, Guenther took Miller to Ammon's office in the
Bennett Building in Nassau Street. Ammon accepted a hundred dollars from
Miller, listened to his account of the business and examined copies of
the circulars. When he was handed one of the printed receipts he said
they were "incriminating." Miller must try to get them back. He advised
(as many another learned counsellor has done) incorporating the
business, since by this means stock could be sold and exchanged for the
incriminating receipts. He explained the mistakes of the "_Dean_ crowd,"
but showed how he had been able to safeguard them in spite of the fact
that they had foolishly insisted on holding the stock in their company
themselves instead of making their customers the stockholders.
Nevertheless "you do not see any of the Dean people in jail," boasted
Ammon. From now on Miller and he were in frequent consultation, and
Ammon took steps to incorporate, procuring for that purpose from Wells,
Fargo & Co. a certificate of deposit for one hundred thousand dollars.
Occasionally he would visit Floyd Street to see how things were going.
Miller became a mere puppet; Ammon twitched the wire.
It was now well on in November, and the press of both Boston and New
York was filled with scathing attacks upon the Syndicate. The reporters
became so inquisitive as to be annoying to the peaceful Miller. "Send
the reporters over to me!" directed Ammon.
The _Post_ (of Boston) said the whole thing was a miserable swindle.
Ammon, accompanied by Miller, carrying a satchel which contained fifty
thousand dollars in greenbacks, went to Boston, visited the offices of
the _Post_, and pitched into the editor.
"The business is all right; you must give us a fair deal!"
The pair also visited Watts, the chief of police.
"You keep your mouth shut," said Ammon to Miller. "I'll do all the
talking." He showed Watts the bag of money, and demanded what he had
meant by calling the enterprise a "green goods business." If the thing
wasn't all right, did Watts suppose that he, Col. Robert A. Ammon, would
be connected with it? The chief backed down, and explained that he had
jokingly referred to the color of one of the receipts--which happened
to be green.
In spite of Ammon's confidence, however, there was an uneasy feeling in
the air, and it was decided to put an advertisement in the _Post_
offering to allow any customer who so desired to withdraw his deposit,
_without notice_, upon the following Saturday. This announcement did not
have precisely the anticipated effect, and Saturday saw a large crowd of
victims eager to withdraw their money from the Boston office of the
Franklin Syndicate. Powers paid the "_Pauls_," of Boston, out of the bag
brought on by Miller containing the deposits of the "_Peters_," of
Brooklyn. Meantime, Ammon addressed the throng, incidentally
blackguarding a _Post_ reporter before the crowd, telling them that his
paper was a "yellow paper, had never amounted to anything, and never
would." Some timid souls took courage and redeposited their money. The
run continued one day and cost Ammon and Miller about twenty-eight
thousand dollars. Ammon took five thousand dollars cash as a fee out of
the bag, and the pair returned to New York. But confidence had been
temporarily restored.
The beginning of the end, however, was now in sight--at least for the
keen vision of Bob Ammon. He advised stimulating deposits and laying
hands on all the money possible before the crash came. Accordingly
Miller sent a telegram (collect) to all depositors:
We have inside information of a big transaction, to begin Saturday
or Monday morning. Big profits. Remit at once so as to receive the
profits.