“STAR” REPORTING
I now began to get nothing but big stories to cover. Frequently I was
permitted to select my own assignments and often to create them.
As an illustration of what I mean by creating an assignment, I once
clipped a five-line item from an evening paper about a band of
regulators in southern Indiana that were masking themselves and taking
out men and women who were loose in their moral conduct, tying them to
trees and whipping them with hickory switches.
I traveled all day and night to get to the scene of their activities
and was rewarded by witnessing, the first night I was there, the most
brutal public punishment that could be inflicted. The community was
made up of conspicuously ignorant people, and like most men and women
who are densely ignorant and uncouth, they were harshly intolerant
in dealing with the weaknesses of others. If a man wouldn’t work and
neglected his family, they took him out at night and whipped him until
he couldn’t work. The regulators were no respecters of sex and the
week before I got there they stripped and cruelly punished a woman who
didn’t care for her husband and children as they considered she should.
The night of my arrival I was awakened after midnight by a vigorous
pounding on the front door of my hotel. A battering ram drove the door
from its hinges and a crowd of men came stamping up the stairway. A
door was smashed in, a woman screamed in terror, there was a struggle
and loud curses in the hallway, and then I heard them all going down
stairs and I knew they were dragging a man and a woman with them.
Peeping out of the window, I saw in the bright moonlight that more than
fifty stalwart men were grouped in front of the hotel and that every
one wore an enormous white mask, which was simply a flour-sack, with
slits for eyes and nose, the sack pulled over the head and bunched on
the shoulders.
The man and woman, still struggling, were dragged out and quickly
surrounded. The party then marched with their victims to a clump of
trees, where they were stripped of their night clothes, tied to trees
and unmercifully whipped with long switches.
After administering the punishment, the crowd melted slowly and
silently away. I talked with the victims when they crawled back to
the hotel, their backs lacerated. I learned from them that both were
married but living apart from their lawful mates and that anonymous
notes had come to them in the last week, threatening them with a visit
from the “whip-ups” if they didn’t reform their ways. I spent two days
getting stories about this new method of reforming folk and when I got
back to Chicago I wrote a page article, giving the band the name of
“white-caps,” a name they themselves speedily adopted.
I visited another band of so-called regulators of public morals some
time afterward. They had taken a young girl who was running wild, into
a vacant lot, stripped off her clothing and covering her with a coat
of hot tar and a bagful of feathers, drove her away into the night. I
reached the place the following day, found the terrified girl hiding
in a limestone quarry, got her story and provided her with clothing
and shelter. She was only seventeen. A church deacon who boastfully
admitted that he was leader of the ruffians, gave me a list of all
who participated in the outrage and I furnished it to the prosecuting
attorney, together with sufficient evidence to indict them. Some were
sent to prison and the remainder paid heavy fines. I caused the girl to
be placed in an institution. I never knew how she turned out.
Once I witnessed the hanging of six murderers from the same scaffold
in the old Federal prison at Fort Smith, Arkansas. They were all
outlaws from the Indian Territory. At another time I was on a passenger
train in Missouri when it was held up and robbed, after the bandits
had blown up the locomotive with dynamite. They looted the passengers
and carried away a lot of plunder from the express car, shooting and
severely wounding the messenger. After the train robbers escaped, I
telegraphed five columns about it in time to catch the regular edition.
Another time I followed a daring opium smuggler over the Canadian
border, after he had escaped from treasury agents, and interviewed him
in a hotel. He talked freely to me about his adventures, but in all the
time I was with him he kept a revolver pointed at me. He apologized
for his rudeness, said he didn’t doubt that I was a newspaper man, but
that he couldn’t afford to run risks of being captured. He had taken
desperate chances the night before in attempting to visit his mother
and had narrowly escaped with his life. For years he had been the most
successful smuggler of opium operating along the Canadian border,
belonging to a ring that had its headquarters on Vancouver Island. The
duty on opium was then ten dollars a pound and smugglers found traffic
in the drug more lucrative than robbing banks. Treasury agents had been
after this elusive fellow for a long time, but although they were
often close upon him they always failed of capture. A big reward was
offered for his arrest.
Somehow the treasury men got word that he intended visiting his mother
at her home in Michigan and a posse was organized to head him off
and get him, dead or alive. The posse hid in the woods near the home
of the smuggler’s mother, felling a tree across the roadway to block
his progress. It was a bright moonlight night when they discovered
him riding alone through the woods on horseback. When he came to the
obstruction in the road, a voice commanded him to halt and surrender.
As he wheeled his horse to make a dash for liberty, six men rose out
of the bushes and blazed away with their weapons. The horse dropped
dead in his tracks, the rider under him. With six Federal officers,
all armed and ready to shoot, almost on top of him, the nervy smuggler
dragged himself from under the dead horse, darted into a thicket and
lost himself in the shadows. Making his way to the river, he found a
boat and crossed to the Canadian shore. I interviewed him the following
day.
The most singular experience I ever had and one that I have never been
able to explain satisfactorily even to myself, came to me on the day
the Anarchists were hanged. I had been among the earliest newspaper men
to reach the Haymarket after the bomb scattered death among a squad of
policemen sent there to disperse that meeting of Reds, and I was active
in the rounding up of the leaders and the long trial that followed.
I was assigned to write the story of the execution. It was a
nerve-straining task, for I had known all of them for years and had
frequently reported their meetings, long before anyone suspected they
were anything more than harmless cranks.
The night before the execution, I was among a large number of newspaper
men that kept the death watch on the condemned and one of the first to
reach the cell of Louis Ling, when he cheated the hangman by blowing
off his head with a dynamite cartridge, exploding the cartridge between
his teeth.
After a night of sleepless excitement, we newspaper men and the
spectators that held cards of admission, were summoned to the
execution chamber and I saw the unfortunate wretches I had known
so well drop into eternity with broken necks. I had witnessed many
executions but this was the most horrible. When it was over I was
nauseated and so faint I could scarcely drag myself to the street.
With others, I went to a nearby saloon and asked for brandy. I drank
the stuff and then came oblivion. In all the years since I have never
been able to recall what happened to me afterward, not even leaving the
saloon.
When I recovered my senses I was in my bed at home. The rising sun
streamed through the window and I awoke with a start. It was six
o’clock in the morning. Then came the humiliating remorse of a
drunkard. I had always proven dependable in every emergency, but now I
had fallen down and forever disgraced myself. Worst of all, the editor
who had trusted me must have had a difficult time whipping a story
together when I failed to return to the office. I felt he could never
forgive me and I buried my face in the pillow and cried.
At last I got up and dressed, so ashamed of what had happened that
I sneaked silently out of the house, hurrying down the street to
find a paper-carrier and ascertain how my paper had fared when I so
treacherously betrayed it. I bought a complete set of all the various
morning papers and eagerly began scanning the _Tribune_.
As I read the story I grew more and more puzzled. The introduction
was precisely as I had planned to write it and the story described
everything just as my eyes had seen what had taken place. There were
sentences that were undeniably mine. I was completely mystified, but my
mind was greatly relieved. It was apparent that even if I had failed
in my duty, the paper hadn’t suffered. The story was complete and was
written as well as I could have done it. Perhaps I had written it and
was now suffering from a trick of memory. I wondered if that could be
possible.
Hurrying back to my home, I encountered the maid and asked her what
time it was when I got in the night before. She said it was shortly
after ten o’clock and that I looked so pale and tired she was worried
about me. I searched her face in an effort to discover whether she
suspected that I was intoxicated, but her eyes beamed nothing but
sympathy. After breakfast I decided to go to the office and face the
music. In the elevator, I encountered Mr. Patterson.
“You wrote a fine story of the execution,” he said, putting his arm
affectionately around me and giving my body a hug.
I thanked him with as much modesty as I could assume, but I was too
uncertain about what had happened to prolong the conversation. Perhaps
the city editor had concealed from his superior that I had fallen down
on the assignment, until he could have a talk with me.
The only way to find out was to put on a bold front, so I walked into
the local room and bade the city editor a cheery “good morning.”
Mr. Hall’s response set my mind at rest. He praised my story
unstintedly and was particularly gratified that I had turned the last
of the copy over to him before nine. I next went to the proofreaders’
room and found the copy I had so unconsciously written. There was no
indication of trembling fingers, nor were there scratched-out words to
betray unsteadiness of mind. I had never written more perfect copy.
By cautious inquiry, I learned that I took but a single drink after the
execution and I then went straight to the _Tribune_ office, locked
myself in a room and wrote steadily for eight hours without a break.
The only way I can account for my interruption of memory is that I was
weary from excitement and loss of sleep, but automatically kept at the
task before me until it was accomplished and when it was and I had a
chance to think about myself, my tired brain collapsed and went dead.
An expert psychologist might explain it differently. I can’t.
Someone telephoned to the office one day that a large lake vessel,
laden with lumber, had been driven ashore near Miller’s Station, a
small village in northern Indiana. The informant said a storm was
raging and he could see the crew clinging to the rigging, frantically
waving distress signals. I called up the Chicago life-saving station
and was told they were as busy as hornets looking after vessels that
were in trouble off the harbor. The captain said the best he could do
would be to send one of his men with me. I met his man “Ed” at the
Michigan Central.
The first train out was the Limited. I knew it didn’t stop at Miller’s,
which was only a flag station, but I took a chance and we got on the
rear platform of the last sleeper. As we neared Miller’s I jerked the
cord that released the air brakes and when the train slackened, “Ed”
and I hopped off and ran away as fast as our legs could carry us,
followed by curses from the angry trainmen.
It was a walk of three miles through sand that was ankle deep to the
scene of the wreck. We found the vessel had pounded to pieces in the
breakers, drowning all but one of her crew. The shore was strewn with
wreckage and lumber and the entire population of the village, men and
women, was gathering and carting it away. They told us that the only
survivor had been taken to a clubhouse, two miles away.
“Ed” had on his life-saver uniform of blue, with gilt buttons, and I
made him pretend that he was an officer, intimidating a man with a team
to quit beach combing long enough to haul us to the club. The survivor
gave a graphic recital of the wreck and we trudged through the sand to
the railway station, only to find there were no more trains to the city
until morning. I wrote a story for the paper, but the “plug” operator
at the station was so slow that I had to turn in and send most of it
myself after I had finished writing. There was no hotel. The operator
said he would gladly invite us to his house if two of his children
weren’t sick with scarlet fever.
“Ed” and I went out into the murky night to hunt for lodgings. There
was a single light glimmering from a small shack of a house. All the
rest of the village was dark. We made for the light and a belligerent,
red-faced woman opened the door wide enough to get a glimpse of the
gilt buttons on “Ed’s” uniform. She may have thought we had come to
arrest them for carting away lumber from the wreck. Anyway, she would
have slammed the door in our faces if my companion hadn’t interfered
with his foot. We pushed our way into the house, for it was bitter
cold and raining cats and dogs. I offered to pay a dollar if she would
shelter us for the night. The silver dollar brought hospitality and
she led us to the attic, where there was a dirty mattress and dirtier
bedding, in one corner on the floor. I dropped on it as I was, wet
clothing and all, and was soon fast asleep. When I awoke in the morning
“Ed” wasn’t there. From behind a curtain that was stretched across
the attic, came sounds of suppressed giggling and on reconnoitering
I discovered that the venturesome life-saver had found playmates,
daughters of our hostess.
There was another time when a tip came by telephone of a vessel in
distress off Hyde Park. It was nearly midnight when I got there. A
few helpless men were gathered impotently on the shore, watching the
blazing signals as the crew set fire to oil-soaked bedding and cast
it into the lake. I had the idlers build a bonfire on the beach to
let the wrecked sailors know that help was coming, and hurried to a
telephone to notify the life-saving station. I kept the fire blazing
all night and the sailors kept signaling until they used up everything
combustible.
It was daylight when the life-savers came with their boat on a wagon.
They had driven nearly fifteen miles. The boat was launched and was
quickly propelled through the breakers to the stranded vessel. I went
with them. As we approached the wreck the sailors dropped into the lake
and were picked up. The last to be rescued was the captain. I asked his
name. It was the same as mine. If it had been Jones or Smith I don’t
suppose I would now recall the incident, for it was two months prior
to the assassination of Garfield and that was thirty-nine years ago. I
knew the crazy slayer of our martyred President when he was a lawyer in
Chicago. His half-brother was one of my boyhood friends.
The last important story I wrote for the _Tribune_ was a pitiful
domestic tragedy that culminated in a brain-tortured wife shooting her
faithless husband dead in my arms. As I recall the exciting events that
were woven into the story I wrote that Christmas eve, long years ago,
I am reminded of Joe McCullagh’s definition of journalism. He was the
famous editor of the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_ for many years,
terminating a brilliant career by plunging headlong from an upper
window of his home early one morning, breaking his neck. In delivering
a lecture before a body of university students, he defined journalism
as “the art of knowing where hell is going to break loose next and
having a reporter on the spot to cover it.”
I chanced to be the reporter on the spot when the pent-up hell that was
blazing in a woman’s brain broke loose. The story I wrote is indelibly
fastened in my memory. I would have forgotten it if I could.
One day I ran into Magistrate Prindiville during the noon recess
and he told me that he had just issued warrants for the arrest of a
business man and the latter’s sister-in-law. He thought it might prove
an interesting story for the paper and suggested that I come to his
courtroom after the principals had been arrested and get the details.
All that he could tell then was that a few minutes before, an excited
little woman, accompanied by an excited brother, had obtained warrants
for the arrest of the woman’s husband and the brother’s wife. It was
a complicated case of infidelity. Officers were to make the arrests
during the afternoon. The magistrate returned to his court long enough
for me to copy names and addresses. The man to be arrested was William
McCauley; the woman was Molly Mackin.
I learned in the city directory that McCauley was office manager of
a big brewing plant on the West Side and there I went in hopes of
obtaining the story before he was locked up. At the brewery I was
told he had gone away that day for his annual vacation. They gave
me his home address, a flat building in a quiet little residential
street called Arthington Place. When I pressed a button in the lower
vestibule, a woman appeared at the head of the staircase on the floor
above and inquired what I wished.
“I have called to see Mr. McCauley,” I said.
“What is the nature of your business?”
“It is entirely personal. Kindly tell him that a _Tribune_
reporter is calling.”
“A reporter, I thought so. You may come up.”
She held the door open and motioned me into the parlor. As I entered a
man came from a side room and confronted me. He was a handsome chap,
about thirty years old, big and muscular. The woman followed into the
parlor and stood there as if eager to know what I intended asking her
husband, perhaps more eager to know how he would reply.
Her presence was so embarrassing I asked the man if I could see him
alone. He waved me toward the room he had just come from and followed
me into it. Without closing the door he brusquely demanded what I
wanted. I hardly knew myself. I had to go at it almost blindly.
“I have come to ask about Mrs. Mackin,” I venturingly began.
“What do you want to know?” was the angry response. He was visibly
agitated and was making an effort to control himself. His face grew
scarlet. “What about Mrs. Mack----”
The name died on his lips. Before he could complete it his wife
appeared in the open doorway with a revolver in her outstretched hand.
His back was to the door; I was facing it. Before I could warn him or
stop her, she pointed the revolver at the back of his head and pressed
the trigger.
There was a flash of flame and the man sank limply into my arms with a
bullet in his brain. He never knew, unless his spirit saw me struggling
with the woman when it left his body. She made as if to fire another
shot, so I let him down to the floor and grabbed her wrist, wresting
the weapon from her hand.
“Why did you do this dreadful thing?” I asked.
“Because he has wrecked all of our lives.”
I heard little children crying with fright.
“Our children,” she sobbed. “What will become of them?”
The dying man groaned and there were choking sounds in his throat. I
asked where I could find the nearest doctor.
“Don’t call one. He mustn’t live! It would be horrible after all he has
done.”
There appeared to be no likelihood of a doctor being of service, but
I went after one. A maid was shaking a rug under the window where the
shooting had taken place, but she evidently hadn’t heard the shot, for
she calmly directed me to the home of a nearby physician. The doctor
wasn’t in but his wife said she expected him any minute and she would
send him or telephone for another. I told her the case was urgent.
When I got back to the McCauley apartment the front door had been
bolted from the inside. There was no response to my knocking. Something
must have given me the strength of a stevedore, for I threw myself
against the door and burst the lock. I found Mrs. McCauley in the
kitchen with her children. She had a knife and was about to use it when
I took the knife from her hand.
McCauley was still crumpled up where I left him. I rolled him on his
back and put a pillow under his head, for there was still a flicker
of life. The queer gurgling sounds in his throat were growing less
distinct and I knew he would soon be done for.
Mrs. McCauley watched him with apathetic calmness. She made no attempt
to help, except to bring a flask of liquor when requested. I tried to
force some of it down his throat, hoping to keep him alive until the
doctors came, but his teeth were tightly clenched and I was unable to
pry them apart.
While waiting for the doctors she told her story, told it so simply and
with such pathos that it stirred my sympathy more than any story of
human suffering I ever listened to. Two doctors came in the midst of
the recital, but she went on with it to the end.
William McCauley, son of a wealthy widow, had been educated for the
priesthood but before the time came for his induction his mind changed
and he went into business. He had grown prosperous when he met Ida
Mackin, a school-teacher, and when they were married and settled
in a pretty home, there wasn’t a cloud to mar their happiness. Two
children were born and everything was serene. Along came Molly! She
entered their lives when she became the bride of sturdy Harry Mackin,
Mrs. McCauley’s brother. She was as pretty as a doll and almost as
brainless. The families saw much of each other, though they lived
apart. McCauley supplied the capital to start Harry in business. Soon
Molly had a baby. And they all were as happy as they could be. Then
something happened.
When Harry Mackin went home from the store one evening Molly was
gone. Pinned to a chair was a note in Molly’s familiar handwriting.
She had gone away with the baby and would never return. She asked to
be forgotten as one unworthy. The note stunned him. They had never
quarreled and he had toiled unceasingly that Molly might have all the
finery her heart craved.
He hurried to the home of her mother, but found no trace of Molly or
baby and next he burst into the home of his sister and sobbed his
grief into her sympathetic ears. It was as mystifying to her as it
was to him, for she and Molly had been as intimate as sisters and she
had never heard a word of discontent. William McCauley came home and
pretended great astonishment at what they told him. There was no way
of explaining what Molly had done. McCauley suggested hiring detectives
and went with Harry to an agency, directing that no expense be spared
in searching for the runaway wife.
Weeks went by without trace of Molly or baby. The detectives could find
nothing that might help to solve the mystery of her disappearance. The
husband searched frantically day and night, neglecting his business and
growing thin and pale with loss of sleep and anxiety. McCauley was ever
sympathetic. He directed the activities of the detectives and spent
hours with the grieving husband as they blindly searched every part of
the city where she might be hiding. Finally, he declared that Molly
must have lost her mind and plunged into the lake with her baby in her
arms. There seemed no other solution.
Time dragged wearily along for young Mackin, until one evening he
unexpectedly ran into his brother-in-law in the street. McCauley was
carrying bottles of wine and was walking so hurriedly he passed Harry
without recognition. The following day Harry had luncheon with his
sister and asked for a glass of wine. There was none in the house.
“Didn’t Will bring some home last night?” he asked.
“Will hasn’t been home for three days. He is out of town on business.”
The first suspicion that had ever come to him of his brother-in-law’s
perfidy burned its way into Harry Mackin’s brain. He recalled that
McCauley had been frequently away from home of late. Business had been
the excuse. That evening he was hidden in a shadow when McCauley left
the brewery and hurried away. Harry followed on the opposite side of
the street and never lost sight of him. McCauley turned into Sangamon
Street, stopped in front of a flat, fumbled in his pocket for a key and
let himself in.
Harry saw a woman, with a baby in her arms, appear at an upper window
and draw down the shade. Then he saw the shadow of a man and woman
embracing silhouette on the curtain. It was his own wife and child, for
whom he had been searching until he was almost insane.
His impulse was to burst in the door and get revenge, but another
thought came and he hurried to his sister and told her of his
discovery. It made clear to her why her husband had been from home so
much of late on what he called important business. She suggested that
they go together to the Sangamon Street flat and kill them. The brother
counseled waiting until morning, when he would have them arrested and
sent to prison, a punishment that would be worse than death, he argued.
All that night, with bruised hearts and tortured minds, they cried
aloud in their misery, while William McCauley and Molly Mackin slept
peacefully, without a thought of the tragedy that was soon to come.
In the morning brother and sister went to Magistrate Prindiville and
procured warrants, hurrying on ahead of the officers, so as to be there
when the arrests were made. It was arranged that Harry should watch
in front of the flat in Sangamon Street and Mrs. McCauley return to
her home, that she might be there if her husband came. When he went
away, McCauley had promised to be back that morning. While passing a
pawnshop she saw a revolver in the window. Impulsively she went in and
bought it. The pawnbroker loaded the weapon and showed her how to use
it.
When she got home her husband was there. She told him that his perfidy
had been uncovered and he made no denial. He no longer cared for her,
he said, for he loved only Molly and he and Molly were planning to go
far away, where they could be happy and secure in each other’s love. He
would share his savings with his wife to provide for herself and the
children.
It was then I rang the doorbell.
McCauley died before she had finished telling me her story. Officers
came soon after that, sent the body to the morgue and took her to the
police station.
Before leaving the flat I ransacked the family album for photographs
of all concerned in the tragedy. Then I hurried over to the Sangamon
Street house, ahead of the officers and interviewed Molly. Harry came
while we were talking and I had to restrain him from harming her. We
all went to the courtroom, where I explained to Magistrate Prindiville
what had happened. At my request he consented to release Molly on bail
furnished by her husband.
Harry said he would “see her in hell” before he would sign her bond,
but when I suggested that it might be prudent to do what I asked,
considering that I was the only witness to the killing of McCauley, he
yielded.
I knew that no other reporter had the story and I proceeded to bottle
it up so tightly they couldn’t get it. I sent Molly away in a cab to
a place where she couldn’t be found. Harry was similarly disposed of.
Mrs. McCauley had collapsed before they got her to the police station
and was under the care of a doctor. Magistrate Prindiville told me he
was leaving the city immediately, to be gone over the holidays. There
was no one left to feed the story to other reporters except--me.
I wrote five columns that night that appeared on the front page, with
photographs of the principals and their children. No other paper
contained more than the police could tell and that was almost nothing.
At the inquest, two days later, Mrs. McCauley was too prostrated to
tell her story but I related it just as she had told it to me, giving
at the same time a description of what had happened from the time I
first entered the McCauley flat. The jury set her free without leaving
their seats. Not long afterward she and her two children were found
dead in bed. She had turned on the gas.
Molly Mackin I saw a year later on the stage of a cheap vaudeville
theatre. A magician was performing a trick he called “The Sleeping
Beauty.” The beauty I recognized as the frail and foolish Molly. I
don’t know what became of Harry.