strict laws. They were the loafers, saloon keepers, gamblers, criminals,
and the thriftless poor of all nationalities. Resenting the sobriety of
a staid, industrious community, and having no Irish to boss them, they
delighted to follow the jovial pioneer doctor, Albert Alonzo Ames. He
was the “good fellow”—a genial, generous reprobate. Devery, Tweed, and
many more have exposed in vain this amiable type. “Doc” Ames, tall,
straight, and cheerful, attracted men, and they gave him votes for his
smiles. He stood for license. There was nothing of the Puritan about
him. His father, the sturdy old pioneer, Dr. Alfred Elisha Ames, had a
strong strain of it in him, but he moved on with his family of six sons
from Garden Prairie, Ill., to Fort Snelling reservation, in 1851, before
Minneapolis was founded, and young Albert Alonzo, who then was ten years
old, grew up free, easy, and tolerant. He was sent to school, then to
college in Chicago, and he returned home a doctor of medicine before he
was twenty-one. As the town waxed soberer and richer, “Doc” grew gayer
and more and more generous. Skillful as a surgeon, devoted as a
physician, and as a man kindly, he increased his practice till he was
the best-loved man in the community. He was especially good to the poor.
Anybody could summon “Doc” Ames at any hour to any distance. He went,
and he gave not only his professional service, but sympathy, and often
charity. “Richer men than you will pay your bill,” he told the
destitute. So there was a basis for his “good-fellowship.” There always
is; these good fellows are not frauds—not in the beginning.
But there is another side to them sometimes. Ames was sunshine not to
the sick and destitute only. To the vicious and the depraved also he was
a comfort. If a man was a hard drinker, the good Doctor cheered him with
another drink; if he had stolen something, the Doctor helped to get him
off. He was naturally vain; popularity developed his love of
approbation. His loose life brought disapproval only from the good
people, so gradually the Doctor came to enjoy best the society of the
barroom and the streets. This society, flattered in turn, worshiped the
good Doctor, and, active in politics always, put its physician into the
arena.
Had he been wise or even shrewd, he might have made himself a real
power. But he wasn’t calculating, only light and frivolous, so he did
not organize his forces and run men for office. He sought office himself
from the start, and he got most of the small places he wanted by
changing his party to seize the opportunity. His floating minority,
added to the regular partisan vote, was sufficient ordinarily for his
useless victories. As time went on he rose from smaller offices to be a
Republican mayor, then twice at intervals to be a Democratic mayor. He
was a candidate once for Congress; he stood for governor once on a sort
of Populist-Democrat ticket. Ames could not get anything outside of his
own town, however, and after his third term as mayor it was thought he
was out of politics altogether. He was getting old, and he was getting
worse.
Like many a “good fellow” with hosts of miscellaneous friends downtown
to whom he was devoted, the good Doctor neglected his own family. From
neglect he went on openly to separation from his wife and a second
establishment. The climax came not long before the election of 1900. His
wife died. The family would not have the father at the funeral, but he
appeared,—not at the house, but in a carriage on the street. He sat
across the way, with his feet up and a cigar in his mouth, till the
funeral moved; then he circled around, crossing it and meeting it, and
making altogether a scene which might well close any man’s career.
It didn’t end his. The people had just secured the passage of a new
primary law to establish direct popular government. There were to be no
more nominations by convention. The voters were to ballot for their
party candidates. By a slip of some sort, the laws did not specify that
Republicans only should vote for Republican candidates, and only
Democrats for Democratic candidates. Any voter could vote at either
primary. Ames, in disrepute with his own party, the Democratic, bade his
followers vote for his nomination for mayor on the Republican ticket.
They all voted; not all the Republicans did. He was nominated.
Nomination is far from election, and you would say that the trick would
not help him. But that was a Presidential year, so the people of
Minneapolis had to vote for Ames, the Republican candidate for mayor.
Besides, Ames said he was going to reform; that he was getting old, and
wanted to close his career with a good administration. The effective
argument, however, was that, since McKinley had to be elected to save
the country, Ames must be supported for mayor of Minneapolis. Why? The
great American people cannot be trusted to scratch a ticket.
Well, Minneapolis got its old mayor back, and he was indeed “reformed.”
Up to this time Ames had not been very venal personally. He was a
“spender,” not a “grafter,” and he was guilty of corruption chiefly by
proxy; he took the honors and left the spoils to his followers. His
administrations were no worse than the worst. Now, however, he set out
upon a career of corruption which for deliberateness, invention, and
avarice has never been equaled. It was as if he had made up his mind
that he had been careless long enough, and meant to enrich his last
years. He began promptly.
Immediately upon his election, before he took office (on January 7,
1901), he organized a cabinet and laid plans to turn the city over to
outlaws who were to work under police direction for the profit of his
administration. He chose for chief his brother, Colonel Fred W. Ames,
who had recently returned under a cloud from service in the Philippines.
But he was a weak vessel for chief of police, and the mayor picked for
chief of detectives an abler man, who was to direct the more difficult
operations. This was Norman W. King, a former gambler, who knew the
criminals needed in the business ahead. King was to invite to
Minneapolis thieves, confidence men, pickpockets and gamblers, and
release some that were in the local jail. They were to be organized into
groups, according to their profession, and detectives were assigned to
assist and direct them. The head of the gambling syndicate was to have
charge of the gambling, making the terms and collecting the “graft,”
just as King and a Captain Hill were to collect from the thieves. The
collector for women of the town was to be Irwin A. Gardner, a medical
student in the Doctor’s office, who was made a special policeman for the
purpose. These men looked over the force, selected those men who could
be trusted, charged them a price for their retention, and marked for
dismissal 107 men out of 225, the 107 being the best policemen in the
department from the point of view of the citizens who afterward
reorganized the force. John Fitchette, better known as “Coffee John,” a
Virginian (who served on the Jefferson Davis jury), the keeper of a
notorious coffee-house, was to be a captain of police, with no duties
except to sell places on the police force.
And they did these things that they planned—all and more. The
administration opened with the revolution on the police force. The
thieves in the local jail were liberated, and it was made known to the
Under World generally that “things were doing” in Minneapolis. The
incoming swindlers reported to King or his staff for instructions, and
went to work, turning the “swag” over to the detectives in charge.
Gambling went on openly, and disorderly houses multiplied under the
fostering care of Gardner, the medical student. But all this was not
enough. Ames dared to break openly into the municipal system of vice
protection.
There was such a thing. Minneapolis, strict in its laws, forbade vices
which are inevitable, then regularly permitted them under certain
conditions. Legal limits, called “patrol lines,” were prescribed, within
which saloons might be opened. These ran along the river front, out
through part of the business section, with long arms reaching into the
Scandinavian quarters, north and south. Gambling also was confined, but
more narrowly. And there were limits, also arbitrary, but not always
identical with those for gambling, within which the social evil was
allowed. But the novel feature of this scheme was that disorderly houses
were practically licensed by the city, the women appearing before the
clerk of the Municipal Court each month to pay a “fine” of $100. Unable
at first to get this “graft,” Ames’s man Gardner persuaded women to
start houses, apartments, and, of all things, candy stores, which sold
sweets to children and tobacco to the “lumber Jacks” in front, while a
nefarious traffic was carried on in the rear. But they paid Ames, not
the city, and that was all this “reform” administration cared about.
The revenue from all these sources must have been large. It only whetted
the avarice of the mayor and his Cabinet. They let gambling privileges
without restriction as to location or “squareness”; the syndicate could
cheat and rob as it would. Peddlers and pawnbrokers, formerly licensed
by the city, bought permits now instead from the mayor’s agent in this
field. Some two hundred slot machines were installed in various parts of
the town, with owner’s agent and mayor’s agent watching and collecting
from them enough to pay the mayor $15,000 a year as his share. Auction
frauds were instituted. Opium joints and unlicensed saloons, called
“blind pigs,” were protected. Gardner even had a police baseball team,
for whose games tickets were sold to people who had to buy them. But the
women were the easiest “graft.” They were compelled to buy illustrated
biographies of the city officials; they had to give presents of money,
jewelry, and gold stars to police officers. But the money they still
paid direct to the city in fines, some $35,000 a year, fretted the
mayor, and at last he reached for it. He came out with a declaration, in
his old character as friend of the oppressed, that $100 a month was too
much for these women to pay. They should be required to pay the city
fine only once in two months. This puzzled the town till it became
generally known that Gardner collected the other month for the mayor.
The final outrage in this department, however, was an order of the mayor
for the periodic visits to disorderly houses, by the city’s physicians,
at from $5 to $20 per visit. The two physicians he appointed called when
they willed, and more and more frequently, till toward the end the calls
became a pure formality, with the collections as the one and only
object.
[Illustration:
FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF “THE BIG MITT LEDGER”
]
In a general way all this business was known. It did not arouse the
citizens, but it did attract criminals, and more and more thieves and
swindlers came hurrying to Minneapolis. Some of them saw the police, and
made terms. Some were seen by the police and invited to go to work.
There was room for all. This astonishing fact that the government of a
city asked criminals to rob the people is fully established. The police
and the criminals confessed it separately. Their statements agree in
detail. Detective Norbeck made the arrangements, and introduced the
swindlers to Gardner, who, over King’s head, took the money from them.
Here is the story “Billy” Edwards, a “big mitt” man, told under oath of
his reception in Minneapolis:
[Illustration:
PAGE FROM “THE BIG MITT LEDGER”
This shows an item concerning the check for $775, which
the “sucker” Meix (here spelled Mix) wished not to have
honored.
]
“I had been out to the Coast, and hadn’t seen Norbeck for some time.
After I returned I boarded a Minneapolis car one evening to go down to
South Minneapolis to visit a friend. Norbeck and Detective DeLaittre
were on the car. When Norbeck saw me he came up and shook hands, and
said, ‘Hullo, Billy, how goes it?’ I said, ‘Not very well.’ Then he
says, ‘Things have changed since you went away. Me and Gardner are the
whole thing now. Before you left they thought I didn’t know anything,
but I turned a few tricks, and now I’m It.’ ‘I’m glad of that, Chris,’ I
said. He says, ‘I’ve got great things for you. I’m going to fix up a
joint for you.’ ‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe you can do
it.’ ‘Oh, yes, I can,’ he replied. ‘I’m It now—Gardner and me.’ ‘Well,
if you can do it,’ says I, ‘there’s money in it.’ ‘How much can you
pay?’ he asked. ‘Oh, $150 or $200 a week,’ says I. ‘That settles it,’ he
said; ‘I’ll take you down to see Gardner, and we’ll fix it up.’ Then he
made an appointment to meet me the next night, and we went down to
Gardner’s house together.”
There Gardner talked business in general, showed his drawer full of
bills, and jokingly asked how Edwards would like to have them. Edwards
says:
“I said, ‘That looks pretty good to me,’ and Gardner told us that he had
‘collected’ the money from the women he had on his staff, and that he
was going to pay it over to the ‘old man’ when he got back from his
hunting trip next morning. Afterward he told me that the mayor had been
much pleased with our $500, and that he said everything was all right,
and for us to go ahead.”
[Illustration:
PAGE FROM “THE BIG MITT LEDGER”
This shows the accounts for a week of small transactions.
]
“Link” Crossman, another confidence man who was with Edwards, said that
Gardner demanded $1,000 at first, but compromised on $500 for the mayor,
$50 for Gardner, and $50 for Norbeck. To the chief, Fred Ames, they gave
tips now and then of $25 or $50. “The first week we ran,” said Crossman,
“I gave Fred $15. Norbeck took me down there. We shook hands, and I
handed him an envelope with $15. He pulled out a list of steerers we had
sent him, and said he wanted to go over them with me. He asked where the
joint was located. At another time I slipped $25 into his hand as he was
standing in the hallway of City Hall.” But these smaller payments, after
the first “opening, $500,” are all down on the pages of the “big mitt”
ledger, photographs of which illuminate this article. This notorious
book, which was kept by Charlie Howard, one of the “big mitt” men, was
much talked of at the subsequent trials, but was kept hidden to await
the trial of the mayor himself.
The “big mitt” game was swindling by means of a stacked hand at stud
poker. “Steerers” and “boosters” met “suckers” on the street, at hotels,
and railway stations, won their confidence, and led them to the “joint.”
Usually the “sucker” was called, by the amount of his loss, “the
$102-man” or “the $35-man.” Roman Meix alone had the distinction among
all the Minneapolis victims of going by his own name. Having lost $775,
he became known for his persistent complainings. But they all “kicked”
some. To Detective Norbeck at the street door was assigned the duty of
hearing their complaints, and “throwing a scare into them.” “Oh, so
you’ve been gambling,” he would say. “Have you got a license? Well,
then, you better get right out of this town.” Sometimes he accompanied
them to the station and saw them off. If they were not to be put off
thus, he directed them to the chief of police. Fred Ames tried to wear
them out by keeping them waiting in the anteroom. If they outlasted him,
he saw them and frightened them with threats of all sorts of trouble for
gambling without a license. Meix wanted to have payment on his check
stopped. Ames, who had been a bank clerk, told him of his banking
experience, and then had the effrontery to say that payment on such a
check could not be stopped.
Burglaries were common. How many the police planned may never be known.
Charles F. Brackett and Fred Malone, police captains and detectives,
were active, and one well-established crime of theirs is the robbery of
the Pabst Brewing Company office. They persuaded two men, one an
employee, to learn the combination of the safe, open and clean it out
one night, while the two officers stood guard outside.
The excesses of the municipal administration became so notorious that
some of the members of it remonstrated with the others, and certain
county officers were genuinely alarmed. No restraint followed their
warnings. Sheriff Megaarden, no Puritan himself, felt constrained to
interfere, and he made some arrests of gamblers. The Ames people turned
upon him in a fury; they accused him of making overcharges in his
accounts with the county for fees, and, laying the evidence before
Governor Van Sant, they had Megaarden removed from office. Ames offered
bribes to two county commissioners to appoint Gardner sheriff, so as to
be sure of no more trouble in that quarter. This move failed, but the
lesson taught Megaarden served to clear the atmosphere, and the
spoliation went on as recklessly as ever. It became impossible.
Even lawlessness must be regulated. Dr. Ames, never an organizer,
attempted no control, and his followers began to quarrel among
themselves. They deceived one another; they robbed the thieves; they
robbed Ames himself. His brother became dissatisfied with his share of
the spoils, and formed cabals with captains who plotted against the
administration and set up disorderly houses, “panel games,” and all
sorts of “grafts” of their own.
The one man loyal to the mayor was Gardner; and Fred Ames, Captain King,
and their pals plotted the fall of the favorite. Now anybody could get
anything from the Doctor, if he could have him alone. The Fred Ames
clique chose a time when the mayor was at West Baden; they filled him
with suspicion of Gardner and the fear of exposure, and induced him to
let a creature named “Reddy” Cohen, instead of Gardner, do the
collecting, and pay over all the moneys, not directly, but through Fred.
Gardner made a touching appeal. “I have been honest. I have paid you
all,” he said to the mayor. “Fred and the rest will rob you.” This was
true, but it was of no avail.
Fred Ames was in charge at last, and he himself went about giving notice
of the change. Three detectives were with him when he visited the women,
and here is the women’s story, in the words of one, as it was told again
and again in court: “Colonel Ames came in with the detectives. He
stepped into a side room and asked me if I had been paying Gardner. I
told him I had, and he told me not to pay no more, but to come to his
office later, and he would let me know what to do. I went to the City
Hall in about three weeks, after Cohen had called and said he was ‘the
party.’ I asked the chief if it was all right to pay Cohen, and he said
it was.”
The new arrangement did not work so smoothly as the old. Cohen was an
oppressive collector, and Fred Ames, appealed to, was weak and lenient.
He had no sure hold on the force. His captains, free of Gardner, were
undermining the chief. They increased their private operations. Some of
the detectives began to drink hard and neglect their work. Norbeck so
worried the “big mitt” men by staying away from the joint, that they
complained to Fred about him. The chief rebuked Norbeck, and he promised
to “do better,” but thereafter he was paid, not by the week, but by
piece work—so much for each “trimmed sucker” that he ran out of town.
Protected swindlers were arrested for operating in the street by “Coffee
John’s” new policemen, who took the places of the negligent detectives.
Fred let the indignant prisoners go when they were brought before him,
but the arrests were annoying, inconvenient, and disturbed business. The
whole system became so demoralized that every man was for himself. There
was not left even the traditional honor among thieves.
It was at this juncture, in April, 1902, that the grand jury for the
summer term was drawn. An ordinary body of unselected citizens, it
received no special instructions from the bench; the county prosecutor
offered it only routine work to do. But there was a man among them who
was a fighter—the foreman, Hovey C. Clarke. He was of an old New England
family. Coming to Minneapolis when a young man, seventeen years before,
he had fought for employment, fought with his employers for position,
fought with his employees, the lumber Jacks, for command, fought for his
company against competitors; and he had won always, till now he had the
habit of command, the impatient, imperious manner of the master, and the
assurance of success which begets it. He did not want to be a grand
juryman, he did not want to be a foreman; but since he was both, he
wanted to accomplish something.
Why not rip up the Ames gang? Heads shook, hands went up; it was useless
to try. The discouragement fired Clarke. That was just what he would do,
he said, and he took stock of his jury. Two or three were men with
backbone; that he knew, and he quickly had them with him. The rest were
all sorts of men. Mr. Clarke won over each man to himself, and
interested them all. Then he called for the county prosecutor. The
prosecutor was a politician; he knew the Ames crowd; they were too
powerful to attack.
“You are excused,” said the foreman.
There was a scene; the prosecutor knew his rights.
“Do you think, Mr. Clarke,” he cried, “that you can run the grand jury
and my office, too?”
“Yes,” said Clarke, “I will run your office if I want to; and I want to.
You’re excused.”
Mr. Clarke does not talk much about his doings that summer; he isn’t the
talking sort. But he does say that all he did was to apply simple
business methods to his problem. In action, however, these turned out to
be the most approved police methods. He hired a lot of local detectives
who, he knew, would talk about what they were doing, and thus would be
watched by the police. Having thus thrown a false scent, he hired some
other detectives whom nobody knew about. This was expensive; so were
many of the other things he did; but he was bound to win, so he paid the
price, drawing freely on his own and his colleagues’ pockets. (The total
cost to the county for a long summer’s work by this grand jury was
$259.) With his detectives out, he himself went to the jail to get tips
from the inside, from criminals who, being there, must have grievances.
He made the acquaintance of the jailer, Captain Alexander, and Alexander
was a friend of Sheriff Megaarden. Yes, he had some men there who were
“sore” and might want to get even.
Now two of these were “big mitt” men who had worked for Gardner. One was
“Billy” Edwards, the other “Cheerful Charlie” Howard. I heard too many
explanations of their plight to choose any one; this general account
will cover the ground: In the Ames mêlée, either by mistake, neglect, or
for spite growing out of the network of conflicting interests and gangs,
they were arrested and arraigned, not before Fred Ames, but before a
judge, and held in bail too high for them to furnish. They had paid for
an unexpired period of protection, yet could get neither protection nor
bail. They were forgotten. “We got the double cross all right,” they
said, and they bled with their grievance; but squeal, no, sir!—that was
“another deal.”