steadfast. No one had been tried. The trials were approaching, and the
understanding was that the first of them was to be made a test. A defeat
might stop Mr. Folk, and he realized the moral effect such a result
would have. But he was sure of his cases against Murrell and Kratz, and
if he convicted them the way was open to both combines and to the big
men behind them. To all appearances these men also were confident, and
with the lawyers engaged for them they might well have been. Suddenly it
was decided that Murrell was weak, and might “cave.” He ran away. The
shock of this to the community is hard to realize now. It was the first
public proof of guilt, and the first break in the ring of little
boodlers. To Mr. Folk it was the first serious check, for he could not
now indict the House combine. Then, too, Kratz was in Florida, and the
Circuit Attorney saw himself going into court with the weakest of his
early cases, that of Meysenburg. In genuine alarm he moved heavy
increases in the bail bonds. All the lawyers in all the cases combined
to defeat this move, and the fight lasted for days; but Mr. Folk won.
Kratz returned in a rage to find bail. With his connections and his
property he could give any amount, he boasted, and he offered $100,000.
In spite of the protest of the counsel engaged for him, he insisted upon
furnishing $20,000, and he denounced the effort to discredit him with
the insinuation that such as he would avoid trial. He even asked to be
tried first, but wiser heads on his side chose the Meysenburg case.
The weakness of this case lay in the indirection of the bribe.
Meysenburg, a business man of repute, took for his vote on the Suburban
franchise, not money; he sold for $9,000 some two hundred shares of
worthless stock. This might be made to look like a regular business
transaction, and half a dozen of the best lawyers in the State appeared
to press that view. Mr. Folk, however, met these lawyers point by point,
and point by point he beat them all, displaying a knowledge of law which
astounded them, and an attitude toward the prisoner which won the jury,
and might well reform the methods of haranguing prosecutors all over
this country. Naturally without malice, he is impersonal; he did not
attack the prisoner. He was not there for that purpose. He was defending
the State, not prosecuting the individual. “The defendant is a mere
atom,” he tells his juries; “if we could enforce the law without
punishing individuals, we should not be here; but we cannot. Only by
making an example of the criminal can we prevent crime. And as to the
prisoner, he cannot complain, because his own deeds are his doomsmen.”
At one stage of the Faulkner trial, when ex-Governor Johnson was talking
about the rights of the prisoner, Mr. Folk remarked that the State had
rights also. “Oh, d—— the rights of the State!” was the retort, and the
jury heard it. Many juries have heard this view. One of the permanent
services Mr. Folk has rendered is to impress upon the minds, not only of
juries, but of the people generally, and in particular upon the Courts
of Appeal (which often forget it), that while the criminal law has been
developed into a great machine to preserve the rights, and much more, of
the criminal, the rights of the State also should be guarded.
Meysenburg was found guilty and sentenced to three years. The man was
shocked limp, and the ring broke. Kratz ran away. He was advised to go,
and, like Murrell, he had promises of plenty of money; unlike Murrell,
however, Kratz stood on the order of his going. He made the big fellows
give him a large sum of cash, and for the fulfillment of their promise
of more he waited menacingly in New Orleans. Supplied there with all he
demanded, this Council leader stepped across into Mexico, and has gone
into business there on a large scale. With Kratz safely away, the ring
was nerved up again, and Meysenburg appeared in court with five
well-known millionaires to give an appeal bond of $25,000. “I could have
got more,” he told the reporters, “but I guess that’s enough.”
With the way to both boodle combines closed thus by the flight of their
go-betweens, Mr. Folk might well have been stayed; but he wasn’t. He
proceeded with his examination of witnesses, and to loosen their tongues
he brought on the trials of Lehmann and Faulkner for perjury. They were
well defended, but against them appeared, as against Meysenburg,
President Turner, of the Suburban Railway, and Philip Stock, the brewery
secretary. The perjurers were found guilty. Meanwhile Mr. Folk was
trying through both Washington and Jefferson City to have Murrell and
Kratz brought back. These regular channels failing, he applied to his
sources of information in Murrell’s (the House) combine, and he soon
learned that the fugitive was ill, without money, and unable to
communicate with his wife or friends. Money that had been raised for him
to flee with had been taken by others, and another fund sent to him by a
fellow-boodler did not reach him. The fellow-boodler did, but he failed
to deliver the money. Murrell wanted to come home, and Mr. Folk, glad to
welcome him, let him come as far as a small town just outside of St.
Louis. There he was held till Mr. Folk could arrange a _coup_ and make
sure of a witness to corroborate what Murrell should say; for, secure in
the absence of Murrell, the whole House combine was denying everything.
One day (in September, 1902) Mr. Folk called one of them, George F.
Robertson, into his office.
They had a long talk together, and Mr. Folk asked him, as he had time
and again, to tell what he knew about the Suburban deal.
“I have told you many times, Mr. Folk,” said Robertson, “that I know
nothing about that.”
“What would you say if you should see Murrell here?” Mr. Folk asked.
“Murrell!” exclaimed Robertson. “That’s good, that is. Why, yes, I’d
like to see Murrell.”
He was laughing as Mr. Folk went to the door and called, “Murrell.”
Murrell walked in. Robertson’s smile passed. He gripped his seat, and
arose like a man lifted by an electric shock. Once on his feet, he stood
there staring as at a ghost.
“Murrell,” said Mr. Folk quietly, “the jig is up, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Murrell, “it’s all up.”
“You’ve told everything?”
“Everything.”
Robertson sank into his chair. When he had time to recover his
self-control, Mr. Folk asked him if he was ready to talk about the
Suburban deal.
“Well, I don’t see what else I can do, Mr. Folk; you’ve got me.”
Robertson told all, and, with Murrell and Turner and Stock and the rolls
of money to support him, Mr. Folk indicted for bribery or perjury, or
both, the remaining members of the House combine, sixteen men at one
swoop. Some escaped. One, Charles Kelly, a leading witness in another
case, fled to Europe with more money than anyone believed he owned, and
he returned after a high time with plenty left. A leading financier of
Missouri went away at about the same time, and when he got back, at
about the same time with Kelly, the statute of limitation in the
financier’s case covered them both.
With all his success these losses were made the most of; it was remarked
that Mr. Folk had not yet convicted a very rich man. The Snyder case was
coming up, and with it a chance to show that even the power of money was
not irresistible. Snyder, now a banker in Kansas City, did not deny or
attempt to disprove the charges of bribery; he made his defense his
claim to continuous residence in the State. Mr. Folk was not taken
unawares; he proved the bribery and he proved the non-residence too, and
the banker was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
One other trial intervened, that of Edmund Bersch of the House combine,
and he was convicted of bribery and perjury. But all interest centered
now in the trial of Edward Butler, the boss, who, the people said, would
not be indicted; who, indicted, they said, would never be tried. Now
they were saying he would never be convicted.
When Boss Tweed was tried in New York, his power was broken, his machine
smashed, his money spent, and the people were worked up to a fury
against him. The most eminent members of the New York bar prosecuted
him. The most eminent members of the St. Louis Bar were engaged to
defend Butler. He was still the boss, he had millions of his own, and
back of him were the resources, financial and political, of the leading
men of St. Louis. That the people were against him appeared in only one
sign, that of the special juries, carefully chosen to keep out men
privately known to be implicated. These juries had invariably convicted
the boodlers. Butler asked to be tried in some other town. Mr. Folk
suggested Columbia, the university town of the State of Missouri.
Columbia was chosen, and Butler’s sons went up there with their heelers
to “fix the town.” They spent money freely, and because the loafers
drank with them plentifully, the Butlerites thought they “had the town
right.” But they did not know Columbia; neither did Butler. When he
stepped off the train, he asked genially what the business of the town
was.
“Education,” was the answer.
“Education!” he blurted. “That’s a h—l of a business!” And he conducted
himself as if he did not understand what it meant. His friends having
prepared the way for a “good fellow,” Butler set about proving himself
such, and his reception in the bar-rooms and streets was so flattering
that it was predicted in his crowd that Folk would never leave Columbia
alive. But Mr. Folk understood the people better. Stanch as the leading
interests of St. Louis were against him, he always held that his
unflinching juries meant that the silent people of St. Louis were
against boodlers and out in the State he felt still surer of this. He
was right. There was no demonstration for him. He was welcomed, but in
decorous fashion; and all he saw by way of prejudice was the friendly
look out of kind eyes that went with the warm pressure of strange hands.
When the jury was drawn, every man on it proved to be a Democrat, and
three were members of the Democratic County Committee. Mr. Folk was
urged to challenge these, for, after all, Colonel Butler was at the head
of their machine. He accepted them. He might as well have objected to
the judge, John A. Hockaday, who also was a Democrat. “No, sir,” said
Mr. Folk; “I am a Democrat, and I will try Butler before a Democratic
judge and a Democratic jury.”
The trial was a scene to save out of all the hideousness before and
after it. The little old court-house headed one end of a short main
street, the university the other; farmers’ mule teams were hitched all
along between. From far and near people came to see this trial, and,
with the significance of it in mind, men halted to read over the
entrance to the court these words, chiseled long ago: “Oh, Justice, when
driven from other habitations, make this thy dwelling-place.” You could
see the appropriateness of that legend take hold of men, and in the
spirit of it they passed into the dingy courtroom. There the rows of
intent faces seemed to express that same sentiment. The jury looked, the
judge personified it. He alone was cold, but he was attentive,
deliberate, and reasonable; you were sure of his common sense; you
understood his rulings; and of his uprightness you were convinced by the
way he seemed to lean, just a little, toward the prisoner. I don’t
believe they will find any errors, however trivial, on which to reverse
John A. Hockaday.[2] Even the prosecutor was fair. It was not Edward
Butler who was on trial, it was the State; and never before did Mr. Folk
plead so earnestly for this conception of his work. Outside, in the
churches, prayer-meetings were held. These were private and
undemonstrative; the praying citizens did not tell even Mr. Folk that
they were asking their God to give him strength. Indirectly it came to
him, and, first fine sign as it was of approval from his client, the
people, it moved him deeply. And when, the plain case plainly stated, he
made his final appeal to the jury, the address was a statement of the
impersonal significance of the evidence, and of the State’s need of
patriotic service and defense. “Missouri, Missouri,” he said softly,
with simple, convincing sincerity, “I am pleading for thee, pleading for
thee.” And the jury understood. The judge was only clear and fair, but
the twelve men took his instructions out with them, and when they came
back their verdict was, “Guilty; three years.”
Footnote 2:
See _Post Scriptum_, end of chapter.
That was Missouri. What of St. Louis? Some years ago, when Butler was
young in corruption, he was caught gambling, and with the charge pending
against him St. Louis rose to challenge him. Meetings were held all over
the city—one in the Exchange downtown—to denounce the political leader,
who, an offense always, had dared commit the felony of gambling. Now,
when he was caught and convicted and sentenced for bribery, what did St.
Louis do? The first comment I heard in the streets when we all got back
that day was that “Butler would never wear the stripes.” I heard it time
and again, and you can hear it from banker and barber there to-day.
Butler himself behaved decently. He stayed indoors for a few weeks—till
a committee of citizens from the best residence section called upon him
to come forth and put through the House of Delegates a bill for the
improvement of a street in their neighborhood; and Butler had this done!
One of the first greetings to Mr. Folk was a warning from a high source
that now at length he had gone far enough, and on the heels of this came
an order from the Police Department that hereafter all communications
from him to the police should be made in writing. This meant slow
arrests; it meant that the fight was to go on. Well, Mr. Folk had meant
to go on, anyway.
“Officer,” he said to the man who brought the message, “go back to the
man who sent you, and say to him that I understand him, and that
hereafter all my communications with his department will be in the form
of _indictments_.”
That department retreated in haste, explaining and apologizing, and
offering all possible facilities. Mr. Folk went on with his business. He
put on trial Henry Nicolaus, the brewer, accused of bribery. Mr.
Nicolaus pleaded that he did not know what was to be the use of a note
for $140,000 which he had endorsed. And on this the judge took the case
away from the jury and directed a verdict of not guilty. It was the
first case Mr. Folk had lost. He won the next eight, all boodle
legislators, making his record fourteen against one. But the Supreme
Court, technical and slow, is the last stand for such criminals, and
they won their first fight there.[3] The Meysenburg case was sent back
for retrial.
Footnote 3:
See _Post Scriptum_, end of chapter.
Mr. Folk has work ahead of him for the two years remaining of his term,
and he is the man to carry it all through. But where is it all to end?
There are more men to be indicted, many more to be tried, and there is
much more corruption to be disclosed. But the people of St. Louis know
enough. What are they going to do about it?
They have had one opportunity already to act. In November (1902), just
before the Butler verdict, but after the trial was begun, there was an
election. Some of the offices to be filled might have to do with
boodling cases. Mr. Folk and boodling were the natural issue, but the
politicians avoided it. Neither party “claimed” Mr. Folk. Both parties
took counsel of Butler in making up their tickets, and they satisfied
him. The Democrats did not mention Folk’s name in the platform, and they
nominated Butler’s son for the seat in Congress from which he had
repeatedly been ousted for fraud at the polls.
“Why?” I asked a Democratic leader, who said he controlled all but four
districts in his organization.
“Because I needed those Butler districts,” he answered.
“But isn’t there enough anti-boodling sentiment in this town to offset
those districts?”
“I don’t think so.”
Perhaps he was right. And yet those juries and those prayers must mean
something.
Mr. Folk says, “Ninety-nine per cent. of the people are honest; only one
per cent. is dishonest. But the one per cent. is perniciously active.”
In other words, the people are sound, but without leaders. Another
official, of irreproachable character himself, said that the trouble was
there was “no one fit to throw the first stone.”
However, this may be, here are the facts:
In the midst of all these sensations, and this obvious, obstinate
political rottenness, the innocent citizens, who must be at least a
decisive minority, did not register last fall. Butler, the papers said,
had great furniture vans going about with men who were said to be
repeaters, and yet the registration was the lowest in many years. When
the Butlerized tickets were announced, there was no audible protest. It
was the time for an independent movement. A third ticket might not have
won, but it would have shown the politicians (whether they counted them
in or out) how many honest votes there were in the city, and what they
would have to reckon with in the force of public sentiment. Nothing of
the sort was done. St. Louis, rich, dirty, and despoiled, was busy with
business.
Another opportunity is coming soon. In April the city votes for
municipal legislators, and since the municipal assembly has been the
scene of most of the corruption, you would think boodling would surely
be an issue then. I doubt it. When I was there in January (1903), the
politicians were planning to keep it out, and their ingenious scheme was
to combine on one ticket; that is to say, each group of leaders would
name half the nominees, who were to be put on identical tickets, making
no contest at all. And to avoid suspicion, these nominations were to be
exceptionally, yes, “remarkably good.”[4]
Footnote 4:
See _Post Scriptum_, end of chapter.
That is the old Butler non-partisan or bi-partisan system. It emanates
now from the rich men back of the ring, but it means that the ring is
intact, alert, and hopeful. They are “playing for time.” The convicts
sitting in the municipal assembly, the convicts appealing to the higher
courts, the rich men abroad, the bankers down town—all are waiting for
something. What are they waiting for?
Charles Kratz, the ex-president of the Council, head and go-between of
the Council combine, the fugitive from justice, who, by his flight,
blocks the way to the exposure and conviction of the rich and
influential men who are holding the people of Missouri in check and
keeping boodling from going before the people as a political issue, this
criminal exile, thus backed, was asked this question in Mexico, and here
is the answer he returned:
“I am waiting for Joe Folk’s term to expire. Then I am going home to run
for Governor of Missouri and vindication.”
* * * * *
_Post Scriptum_, December, 1904.—The tickets were not “remarkably good.”
“Boodle” was not in the platform, nor “reform.” The bi-partisan
boodlers, with reformers and “respectable” business men for backers,
faced it out, and Boss Butler reorganized the new House of Delegates
with his man for Speaker and the superintendent of his garbage plant (in
the interest of which he offered the bribes for which he was convicted)
for chairman of the Sanitary Committee.
And the Supreme Court of Missouri reversed his case and all the other
boodle cases one by one, then by wholesale. The whole machinery of
justice broke down under the strain of boodle pull.
Meanwhile, however, Mr. Folk uncovered corruption in the State and,
announcing himself a candidate for Governor, has appealed from the Court
to the People, from the City of St. Louis to the State of Missouri.
PITTSBURG: A CITY ASHAMED
(_May, 1903_)
Minneapolis was an example of police corruption; St. Louis of financial
corruption. Pittsburg is an example of both police and financial
corruption. The two other cities have found each an official who has
exposed them. Pittsburg has had no such man and no exposure. The city
has been described physically as “Hell with the lid off”; politically it
is hell with the lid on. I am not going to lift the lid. The exposition
of what the people know and stand is the purpose of these articles, not
the exposure of corruption, and the exposure of Pittsburg is not
necessary. There are earnest men in the town who declare it must blow up
of itself soon. I doubt that; but even if it does burst, the people of
Pittsburg will learn little more than they know now. It is not ignorance
that keeps American citizens subservient; neither is it indifference.
The Pittsburgers know, and a strong minority of them care; they have
risen against their ring and beaten it, only to look about and find
another ring around them. Angry and ashamed, Pittsburg is a type of the
city that has tried to be free and failed.
A sturdy city it is, too, the second in Pennsylvania. Two rivers flow
past it to make a third, the Ohio, in front, and all around and beneath
it are natural gas and coal which feed a thousand furnaces that smoke
all day and flame all night to make Pittsburg the Birmingham of America.
Rich in natural resources, it is richest in the quality of its
population. Six days and six nights these people labor, molding iron and
forging steel, and they are not tired; on the seventh day they rest,
because that is the Sabbath. They are Scotch Presbyterians and
Protestant Irish. This stock had an actual majority not many years ago,
and now, though the population has grown to 354,000 in Pittsburg proper
(counting Allegheny across the river, 130,000, and other communities,
politically separate, but essentially integral parts of the proposed
Greater Pittsburg, the total is 750,000), the Scotch and Scotch-Irish
still predominate, and their clean, strong faces characterize the crowds
in the streets. Canny, busy, and brave, they built up their city almost
in secret, making millions and hardly mentioning it. Not till outsiders
came in to buy some of them out did the world (and Pittsburg and some of
the millionaires in it) discover that the Iron City had been making not
only steel and glass, but multimillionaires. A banker told a business
man as a secret one day about three years ago that within six months a
“bunch of about a hundred new millionaires would be born in Pittsburg,”
and the births happened on time. And more beside. But even the bloom of
millions did not hurt the city. Pittsburg is an unpretentious,
prosperous city of tremendous industry and healthy, steady men.
Superior as it is in some other respects, however, Scotch-Irish
Pittsburg, politically, is no better than Irish New York or Scandinavian
Minneapolis, and little better than German St. Louis. These people, like
any other strain of the free American, have despoiled the
government—despoiled it, let it be despoiled, and bowed to the
despoiling boss. There is nothing in the un-American excuse that this or
that foreign nationality has prostituted “our great and glorious
institutions.” We all do it, all breeds alike. And there is nothing in
the complaint that the lower elements of our city populations are the
source of our disgrace. In St. Louis corruption came from the top, in
Minneapolis from the bottom. In Pittsburg it comes from both
extremities, but it began above.
The railroads began the corruption of this city. There “always was some
dishonesty,” as the oldest public men I talked with said, but it was
occasional and criminal till the first great corporation made it
businesslike and respectable. The municipality issued bonds to help the
infant railroads to develop the city, and, as in so many American
cities, the roads repudiated the debt and interest, and went into
politics. The Pennsylvania Railroad was in the system from the start,
and, as the other roads came in and found the city government bought up
by those before them, they purchased their rights of way by outbribing
the older roads, then joined the ring to acquire more rights for
themselves and to keep belated rivals out. As corporations multiplied
and capital branched out corruption increased naturally, but the notable
characteristic of the “Pittsburg plan” of misgovernment was that it was
not a haphazard growth, but a deliberate, intelligent organization. It
was conceived in one mind, built up by one will, and this master spirit
ruled, not like Croker in New York, a solid majority; nor like Butler in
St. Louis, a bi-partisan minority; but the whole town—financial,
commercial, and political. The boss of Pittsburg was Christopher L.
Magee, a great man, and when he died he was regarded by many of the
strongest men in Pittsburg as their leading citizen.
“Chris,” as he was called, was a charming character. I have seen
Pittsburgers grow black in the face denouncing his ring, but when I
asked, “What kind of a man was Magee?” they would cool and say, “Chris?
Chris was one of the best men God ever made.” If I smiled, they would
say, “That is all right. You smile, and you can go ahead and show up the
ring. You may describe this town as the worst in the country. But you
get Magee wrong and you’ll have all Pittsburg up in arms.” Then they
would tell me that “Magee robbed the town,” or, perhaps, they would
speak of the fund raising to erect a monument to the dead boss.