Chapter III: Preface (3)

After sending the above message, I borrowed a copy of the revised statutes of Canada from the Crown Counsel, who would be called prosecuting attorney in the United States. He marked each section of the statutes which pertained to our case. I at once put the law book in my grip, and started for St. Louis, arriving there the following morning.

I immediately reported to Vice-President Hoxie, whom I found in his office. After the usual greeting Mr. Hoxie said to me, "Tom, Gov. Brown showed me a message that he had received from you yesterday. He appeared to be quite angry."

To which I replied, "I am here to explain my actions fully, and I wish you would kindly request Gov. Brown to come to your office at his convenience, as I think my explanation should be made to him in your presence so that one explanation may serve both. My time is limited, as I must go to Texas and procure certain witnesses and return with them to Chatham, Ontario, within two weeks, the time set for the hearing."

Whereupon, Mr. Hoxie sent for Gov. Brown, who appeared in a few moments. After the usual salutation, I repeated the instructions I received from him. I then stated that I had found it impossible for me to have carried out the instructions in Canada without subjecting myself to prosecution, and probably a sentence to the penitentiary, and I, therefore, concluded to do the next best thing, which was to employ a competent attorney, who advised me as to my rights and how to proceed legally under the laws of that country. I then produced the copy of the statutes, which I had borrowed from the crown counsel, and directed Gov. Brown's attention to the marked sections before mentioned, which he carefully read. After he had finished I produced and read the telegram I had received from him, at the same time calling his attention to the question he had asked me to answer in his message.

He then compared his message with the one he had received from me in dignified silence, and then without a word handed the two messages to Mr. Hoxie, near whose chair he was standing. Mr. Hoxie read them and then looked up at the Governor and said, "Governor, what do you think of this matter?"

For answer Gov. Brown deliberately walked around the table to where I was sitting and extended his hand to me, and I arose and took it. He turned to Mr. Hoxie and said in a pleasant manner, "Furlong was right all the way through." Then turning to me he said, "Furlong, you ought to have been a lawyer. I was a little angry when I received your message yesterday, but I see that it was all right, as you only answered the questions I had asked you."

I left St. Louis for Dallas that night, and while there I arranged with the Chief of Police, Jim Arnold, and other well-known citizens, to accompany me to Chatham, Ontario, as witnesses in the case pending against No. 2. These witnesses had all known No. 2 for years, and were familiar with his reputation as to truth and veracity, his business connections, etc. The witnesses and myself arrived in Chatham in time for the hearing of No. 2.

The judge, after hearing the evidence, committed No. 2 to jail without bail to await extradition papers from the President of the United States and the Governor General of Canada. No. 2 was defended in the hearing by two noted barristers, who at once appealed to a higher court. In due time the appeal was argued and the action of the lower court sustained; whereupon No. 2's counsel had the case taken up to the Privy Court at Toronto. This court affirmed the action of the lower courts, and it being the highest tribunal in Canada its decision was final and No. 2 was committed without bail for extradition.

I immediately left Toronto for Washington, D. C., having already received the necessary papers from the state of Texas. I presented these to the Department of Justice in Washington, on the evening of my arrival there, and they were promptly approved and sent to President Cleveland for his signature. By the way, these papers were the first of their kind ever signed by President Cleveland, it being but four days after his inauguration for his first term as President of the United States. The papers were delivered to me and I left for Chatham, Ontario, for the purpose of taking No. 2 back to Dallas, Texas, for trial and bearing the commission of President Cleveland to do so.

The following day the train on which I was riding stopped twenty minutes at Canandaigua, New York, for dinner. As I was eating my dinner a messenger boy called out my name at the dining room door. I answered and he handed me a telegram, which was from the high sheriff of Chatham, and read as follows:

"When my jailor went to the cell occupied by No. 2 at twelve o'clock to day he found him dead. Had apparently been dead an hour. Cause of death yet unknown. Probably heart failure."

I wired him that I would be in Chatham on the following morning. On my arrival there a post-mortem autopsy was made of the body of No. 2, and it developed that he had committed suicide by taking laudanum. The sheriff and the jailor have never been able to satisfy themselves as to how No. 2 got possession of the poison. He had friends and relatives who lived at Jackson, Michigan, who called at Chatham and identified the body, and took it to Jackson for burial.

I then returned to Dallas, Texas, so as to be present at the trial of No. 1 and No. 4, they being the only two of the swindlers left for trial.

When I had first arrested the swindlers and placed them in jail at Dallas, the Prosecuting Attorney called me to his office and told me that the defendants had employed a number of the most able attorneys at that bar to defend them, and he said that he thought that the railroad company ought to permit him to select an attorney to assist him in the prosecution of the defendants. I told him that I had no doubt but that General Solicitor Brown would do so if he would make the request of him.

He replied that as I was going direct to St. Louis that he wished me to make the request for him, which I did. When I delivered his request to Gov. Brown, he replied that Capt. Tom Brown, of Sherman, Texas, was the railroad company's attorney in that district, an able lawyer, and he would be glad to instruct him to assist the Prosecuting Attorney in every way that he could, or, he would furnish him any other of the company's attorneys in Texas, should he believe their assistance necessary, and that he would take it up with the Prosecuting Attorney at Dallas and make all the necessary arrangements.

I communicated these facts to the Prosecuting Attorney. Later Gov. Brown informed me that he (the prosecuting attorney) had selected a lawyer to assist him who was not in any way connected with the railroad service, and that he had suggested that this assistant should be paid a fee of five or six thousand dollars by the railroad company for his services. Gov. Brown further stated that the attorney selected for an assistant was not looked upon with favor by either himself or any of his assistants. Some of the assistants connected with the legal department of the railroad company, under General Solicitor Brown, refused to associate themselves with the cases if the man selected by the Prosecuting Attorney was connected in any way with them. His services were refused and Capt. Tom Brown went to Dallas for the purpose of assisting in the prosecution of the two remaining accused swindlers.

I had turned the duplicate bills of lading over to Capt. Brown and on the morning of the trial of No. 1 and No. 4, he placed these papers in his overcoat pocket with other documentary evidence. He was a little late and hastened into the dining room, leaving his coat and hat on a rack in the corridor of the hotel. When he finished his breakfast and returned to his overcoat he discovered the papers had been stolen. When the cases were called into court, the prosecuting attorney asked that a nolle prosequi be entered in the cases, thus letting two of the principals in the swindle go free.

Thus ended the cotton swindle, the most gigantic swindle of this kind that had ever taken place in the United States, or, I believe, in any other country up to that time.

Capt. Tom Brown was afterwards elected as Judge of the Supreme Bench of Texas, and was always esteemed as an able jurist and a thorough gentleman.

A REMARKABLE CASE.

IDENTIFICATION OF A LITTLE GIRL FROM A DESCRIPTION GIVEN OF HER FATHER, LEADS TO THE LATTER'S ARREST.

Identification of criminals from descriptions is not always an easy task, for two reasons. First, there are but few men who can intelligently describe a person from memory. This is an art within itself. The second reason is, it takes so little to change the general appearance of a man to such a degree that it is hard to pick him up from a mere description, that is, unless the man wanted has some peculiar feature or form that is very noticeable. The ordinary man, to change his general appearance, has to do but little. A change of shape or style of hat or clothing, the cutting off or growing of a mustache, or even a haircut or shave will often serve the purpose. I have never claimed to have what is today called "a camera eye" but I did a piece of identification work while special agent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad in the early '70s of which I have always been proud, for the reason that there has absolutely never been another case like it in the police annals of the entire country.

During the spring 1874, a man giving the name of Joseph Chalfont applied to Mr. Thomas M. King, the Division Superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, at Pittsburg, Pa., for a situation as locomotive engineer. This man, Chalfont, was a rather remarkable person, appearing to be about thirty-six years of age. He stood more than six feet in height, with extremely long arms and legs. His complexion was dark and sallow, and his hair coarse and black. His neck was very long, with a noticeable "Adam's Apple." His cheek-bones were high, and his nose straight and long. His eyes were beady and black, being set far back in his head and very close together; they were crowned with a bushy pair of eyebrows, which met above the ridge of his nose. Then to make the picture more complete, his forehead was low, giving his head a small, bullet-like appearance. The reader can see that a description of this man, if given accurately and with any care could be almost as good as a photograph.

Chalfont presented a letter of recommendation from the Master Mechanic of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Ry., at Buffalo, N. Y. The letter was very good, and stated that Chalfont had been in the employ of that company for a couple of years, and that he had left its service of his own accord, because he hoped to benefit himself by a change of climate. Supt. King was a close observer, and a good judge of human nature. He was badly in need of men at the time, and being rather impressed with Chalfont's appearance and manner, he examined him as to the rules governing the movement of trains. He stood a fair examination and was engaged. It is usual for an engineer who has not been promoted on a road, or who comes from another road, to spend several weeks in riding on the engines back and forth over the portion of the road on which he is expected to run. In this way a man could become familiar with all the grades, switches, side-tracks, curves, signals and so forth. Chalfont was given a copy of the company's rules and an order to learn the road. When he had done this he was given freight engine No. 42 to haul freight between South Oil City and Pittsburg. One day he was given a train of empty oil tanks at Pittsburg, and started for South Oil City with them. He arrived there in due time and turned the cars in safely. The following evening he was given a train of forty-five full oil tanks with orders to take them to Pittsburg. When he reached Sarah's Furnace, about half the distance to Pittsburg, he received orders to run upon the side-track there and allow a north-bound freight to pass him. He took the siding as he had been ordered, and in due time the first section of the freight met and passed him there. The engine on this section carried two red lights, which is the warning to railroad men that another section is following the first one, and it has the same roadway privileges as the first section. It therefore became the duty of Chalfont to remain upon the siding until the second section had passed him. Instead of doing this, however, Chalfont pulled out on the main line and started for Pittsburg. About one and a half miles south of Sarah's Furnace there is a curve known as Hard Scrabble Curve, which is one of the shortest and most dangerous curves on the road. Here on this curve Chalfont's train collided with the second section which was going north. Both engines were about the same size and weight, so when they met the force of ninety-five empty cars going north and forty-five loaded cars going south caused the engines to rear up in front, crushing the machinery of both. The fire from the boilers immediately spread, and soon the oil tanks were a mass of flame. As the heat grew greater the tanks exploded, scattering the blazing oil over the surface of the Allegheny River. The current was quite strong and it carried the blazing oil down-stream for miles, spreading destruction as it went. The heat from the oil changed the wreckage into a mass of molten metal. Chalfont's fireman was crushed to death, as was his front brakeman. The same fate overtook the engineer, fireman and brakeman of the north-bound train. The bodies were cremated in the blazing oil.

At this time oil was worth from $7.00 to $8.00 per barrel. The amount of oil lost totals up to nearly $200,000 in value. The company's loss in property was not less than $500,000, besides being responsible for the loss of the five lives. All this destruction was caused by the incompetency of Chalfont and the negligence of his conductor.

Chalfont luckily, or rather unluckily, escaped with his life by springing from his engine cab out upon the bluff side of the track. Here he climbed an almost perpendicular cliff about 400 feet high. The blaze from the oil had burned nearly all the clothing from his back, and had singed the back of his head and neck into a blister. He escaped into the hills.

The officers of the company at Pittsburg were notified immediately by wire, and a wrecking train and crew were sent to the scene post haste, in charge of Supt. King. They arrived at the wreck early the following morning. Here Supt. King learned what facts he could as to the cause of the wreck. He then wired to me to come to the wreck on the first train. I was at Oil City at the time, and left immediately, arriving at the wreck about noon. On my arrival Mr. King walked a little distance down the track, out of earshot from the noise of the wrecking crew, and sat down upon a log. He then told me what he had learned and as to the cause of the wreck. He also proceeded to describe Chalfont to me. He was so deliberate and careful in this description that it took him nearly an hour to do it. He had that rare faculty of being able to describe one person to another with accuracy. He then said, "Tom, do you think you could recognize this man from the description I have given you?" I answered, "Yes, I believe I could. The description you have given me reminds me very much of 'Morg' Erwin, a passenger engineer on the road." At this Mr. King, usually very quiet and sedate, grew very excited and clapped his hands as if in joy, exclaiming, "Why didn't I think of that before? He looks like 'Morg' Erwin."

I then said, "No, Mr. King, he looks very much like Erwin, but not exactly like him. He is very much like him in some respects, though, being taller than Erwin. Chalfont's neck is longer and his 'Adam's Apple' is much larger and more prominent. His eyes are not so large and are set back farther in his head than Erwin's. Chalfont's cheek-bones are much higher, while his hair is more coarse and much like horse hair. In short, Erwin is a more refined man than Chalfont."

To this Mr. King replied, "Tom, I feel sure that you will be able to identify that man on sight, and I want you to get him at all hazards. Spare no time or trouble, but 'GET HIM.' Take him to Katanning (the county seat of Westmoreland Co., Pa., where this wreck occurred) and lodge him in jail."

Mr. King then told me that I would find the letter of recommendation Chalfont had given him on file in his office at Pittsburg. I took the first train for Pittsburg, where I applied to Mr. Joe Reinhart, Mr. King's chief clerk, who was later President of the great Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe System, and he turned the letter over to me. I then concluded to go to Buffalo and see the Master Mechanic of the Lake Shore, from whose office the letter purported to come. At Buffalo I found the Master Mechanic and showed him Chalfont's letter. After reading the letter he told me that the letter head was genuine, but the letter itself, with stamp, seal and signature, were forgeries. He had neither written the letter nor authorized it, but he identified Chalfont's hand-writing. I learned that Chalfont had been a country school teacher earlier in his life, and that he received such small pay as such that he could not support his wife and children. He came to Buffalo, where he applied for work in the round-house of the Lake Shore shops there. He was given a position at wiping engines in the round-house. Here also his salary was too small to support his family and pay rent at the same time, so he was forced to move once a month to avoid paying rent. One day he got into the Master Mechanic's office and stole a part of a block of the official letter heads of the company. He then wrote himself a letter of recommendation which he had shown to Mr. King, and when the chance offered he stamped and sealed the letter, after stealing the stamp one night from the office. About this time he became so lazy and indolent that he was reprimanded by the Master Mechanic.

The Master Mechanic told me that he had discharged Chalfont, previous to his going to Pittsburg, because of failure to pay his grocery bills and his rent. The grocers and landlords were garnisheeing his wages, and as the company did not tolerate such things, he was discharged. He also said that Chalfont's family was somewhere in Buffalo, but he did not know their whereabouts because they had moved so often. I thanked him for this information and then decided to see the Superintendent of Police.

I called at the office of Superintendent Phillips, and asked him to give me an officer who was more familiar with the haunts and dwellings of railroad men in Buffalo than I was. He gladly assented and assigned Detective Tony Collins to assist me. We started out by canvassing the grocers, butchers and milkmen in the neighborhood where the Lake Shore Railway men resided. During the forenoon we found many who knew of Chalfont's family, but did not know where they were at present. About 3:00 P. M., as Collins and I were going down a side street called Hayward St., I noticed a group of six or eight children playing before a row of wooden cottages, or more properly, shacks. One little girl in a dirty blue dress attracted my attention because of the likeness she bore to Chalfont, according to my description of him. I also noticed a grocery on the corner below us. When we got to the grocery I told the man with me, Detective Collins, to go back to the group and ask the little girl in the blue dress to deliver a package to his wife. He was to tell her that he lived in the large white house down the street. I then told him to return to the grocery with the girl so that I could get a chance to speak to her without exciting her. He returned in a few moments with the little girl, who looked uncommonly like a little Indian squaw, and who proved to be the living image of her father. While Collins was inside the store examining the vegetables I said to the girl, "Why, hello, sis, where is your uncle Charlie now?" She smiled and said, "Oh, do you know Uncle Charlie?" I said, "Oh, sure; I know him well." She then said, "He is down in Pennsylvania firing on a railroad." (Uncle Charlie was Chalfont's brother-in-law, and had gotten a position as fireman at the same time Chalfont got his job as engineer.) I then said to her, "Is your father home now?" She looked up and said, "Yes, he got home a couple of days ago, but he is sick, and--oh, he said I mustn't tell any one." I said, "That's all right, but tell me which one of those houses do you live in?" She said, "We live in that middle one, with the bunch of rags stuffed in the window."

I attracted Collins' attention, and told him to send the girl away on some pretext. We then went up to the house the girl had pointed out. I sent Collins around to the back door and I went to the front door and knocked. Mrs. Chalfont opened the door, and when I asked for Joe Chalfont she attempted to slam the door in my face. I pushed the door open and entered the house. Seeing no one in the front room I walked through it to the door of the back room. Here I saw Chalfont seated before a window with his head and neck all swathed in bandages. As I entered the room he said, without moving, "Well, Mr. Furlong, you have got me." I answered, "Yes, Joe, I am sorry to say I have." This showed conclusively that I had been pointed out to him while he was on the road without my knowledge. Here I will state that up to the time I entered that room I had never seen Joe Chalfont himself, nor a picture or photograph of him. He had seen me and had heard me speaking so that he knew my voice. I had suspected from the first that Chalfont might know me, so when I saw the little girl, whom I believed was his daughter, I did not stop in front of the houses in which I supposed the children lived, but kept on to the grocery store.

This is the only case of its kind on record in which an officer picked out a child from a group of children and recognized her from a description of her father, whom the officer had never seen.

I arrested Chalfont and took him to Katanning, as Mr. King had ordered. I then went to Pittsburg and reported in detail to General Superintendent J. J. Lawrence. Meanwhile it dawned upon me that I had done a rather commendable thing in arresting this man Chalfont, and I was expecting a little praise from the General Superintendent. Imagine my surprise, upon being ushered into his office, at his beginning to reprimand me for arresting Chalfont. He said, "Furlong, you have gotten this company into a lot of trouble by arresting this man."

To this I replied, "Why sir, Mr. King ordered me to get him at all hazards, and I simply carried out his orders."

He then went on, in a most bitter tone, "Well, you should not have done it. I think I shall be forced to discharge you for so doing. From your reports from Buffalo I see that Chalfont was not an engineer, and, therefore, an incompetent employe. That makes this company liable to damages for the lives lost, and for all the property destroyed in that wreck. Don't you see what you have done?"

I was angered at his words, and said, "Col. Lawrence, if you did not want that man arrested Mr. King should not have ordered me to get him. I believe I am entitled to some little credit for the capture of this man, in view of the fact that the feat is so far unparalleled. So far as discharging me goes, that will be unnecessary, for I have already quit the service of a company which does not approve of my work."

To this Col. Lawrence replied, "Furlong, I beg your pardon, and want to compliment you on your good work on this and other cases, but when this case comes to trial all the facts of Chalfont's incompetency will be laid bare, and it will cost us a lot of money."

I then said, "Oh, I can fix that."

"What can you suggest?" he asked me.

"I will get some prominent lawyer," I said, "to sign his bond; he will be released, and as the quarterly session is nearly three months away it will be hard to find him in three months."

Col. Lawrence said, "See that that is done and I will greatly appreciate it."

A few days later a prominent lawyer of Katanning signed a bond for Chalfont's appearance in court. He was released and at once set out for parts unknown. Of course, he did not appear for trial and the bond was declared forfeited. Through professional courtesy the bond was never collected.

Chalfont was not heard from until the railroad strike at Pittsburg in 1877, when he again appeared in Pittsburg under an alias, and got a job on the Panhandle Ry., running a passenger engine on the MacDonald Accommodation. He got partly over the road on his first trip, and failing to get the proper amount of water in the boiler the crown-sheet blew out of the locomotive, scalding his fireman badly. He again took to the woods and disappeared, and to my knowledge has not been heard of since.

TRACING TRAIN WRECKERS.

REVIEW OF A CRIME WHICH RANKS WITH THE LOS ANGELES DYNAMITING CASE FOR HEINOUSNESS--HOW CONFESSION WERE OBTAINED.

What many of my friends, who are familiar with the case in all of its details, believe to have been my best piece of real detective work during my long career at the business, was done on what is known as "The Wyandotte Wrecking Case" in 1886. While much has been written about this case, yet all the real facts have never appeared in print. The crime, which was the aftermath of the Knights of Labor strike on the Gould Southwest System that spring, occurred on the early morning of April 26th. Freight train No. 38 on the Missouri Pacific was pulling slowly into Wyandotte, now Kansas City, Kansas, and on reaching a point near the north depot on the banks of the Kaw River, the engine and several cars suddenly left the track, rolling down the embankment and some of them into the river. The fireman, Benjamin F. Horton, and the head brakeman, George Carlisle, who were on the engine, were pinioned beneath the wreckage and were dead when taken out. The engineer, J. H. Fowler, was severely injured, dying within a few months from his injuries. The conductor, A. Spaulding, who was in the cupola of the caboose, was thrown from his seat to the floor and painfully bruised and badly shaken up. The rear brakeman, whose name I do not now remember, was the only one of the crew to escape either death or injury.

The discovery immediately after the wreck of unmistakable evidence that it had been caused by wreckers, and because of the prominence of the men who had lost their lives thereby, caused a great sensation and much indignation. The dead fireman was a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Firemen and the brakeman a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen. All of the newspapers, not only of Kansas City, but of the entire country, denounced the wreckers in no uncertain terms, as did all decent and law-abiding citizens. I will add right here that the facts brought to light at the trial of the men charged with this crime, more than to any other one thing, caused the disintegration or dissolution of the Knights of Labor. In other words, it was the beginning of the end of that once powerful organization. For the benefit of those readers who are not familiar with the history of this order, I will state that it had in 1886 something over a million members. It had a veritable mushroom growth. No class of people were ineligible to membership; all trades and professions, as well as races and tongues, provided they were males over 18 years of age, and had the price of the initiation fee, usually one dollar, could join. The color line was not even drawn, as it is in most secret societies. Of course, some good honest men were on its roster rolls, but it was dominated by a brazen gang of mountebanks, agitators and crooked politicians and others seeking power and prominence. To gain a point the officers of the organization would stop at nothing. If coercion failed in its purpose, the boycott and more harsher methods were substituted. In short, a veritable reign of terror existed throughout the Middle West. To illustrate their methods better, I will state that if a merchant or other person in business, through a slip of the tongue or otherwise, made even the slightest remark reflecting on the order, or even one of its leaders, he was a marked man thereafter, his business ruined, and he, of course, driven from the country. Business men were often subjected to this treatment--and worse--for simply refusing to join the order. In many of the Western cities it was impossible for a man who did not "jine" the order to be elected to office, however deserving or competent he might be.

At the time the wreck occurred, I was very busy in St. Louis looking after cases that had grown out of the great strike on the Gould System, of which I was Chief Special Agent. The strike, which had been over but about a month, was a long, bitter struggle, entailing much work on my department, and had resulted in a victory for the company. I could not get to Wyandotte to investigate the wreck until nearly a month had elapsed. In the meantime the railroad company had offered $2,500 reward for the arrest and conviction of the guilty parties, and $1,000 for any information which would lead up to such conviction. After looking the ground over, I became satisfied that this diabolical crime had been committed by some member, or members, of the Knights of Labor, either out of revenge or to harrass the company and divert traffic from the road. After satisfying myself on this point, I returned to St. Louis and requested Vice-President Hoxie to withdraw the offer of a reward for the conviction of the criminals, as I was then, and am now, opposed to offering rewards in such cases. Mr. Hoxie was in bed sick at the time, but he issued the order as requested, and I promised him that I would personally go to work on the case. A few days later, while I was engaged in laying plans for working out a solution of the case, a bold attempt was made to wreck another train near Tampoo, a short distance north of where the first wreck had occurred. A couple of guards were on this train and these men and some of the crew, who saw the wreckers, gave chase and succeeded in arresting one of them. This man proved to be O. J. Lloyd, a member of the Executive Board of the Knights of Labor, in charge of the late strike. Prior to the strike he had been employed by the Missouri Pacific Company as a switchman and had been a very active member of the committee.

About this time my department was badly in need of a thoroughly trained criminal lawyer to prosecute the cases growing out of the big strike, and at my earnest solicitation, Marshall F. McDonald, former Circuit Attorney of St. Louis, one of the best criminal lawyers of his time, was retained by the company for the purposes named, and given authority by Vice-President Hoxie to employ all other counsel needed. Mr. McDonald accordingly employed Ex-Judge Laughlin and Judge R. S. McDonald to assist him. A few days later, these three lawyers and myself met the Hon. Bailie P. Waggoner, General Attorney for the State of Kansas for the company, by appointment at Kansas City. We visited the scene of the crime. As we were on the bank overlooking the place where the engine and cars had left the rails, I told the lawyers that I was satisfied that Lloyd, the man in jail for the Tampoo affair, was also implicated in the Wyandotte crime, and that I proposed to get a confession from him.

"How are you going to go about it, Tom?" asked Judge McDonald.

"I am going to get it through a Knight of Labor," I replied, and gave the gentlemen a short outline of the plan I had evolved in my mind for getting the confession. After I had finished the lawyers all thought my scheme was a good one, but not one of them thought it could be carried out. I will admit that, because of the peculiar situation in Wyandotte County at that time, I knew I would have to be very careful or my scheme would not work. The mayor, sheriff, jailor and, in fact, all of the city and county officials, even policemen and constables, excepting Judge Hineman of the Circuit Court, were members of the Knights of Labor, and of the same local lodge as the prisoner, consequently were very friendly disposed towards him. As every one familiar with such organizations as the Knights of Labor knows, I would have had but little trouble to find a member among them who would betray the secrets of the order for a few paltry dollars and thus enable me to obtain the information I so much desired from Lloyd, but I decided on another plan, as I never considered a man who would violate his obligation to be upright and honorable. In a word, in trusting such men one is liable to receive what is known in slang parlance as "the double cross."

Locked up in a safe in my office was a ritual and by-laws of the Knights of Labor, and a book of instructions showing how to initiate new members, together with the annual and semi-annual pass words, and the "hailing" and "distress" signs and various signals used by the members of the order, so I decided to set up a little Knight of Labor factory of my own and make a member that I could trust with the work in hand. I had an operative in my employ at that time named George Fowle. He had for a long time been in the train service of different railroads of the country, and I selected him as the man to be trusted with securing the confession from Lloyd. I took Fowle into my private office, and after instructing him carefully as to how to carry out my plans, he was initiated into the mysteries of the order. We took our time and went through the initiatory work carefully, so that when Fowle left for Wyandotte the next day to play the part of Brother Alfred in the drama that I had staged for that town, he was as well posted on the secret work of the order as though he had just passed through the Grand Assembly, as the governing body of the order was called.

On arriving at Wyandotte, Brother Alfred proceeded at once to the headquarters of the organization, where he made himself known as a special envoy and minister plenipotentiary of the head assembly of the order at Scranton, Pa. His mission was to investigate the conditions as he found them in Wyandotte, so that the head officers at Scranton would know exactly what was going on in the west. He also hinted that the General Master Workman and Grand Treasurer Hayes had empowered him to use his own judgment about what was to be done in the case of Lloyd, who was in jail on the train wrecking charge.

Brother Alfred also called on the sheriff, who was a Knight of Labor, and after giving him the grip, asked to be allowed to consult with Lloyd. The sheriff readily granted the request and Brother Alfred was ushered into the jail, where he was closeted with Lloyd for more than an hour and a half. After introducing himself to Lloyd, Brother Alfred dispensed with all formalities and at once began a discussion of the charge against the prisoner. "Of course, Mr. Powderly, Mr. Hayes and the other head officers of the order and myself, know that you are all right, Lloyd, and that you will not make a confession, but in cases of this kind, where there are so many on the job, some one will squeal when they are arrested, as they all will be, for the Goulds have a lot of detectives on the case, headed by Tom Furlong, and it is only a question of time until they are all run down. Furlong, as you know, is not only a great detective, but he is also very unscrupulous and will not stop at anything to secure a conviction in these cases. Now, the order at this time cannot afford to have this crime laid at its door. If one of the men implicated in it would confess, which some of them would be sure to do, as I stated before, it would be a great blow to the order and cast an odium over it that would take years to eradicate. Another thing, the men charged with this crime could not get a fair trial here at this time, as the people here are very sore, as are the members of the Brotherhood of Firemen and Brotherhood of Trainmen, of which orders the two men killed in the wreck were members. I have, therefore, evolved a scheme to outwit these capitalistic bloodhounds, and thus save the order. I have a lawyer over in the city from headquarters, Brother Thomas, who will get you out of here on bond, and I will take you east and get you a job on a railroad where Furlong cannot find you, and will do the same thing with the other men who were with you."

"That is true about some of the gang squealing," replied Lloyd. "We have been afraid of at least two of them giving the snap away, and I know they will do it if they ever fall into the clutches of Furlong and his hirelings."

Lloyd further expressed himself as being delighted with the scheme, and within a few hours he was released from jail and taken by Brother Alfred in a circuitous route through Kansas City to Independence, Mo., where the two boarded a train for St. Louis. I had been informed of their movements by wire, and had one of my operatives meet them at the Union Station and escort them to the room of another operative in my employ at 17th and Pine Streets. That evening Marshall F. McDonald and myself and a stenographer called at the room, and I was introduced to Lloyd as the "headquarters' attorney," Brother Thomas. I corroborated all that Brother Alfred had told Lloyd, and O. K.'d the scheme to get all of these men in the job out of the country, and promised to do all I could to further the scheme. Lloyd then gave us the names of his partners in the crime. They were George H. Hamilton, Mike Leary, Robert Geers, Fred Newport and William Vassen, all prominent and active members of the local executive board of the Knights of Labor.

The next morning, Lloyd, in charge of Operatives Bonnell, McCabe and two guards, and myself, boarded a special car at Union Station, and it was attached to west-bound passenger train No. 1. Of course, Lloyd did not know he was in charge of officers. At Independence the special car was placed on a siding and I went on to Kansas City. The next morning, which was Sunday, a conference was held at the St. James Hotel between the attorneys for the Pacific Company and myself. It was late in the evening when the conference ended, after which I decided to at once arrest the men named by Lloyd as his partners in the Wyandotte crime. I proceeded to Wyandotte and procured the warrants. As the arrests had to be made quickly, and all my experienced men in that vicinity were in Independence guarding the special car, I secured the services of Frank Tutt, who had been employed by me as a guard for the railroad during the strike, to go with the sheriff and myself to make the arrests.

The first man arrested was George Hamilton, chairman of the executive committee in charge of the strike. We found him in ViceRoy Park, Armourdale, where he was acting as a special policeman. When Hamilton was pointed out to me, I approached him saying:

"I want you, officer."

"What for?" asked Hamilton.

"Murder," I replied.

Had Hamilton been cracked on the head with his own club he would not have been more surprised. Before he could recover the club was taken from his hand and his pistol from his pocket, and his big star from over his palpitating heart. He made a feeble attempt to get indignant, but failed lamentably and broke down completely, and wanted to confess. He was taken to jail and locked up.

We then got in the hack and were driven to Armourdale, where we arrested Robert Geers, after breaking through several doors. While arresting Geers we came near getting our heads blown off by an irate roomer, whose door we had broken open by mistake. After locking up Geers, we went across the river and stopped in front of a shack in the bottoms, and entering it arrested Fred Newport and took him to jail, leaving his wife and six children in tears.

We then visited Kansas City and arrested Mike Leary. He was locked up about 4:30 A. M. There was one man yet missing, William Vassen. We experienced considerable trouble in locating him. He had left his home to go to work for Wood Bros., the Kansas City ice dealers, where he was employed as a driver to deliver ice. We obtained a list of his customers, and finally overtook him near the Kansas City Union Depot, at about seven o'clock. He broke down at once and wanted to confess. After a good breakfast I took him to the St. James Hotel in Kansas City and into the presence of the attorneys for the company. The prisoner broke into tears, as soon as we entered the room, and made a piteous appeal to the gentlemen to see that the wants of his sick wife and children were attended to. "I have never been arrested before, and I was led into this. I went into it at the point of a pistol," he said, crying bitterly. "Damn the Knights of Labor," he continued, and expressed the intention of making a clean breast of the whole affair. He was told by both the lawyers and myself that he did not have to talk if he did not want to. "I have been weighted down too long; I want to tell all about it. I will suffer, I guess, but I deserve it." Then he made a full confession, giving the most minute details of the terrible crime.

It was the intention of the gang, according to the confession, to wreck a passenger train. The tools with which the spikes were pulled, and the fish plates removed, were stolen from a tool house of the company, located between the depot and the scene of the wreck.

Geers and Newport also made confessions, and all these men took the stand at the trial of the defendants when they were arraigned the following January. The testimony of these men was corroborated in every detail, but the jury failed to reach a verdict, standing 7 to 5 for acquittal. The Knights of Labor representatives, through the court officers, who were all, excepting Judge Hineman, members of the order, had succeeded in getting several of its members on the jury. The Knights of Labor employed the best attorneys in the west to defend the men. Among them were Ex-Governor Chas. P. Johnson, Ex-Senator William Warner, Thomas P. Fenlon and others; in fact, the officers of the order spent money very freely to bring about the desired end.

After the mistrial, the attorneys for the defense made application for a change of venue, and the cases were sent to Olathe. The officers of the Knights of Labor immediately sent a swarm of organizers into Olathe and Johnson County, and through coercion and other mysterious methods, succeeded in getting almost every male citizen of the county into the order. The second trial resulted in another farce, the jury again being packed with Knights of Labor.

About this time there was a change of management in the legal department of the road, and the cases were all nollied at the request of the company--even the three men who had made confessions were turned loose.

Peculiar conditions existed in the west at that time. The laboring men knew nothing about the real benefits of unionism. They had been herded into the Knights of Labor like sheep into a pen, and were educated by those who led them into believing that any kind of crime was all right when committed during a strike, or against a firm or company against which there was a grievance, and the latter were often, as in the case of the big strike on the Gould System, proved to be imaginary.

I and my men were only interested in this strike in so far as it was our duty to see that no acts of violence were committed; in short, to protect the company's property from vandals and thieves. The rank and file of the order were led to believe by their leaders, however, that we were a lot of crooks, who regarded a man's liberty and life lightly and would violate any of the laws on the statute books to secure a conviction in any case we were called into. And strange to say, there are some men who believe this to be true, even to this day.

I want to say right here, that this crime was one of the most diabolical and fiendish crimes of the century. Had it not been for a mere accident, a loaded passenger train would have been wrecked instead of the freight, but, luckily, the passenger was late, and the freight was given orders at Leavenworth to proceed into Wyandotte on the passenger train's time, with the disastrous results told in the preceding portions of this narrative. The officers of the Knights of Labor knew these men were guilty, for three of them had gone on the witness stand and testified to the facts, while Lloyd, one of the leaders, had furnished evidence to corroborate them.

The investigation, at the next grand assembly of the Knights of Labor, at the insistence of a few good men in the order as to how much money had been spent in defense of these men, revealed a big scandal within the order. While it was true that a great deal of money had been expended, yet it was learned that the sum was not more than one-fourth of the amount claimed by the officers in charge of this fund.

The amount of money expended by me for the company, in working up the case, was very small, as all of the men who did any work on the case were employed by the month on a regular salary and expenses. In fact, there were not cents expended in this case, when dollars were expended in running down the dynamiters who blew up the Los Angeles Times, the latter crime being the only one which has occurred within my time that could at all compare with the Wyandotte wrecking case for cold-blooded fiendishness. It is also the only case in which big rolls of money were expended by labor organizations, knowing that the men were guilty.

Because of my work in this case, I incurred the lasting enmity of all the heads of the Knights of Labor, from Terrance V. Powderly, the Grand Master, on down the line. This was evidenced several years later. In 1889, I was tendered the position as chief of the secret service bureau of the treasury department at Washington by President Harrison. I was not overly anxious to accept the job, as the pay at that time was only $3,600 per year, and I had a good business in St. Louis, as head of the agency which bears my name, but at the solicitation of friends, I agreed to accept the position. Somehow, the fact that I was to be the new chief of the secret service had leaked out in Washington, and immediately the Knights of Labor "tipped their hand," to use a slang phrase. The President had gone to Deer Park, Maryland, to recover from the fatigue caused by his inauguration, and his few first months of service. Telegrams poured in on him from all points of the United States. They came from the east and the west, and from the north and the south, and from towns I had not known were on the map. Some of these telegrams were long and others short, but all showed the vindictiveness of the members of the order towards me. After the President returned from Washington he sent for me, and on my arrival at the White House, told me of the protests. To offset these, I presented letters from Ex-Governor Johnson and Major William Warner, chief counsel for the men I had arrested for the Wyandotte crime, which stated in terms that could not be misconstrued, that I had done nothing but my duty in that case, and testifying further that I had been very respectful and magnanimous to the prisoners on trial--in short, that I had done nothing to secure a conviction that was not entirely honorable.

"You are all right, Furlong, and I am going to appoint you, as soon as this storm dies down a little," said the President. Of course, I was a little put out by the delay, and told the President that if I accepted the place my commission would have to be handed me not later than January 1st. After further assurance from the President that I would have my commission before the date mentioned, I returned home. A few days before January 1st I was again called to Washington by the President. I visited the White House in company with the Hon. Richard Kerens. After a short discussion of the matter, the President told me to go over to the treasury department and get my commission. On my arrival there, I did not find the Secretary, Mr. Windom, in, he being detained at home on account of sickness. My presence in Washington again revived the rumors that I was to be appointed, and these rumors also put the Knights of Labor to work again, with the result that the White House was again flooded with a lot of telegrams protesting against my appointment, and my commission was again held up. I then dropped the matter and returned to St. Louis.