94

Date 1912-07-17

From 94

irst of The r placed in best of its La Fon- American tne summer? ng shame ; dame, ) each comer lease. t ease; glance, must dance. rt of the wind im- have no suspicion that there is anything-wrong- MEDICINE HAT DAILY NEWs. UCCESS gt; I O 2 AFTER:-BLOTTING OUT THE PAST Coorrlebt 1D1L nv the New York Herwid Oo. All rights reserved.) 4 new leaf, and become good citizens? 1 fired the question at random, little : + dreaming wbat a wealth of interesting i and convincing anecdote it would evoke. 1 expected the time honored cynical repis. something to the effect of Once a thief, always a thief. But I was disappotnted agreeably disappointed. For my answer was a quick, emphatic, earnest Yes. And the-man who sald. Yes was William A. Pink- . erton, and he knows. Probably no Iiying man knows more Thtimate ce tails about the individual members of the under. world, those who are active criminals to-day, as well as the notorious crooks of the past than the head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. And every crook will tell you, what every honest man who knows Mr. Pinkerton will tell you, that when he says Yes there Is uo possibility that the correct answer should be No. I know what the average map thinks that a real crook Dever turns straight. But it isn't 0. Thou- sands of crooks and I don t mean one time offenders, but men in the class we call hardened criminals have become honest men to my knowledge. It ts not trus some recent writer said, that as many rooks turn honest as there are honest men turn crooked. but I believe one of the reasons fs that so few men are willing to-lend a helping hand. -I-don't mean that every crook 1s ready to reform f he ts encouraged, but I do-meanjthat society makes tt hard for any man who has once been a criminal to lead a honest life * And I'll tell you another thing, continued Mr. Pinkerton; I'm prouder of the fact that I have helped few criminals to become honest men than of all the work I have done in petting criminals behind the bars. I'm proud of the fact that every crook knows : that Pinkerton will deal equarely with him if he will eal squarely with Pinkerton that I believe it is as important to keep faith with a bank thief as with a bank president, * I know a score of business men In Chicago not saloonkeepers, but reputable merebants who have eriminal records. These men have done time and have paid their debt to society for their crimes. 1 cannot tell you their names, for t' would be uafair to them and to their wives anJ famflies, many of whom CIMT geod behavior, and finally got out. 1 met him in Chicago. He was despondent, He felt that he had 0 chance to be anything but a crogk, but he knew the terrible chan es a once convicted man runs if.he returns to crime, I told him the best thing for him to do'was to go to New York, sant him on to my brother Robert, whd had aifSe openeu 1. bor. eee ao with an sedi rom os 's of the order through-) Reform of Jerry. 9. meeting will gon- Now, here s a part of this story that will intcbig parade. you. Robert had a friend who was chief engineer of a building in Ann street. He told this friend . about Jerry, and the engineer sald he'd take a chance on him. He put Jerry at work stoking the boller at dollar and a half a day. After a year or so there was a vacancy and Jerry became assistant engineer. A a British government, Bordon, it continues, a Royal Cantdian Inatitute bal was accompanied by six of eg in the Dominion governmity Mt the fact that Mr. Bor *+ lt; first public-sp D OU CRIMINAL ONCE a Thie f, Always a Thief. Has Been Disproved in Thousands of Cases, According to Mr. William A. Pinkerton Se. 2 as on he was going to call at seven o'clock. There As banquet on for that evening, and hundreds if poll offictals from very part of the United States wa there, 1 wondered If he knew. whit sort Of lina eu be Was walklig into. Sure enough, be came inth the hotel and spoke to me. 7 Don't you know lt; you ate surrounded by policemen, some of whom ure sure abot yOUT L) asked him. Rae You're the only man tn the world who: he sald. My name now is So and So fictitions name and I'm a respected and citizen. I Just wanted to let you know found t out for yourself, for I kuew you'd square with me And I was. So far as T was not wanted for anything, and what have come of exposing him? Thieves who resist the temptation to steal? dreds Of them. There's one right here, only blocks from where we are talking. He's the man in a big slik Warehouse and if there's unyel your professional thief likes to steal, short of mon diamonds, It's silk, for you can get so much into so small a package. This man was a prof sional safe blower, and didi several big Jobs. WH he got out of prison I helped hilm to get the job has row. His employer knows his.record. 1 told to him on the man s own request. When work star for the day this man-ts left alone In charge of hus dreds of thousands of dollars worth of valuable allt. He tsn t bonded, for he couldn't get bondsman tf . wanted to. He has held the Job seven years nun, and not a cent s worth has been taken from the ware house tn tliat me. e You may say that he does not dare to steat that be knows a single false move on bis part will bring Instant punishment. But I say he bas no de- 1 alre to steal that be lins reformed. And thousnnils of other criminals would reform if society would give them half a chance. Baffling Hotel Robberies. Several years ago there was.a serles of botel rob- beries in New York that baffled the police. The thiet always worked with key8, opening doorszaud th unlocking baggage left tn rooms, and he always away with the goods. At last one night the word came to headquarters that a) man had been caught in one of the big hotels who jwas suspected of being. the author of all the robberies. I was visiting Chief. Devery at the time and he asked me to go with him to the West Thirtieth street station to look the man ove The man arrested was a well dressed, respectable looking little man, with a white beard the:last-man who would be taken for a thief f seen In a hotel corridor. Hts-tuce was vaguely familiar to me. but Thad some difficulty in placing him. Finally it struck me. I had seen him nearly thirty years before on the occasion of a Sig prize fight In New Orleans, when er the chief engineer resigned and Jerry, yernment society Aiscovers that a man is former riminal It is not Content to cancel the debt, no matter How much imprisonment at herd labor the former crook may have given in expiation of his sin. 3 1 know men im trusted positions ti New York who were convicts. In many cases only the man himself the employer does not know t. I know men scat- tered all over the West business men, professional men, many of them wealthy and prominent ettfkens who-bare seen thre le of Joliet, Moyamensing, Sing Sing or Leayenwor They have sons and daughters who never have suspected and never will suspect the truth. These are good ood then as any living. They have turned away from Welr of ways, in many cases bave changed thelr names, and who shall say they are not as much to be respected asithe honest man who never was tempted, never was forced into erlme? I'll tell you about some of them, :*When 1 was boy in Chicago there were two brothers, neighbors, about the age of myself and my youuger brother, and we-were friends, When the civil war broke out I went into the army secret service at the uge of tifteen, and the older of these two boys, John, enlisted in an Tiinols r giment. Jerry, the muger. was not old enough, but a Uttle later, when the government began offering a bounty for soldiers, ue became bounty Jumper. He would enlist, get the vonnty money, then- desert and enlist over again Acer another name. He was with a band of young tcllows who were engaged in that way of getting easy uiwuey, and who found t 0 easy that they turned to other kinds of crime. When the war was over John came back to Cbi- eaxo und settled down as a rather plodding sort of mechanic. He tried to get Jerry to straighten olt, but the younger brother was too far along on the road to prison. In those days the Northwestern Rallroad used Wood for fuel, and the wood agent of the road was Amos Snell the same Suell who was later murdered by Willie Tascott. He-iived ina suburb of Chicago, and oue night Jerry and his crowd went out there and stuck up the whole famlly robbed them of everything they bad. John was along with them, lying in the bottom of the hack. The police got a clew through the hack driver and rounded up the whole band. All of them, Including John, were sen- tenced to tive years each except Jerry. When-he came nto the hands of the police citizen who had been held up on the street some time before identified him 8 the hold-up man, and on the strength of that the Judge gaye him tifteen years. It was an unjust sen- tence, for Jerry had not committed the hold-up that Was found out later. Well, John's old Colonel and some other army men and my father got together and got a pardon for John, who had merely gone-along with the crowd And had taken no part in the robbery, He went back to work at his rado of brass tinisher, but Jerry stayed In Joliet. rebelling against those long unjust years of his sentence. Jerry was put to work In the engine room of the prison and soon displayed great aptitude for ma- chinery, He served out bis term, with Ume off for and his employer know the secret, and sometimes pasts of thelr busbends and fathers. Besides, when -the ex-crook, became chief engineer, He left these after while to take charge of a big plant on Long Island, and he sent for his brother John and gave bi:a a Job. A few years later the two brothers called on me in Chicago. They had saved about 6,000 between them and were on their way to a new town In the West to start a manufacturing business of their own. Bach had married a girl who knew nothing of their Prison record and had children. They prospered ex- ceedingly. Jobn died several years ago, but-only a few years ago, when my brother Robert died, an old man, whom nobody but myself recognized, came from the West for the funeral and sbed tears at the grave. It was Jerry. He is still living, and ts the leading citizen of. his town and worth at least balf fA milion dollars. Criminals who reform? There are thousands of them. I remember a little Liverpool Irishman who was a pickpocket around New York. He was known as Jimmy the Nibbler. The police picked bim. up in Tennessee, where be lifted somebody's pocketbook, and he was sent to Nashville for seven years. In the prison they put him to work in the hospital. Then the cholera epidemic broke out. Jim helped the doctors and nurses, and when the doctors got sick he nursed them andthe warden and his family and helped save a good many lives. After the epidemic o the farmer hated the first automobile so the - fisherman hated the motor boat. The farmer walved some of his prejudices when he began to ride in his own automobile, and the fisherman to some extent changed his viewpoint as he added the auxiliary to his.salls, But there Is even yet a feud between farmers and motorists, and the fishermen have a serious quarrel with the motor boats. They-have also (the fishermen) a serious quarrel with the navy. They have made such complaints of the noise of gun practice by the battle ships that in some localities they induced the Navy Department to remove the ships. They charged that the ishing ia certain bays or shore waters was entirely ruined at some seasons because the fish were frightened away by the firing of guns. and now everywhere along the coasts and in the big lakes and lower waters of the rivers they claim with equal force that another noise is a cause when fishing Is poor. So much of an issue ts this motor boat question that on the treaty coast of Newfoundland, a scene of fisher- men s strife for years, new difficulties ha the Gloucester tishing boats with has refused to license th We must admit some sympathy with this outery Except our neighbor's car, which chugs away under our window most any hour of the night, there Is noth- ing more hateful than the incessant pop of the little Qapbtha vehicles that infest the water when we are out for sail or are guiding our graceful canoe, Small wonder the poor fish should find hls life quite unen- able and forsake his native shores nd there 1s, afcourse, classic authority for the fishermen s contentions: Did not Izaak Walton him- self tell how necessary t was for the angler to be quiet lest bis talle o his movements on shore give rm to the fish he was trying to catch? And if there were still doubt that fishes note noises there Is that Austrian monastery. where the fish in the ponds came np to be fed when the monks periodically rang the bell. Only the ruthless sclentist Upset such facts, . But the world ts developing rythless scientists, slong with its big guns and motorboats: lt;Ehe-fsher. men, having existed from time immemorial, do not The Quarrel of Fisherm L I've Cut That All Going To Be Out, He Saiu. a Gun Any More was over the warden and the Prison Board were so grateful they got Jim a pardon and made up a purse of- 350 for him. With the money in his pocket he came right to Chicago to see me. I began to lecture him on the futility of golng back to the life he had led before. l've cut that all out, he said I'm not going to be a gun any more. I've been studying medicine down there in Nashville. The doctors have been tell- Ing me things and giving me medica books to rea and now I want to get Into one of these colleges where I ean get a diploma quick, There were a number of diploma factories, as the lower cluss. of medical colleges were called, running willingly relinquish their prestige. It must, In any case, be a brave man who would discredit Izaak Wal- ton, But it bas proved there are men who would dare even that, and would quite beartlessly and cas ually destroy the romance of the wonks. At the head of these seleutitic conspirators ty Pro- fessor George H, Parker, of Harvard. He does not say that fish can not bear. He has proved thit some fishes can. But their ways are peculiar. They hear no more with their ears than they do with thelr skin, 1d sone kinds of fish hear much better than others. These things were found ont by putting dsh in a glans tank of water, with one end a sounding board in place of a glass, A bass violin string wus rigged upon this, and sometimes a tuning fork was used in the experi: ment. ; Observations disclosed that when the base viol string was sounded the fish jumped, or otherwise showed that It was distributed. This was because the sounding board, in direct contact with the water, vibrated and communicated its vibrations to the water, whence the fish received them on bis lateral line, fis scales und skin, or bis eats, or all of these together as might be. So also when the tuning fork took the place of the base viol siring. But f the sounding board were discarded and the tuning fork merely sounded In the room where the aquarium might be, of if two balls should be clicked together over the tank, the fish would be found to pay the very least bit of attention, If any, provided he had beed blinded and could not see what was happening. And there s the crux of the matter. It ts not that the ish can not bear, but that they are out of reach of most sounds, The surface of the water is a barrier from which sounds are reflected. Let two persons stand In the water and one of them ring a bell or fire a pistol. Thelr cars are deafened by the sound, al. most. But let one of these people plunge his head under water when th noise occurs, and he will hardly oF let the bell be rung under water when the Matener s head Is above, and again the sound. will be nearly Jost. Professor Parker used a similar test for motorboat noises. He plunged under water bimself, with an 4 Jim found h hid money enough of them in the front door and out the'back. But he got bis diploma and license to prac- tise and started for one of the new towns in the West. T looked him up.there a while ago. He comes pretty near to being the most prominent citizen of the town. He Is a director In a na fonal bank and the leading physician, and haa officiated at the dirths of balf the sent population. Moreover, he Ix cn enthustastte jurch member. But bow long do you think it ould Mttke for the whole town to turu a; inst him ff they should ever learn out there that be Is Jimmy the Nib- bier ? rooks that turn straight? Your next door neigh- bor, your familly physician, even your clergyman, may be one of them, The world ts full of them. There was one mun, a professional thief, a fellow who had done time fn half a dozen State prisons and peniten- Haries, whom I used to tabor It. earnestly every time he got out, but he apparently never tried to re- form. He was always doing the, It aeomed. I lost track of him for several years. hen, two years ago, when the National Association of Chiefs of Police was in sesston in Buffalo, t found a note In my box in my hotel signed-by this-man s name. He sald nuenaananevnenenn enevanenaneunaaanecereneavanvnsesanunennennsen en With Motor Boats wxceedingly uoisy seven horse power motorboat ex- Dloding above him. With the escape pipe in the: alr, the sound was faintly audible under water. With the escape mufiled under water, the sound wus even fainter. But nelther wuttied nor unuutfied did the sound reach the human ears under water with any: thing Uke the forve or penetration with whicly it af- Acts the people on shore. This, of course, doey uot prove how loud the sound might be to a fish's organs of bearing, But Professor Parker then penned up some fish In the heart of a pound net of shore, und had A motor boat run back nd forth while he watched the fist, Not a sign of isturbance did they give, no matter whether the ex- Hosion were mutied or unmuttied, Then the fishes were tested with baited lines, While they were nibbling at the bait a inotor boit was backed up from a distance of about fifty feet. Not until the bont was-six feet away did the nibbling stop, and as soon s the boat withdrew about six or eight feet more, the fises returned to the balt. They might have been frightened away by the churning of the water and not by the noise. But however that may be they took no notice whatever watil the boat was almost upon them, The fishermen s case against naval gun practice has not been so thoroughly demolished, for it has been dificult to find a tine aud a way'to carry out the tests, But Professor Parker did find that the effect of a saluting charge of two pounds of powder from a six pound howitzer on the revenue cutter Gresham failed to elicit any notice from fishes one thousand feet away. A, fawling plece discharged a few feet trom fishes In a cage caused them to forsake some balt they were nibbling, but they returned to it in half a minute. Thus, according to Professor Parker's findings there. Is very little sclentific evidence to support men's complaint. The motor boat question, partic: ularly, may be dismissed, for what sound there Is under water comes with such gradual force, from a distance, and never sharply and suddenly, that the Uitte they hear gives them no alarm. But even ip the case of the guns t is not probable that fish would be permanently driven away If they were disturbed. They return at once to the place where thelr food is to be found. he n- be r arrested for the same trick It eame over me Ike a flash, and I told bim I knew him. What's the use of making trouble? be asked: These fools dou't know anything about me unless you put them wise. - i wid Chief Devery what I remembereu about the man, who protested violently that he had never been in New Orleans in his life. Then an. her thought struck me. *You've been in New Orleans more than once, I said, The last time was about six months ago, when you got Denman Thompsot 8 diamonds in the St Charles Hotel. I remembered the report of that case, but It was a chance shot on my part, for no one had seen tbe thief. The old fellow denied this vigor ously. fl He was wearing a new derby hat. I don t know what impulse prompted me, but I took the hat off bis bead and looked itside. New Orleans batter. The Chief and I left the station and had jus turned into Sixth avenue when I remembered the fellow s name. We went back to the and I confronted him again. I told -him -is nai denied that it was-tts. ats What's the use of making trouble, Mr. Pinkem ( ) any ton? he pleaded. His inadvertent use of my name, which bad not been mentfoned there, gave bim away. I don't know what kind of a case the police hers have on You, I told him, but we are retained. by the Jewellers Protective Association and if you get Bc? any Jewelry drummers I'll make it hot for you. fas a precaution I got bis photograpn from the New York police. They didn't havo much of case oh bit and he got off. Not long after a Jewelry drummer was robbed in 2 Chicago hotel of about three thousand dollars worth of diamonds which he had arelessly Jeft In his grip fastead of putting them in the cafe, The same day friend of imine who was stopping tn another hotel Jost bis new overcoat and told me about tt. 1 thought of the old man the first Job, and found a chambermaid and bellboy who had ::e him on the oor, but didn t connert him with the second be- cause be had. never stolen anything bat very valua- ble articles, so far as I knew. My friend had to leave for New: Yori-that-nlzbt- aint some time fn-teeven ing I got a telegram from him which bad been tiled in Fort Wayne. x Positive than t my coat. Js In sume sleepe: tleketed to New York. It read. 1 wired my frlend at 4 polnt farther along the line to get off at Pittsburg and bold a white handkerchief In bis hand so ne cottid be tdentived aud be prepared to point out the thief, Then I got In touch with Pittsburg by wire, and sure enough back came a wire after a while to the effect that they had got the man, whom my friend Identted, 2ng towyl on him Vesides the overcoat about 3,000 worth of dimonds.. I asked for a der scription, and the one they wired fitted that of the man I had seen in New York. 1 referred Pittsburg to the man's photograph, which had been published that week in a police periodical, and they were sure they had the same man. And so it proved. He. wat brought buck to Chicago and convicted of the Jew: elry theft: He served a stort sentence, and whe he got out he.came to me. Mind you, this was an old man, who had been a thief all is Ufe E-hed-tenewn him as a thief more thirty years before. It is criminals.of that kind that are commonly regarded as the miost dificult to reform, but even hardened and lifelong offenders like this man will go straight if they get the right kind of encouragement. i found this old man apparently anxious to be honest, out he had never had a chance after his first slip as young man. 1 determined to do what T-could for him and I got him a fob in New York. He 1s more than seventy years old now, but he is still holding that Job, and be hasn't made a alse step since he got out of prison the Inst time. Do crimindis ever veform? 1 think 1 have told you enough to prove that they do and I conld tell Jou of hundreds of other instances If you needed any ether proof .

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Attribution Image 94 (1912-07-17), from microfilm reel 94, (CU1999909). Courtesy of Early Alberta Newspapers Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.