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 The brief 
 
 ADVENTURES IN THE COURTS 
 OF A NEW COUNTRY AND INCI- 
 DENTAL STUDIES IN THE MOR- 
 BID ANATOMY OF GOVERNMENT 
 BY ORGANIZED CORRUPTION 
 
 BY 
 
 The counselor 
 
 HYDE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 HYDE PARK, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
i^fl 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 8, BY 
 
 HYDE PARK PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 MASS ACHUSETTS 
 
 MAY 
 
 918 
 
 ©CU494976 
 
 ^^^ \ 
 
PUBLISHER'S PREFACE 
 
 The Bible suggests that God was the first 
 Judge. That being so, a judiciary is too sacred 
 a power to abuse: and those who do not take the 
 succession reverently are not morally qualified 
 for the bench. 
 
 All this, and a great deal more, is extract 
 from a diary, corroborated by indisputable facts, 
 and true. Hamlet complains of insolence of 
 office. High offices are secured by skillful ad- 
 vertising, secret influence, and other forms of 
 bribery: and hypocrites obtain appointive jobs 
 and salaries in the gift of those so elect at your 
 expense. Readers are variously impressed: One 
 item of our diarist's, entitled "The Black Hand," 
 in a booklet of sketches called "Tears and Smiles" 
 of some years ago, for instance, brought forth 
 the question of eminent students whether -social 
 degenerates, so called, do not, after all, display 
 more love for their fellow men than does the 
 average of the public pay-roll: or is it a case of 
 extremes meeting, — those above the law, bureau- 
 crats, and those beyond, anarchists .^^ 
 
 We have seen mouths water with joy over the 
 imposition upon the Shy lock who never lived: 
 and the objects of the rapture neither saw the 
 farce in the play nor the corrupt license of the 
 plot to rob, or knew that the pound of flesh law 
 never was. lago, the detestable scoundrel of 
 
 3 
 
4 PREFACE 
 
 the officer class, utters the finest sentiments of 
 gentleman and good-fellow; Antony, the forger, 
 hypocrite, low-life, and thief, is the great orator. 
 Millions of people cannot see in Christianity 
 much more substantial than a pretext for hate, 
 the profit of robbing and the fun of killing: and 
 to other millions it is a business card. There is 
 an abundance of myrmidons whose sole mer- 
 chandise is any deed for any fee, with protection 
 by those who are above the law. 
 
 Cervantes had to create an insane person to 
 say the things he felt: and, but for that, Don 
 Quixote is a mere record of ravings. Shakespeare 
 rails at conditions by proxy. Our diarist calls 
 things by their names, in the press, on the plat- 
 form, in court and out: and many now live who 
 remember him facing a forum of unlimited juris- 
 diction in response to the unfair challenge and 
 recite crime after crime of which the challenging 
 judiciary was guilty. We see him raise the 
 orphans of his friend to success. We see him 
 drive out of town prominent preachers whose 
 congregations are too immersed in material in- 
 terests to use their own eyes. We see him 
 write up an interview with a senator, who, con- 
 fronted with the story, throws up his hands in 
 guilt and accepts his "suspension to the end of 
 his term." If the medicine man serves humanity 
 when he prescribes a pill and charges a fee — 
 to what extent, then, helps one who cures whole 
 communities of political and judicial cancers and 
 strengthens the laws that make for human rights, 
 without a fee! 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 And the moral is that gentlemen on the public 
 pay-roll, who are ornamental and ambitious, 
 forsooth, but dishonest, as shown, should not 
 be imitated by descendants of good women; but 
 excellent men on the other hand, should be re- 
 tained so long as they are able and willing to 
 serve: for these are lessons in what people en- 
 trusted with government, — lawyers, judges, — 
 ought not to be. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEB PAGE 
 
 Publisher's Preface 3 
 
 Prologue 8 
 
 I. The One behind it 11 
 
 II. Divorce Practice 17 
 
 III. Criminal Immunity 23 
 
 IV. Those Knights 29 
 
 V. That Barber Shop Incident 37 
 
 VI. General Corruption 45 
 
 VII. The Justice-shop 54 
 
 VIII. The Rhoades Case 60 
 
 IX. The Cattle of Chicago Lawn 73 
 
 X. The Testimony 81 
 
 XI. The Chancery Crook 90 
 
 XII. A Skunk of a Namesake 100 
 
 XIII. The Official Lie 106 
 
 XIV. That Edition of Filth 114 
 
 XV. Rascals at Law 123 
 
 Epilogue 129 
 
PROLOGUE 
 
 ''But soft! methinks I digress too much, 
 Citing my worthless praise: 0, pardon me; 
 For when no friends are by, men praise 
 themselves," 
 
 — Shakespeaee. 
 
THE BRIEF 
 
 I 
 
 TEE ONE BEHIND IT 
 
 I WAS struggling with languages, drifting 
 into newspaper work, reading law, prac- 
 ticing stenography and economy, and residing 
 in Pennsylvania in my early twenties, with not 
 even a distant relative within four thousand 
 miles except — Mary. Among other things not 
 usually committed by men of such age, and 
 under such circumstances — I gradually loaned 
 my funds to her father. My generosity to the 
 family was, judging by the experience I have 
 since acquired, quite beyond that of those 
 better advised and possessed of much larger 
 means. This, coupled with my ready compli- 
 ance with requests for the loans of my savings 
 without evidences of debt, misled them to 
 thinking that I was quite rich. My funds were al- 
 ready practically gone and I was entirely depen- 
 dent upon what I earned when I learned of the 
 exalted suspicions entertained by those who be- 
 came my relatives-in-law of the enormous wealths 
 I did not possess, and I enlightened the little 
 bride, who in turn explained to her people — that 
 I simply earned my living and way by work. 
 
12 THE BRIEF 
 
 Soon my bride began to beg me to leave 
 Pittsburg and go farther West — any place, 
 saying that she would follow me as soon as I 
 would telegraph her to come. After a few days' 
 discussion we agreed on Cleveland, where I 
 soon found employment, made arrangements for 
 her entertainment, and telegraphed for her. 
 She wrote several affectionate letters, and at 
 last that she was coming. But she did not come. 
 She ceased writing. She refused to talk over 
 long distance telephone with me. In fact, and 
 in law — and to be brief — she deserted me. 
 My disappointment was terrible. 
 
 A week had passed. Cleveland was dark to 
 me now, and I went to Chicago. But I was — 
 infatuated, and sometimes furious, and indeed 
 almost raving. For here I was, not only de- 
 prived of her and of all my earthly possessions — 
 yes, my lifetime's savings — but such a mis- 
 placement of everything that seemed worth 
 anything in the life of one of that age. And to 
 think that when she accompanied me to the train 
 as I was leaving Pittsburg — after I had given 
 her everything else I possessed, including my 
 storage receipts for trunks and other personal- 
 ties, except some twenty-odd dollars after my 
 fare was paid — her last words of affectionate 
 farewell consisted of the suggestion in manner 
 childish that I leave with her my watch and 
 chain and ring and some diamond heirlooms I 
 had, and a "stud" that I had been just young 
 and vain enough to buy some time before for 
 some three hundred and fifty dollars, lest among 
 
THE ONE BEHIND IT 13 
 
 strangers I lose them! I left them. So that 
 now, when I left Cleveland for Chicago, I was 
 just able to secure transportation by purchasing 
 a "scalper's" reduced rate ticket, arriving at 
 my destination with two suitcases and forty 
 cents and practically nothing to borrow on. 
 The little wife was to ship everything when she 
 was to follow to Cleveland. 
 
 I was in Chicago, alone. My wife returned 
 what letters I now addressed to her, some opened 
 and some unopened. Some were readdressed by 
 herself and some in her father's writing. Anon 
 her father sent a female named Newburgh to fol- 
 low me to Chicago, where Father-in-law Delahun 
 prearranged for counsel and entertainment con- 
 sistent with the scheme — to sue me, charging 
 that she was with child and that I was the father. 
 This wench, as later evidences disclosed, had been 
 a concubine of Delahun's and an inmate of a 
 common bawdy house. That Delahun gave her 
 the fare, furnished her counsel, and prearranged 
 everything, she admitted quite boldly in court, as 
 also that she obtained my address from him; and 
 that she had been given letters I had written to 
 Mary : for I did write, foolishly, lovingly — 
 desperately. Years later I obtained some of 
 my Mary's letters addressed to the lawyer of 
 this — person, urging him and pleading with 
 him to waylay me, cause me to be imprisoned, 
 disgraced, discredited, and got rid of in any way 
 consistent with such law practice as was in his 
 power. 
 
 The Court instructed the jury that, it being 
 
14 THE BRIEF 
 
 a civil case, they need not be satisfied beyond a 
 reasonable doubt, and that the presumption is 
 that the woman knows best who is the father 
 of her — brat. There was no child in evidence. 
 I had witnesses in court to prove the plot, for 
 the woman, in an orgy, confided her criminal 
 mission a few nights after her arrival in Chicago 
 to those with whom she caroused. One of these 
 witnesses was a sick woman who was told that 
 she was going to die, and her priest told her 
 that she must find me and tell. 
 
 Her deposition was taken by agreement of coun- 
 sel and consent of Holdom, the judge, and when it 
 was about to be read to the jury the plaintiff's 
 counsel objected and the judge sustained him; 
 he also objected to my other witnesses. A man 
 named Brunski, to whom the woman confided 
 her mission and the plot, took the stand. The 
 judge — Holdom — ordered him off the stand. 
 He would not listen to him. It was a farce! 
 In the court room it was bastardy week, one of 
 those sessions in which hundreds of such are 
 tried, and generally judgments entered against 
 the men for payments of alimony. Np doubt 
 there are many unfortunate just causes. All 
 objections made against my interests were 
 sustained quite yawningly and mechanically. 
 It was a one-sided affair; a lot of witnesses 
 on my side, a good defense, and no show in 
 court! My lawyer, Mr. Albert H. Putney, 
 was one of my professors in law school, who 
 had never before appeared in such a case, 
 and only took up the defense on account of 
 
TEE ONE BEHIND IT 15 
 
 his strong belief in my innocence and in the 
 injustice being done me, and would not accept 
 any fee. This gentleman took a friendly interest 
 and wanted to help. It was impossible. No 
 one could understand anything of this sort 
 except one who practiced law in Chicago and 
 actually knew these things! Chicago always 
 was corrupt. I did try to make her a little 
 more moral later, but she would not stand for 
 it. Mr. Putney, my said lawyer, at this writ- 
 ing is chief of the Near-Eastern Division of 
 the State Department, Washington. 
 
 A politician named Fake assisted this woman's 
 lawyer in prosecuting. He was an "assistant 
 state's attorney." He knew her relations with 
 Delahun. The custom was to bring a ste- 
 nographer to court, for otherwise the evidence 
 would not be in existence and a disappointed 
 litigant could not appeal. Fake put a "dummy" 
 in the reporter's chair in order to mislead us to 
 believe that the proceedings were being reported. 
 Behold, now: this man was acting — or rather 
 cheating — in the name of the State of Illinois ! 
 He ordered this dummy in formal language, 
 quite conspicuously, "to be sure and make a 
 verbatim report." When I wanted to appeal 
 I found there was no record to take to the court 
 above. This fraud was committed in order to 
 prevent me from taking the reporter's chair, 
 where I would have made a shorthand report 
 had we not been so — deceived in the name of 
 the State of Illinois! 
 
 In the earlier stage of this case two lawyers 
 
16 THE BRIEF 
 
 were hired by Mr. Delahun, one named McCaslin 
 and another named Blocki. When Mr. McCashn 
 became satisfied that the case was unjust, he 
 withdrew from it and tried to get his associate 
 to drop it. But Blocki stuck, although he knew 
 it was a fake case. Then Blocki's wife tried to 
 get him to drop that kind of law practice, but 
 she could not lead him aright either, and she 
 left him; then Blocki gave to the papers a story 
 to the effect that she left with another man. 
 Then, of course, she decided never to return to 
 him. Thus ended another married relation — 
 but that is another story. 
 
 Later Mr. McCaslin left Chicago, and is now a 
 judge somewhere in Massachusetts. 
 
II 
 
 DIVORCE PRACTICE 
 
 ANON I learned that Mary sued for divorce 
 in Pittsburg. The formahties of the laws 
 of Pennsylvania were carefully complied with. 
 She was sworn to a document reading that I 
 deserted her; that I was already married to a 
 lady named Starke; that my marriage to her 
 was an act of bigamy — and, further, that she 
 was a minor three days under twenty-one years 
 at the time she married, and that without pa- 
 rental consent — a charge no more true than the 
 others, but the insertion of this gravamen en- 
 abled her to sue in the name of her father as the 
 next friend of an "infant"; that I failed and 
 refused to support her; and that she did not 
 know where I was. And here I had my letters 
 readdressed in her own writing! At the time 
 I learned of the suit the case had already reached 
 the concluding stage, for a master in chancery 
 had made his recommendation to the court 
 that a decree be granted her by default, I not 
 having known of the suit, not defending. Mary 
 had access to my baggage, so she took both 
 baggage and papers — and her many letters 
 to me, even the one in which she thanked me for 
 saving her life when a burning lamp had fallen 
 over and covered her with flames. 
 
18 THE BRIEF 
 
 Then and ever since in these years I often 
 wondered why the blunder was made to insert 
 that I deserted her "the next day," for those 
 charges remain on record, and couples who 
 separate the "next day" usually do so for one 
 well-known reason; so that it was as clumsy 
 a job for her sake as also an earmark of her 
 lawyer's and her next friend's crookedness: and 
 the poor girl did suffer the consequences. But 
 that is another story, too. 
 
 I did not have much money. Yet for all the 
 matter of policy in law practice to the contrary, 
 I could not stand for the falsehood without 
 answering to it; and I did. I was still young 
 and foolish enough to believe that being right 
 alone will prevail, too. And still, and for all 
 the evidences to the contrary before and since, 
 I hope for strength so to believe to the end! 
 Of course, I was impulsive. The case came to 
 my knowledge by my writing to the courts 
 asking whether some sort of action was not 
 pending. Then I secured a copy of the files, in 
 the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, 
 Pennsylvania. I prepared an answer to it and 
 filed it, together with a petition to the Court, ex- 
 plaining that I was never served, that there was a 
 danger of fraud and miscarriage of justice, and 
 that I wanted leave to defend. I got a lawyer, 
 but I did not give him much money — because 
 I did not have much. This lawyer readily made 
 plans for many suits — his eye was on figures 
 following the dollar mark: but his conversation 
 did not savor of either speedy action or other 
 
DIVORCE PRACTICE 19 
 
 satisfaction for me. It was all of figures, aliena- 
 tion of affection suits — money. I told him he 
 could keep all the damages he could recover, 
 but I wanted justice for myself: that is, I did 
 not want a lie to be proven on me. I was crazy 
 about the girl, too. The lawyer wanted in writ- 
 ing that he could keep all the damages he could 
 recover. He got it. A cousin of this lawyer's 
 was a railroad-witness physician, who was in 
 a position to get passes for his friends. He got 
 one for this lawyer for a set of vacation trips all 
 over the country: and when he got the pass my 
 true and lawful attorney also took in Pittsburg. 
 The first thing he did was go and see the 
 Delahuns, and offer that whilst he had come to 
 fight — if Mr. Delahun would give him some of. 
 those diamonds of mine he would let him take 
 his daughter's decree of divorce by default, by 
 silent agreement, or in any other way, on 
 the charges on file. Soon I heard of that, for 
 Delahun now had something to brag about, to 
 strengthen his position, and it was common 
 talk in Pittsburg. When Lawyer Ogden returned 
 to Chicago I accused him of it, giving him the 
 source of my information. He did not deny it, 
 but said that he made that proposition to test 
 the Delahuns — in fun. Maybe so, but I dis- 
 missed him immediately. Soon thereafter the 
 court in Pittsburg entered an order, on motion, 
 to ignore my petition for leave to defend because 
 it was not accompanied by a non-resident's bond. 
 Lawyers, like other people, usually give but 
 slight attention to one who has little or no money. 
 
20 THE BRIEF 
 
 Of course there are exceptions, but I did, not 
 meet the exceptions. I had a great grievance 
 and a just cause, and was eager to fight a fair 
 fight. One is never such a champion of Justice 
 as when he wants some. But justice works on 
 wheels, as it were, and the wheels have to be 
 greased, and I did not have much of the grease. 
 The country herself has since, as before, officially 
 admitted that you must have men, munition, and 
 money. You can buy both men and munition, 
 with money. I soon learned, too, that under the 
 Pennsylvania practice, when a woman files a 
 petition for divorce, and her defendant or victim, 
 as the case may be, is within the jurisdiction of 
 the court, her lawyer makes motion for tempo- 
 rary alimony, attorney's fees, and master in 
 chancery's costs. She invariably gets this by 
 interlocutory order; which means that I would 
 have had to pay and keep on paying or go to 
 jail: and poverty is no defense. When a very 
 young man marries and gives up his funds to a 
 father-in-law he does not think of a sinking fund 
 for such purposes: so I was not prepared. The 
 dice were loaded, the fight was an impossibility. 
 I had not even had time enough to recover from 
 my series of shocks yet, without remaking money. 
 Besides, I knew I could not refrain from violence 
 if I ever met that scoundrel anywhere — and 
 then the law would handle me even more roughly. 
 There was no use, then, and it would have been 
 too expensive and risky, to go to Pittsburg: so 
 I just decided to console myself with the satis- 
 faction that I filed an answer, feeling that 
 
DIVORCE PRACTICE 21 
 
 though it did no further good, it called the lie 
 a lie, on the record. For purposes of policy, 
 again, had I not filed the answer at all it would 
 have been better, unless I had fought to the 
 end. I had not the means. Nor did I care any- 
 thing about policy. Policy is sometimes trickery. 
 I wanted Truth. I knew I was right. The 
 charges were false. I learned about them, and, 
 like I thought an honest man ought to do, de- 
 nied them. There have been times when I did feel 
 that Mary was made to believe falsehoods, and 
 I was fond of her. I should have known better. 
 I was more of heart and less of head. Per- 
 haps I should have been glad to get rid of her 
 had I had the information I since obtained: 
 but even then not with such charges against me 
 on the records of a court, if I could help it. And 
 in spite of it all, I could not believe her capable 
 of any wrong, at times. I have since known 
 men much older who could not believe any 
 wrong, when there was wrong! There is no 
 permanent resolution about her now. No deci- 
 sion of her morals or turpitude is twice alike or 
 ever final, or ever will be. — In my life Mary 
 is a sarcoma that gnaws. 
 
 Other complications arose. I used to be as 
 good to my friends as other young people are 
 who have no one to warn them. Now, when I 
 got married and had all sorts of plans, and by 
 such extravagances my means had begun to be 
 exhausted, I wrote to those friends whom I 
 had accommodated with loans that I could well 
 use the various little amounts they had borrowed. 
 
22 THE BRIEF 
 
 Some responded with what money they could 
 spare. They were just friendly loans, without 
 interest, and without memoranda, for that 
 matter. By the time I got to Chicago responses 
 still came to the Pittsburg address, although I 
 had notified the postoffice to forward my mail. 
 
Ill 
 
 CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 
 
 MY mail was received by Mary and her 
 people in Pittsburg after I left there. 
 They took out the moneys and checks the letters 
 contained, signed my name, appropriated the 
 funds, and destroyed the letters. When I 
 learned about this I resented it and wrote 
 demanding my stolen property. My letters to 
 them were still ignored. Soon I learned that 
 some of the inclosures were post-office money 
 orders, one of which came in a registered letter. 
 I complained about that to the post-office de- 
 partment. After a few months' correspondence 
 I was informed by Post-office Inspectors Stuart, 
 Germer and Mullen of Chicago that Delahun 
 had political influence, that they could not get 
 any satisfaction out of the postal authorities in 
 Pittsburg, that they are a lot of crooks, and 
 that they were very sorry about it. I had the 
 return receipt of a registered letter in which a 
 postal money order had been delivered to the 
 Delahuns, who signed my name. The post- 
 master-general referred my letter to the local 
 inspectors in Pittsburg, and they, as I was now 
 informed, could not help me because there was 
 politics! Then I wrote to President McKinley. 
 By order of the President an investigation was 
 made and the amount of this money order was 
 
24 THE BRIEF 
 
 repaid me by the postoffice. But I wanted to 
 know what would be done to the thieves. After 
 much correspondence I learned that nothing 
 was done to them, and that the money which I 
 received from the Department was deducted 
 from the wages of the letter carrier from whom 
 the registered letter was obtained without my 
 authority, in spite of my written request to 
 forward my mail. I sent the postman my check 
 for the amount. But against pilferers of the 
 mail who had friends in politics even the Pres- 
 ident was helpless. Later on letters were sent 
 to me by friends in New York, together with 
 the envelopes in which they had been received 
 unsealed, written by this Delahun, on his real- 
 estate-agent stationery, saying that I was a 
 very bad man, that nice people ought to shun 
 me, that he did this letter-writing unselfishly 
 and for the sake of humanity, that I was — 
 everything that one could be called by a vile 
 and filthy-mouthed rascal such as he. Again I 
 lodged a grievance at the postoffice, because it 
 is a violation of the postal laws to send such 
 abuse: but I got no better satisfaction than 
 when my money -mail was pilfered. "Nothing 
 doing," "Politicians," "Great big drag in 
 Pittsburg," were the reasons assigned by the 
 same post-ofiice "inspectors" for what they 
 pleaded to be their inability to do their duties 
 under the law, claiming to have corresponded 
 with the authorities in Washington and Pitts- 
 burg for months, in vain. 
 
 I would have been something else than hu- 
 
CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 25 
 
 man had I not expressed my sentiments to the 
 Delahun family in writing, which was really 
 all I could afford to do. I did that and sent 
 it by mail. Nor could I admit that the law 
 gives them rights which other citizens have not. 
 There is a quaint epithet, known by all Anglo- 
 Saxons, commonly used and properly applied to 
 men like I thought Delahun was, and so I showed 
 him, in argumentative manner, that if ever there 
 was a son of an indecent woman, he exhibited 
 every etiological element of each symptom that 
 pronounced one. He consulted his political and 
 legal friends with a view of getting me prose- 
 cuted for it: but they told him that, had I 
 written those letters to third persons instead of 
 to himself, talking about him in terms as I did 
 to him, those letters would be actionable: or, 
 had I written those things on postal cards in- 
 stead of letters, the language would be actionable 
 under the postal laws: but that those letters, ad- 
 dressed as they were to himself, did not amount 
 to a publication of the names that I gave him 
 until he showed them around himself, and 
 for such publication, by himself, the sender of 
 the letter could not be charged. Delahun was 
 furious: but he saw a way out: so he seated 
 himself, now that he was well advised of the law, 
 and wrote postal cards to himself and his wife 
 and his daughter and other relatives of his that 
 I never heard of, calling each all sorts of names, 
 signed my name, and had them mailed to him- 
 self and his relatives and friends by his female 
 accessory from Chicago. 
 
26 THE BRIEF 
 
 Then I was charged by these same post-ofBce 
 inspectors who theretofore claimed to resent 
 Delahun's corrupt political influence — with send- 
 ing obscene postal cards to the Delahun gang. 
 I have begun to submit to such conditions in 
 Pittsburg as criminal immunities by influence. 
 Perhaps I might have been willing to overlook 
 that this individual had the right to rob me, to 
 lie about me, and to write all the libels he desired 
 about me, in manner he chose, with impunity, 
 whilst I should not have the same right, — 
 since the President himself was helpless in the 
 matter, — but here I was, charged with the 
 writing of post-cards to Delahun, which cards 
 he himself had written to himself and his! 
 
 Two years had passed. The judgment in 
 the paternity case had been paid and forever 
 satisfied^ and the wench had long since gone 
 back to Pittsburg, the bawdy house, and Dela- 
 hun. The white-slave law did not exist then; 
 nor would it have affected one who had im- 
 munity by influence. There are plenty such. 
 My petition for divorce was now pending in the 
 Cook County Circuit Court, in Chicago. For 
 I had to get rid of Mary legally. In fact it had 
 been so pending at the time I heard that she 
 had sought a divorce in Pittsburg upon those 
 charges in which her father and his divorce 
 specialist friends had assisted her. I charged 
 desertion, although I had other evidence: for 
 what would have been the use of marring her 
 future chances.^ Had she not done enough to 
 herself alone .^^ All I wanted was that she either 
 
CRIMINAL IMMUNITY 27 
 
 come, and get out of the sinister influences in 
 which I beheved she Kved — for I did beheve 
 her an angel fallen among thieves, at times — or 
 that I get free from the legal and moral bonds. 
 The postal-card case came up for trial in the 
 United States Court. I was arraigned on my 
 twenty-fourth birthday. The very same post- 
 office inspectors who pretended to sympathize 
 with me because they could not be helpful when 
 the money was stolen from the mail — these 
 same officials who lamented that nothing could 
 be done to that scoundrel because he had friends 
 in Pittsburg politics — now appeared as my 
 prosecutors. Nay, they lied in the hope of 
 having me convicted, in order to please the 
 Delahuns. They sought the friendship of the 
 man who had friends in politics; for they were 
 on the public pay-roll through the support of 
 such. They swore one after the other that I 
 went to them and told them that I had written 
 those postal cards. They knew they were in 
 Delahun's writing: and they were still in posses- 
 sion of the letters he had written to my friends in 
 New York, for which these same barnacles of 
 the law should have prosecuted him. Delahun 
 confirmed their testimony by saying that he 
 had seen me write a hundred times, and 
 that they were written by me. My plea was 
 that Delahun himself had written them in order 
 to get me in trouble. I wanted to offer in evi- 
 dence the letters he had written about me, but 
 the post-office inspectors had them: they claimed 
 they were in Washington. I doubted it then, and 
 
28 THE BRIEF 
 
 know now that they were not in Washington. 
 Inspector Stuart had them in his pocket. I 
 happened to have other papers written in Dela- 
 hun's hand, and used them to the best ad- 
 vantage I could. 
 
IV 
 
 THOSE KNIGHTS 
 
 DELAHUN came with political letters to 
 Prosecutor Bethea: also, he wore the same 
 society badges that the prosecutor did; and he 
 had shed tears before the United States Attor- 
 ney in his office. I have no doubt Bethea be- 
 lieved him. The prosecutor overdid himself, and 
 got a number of assistants to help him. They 
 abused me till they talked themselves hoarse, 
 one after the other. I was alone. Since then 
 I learned that when Delahun asked the United 
 States Attorney to help him, he added: "Be- 
 hold my badge as a noble Knight. You swore 
 to avenge the wrongs done a brother. I 
 am your brother. This man wronged me and 
 my beautiful, innocent daughter." Bethea was 
 a bachelor. These cattle actually believe them- 
 selves nobles after they pay their initiation! 
 
 I have been more or less connected since then 
 with some of the biggest cases tried in the coun- 
 try, but never have I seen so much energy dis- 
 played, so much abusive language vituperated, 
 and so much unfair and unlawful law practice 
 in evidence as these United States Attorneys 
 indulged, in this petty, nasty, "clothes-line" 
 family affair, upon such forged postal cards, and 
 against me — a mere boy, with not a friend 
 
so THE BRIEF 
 
 within four thousand miles! The prosecutor 
 put the Government to considerable expense: 
 even caused the payment of the traveling ex- 
 penses of the Delahun family and some ward 
 political toughs that they brought with them. 
 This great power, the counsel for the Govern- 
 ment, indulged in the unprofessional practice of 
 waving a copy of that fraudulently secured 
 "paternity" judgment before the jury, and by 
 flaunting before the venire a certified copy of 
 a now fraudulently and by -default-obtained di- 
 vorce of Pittsburg, which said that I had had a 
 wife living when I married this man's daughter. 
 They made reference to my youth, my education, 
 my religion, my writing in the papers, my for- 
 eign accent, which they claimed to be feigned — 
 for I had spent seventeen of the few years I 
 lived, abroad — and referred to my familiarity 
 with foreign languages, as so many instruments 
 of crime or vice, and made capital of every 
 possible suggestion that could arouse passion 
 and prejudice — for nothing will provoke the 
 prejudice of the lower men in a jury box more 
 than contemptible reference to education or any- 
 thing respectable. "Look at him!" he shrieked; 
 " don't he look like a seducer of young women .^^ 
 He speaks French, and German, and Latin, and 
 Hebrew, and Hungarian, and Italian, and Greek, 
 and what not! — Will you let a fellow like that 
 be at large and make it possible for him to 
 write insulting postals to you and your wives 
 and your daughters.^ He has a lot of wives, 
 too. He deserted his young wife: and look 
 
THOSE KNIGHTS 31 
 
 at this good, suffering father-in-law!" — whilst 
 the complaint against me was that I wrote a 
 postal to Mr. Delahun, respectfully requesting 
 that he return to me the things he stole from 
 me. The law is that though a man be a thief, 
 you may not call him that on postals. You 
 may, in a closed letter. Delahun wrote it, and 
 signed my name. When Bethea got through 
 abusing me, his assistant, Childs, addressed the 
 jury; and after him another assistant, Hopkins, a 
 senator's son who was there to work his way into 
 politics: all in the same vicious vein. When the 
 assistants got through they asked Delahun how 
 he liked them as orators! Bethea foamed like 
 a hy drophobiac : he said that the writing was 
 so far from being Delahun's and so near mine, 
 that as a matter of fact I imitated Delahun's 
 writing when I wrote to him, and so prepared a 
 defense, in order to be able to deny the writing 
 if ever I were prosecuted for it. He was so 
 tricky and abusive, and so unfair to fact, that I 
 could not refrain from calling him a liar and a 
 scoundrel in open court: for he well knew that 
 I worked in newspaper offices, which are full of 
 typewriters; he knew I was a shorthand reporter, 
 and had typewriters; and he knew that if I had 
 wanted to write something that I ever expected 
 to deny, it would have been more reasonable for 
 me to write it on a machine. And why should I, 
 if I had written them? For I was anxious to 
 have it known in what dastardly manner the 
 cur robbed me, and how he made his young 
 daughter take the place of billy, black-jack, and 
 
32 TEE BRIEF 
 
 other burglar's tools! As a piece of thievery, 
 it was a clever job: but is that the use one 
 should make of a daughter? The pig! 
 
 It was one of those trials in which the prose- 
 cution feels overconfident: a prosecuting attorney 
 has nothing to lose anyway, for, right or wrong, 
 the Government pays the expenses and politics 
 stand behind him: and what more dangerous 
 than an irresponsible person — or a fool armed 
 with a knife — with nothing to lose, acting in 
 the name of the country? It was generally 
 understood at the time, too, that when one is 
 accused in the United States Courts he might as 
 well plead guilty, for the marshal, the jurors, the 
 commissioners, and all concerned there are one 
 crowd, interdependent on each other for favors 
 and the maintenance of jobs; they are known to 
 stick together like thieves. The juries there con- 
 sist of a melange of poor citizens and pensioners 
 and cheap politicians. A rather interesting coin- 
 cidence in a barber shop disclosed later that at 
 least one actually came from the soldiers' home. 
 These poor fellows usually beg the prosecutor for 
 the favor of being given a chance to make jury- 
 money. The trial lasted two days. Over night 
 the jurors were not allowed to go home. The 
 deputy marshal in charge explained to them that 
 the prosecution would have allowed them to go 
 home, but that I, the defendant, insisted that 
 they be kept behind lock and key — as if they 
 had not already been influenced enough by all 
 that array of official perjury and insidious elo- 
 cution. Had I been fined, I do not know where 
 
THOSE KNIGHTS 33 
 
 I would have got the money to pay. The jury 
 found against me. 
 
 Judge Kohlsaat could not help seeing through 
 it: he would not impose any fine. He said he 
 did not believe I wrote those postals: he said 
 there were too many words misspelled. He held 
 that I was a perfect speller. The same words 
 were misspelled in the letters of Delahun which 
 I offered for comparison. Many lawyers who 
 were present told me that they never saw the 
 judge so lenient with a man against whom the 
 jury had found; that a man would have to be 
 crazy not to see that the prosecution was too 
 vicious to be honest; and that the Government 
 never before had spent so much money to make a 
 breach between husband and wife so perfect and 
 permanent. That is all it seemed to amount to. 
 And the judge concluded by saying that instead 
 of a United States District Court a divorce 
 court should have had to listen to that case. 
 United States Attorney Bethea was furious with 
 disappointment. When next he saw me he 
 accused me of having had friends influence the 
 judge. I told him that he lied and invited him 
 to go and let us ask the judge. I did not care 
 how I spoke to him now, for he had already done 
 his worst. But he would not go to the judge 
 with me. 
 
 While this postal-card case was being tried, 
 frequent reference was made, for the purpose of 
 "showing me up," to the fact that there had 
 been a divorce against me in Pittsburg. I 
 explained that that was a fraudulent divorce, of 
 
34 TEE BRIEF 
 
 no validity; that my divorce was then pending 
 and was due to be heard in a few days; and 
 that I had mailed notice of it to the defend- 
 ant, the daughter of the scoundrel present. I 
 showed the large envelope, unopened, still con- 
 taining the copy of the petition for divorce, 
 which Mary had readdressed to me, having 
 refused to accept it. The judge looked at it, as 
 I thought then, indifferently. Under our law, 
 when a person is charged with one offense, no 
 evidence is admissible which would tend to 
 prejudice him before the jury, except to the issue, 
 and the issue in this case was whether I wrote 
 the postals or not: but when you want a jury to 
 find that one wrote certain postals and at the 
 same time show that that same defendant has 
 lost other law suits — it is a violation of law 
 that no decent lawyer would commit. The 
 United States Attorneys did that. And Dela- 
 hun's lawyer in Pittsburg who engineered all 
 this smut was the president of the bar associa- 
 tion there! Some of the crookedest tricks I 
 ever saw were accomplished by people cloaked 
 in just such ofiices! Yes, a dishonest lawyer is 
 the crookedest of all crooks, and there are thou- 
 sands of them, of very high standing — as such. 
 Some are never found out, because their crooked- 
 ness is for the rich, whose actions poor wretched 
 political parasites in office would not dare in- 
 vestigate, except by orders from men above, as a 
 political investment. 
 
 The petition for divorce which I filed was one 
 of those printed blanks, with spaces to fill in. 
 
THOSE KNIGHTS 35 
 
 Under the laws of Illinois I was entitled to a 
 divorce when two years had elapsed from the 
 day Mary deserted or refused to follow. More 
 than two years had elapsed. The printed stat- 
 utory form read that petitioner and defendant 
 were married and "lived and cohabited" together 
 before the desertion was committed. Whether 
 there was living and cohabitation really or not 
 did not make any difference for the purposes of 
 the case; because if she deserted more than two 
 years ago, that was sufficient to entitle one to 
 the decree. But the words "lived and cohabited" 
 bothered me, for I really did not live and 
 cohabit with her, and now was rather glad of it; 
 so at the trial I explained to the judge that 
 although those words appeared in the printed 
 form, that part was not true: I was glad to em- 
 phasize it; and, too, I wanted to have the facts 
 clear upon the record. The judge saw a plain 
 case, — a lot of returned letters in the defendant's 
 own writing, evidences that she and her people 
 accepted my moneyed mail, evidence that I had 
 sent for her, that I resided in Chicago for two 
 years and more — and I had a witness there to 
 prove the breach of the Commandment; but I 
 told the judge, when my evidence on desertion 
 was all in, that if he thought I made out a case 
 I would rather not call that additional witness. 
 It sounded well to Judge Tuthill, and he knew 
 me, too, because whilst struggling to make ends 
 meet as a reporter I had time for sundry chari- 
 ties, with some of which he was connected. 
 For instance, I was a probation and juvenile 
 
36 THE BRIEF 
 
 officer and did not draw any pay, and he was the 
 judge of that court. (This is the same judge 
 who, some thirteen years later, decided judi- 
 cially, in a case where that was not in issue, that 
 Shakespeare was a mere sausage-maker and that 
 the works bearing his name were written by 
 Bacon the courtier, shyster, and confessed, con- 
 victed, and pardoned bribe-taker and contempo- 
 rary, who himself never claimed to have done the 
 work. I want to plead for Mr. Tuthill that in 
 my time he used to be quite rational and that a 
 mere lapse of senility may be to blame for the 
 slander to the three-hundred-year-dead Shake- 
 speare. One need not be dead at all to be suc- 
 cessfully maligned on the grand-stand as even 
 this story will show.) 
 
 The files of my cause disclosed that Mary 
 refused to accept the notice of suit which the 
 clerk mailed to Pittsburg, for it came back to the 
 Court. My heart was so heavy at that short 
 trial! How unsophisticated I was about her 
 would be better indicated by the fact that in 
 spite of all this persecution, and years after I 
 had divorced her, I named her as beneficiary in 
 my life insurance. Anyway, I got the divorce. 
 
V 
 
 TEAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 
 
 THE juror from the soldiers' home must not 
 be overlooked, so I quote this from my 
 diary : 
 
 ... I went to the Saratoga Hotel barber 
 shop for a hair cut. I very seldom can spare 
 the time I have to wait for my "next"; 
 therefore I shave myself, but I never could 
 learn to cut my hair. 
 
 Barbers are quite a loquacious fraternity. 
 Half the time some of them blabber aimlessly; 
 sometimes they impart good information, 
 such as they pick up from customers, by 
 overhearing them while they talk with each 
 other, and all the time they talk for talk's 
 sake. 
 
 I was waiting for my turn, reading the 
 Osservatore Romano, when my attention was 
 attracted by a part of a barber's talk, while 
 he was shaving a disinterested victim. The 
 name of the barber was Aryan: 
 
 "This lottery shark, John H. Dalton, I 
 see in the papers, was again convicted for 
 using the mails fraudulently. My father 
 helped convict him twicet. You know, 
 Dalton sometimes calls himself a doctor. 
 My gov'nor is on the Federal jury almost 
 
38 THE BRIEF 
 
 every year; they always have the same crowd 
 of jurors there. When they have an intelh- 
 gent and impartial crowd they just hold on 
 to them, and they just keep on drafting them 
 in, again and again." 
 
 I knew Dalton; that is how my atten- 
 tion was attracted at the mention of his 
 name. 
 
 When I first came to Chicago, Dalton called 
 at my office and gave me a lot of translation 
 to do; but after translating a few of his 
 pamphlets I became suspicious as to the legiti- 
 macy of his business, and then I declined 
 to do further work for him: for which 
 reason Mr. Dalton refused to pay me for the 
 work I had done in the past. And so, as I 
 was in the habit of going through my ac- 
 counts at least once a month, I have seen the 
 name so often that its mention naturally 
 invited my curiosity. I listened further: 
 
 "Who the devil is Dalton .^^ Gee, but that 
 damn razor of yours is dull; it hurts like 
 hell. I thought your old man was in the 
 soldiers' home in Danville: do they draft 
 jurors from there .^" 
 
 "Hell, no! They serve the papers on me, 
 and I get him. He can use the few dollars, 
 you know. Of course he always gives my 
 address. Last time he was on the jury he 
 said he was the barber in the Saratoga Hotel. 
 Of course he could not say he was in the 
 Home." 
 
 The barber stopped for breath and to strop 
 
THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 39 
 
 the razor, which he then tested on his thumb- 
 nail, and continued: 
 
 "Dalton is a poHtician. He owns a lot of 
 saloons. He is what they call the lottery king. 
 He runs the International Aural Clinic, 
 which is a fake mail order concern, but 
 from, its name people naturally think it is 
 a hospital : there he sells a sort of an ear drum 
 and a small bottle of vaseline, a combination 
 which costs him about three cents, at fabu- 
 lous prices, guaranteeing them to cure deaf- 
 ness; he advertises Dr. Dalton's Deafness 
 Cure all over the world, in all the languages, 
 and thousands of dollars are pouring into his 
 thief's kitchen every day; he makes money 
 hand over fist, and they can't do nothing to 
 him." 
 
 "But you say he has been convicted," 
 put in the groaning customer from under the 
 squeaky swishes of the razor and amid the 
 incessant talk of the barber, edgewise. 
 
 "What t'ell is a few thousand dollars' fine 
 to a guy like that. It ain't nothing to him. 
 He has been convicted many times; but he 
 just pays a few thousand dollars' fine, laughs, 
 walks out of the court room, goes to one of 
 his saloons, sets them up, and that is all it 
 amounts to, to him. But say, the greatest 
 case my gov'nor ever was in was before 
 Kohlsaat. It was a young fellow, about 
 twenty-four years old. Say, that fellow knew 
 all kinds of languages. Wasn't he smart, 
 though.? He used to write in the papers. 
 
40 THE BRIEF 
 
 roasted every one he didn't like, and he 
 wasn't afraid of law nor nothing. He would 
 marry any girl he liked. It was a cinch for 
 him, for he had all kinds of money. They 
 said he was some damn nobleman who got 
 piles of money from the old country — that's 
 what the bailiff said to one of the gentlemen 
 of the jury. Well, he would shake his wife 
 and get another one. He wouldn't go to the 
 trouble of getting no divorce nor nothing. 
 Sometimes he would live with a woman with- 
 out any marriage; when he would get tired 
 of her he would just shake her. That fellow 
 was so smart they couldn't do nothing to 
 him. 
 
 "There he sat in court. Gee, he was 
 dressed fine, and he was a dandy looker, too. 
 The first glimpse my old man took of him, 
 he says to himself, says he, 'wouldn't you 
 look dandy in stripes .f^' Well, sir, he was 
 charged with calling his father-in-law a 
 scoundrel on a postal card. His father-in- 
 law did him some dirt; I guess he was an 
 old profligate, all right; and I think he 
 turned his daughter away from this damn 
 foreign husband of hers, for, you see, she 
 only married him for his money, and she got 
 all of that. But it is unconstitutional to send 
 such insulting postal cards by the mail. 
 
 "Well, sir, there he spread himself com- 
 fortable on a table in the court, dressed like 
 a new doll, writing letters and drawing pic- 
 tures of the jurors, the judge, and the prose- 
 
THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 41 
 
 cutor, and he didn't give a damn. And then 
 he took the stand and dared deny that he 
 wrote the insults, after a Government de- 
 tective himself swore that he was guilty as 
 hell. He didn't care for nobody. And there 
 was some law professor who said the writings 
 was not his; and also an old woman, from 
 uptown, you know, and she testified for him. 
 She liked him, and she had daughters; and 
 the prosecutor said it right to her face, right 
 there in court, and before the judge and the 
 jury, that that is why she swore the writing 
 wasn't his — because she had daughters; and 
 she didn't do a thing but smile. She said he 
 was the finest gentleman she ever knowed. 
 
 "I wish I had had a chance to get a whack 
 at him, I tell you. Gee, wouldn't I! 
 
 "He was fine educated, too. His lawyer, 
 a little Dutch shyster, said something there 
 about that the father-in-law, whose name 
 was Delahun, had wrote worse about him 
 to some New York Mason lodge; but they 
 could not prove it; and then he said that 
 Colonel — what the hell is his name — well, 
 whatever it is, he said that the post-oflSce 
 inspector had stole his evidence. He ad- 
 mitted that what was writ on the postal — 
 I think there was several of them postals — 
 was all true, and he would not take it back; 
 and he said he wrote something like them, 
 and worse, in letters, but not on postals. 
 The court stopped him from insinuating 
 further that the post-oflfice inspector was a 
 
42 THE BRIEF 
 
 thief, because that wasn't competent evidence 
 nohow. 
 
 "Then he got mad, and told the United 
 States District Attorney that he was a har 
 and a scoundrel; and then he said the old 
 father-in-law was a liar — I believe he called 
 him an idiot, and then he called him a 
 cancer-eaten rogue. What do you think of 
 that — right in open court ! 
 
 "Why, that fellow, he's got children, so 
 many of them that he don't know them; 
 some of them he never seen, but they're his, 
 all right. He was certainly hell. And, you 
 know, two of the jurors was Masons, and 
 they said that this fellow wasn't a Mason 
 at all, because if he was one, in a trouble 
 like that, wouldn't he have sense enough to 
 give the distress signal of the fraternity in 
 open court, so that his brothers could recog- 
 nize it.^ You know the district court is always 
 jammed with folks and lawyers, and don't 
 you think if he was a Mason he would have 
 sense enough to know that there was Masons 
 amongst the crowd, and put on a Mason 
 badge as big as a fork, so they would see it 
 and help him. You are a member of the Mac- 
 cabees yourself: If you was on the jury, 
 and a fellow insinuated that he was a brother 
 Maccabee, and he wasn't, wouldn't you con- 
 vict him on general principles.'^ And wouldn't 
 you have it in for him? 
 
 "Gee, but he was a bad egg. They showed 
 the damn foreigner up, all right; and, you 
 
THAT BARBER SHOP INCIDENT 43 
 
 know, he was afraid of the jurors' finding 
 out some more about him privately, so he 
 made the judge keep them prisoners over 
 night. It is hard to escape a Federal jury 
 anyway; but they found him guilty all right." 
 
 "And what did they do to him.^" slob- 
 bered the customer from under the bay rum. 
 
 "Well, that's up to the judge. The jury 
 had nothing to do with the sentence, only 
 to find him guilty. I don't know just what 
 he got. I hope to Christ they hung him. — 
 Next!" 
 
 I was next. Barber Aryan cut my hair. 
 He talked a great deal to me; he told me all 
 about the horse races and the baseball games 
 and the prize fights. I would have given 
 anything to have had him revert to the case 
 of which he had spoken to my predecessor 
 in the chair of torture, but I could not think 
 of a thing that would lead to it, as I was a 
 stranger to him. I was too conscious, too, 
 of my position in the matter, and I did not 
 have the courage to broach it. 
 
 Some weeks later I looked for the same 
 barber again. By now he had lost his job; 
 but I learned that he worked in the Great 
 Western Hotel. I managed to get into his 
 chair, and to remind him that I once over- 
 heard him talk about an interesting case, 
 in which his father served as juror. He did 
 not seem to be in good humor, his breath 
 was spirited, and his answer short: "I know 
 all about the case, sir," he said, "but you 
 
44 THE BRIEF 
 
 can't make me talk about it; you are a 
 newspaperman, I know, and you would write 
 the thing up." 
 
 "No, sir," he resumed after a period of 
 silent hair clipping, "I am as mum as an oyster 
 on that there subject." 
 
 I looked up the records of that postal- 
 card case, and my experience in the barber 
 shop was fully confirmed. This barber's 
 father was actually on my jury and had 
 represented himself as a barber in the Sara- 
 toga Hotel. I continued my inquiries and 
 found that this barber's father — my juror 
 — was an inmate of the Old Soldiers' home 
 at Danville. 
 
VI 
 
 GENERAL CORRUPTION 
 
 THINGS practical confronted me in their 
 true complexion. I was fledging into ma- 
 ture manhood and began to take the atmosphere 
 in which I lived most seriously, and crooked- 
 ness pervaded so many things ! I lived in Chicago, 
 they say the crookedess place on earth: but 
 that is not so. The big city is a great hiding 
 place, infested with everything, everywhere. But 
 I began to see with traveled, expert eyes. High 
 and low vice, perjury, and general corruption 
 existed not only, but was worshiped by the 
 multitude and even by those in office and power 
 because of their enormity and success; and it 
 was all aggregate and not individual: nay, indi- 
 vidual corruption would have failed, even as indi- 
 vidual honesty at times, for organized jealousy, 
 competition, and corruption would have over- 
 taken it under the pretext of fighting for fair- 
 ness. If a man held public ofiice, or worked 
 for a big concern or a rich man, it appeared 
 that he did not feel it necessary to be decent 
 at all : and on the witness-stand — it never 
 before would have seemed reasonable that people 
 would swear so recklessly. Such were my obser- 
 vations, for instance, as a reporter in court. 
 It all seemed a mere game for — who will win ! 
 
46 THE BRIEF 
 
 One small band with which I naturally fell in 
 was an organization of shorthanders. The high 
 courts of Chicago did not have any official ste- 
 nographers, although the law authorized every 
 judge to appoint one for his room; but as the 
 judges' jobs were elective, and judges wanted to 
 make plausible showings of economy at future 
 elections, some of them did not hurry to take 
 advantage of their rights under that law and 
 stuck to the status quo, which was more expen- 
 sive to the public, less safe, and often corrupt 
 — but all that was subconscious. The people 
 don't know: and politicians thrive upon that 
 ignorance. . The system, such as it was, was un- 
 fair to litigants who could not afford reporters, 
 partial to those who could, and unreliable gener- 
 ally, because stenographers were paid by parties 
 to suits, many of whom controlled their stenog- 
 raphers and corrected their transcripts — and the 
 reporters were not the servants of the court, as 
 lawyers, and judges, too, ought to be, but of those 
 who hired them. And so the grade of their ability, 
 the caliber of counsel who hired them, as well 
 as the necessity of the patronage of the respective 
 employers, affected the certificates of evidence that 
 they signed, and justice. Nor could the fraud 
 which was committed upon me in the name of 
 the State of Illinois have been possible had the 
 court reporting system been fair. And such 
 fraud was general, and the public suffered. I 
 wrote an article advocating fair competitive 
 examinations and appointments under the law, 
 which appeared in the Herald of March 22, 
 
GENERAL CORRUPTION 47 
 
 1903. This antagonized some of my fellow- 
 reporter^ very much, or at least divided them 
 into friends and enemies. 
 
 Some years before then I had passed a short- 
 hand-teachers' examination and received Sir Isaac 
 Pitman's certificate. Not that I ever expected 
 to teach it, or to practice it, for that matter. 
 The local reporters knew that I was the only 
 one who had such an evidence of proficiency; 
 and they also knew that I had been mentioned 
 for an official reporter's job. The first reason 
 why I did not get that job was that I did not have 
 the $2000 which I was asked to pay for it; and 
 the second was that when I was told that my 
 note would be accepted, and that I could pay 
 it in installments from the earnings as official 
 reporter, I wanted to know who would get the 
 $2000 — for unless the money went to a legiti- 
 mate purpose, I would not have the job. Then 
 they said I was unreasonable! 
 
 Now, there were men in the reporting business 
 who had grandsons older than I was; these older 
 men organized a society under a charter from one 
 of the labor orders. They invited me to join 
 it, which I did. To my surprise I found later 
 that the original organizers all had taken oaths 
 not to seek or accept, but to oppose, the appoint- 
 ment of official reporters. They heard that I 
 declined the offer of one job and was tnentioned 
 for another. I believed in both the law and the 
 appointment: but since there was no honest way 
 of getting it, and since, also, the veterans in the 
 business swore that they did not care for it but 
 
48 , THE BRIEF 
 
 were opposed to it, and since I had other am- 
 bitions anyway, I had no special reason to object 
 to remaining a member of the miion; for I only 
 joined in order not to offend those who invited 
 me. 
 
 The organizers of the union themselves wanted 
 the official jobs. They framed up the "union" in 
 order to get the younger people in and pledge 
 them against seeking appointments. When that 
 was accomplished the older men went to work, 
 by political influence and otherwise, and secretly 
 sought the official appointments and secured some 
 one by one! In a town so big and so corrupt 
 there is always something to find fault with, 
 anyway: but this being a subject so near to me, 
 and it being of interest to the public, I exposed 
 the perfidy, which I resented, in a signed card 
 in the Herald of October 11, 1903. The union 
 then appointed a committee to write an article 
 denying the unfair conduct: but the editor told 
 them that unless the denial was signed and sworn 
 to it would not be printed. As the committee 
 could not swear to falsehoods in writing, in 
 view of the fact that all the judges knew that 
 they all were applicants, there was no reply 
 printed; and the union had to content itself by 
 buying certified copies of that fraudulently rail- 
 roaded paternity judgment and sending them to 
 the different judges of the superior and circuit 
 courts, addressed by typewriter in blank envelopes. 
 District Attorney Bethea was also enlisted to 
 talk to some of the judges — and he told them 
 what a bad man I was! 
 
GENERAL CORRUPTION 49 
 
 The obtaining of the certified copies is of ad- 
 ditional interest, since Holdom, the judge, had 
 told me that he was satisfied — too late — that 
 that was a miscarriage of justice, and that, for 
 that reason, he would direct the clerk of the court 
 to impound the papers in that case in order to 
 keep malicious individuals from using them, as 
 he knew they did. Had the judge done that, 
 the circulation of those copies would not have 
 been possible, then or later. Nay, I reminded 
 him in open court a year or two later of what he 
 had said and promised, and that copies of the 
 thing are being circulated by enemies. His 
 answer was that he was so afflicted with rheuma- 
 tism that he did not care to be afflicted with — 
 me. — That is the sort of judge he was. — I ought 
 to be ashamed to admit it: but I actually used 
 to pray for these unwashed curs of human form, 
 whilst they all but preyed on me! 
 
 Soon after all this mess I took the bar exami- 
 nation and was admitted. Here I was, a licentiate 
 at law, a nervous wreck from all I had just been 
 through, and with only about two hundred 
 dollars to my credit. It was not enough to start 
 out with: but I was a sort of a newspaperman, 
 and a newspaper offered me a job that was in 
 the nature of a lawyer's occupation. They made 
 a new "department" to which people in need of 
 legal advice were invited to write and were 
 to await their answers in the columns of the 
 paper. I was to get a paltry compensation by 
 the inch and column, but I was satisfied. I 
 reckoned that with that I could pay part of the 
 
50 TEE BRIEF 
 
 office expenses. Soon thousands of letters poured 
 in, from everywhere, many containing troubles 
 that needed immediate attention and advice. 
 The scheme of the paper was to get individuals 
 to continue to buy the papers until they would 
 find their respective answers. But to let them 
 wait their turns would have been cruel, for soon 
 so much copy accumulated that it would have 
 taken my later correspondents months to receive 
 answers to their anxious questions. I soon 
 found that what little the newspaper paid me was 
 hardly enough to pay for the postage to the 
 answers I was not even supposed to write; but 
 I could not sympathize with the editorial scheme 
 of making them wait so long, after I saw through 
 it, so I answered such letters as needed early 
 attention without delay, by mail. I knew what 
 it was to be anxious, for I had waited myself: 
 yes, and was still waiting with a vain and impos- 
 sible anxiety no one could know! I did not 
 begrudge the newspaper the credit, however, 
 for in fact I used its stationery and signed myself 
 "The Counselor." I enjoyed the job immensely, 
 and I learned more by looking up the answers 
 to the thousands of problems than a good many 
 years' practice would have taught me. Anon I 
 found that the editors opened the mail addressed 
 to the "Counselor," in quest for sensational 
 news. I put a stop to that. 
 
 Had I not done other work, I could not have 
 made ends meet. The result was I worked 
 all day and late at night, for months, on the 
 troubles of these people, with piles of unread 
 
GENERAL CORRUPTION 51 
 
 letters always ahead of me; and my delight 
 in being helpful and buried in an interest — and 
 work — kept me as well entertained as busy. 
 Many a morning found me at the desk which 
 I had not left since the morning before. And 
 many a month long have I worked eighteen 
 hours and more a day in the years that have 
 elapsed between then and now. 
 
 Never before was work so fascinating. Every 
 letter disclosed a distinct set of troubles. I 
 certainly was qualified to feel and bear with 
 people who ^eve in difficulties; and the great 
 majority spoke not only of troubles but also 
 of poverty. They were better off than I had 
 been, however, for they had the "Counselor" 
 to write to. As a power for good, I was growing 
 and growing: When a poor person got into 
 trouble and it was brought to my attention for 
 help — - all I had to do was call by telephone and 
 the authorities seemed to fall all over themselves 
 in their haste to release prisoners, or transfer a 
 drunken police officer to a beat farther away from 
 his residence so he could not go and give his wife 
 a beating every little while, — all protesting the 
 honor of serving the Counselor, who worked for 
 God and Charity. Whilst I appreciated the favor 
 I took the praise with due discount, for I knew 
 that the Saviour himself could not have got such 
 prompt service from politicians for nothing, 
 except because there was a newspaper behind 
 him; and well they might be so practical, for a 
 malignant misreport read by millions cannot be 
 entirely offset by a booklet like this: so poli- 
 
52 THE BRIEF 
 
 ticians figure that by befriending a newspaper — at 
 least it may — not lie about them, perhaps. How 
 delightful it was, to be of actual help, to thou- 
 sands! Nor was that all the compensation. The 
 paper was owned by the worst man in America. 
 He had libeled thousands upon thousands. He 
 libeled me and got me into all sorts of trouble, 
 years ago. Indeed, he was accessory to the 
 murder of President McKinley, and to many 
 another disaster, by his cartoons, scandals, and 
 lies, whereby people have been misinformed and 
 "doped" — as that class of newspapermen de- 
 light to call their nefarious work — and the 
 victims ruined. Now I was his "Counselor." 
 I did some good in his name. And, God, how 
 I did love that work! 
 
 The justice-shop system was in vogue. Corrupt 
 and rotten are not quite expressive of what they 
 were, these thieves' kitchens. When I had 
 time and an itch for writing, in those writings 
 I advocated, among other reforms, their abolition. 
 The system I outlined in my articles has been 
 realized and is now in operation. I often hear 
 and read references to it as an exemplary system, 
 but never do I hear my name in connection with 
 its accomplishment; yet I wrote and spoke 
 and worked and suffered persecution for it. But 
 thanks for the success. To tell all I knew about 
 it would mean the editing together of all I said 
 and wrote about it and more. It would be 
 incredible to those who have not lived and prac- 
 ticed law — or have not been in the clutches of 
 it — in Chicago. My last article on the subject 
 
GENERAL CORRUPTION 53 
 
 appeared in the Record-Herald on Christmas, 
 1904. It was an answer to a card pubHshed by 
 a Mr. Darrow, who has since been on trial for 
 crime in Cahfornia, defending that system of cor- 
 ruption and blackmail in its status quo. He tried 
 to rescue his justice-shop friends when the crisis 
 of the end of that particular corrupt business 
 was reached, for a bill was pending in the Senate 
 to do away with the justice-shop and to establish 
 the municipal court which I advocated. There 
 were some seventy justices and hundreds of 
 constables and other judicial parasites contin- 
 uously putting up jobs, blackmailing, robbing 
 the people, and selling "justice." These men 
 made bigger wages than did the judges of the 
 courts of record: not officially nor honorably, 
 of course — and that is just to what I objected. 
 When the matter of their abolition was up they 
 put up quite a lobbying fund. Big business 
 men, too, contributed large donations, for the 
 system was valuable to them. All they had 
 to do with accounts was to turn them over, by 
 the hundreds, to a "justice," and they were 
 all turned into judgments ready for execution, 
 on "speculation" fees, without ado. But they 
 lost. 
 
F 
 
 vn 
 
 THE JUSTICE-SHOP 
 
 OR a suggestion of what the justice shop 
 was, here is that last article on the subject: 
 
 SCORES JUSTICE-SHOP 
 
 ATTORNEY OF THE CHICAGO BAR POINTS OUT EVILS 
 OF THE SYSTEM 
 
 FEES BLAMED FOR ABUSES 
 
 FAVORS THE PLACING OF ALL COURT OFFICIALS ON SALARY 
 
 AS THE REMEDY 
 
 An attorney of considerable prominence 
 has recently declared himself the champion 
 of the justice court system as it now prevails 
 in Chicago, saying, among other things, 
 that a change in the system would not change 
 conditions in the least; and when he found 
 himself criticized by the members of the bar 
 he prepared an evasive answer, which he 
 published in one of the evening papers, 
 modifying his statements, except as to the 
 few justices of the peace who are his neigh- 
 bors and with whom he is doing business. It 
 does not seem reasonable that he should not 
 know to what extent the justice system 
 affects business, the poor, the general credit 
 
THE JUSTICE-SHOP 55 
 
 and the safety of the people who live in or 
 visit Chicago. 
 
 It is not the title or name of the court that 
 we want changed, but the system. Have a 
 judge under a salary, so that he is not inter- 
 ested in the outcome of the litigation sub- 
 mitted to him to such an extent that he would 
 suffer at the loss of a permanent customer 
 unless he extended to him special and unfair 
 favors at the expense of innocent litigants, 
 thus making a travesty of justice. 
 
 Under the present conditions the justice 
 of the peace needs to advertise his business 
 just as the merchant does his wares, and un- 
 less he will treat his customers as they want 
 him to treat them they will become customers 
 of another justice who will. The income of 
 a justice is the money he receives from liti- 
 gants as costs of their respective suits, and 
 he is, in many cases, equally interested with 
 the plaintiff — his customer. The loss of 
 certain customers would mean the loss of 
 hundreds of dollars annually to the justice, 
 which would not be the case if he were a 
 salaried magistrate. And in most of the cases 
 the justice does not get his fee until he col- 
 lects it from the victim by the force of the 
 execution issued by himself as judge. 
 
 WANTS JUSTICES ON SALARY 
 
 Why not put the justice on a salary.^ He 
 has to make his living, and if the community 
 will not pay him a fixed stipend he will make 
 
56 THE BRIEF 
 
 . money off the people individually, as they 
 fall into his snares. He does not go into 
 politics for fun; he wants to make money 
 while he holds the office, and he is bound to 
 do it. 
 
 The attorney who so ably championed the 
 justices well knows that very few of them 
 ever made any kind of a living until they got 
 their jobs as justices, and he also knows that 
 they are not elected by the people. They 
 are elected by the judges of the courts of 
 record, who select their choices from the 
 applicants on file. But if the system were 
 better, it would be an inducement for lawyers, 
 and good lawyers, to aspire for such appoint- 
 ments or elections. 
 
 The records show that most justices, after 
 filing an application for the office, send written 
 petitions to the several judges of the same 
 political faith begging humbly for their sup- 
 port and stating what a large number of 
 votes they have behind them, and so forth. 
 
 No man engaged in the lower class of po- 
 litical work ever was a good lawyer, and cer- 
 tainly not a good judge, and that is the rank 
 from which the average justice of the peace 
 is picked. 
 
 COURT SHARES IN PROFITS 
 
 Often warrants are issued causing the ar- 
 rest and disgrace of people, because the costs 
 of such warrants are clear profit to the justice, 
 and because the justice needs the money. 
 
TEE JUSTICE-SHOP 57 
 
 If such a justice were under a salary he would 
 subject the applicant for the arrest of peo- 
 ple to critical examinations before depriving 
 men of their liberties. When a person is ar- 
 rested — and in a multitude of cases on some 
 put-up job, to extort money from him — he 
 looks for a bondsman. The constable and 
 the justice's clerk summon a professional 
 bondsman at short notice, who will sign 
 bond for the victim in consideration of what- 
 ever money or valuables he has on his person, 
 which is a booty immediately divided in the 
 justice-shop — and there is hardly any justice- 
 shop in Chicago that could stand searchlight 
 as against this practice. This is usually done 
 in the case of strangers, poor people, and 
 travelers of little influence — and this crime 
 is consummated in some justice-shop or other 
 in every hour of the day. 
 
 Collection concerns file cases by the hun- 
 dreds, usually small bills, against all classes 
 of people. In many cases when a poor person 
 is sued for some small or unjust claim, and 
 he is inside the exemption limits, he pays no 
 attention to it, but lets it go by default. He 
 does not know that he has to file a schedule 
 of his property with the justice in order to 
 avail himself of the exemption, and the next 
 move is for a constable to carry away his fur- 
 niture and whatever other earthly goods he 
 has. 
 
58 THE BRIEF 
 
 CONSTABLE ADDS TO EVIL 
 
 The constable is not on a salary. It would 
 not pay him to inform poor people of their 
 rights of exemption and of the necessity of 
 the schedule. If he should, he would not 
 have a chance to levy and make his com- 
 mission. 
 
 In thousands of instances, when collection 
 concerns sue, and the defendant appears for 
 trial, they will ask for continuances, and they 
 ask for continuances as often as the de- 
 fendant appears. When he becomes dis- 
 couraged at wasting his time, and probably 
 loses his employment through such persecu- 
 tion, and once fails to appear, the justice 
 enters judgment by default against him. 
 
 Often such cases are set for a certain day. 
 After service has been made on the defendant 
 the collection "lawyer" instructs the justice- 
 shop to set his case for some later day. The 
 defendant appears and waits a whole day 
 and does not hear his case called. He does 
 not know what to make of it, and the case 
 being too small to justify the engagement 
 of an attorney, he goes home. The next thing 
 he hears is that the constable is there with 
 his execution. 
 
 The only thing the victim can do is to ap- 
 peal to the courts of record. Appeals are 
 technical and complicated, and in most cases 
 they would involve greater expense than the 
 judgment amounts to. If you complain to 
 
THE JUSTICE-SHOP 59 
 
 the justice of the fraud he will tell you to 
 appeal. He knows that but a small percent- 
 age will appeal on account of the expense and 
 the necessity of bond and attorneys' fees, 
 which the average victim cannot furuish or 
 afford. 
 
 SLIGHT CHANCE POR REDRESS 
 
 In some instances persons sued for small 
 bills go and settle, taking their receipts. 
 They are promised a withdrawal of the suit. 
 Nevertheless, in thousands of cases default 
 judgments are taken in routine order, although 
 in many cases the justice knows of the set- 
 tlement outside of court. If you complain, 
 the justice will tell you to appeal. Soon 
 thereafter the judgment is assigned to some 
 "concern" in that kind of business, and the 
 poor man is again persecuted, by reason of 
 the justice system. 
 
 The justice-shop of Chicago is the most 
 terrible tribunal in the world. It is capable 
 of doing more harm than any court of record, 
 and that in such a way as not to leave a trace 
 of any injustice for evidence against it. Its 
 personnel and its connections are one clique, 
 always prepared with defenses, with a class 
 of hangers-on, ready and willing to swear to 
 anything for its protection and with the proof 
 of its sinister practices always destroyed. 
 
 A few days after this article appeared the new 
 law was passed. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE RHOADES CASE 
 
 JUST then, as a young lawyer, I had the de- 
 Hght of having a case against the leader of 
 these justices of the peace, whose name was 
 Rhoades. All the business I had with him so 
 far was that a Mrs. Cash had complained to me 
 as the "Counselor" that he would not turn over 
 to her certain amounts of money that he had 
 collected from debtors of hers as her justice. 
 I had called that complaint to his attention 
 and he went and settled with Mrs. Cash. Now 
 I represented his wife — a real pay-client. She 
 had every grievance in the code against him. 
 To be short, I sued him as her lawyer for separate 
 maintenance, and to get him out of her house 
 for endangering her life and being a nuisance 
 generally, and for divorce. He was a member 
 of the justices' association, one of the strata or 
 substrata of the many institutions of "barna- 
 cles upon the ship of state" of a big city. It 
 was long known as an organization of bad men. 
 They were banded together for the purpose of 
 helping each other make money and to shield 
 and protect each other from the clutches of the 
 law, if ever they should happen to be overta*ken. 
 Rhoades engaged counsel, of the sort that he knew 
 best — the very dregs of the justice-shop practi- 
 
THE RHOADES CASE 61 
 
 tioners, such as held themselves out as "shovelers 
 of dirt" in the courts. Rhoades said if I would 
 not drop his wife's case he would ruin me, "would 
 do me dirt," and "would drag his wife's name 
 in the mire." He tried to live up to his threat. 
 He made additional threats: he said he would 
 have me waylaid. That he found impossible. 
 People did waylay in Chicago in those days, and 
 he was one of the chief contractors at such 
 work, as the evidence later disclosed; and it 
 was well known that organizations like his were 
 behind the way layings. But that could only 
 happen to those who walked or lurked in the 
 dark or drank immoderately. I tried to walk 
 in the light, and those of his gang who fol- 
 lowed and shadowed me could not corner me.. 
 Nor was I afraid of physical violence, as I knew 
 every trick of that stratum of men: for had I not 
 a multitude of letters in regard to these criminals 
 from people whom they were blackmailing con- 
 tinuously because in the past, and for consider- 
 ations, they had been in league with them.f^ Nor 
 did I know what fear really is. And to fear is 
 against my religion, too: and these adventures 
 never changed that. 
 
 The Rhoades case was the sensation of Chicago 
 — and nationally, while it lasted. It gave the 
 judge — a Jew of the pork-eating type who 
 looked it — sitting in judgment over it a lot 
 of publicity; so he saw to it that it remain before 
 the public long, and he succeeded in spreading 
 it out to last months. He hated me, too, for 
 once he overheard me say that one can always 
 
62 THE BRIEF 
 
 tell a bird of prey from its crooked beak, and 
 he grabbed for his nose. On another occasion 
 — I prosecuted his best friend for crime. There 
 was a third occasion — but the details of that 
 he might deny, and I could not prove them. 
 Now was his chance to get even. Judge Mack's 
 job was elective; and this was cheap advertising; 
 and he posed for the galleries wonderfully. He held 
 night sessions, too, and at such sessions he had all 
 his relatives and wife sitting right and left of him 
 on the bench, making it look more like a com- 
 bination of the personnel of the pawnshop and 
 the frippery than a tribunal of justice. During 
 the pendency of this case complaint was made 
 against me by Rhoades and his friends, before 
 the "special committee of the bar association," 
 asking it to move to disbar me, pleading all that 
 stigmatizing persecution which I sustained at 
 the hands of the Delahuns and those they enlisted, 
 as their reason, alleging that that branded me as 
 immoral and therefore unworthy of remaining 
 a member of the bar. The papers filed with the 
 association, charging "bastardy" and "bigamy," 
 naturally made " deliciously " nasty reading and 
 fine food for the exploitation of "modern journal- 
 ism." In Illinois there seems to be no law against 
 newspapers' discussing private hearings of that 
 sort. In fact those hearings are purposely made 
 " private " in order to enable the committee of 
 the " bar association " to give to the press such 
 misreports as they desire: or white- washed re- 
 ports, if a friend of theirs is " investigated." But 
 against those who " stand in " the most serious 
 
THE RHOADES CASE 63 
 
 complaint would go right straight to the waste- 
 basket. That is the way organized gentlemen 
 learned in the law do, in Chicago. Even plead- 
 ings of pending cases are discussed in the press: 
 and gentlemen of the shyster class do make capi- 
 tal of that: for the editors do thirst for morbid 
 stuff that is loud, and the shyster does seek the 
 good will of the newspaper: and think of the ad- 
 vertising, and the consequent political chances, too! 
 When shysters want to undo one, that is the way 
 they start; they do something that will enable 
 the newspapers to print scandal with impunity. 
 Every newspaper wants at least two sensations 
 every day; and if they get the least color of 
 encouragement and legality they will find matter 
 for blood-curdling food for the minds of the lower 
 classes, the returns of which will fill their coffers; 
 and at the same time the lust of the enemy is 
 satisfied and his case strengthened — free of 
 charge. I declined to talk for publication: first, 
 because there were so many things to say that 
 I had not time for them; and second, because 
 I did not think the newspapers to be the proper 
 courts to try cases in; whilst Rhoades and his 
 friends went to every editor in town with files 
 of manuscript all ready for printing — Rhoades 
 shedding tears and complaining that his wife 
 was in love with me and that I wanted to divorce 
 him in order to marry her! He was one of those 
 short, fat, crimson-faced, baldheaded gentlemen 
 with a fringe of red at the neck who could shed 
 tears at will — and now he wanted sympathy — 
 and what is more valuable sympathy than that 
 
64 THE BRIEF 
 
 of the press, and where is an easier way to obtain 
 it than by going to each editor with a band of 
 justice-shop lawyers weepingly, asserting that 
 one's home is being broken up by a man with 
 such "evidences" against him! I stuck to the 
 issue. My personal griefs were deep, mute, 
 not for the press, and too sacred for such cattle 
 to comprehend. Nor did I seek sympathy. Nor 
 did the newspapers offer sympathy — they sought 
 sensation, blood-curdling and red-hot. 
 
 In order to make my fall the heavier the news- 
 papers announced that I was the greatest lin- 
 guist, the most prominent lawyer, of royal blood, 
 with a string of degrees of learning, a social lion, 
 and all that, to contrast with what they now 
 resolved me to be known as — that monster who 
 would break up a home — and they padded 
 that with the story of the litigations through 
 that nasty gang I fell in with in Pittsburg from 
 which I was trying to emerge, which operated 
 just as lying down with unwashed dogs ren- 
 ders one inflicted with fleas hard to rid. The 
 papers exaggerated even that, to make a 
 foundation for the new scandal. Then the bar 
 association, too, put in some perversions of its 
 own, for the sake of additional packing: it said 
 that I had advertised legal advice free and charged 
 when people came to me, which it knew to be 
 false. I was marked for slaughter because the 
 people could get free advice in my column, and 
 because they saw in me a promising man and a 
 power for good. What good I had tried to do 
 was not even thought of now. They had to 
 
THE RHOADES CASE 65 
 
 crush me before I grew. Newspapermen hinted 
 for blackmail, in consideration of which they 
 would let up; two managing editors actually 
 asked me for it, in vain. 
 
 If people only knew what an ordinary, irrespon- 
 sible class makes up the staff of the average 
 newspaper! 
 
 What few clients I now had could not help 
 reading those inevitable misreports. A young 
 lawyer who starts out as I did usually gets the 
 poorer class of clients anyway, and of those not 
 always the most desirable. When they read 
 the falsehoods furnished to the press by the 
 myrmidons of the justice-shop system, of the 
 counsel of Rhoades, and of the bar association, 
 the first thing they did was go and ask the 
 secretary of the bar association what he thought 
 about it: for the newspapers announced that it 
 was this gang that was hounding me. One 
 Fogle was its secretary and official myrmidon. 
 He advised people to demand their retainers 
 back if they paid any, and if they failed to get 
 them back to come and complain to him, and 
 he would champion them. He assured them that 
 I was doomed for disbarment. He offered other 
 inducements to criminals who would put their 
 signatures to things he would typewrite. At this 
 rate, proud that I was, and not desirous to rep- 
 resent clients against their wishes, I soon became 
 almost penniless. Some of these poor clients, 
 heretofore humble and respectful, now came in 
 boldly and insolently: and almost all were less 
 respectful now. Some of them had such papers 
 
66 THE BRIEF 
 
 with me as affected their respective cases. Others 
 were poor people who had not any money — but 
 when the bar association had told them they had 
 "better get them back," after having read all 
 those stories, they naturally demanded back 
 whatever they could get — retainers, papers, 
 anything. I returned every cent of retainer 
 and every file. In some cases I had done a great 
 amount of work and spent some money and 
 received not a cent as yet, but they were welcome 
 to all that. Many clients had implicit con- 
 fidence in me, however: and I shall ever remain 
 thankful to them, for without those few touches 
 of kindness my plight would have been entirely 
 unendurable. A man named Baude had no case 
 at all. The agents of the bar association had 
 sent him to retain me for a "case." He paid 
 some on account. When I found he had no such 
 case I returned his $25 and took his receipt and 
 ordered him out. The court in its printed "re- 
 port" uses the name of this man as having been 
 ordered out of my oflfice at the point of a revolver. 
 The revolver part is false: and it is remarkable 
 that the "opinion" fails to state that I returned 
 his money first. A Mrs. Baker had troubles 
 with her husband. They were suing each other. 
 I guaranteed some small bills for her — she was 
 a small client, there were not many much bigger. 
 In fact, all sorts were welcome so long as their 
 causes seemed just. Beginners seldom get big 
 people or big cases. She owed me some sixty- 
 odd dollars. The court costs alone were to be 
 over ten dollars; then there had to be the sheriff. 
 
THE RHOADES CASE 67 
 
 a stenographer, and some legal advertising to 
 pay for. She had asked for leave to pay a few 
 dollars every month, a petition of hers to be 
 filed when my office was paid in full. By now 
 she had paid up some forty-six dollars and had not 
 shown up for several months. I did not know 
 that she had now gone back to her husband and 
 lived with him. She went to the bar association, 
 for she had heard that clients were getting back 
 their retainers at the instigation of the bar asso- 
 ciation. She told their secretary that she had 
 engaged my office months ago, had made pay- 
 ments on account, had gone back to her husband, 
 and that she wanted to know her rights. Secre- 
 tary Fogle told her in routine manner to demand 
 the return of her payments. She came up and 
 said that a certain lawyer, whose name she did 
 not desire to mention, told her that if she would 
 let him get a divorce for her he would marry her; 
 and so she would like me to return her payments 
 on account. I did not think competition was 
 quite so bad. She came up a number of times, 
 every time with a different subterfuge. By now 
 I had spent a lot of money and had sold sets of 
 books in order to be able to cope with the de- 
 mands to return those small retainers, many of 
 which had been more than earned long ago. 
 The papers hooted at me day by day. To this 
 person I would not have returned a cent if I had 
 had a million. No one was entitled to a cent 
 back. The Court, in its published "finding," was 
 equally unjust in printing this name in that in- 
 decent and untruthful manner. 
 
68 THE BRIEF 
 
 Complications were continuously planned by 
 the justices' association, the bar association, and 
 counsel for Rhoades, "morally" supported by 
 Delahun and the press. My enemies knew that 
 Bethea hated me. They knew that when post- 
 office "inspectors" once become interested in 
 hounding one, they could always be again enlisted; 
 for they want to be conspicuous and to finish 
 a job. I was a job. They want to make a 
 pretense at doing something. They want to be 
 mentioned in the papers; they have their ambi- 
 tions. They want the good- will and influence 
 of the bigger men in politics, for even judges and 
 other public officials were always on their knees 
 to gain their favor. The bar association was 
 useful before election to those whose candidacies 
 it indorsed in the papers. Bethea felt his impor- 
 tance greatly. Politics was his means of liveli- 
 hood. I had called him a scoundrel and a liar 
 in open court. He remembered how he had put 
 the Government to great expense and yet could 
 not "land" me. It was figured out by this low 
 lot that if they could just get up something that 
 would give him a color of a chance at me, Bethea 
 would do his worst : and that would not cost 
 a cent, for the Government pays for it. When 
 we fight in the trenches we know this, that we 
 fight men who serve their country, and it is a 
 fair, face-to-face, grapple to the death: but when 
 we fight corruption, or worse still, corruption 
 backed by big interests and supported by officials 
 on the Government's payroll, we fight not patriots 
 but enemies of their own and every civilization: 
 
TEE RHOADES CASE 69 
 
 anarchists who enjoy citizen's privileges unduly, 
 snakes in the grass who, like skunks, will stigma- 
 tize us by the contact whether we are wrong or 
 right. 
 
 I lived, in the summer of 1905, in a suburb 
 called Chicago Lawn. That is where Rhoades 
 lived. When I was called into the case of his 
 wife against him, and when, to retaliate, he began 
 to organize his forces, and got his "complaint" 
 against me before the bar association by proxy, 
 for the purpose of throwing all the obstruction 
 possible in my way as counsel for his wife, 
 he circulated such stories as were best calcu- 
 lated to serve his purposes among the com- 
 mon gossips of such an ignorant community. 
 Every one added a little to everything he 
 and she heard, until the atmosphere was dark 
 with the most incredible tales about me. Per- 
 haps luckily, I did not know everything that 
 was going on, for I went to my office early and 
 returned around midnight. Some of these peo- 
 ple who had been gossiping were really too com- 
 mon to be noticed. But I was sensitive. I had 
 already suffered more than my share. Anon 
 I learned from experience, too, that it is these 
 irresponsible bipeds that make and unmake 
 reputations; for the nicer people do not slander, 
 do not libel, do not patch up tales and invent 
 lies, and do not hire themselves out for petty 
 favors to gossip for the purpose of blackening 
 up a name. I called up the editress of the subur- 
 ban paper, and she answered that her lawyer 
 and preacher both told her that it was proper to 
 
70 THE BRIEF 
 
 say and print anything about a divorced man; 
 and she beheved wifeless men ought to be in 
 prison! These poor wretches were so common 
 that it was a social distinction for them to 
 be recognized by even such as Rhoades — for 
 the justice of the peace passed for a great man 
 among the natives, almost as much so as the 
 saloon-keeper. It was a ^ocial rise to them and 
 a chance at revenge; for now they were acting 
 against the interests of the wife of this justice, 
 who was not of the sort that would associate with 
 them. TVTien the lot I heard seemed unbearable, 
 I wrote some of them letters saying that if they 
 did not stop that sort of gossip I would have the 
 law after them. I cited what had come to my 
 attention. Rhoades himself had known all about 
 me. Since then I learned that the tale-bearers 
 who brought "stories" to me were a part of his 
 plot. Anyway, I had written. That is just 
 what was wanted — letters from me. There 
 were now fresh envelopes in which letters had 
 come from me, and the envelopes were post- 
 marked. Now, to put up a job, all they had to 
 do was make letters to fit those envelopes and 
 there was work to give to United States Attorney 
 Bethea. 
 
 Here was another case against me. "Now 
 I have got him down," said Bethea, "and he has 
 not got any friends. I have got him." This in 
 my presence and hearing, and in the name of 
 the country! Moreover, there was an iron cage 
 in the corner of a room in which defendants were 
 held temporarily. He invited Rhoades and his 
 
THE RHOADES CASE 71 
 
 friends to stand in front of that cage and watch 
 for me to be imprisoned in it. To the great 
 dismay of Mr. Rhoades, he saw his own wife 
 and mother-in-law among those who offered bail 
 for me. Bethea would not accept them and 
 insisted that the marshal cage me. Marshal 
 Ames was in politics, true, but a gentleman: 
 he went to see Judge Kohlsaat, who said that one 
 property holder's bond is as good as the other's 
 — and that if I preferred these people's bond it 
 had to be accepted. But by now, after Mr. 
 Bethea did his very, very best, it was impossible 
 to get an indictment. His witnesses were too 
 well known to be trash. They were not from 
 far enough away, as was Delahun. Months later, 
 and to his credit be it said, Bethea took an interest 
 in the matter, and he sent me word by one of his 
 assistants that he believed I was the most perse- 
 cuted man that ever lived. That ended his 
 relations with me. The next case he took up was 
 the prosecution of the Standard Oil Company, 
 which later culminated in the twenty-nine million 
 dollar fine fiasco. A few months later he was 
 himself appointed a United States judge, and his 
 law-partner became the prosecutor. 
 
 These forged Chicago Lawn letters were also 
 used as evidence of "bad character" against 
 me before the bar association, and are referred 
 to in the "finding" secured hy fraud, default and 
 collusion of the Supreme Court which soon fol- 
 lowed, saying that it was not becoming a lawyer 
 to write them. There are details in connection 
 with every item herein that themselves would 
 
72 THE BRIEF 
 
 fill a book; but attempt is made to state the facts 
 and their connections with each other very 
 briefly. 
 
 While all this was on, the suburban editress 
 wrote me, asking sardonically whether I intended 
 to spend the next summer at the Lawn. I 
 returned the letter, indorsed, stating that I might 
 if I decided to spend another season in a com- 
 munity of cattle. This letter was also offered 
 by the bar association as evidence of bad char- 
 acter ! 
 
IX 
 
 THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 
 
 I SPENT one summer in that suburb because 
 that was within my means, still within rapid 
 transit distance from my office, and because I 
 was not familiar enough with its population in 
 the beginning. Here is an extract from my 
 diary depicting its social life: 
 
 "There was not much formality at the 
 Lawn Club dances. We had gentlemen with 
 business coats and low vests, gentlemen in 
 dress suits and red scarfs, gentlemen in long 
 frock-coats and soft shirts, minus neckties 
 and cuffs; we had gentlemen in blue shirts 
 and short trousers and suspenders; gentle- 
 men in white stiff shirts, with fancy buttons 
 in the front buttonholes of the neckbands, 
 but no collars or vests or coats on; we had 
 gentlemen in boots and overalls; and we 
 had some dancing in the garbs of their honest 
 toil, which varied from janitorial and like 
 occupations to the professions. There was 
 Alderman Butterwoth in his inevitable red 
 shirt, his wife's make, to match her hair, 
 and Louis Reinhard in the long coat which 
 his new wife had bought for him when she 
 gave up her job in the laundry and married 
 
74 THE BRIEF 
 
 him, of which fact neither the husband nor 
 the wife ever failed to inform new acquaint- 
 ances nor to oft repeat lest it be forgot. . . . 
 
 "There was a men's room at the club. 
 This room contained ten chairs and some 
 forty cuspidors. The cuspidors, it was often 
 lamented by the members, had been matter 
 of useless expenditure, for the men acted just 
 as they would at home! All would try, it 
 seemed, to emulate each other in the volume 
 of expectorating, and in the telling of stories 
 for men only. In my family no tobacco was 
 ever used. I never saw anything quite like 
 this. I could not bear the atmosphere, and 
 the men — without any hint of impropriety, 
 however — decided that I preferred the 
 company of the ladies." 
 
 When it was about time for the atmosphere 
 to be fully poisoned, the politicians in charge of 
 the bar association deemed it proper to file dis- 
 barment proceedings in the Supreme Court. The 
 case was drawn in the name of the state's attor- 
 ney of the county, who, being a politician, allowed 
 the association to do anything in his name, if 
 indeed he was not proud to be noticed by them; 
 for they will reciprocate by indorsement for 
 future elections. He preferred not to know 
 the facts. Up to now, and for a long time, the 
 bar association only tortured me by the false- 
 hoods they gave out to the press. My health 
 was beginning to fail, for in addition to all this, 
 the enforced economies had begun to make their 
 
THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 75 
 
 ravages. I did engage an older lawyer, but 
 the only connection he had with it was to accept 
 a retainer of a hundred dollars. He visited 
 one of the hearings as a spectator, like other 
 lawyers did. That is all. He could have been 
 useful; he could have saved me from many 
 indignities. A defendant without a lawyer is 
 treated with contempt anyway; and in this 
 case, nothing used to please that mob better than 
 to have me alone all to themselves. This Mr. 
 Elliott later made the explanation that the 
 association had pestered and bothered him and 
 put up jobs on him until he joined it; and that he 
 simply could not afford to antagonize them. 
 I wished he had returned my retainer, if that is 
 the kind of lawyer he was. He was then start- 
 ing out his two sons, also to be lawyers — such 
 as he was. 
 
 It was not until about now that I learned that 
 my work as the "Counselor" was not favored 
 by the bar association. I had no one to consult. 
 I was robbed and damaged. It was a job and 
 a means of becoming known and being occupied. 
 I was useful. Lawyers seemed to resent that 
 people could find legal advice free. That explains 
 their ready compliance with the request to hound 
 me, when I already had other enemies to help 
 them and a colorable file of previous troubles. 
 But they did not have the decency to tell me their 
 true reason or purpose. They never have. The 
 only lawyers who might have had any personal 
 grievances against me were such as I made 
 return moneys they obtained by cheating and 
 
76 THE BRIEF 
 
 robbing poor clients who came to my attention 
 as the "Counselor." These shysters certainly 
 did fear me: and there were some more that I 
 was preparing for, whose clients had complained. 
 Many of them knew how much I had done toward 
 making shysters be more or less decent : and many 
 of them knew that they might soon be due to hear 
 from me, when I got to them. And yet, the 
 only suffering I ever inflicted was to get them to 
 give up moneys they misappropriated, to those 
 to whom they belonged, less a reasonable fee. And 
 since that time, especially during my casual con- 
 nections with the office of the attorney -general of 
 the United States in anti-trust cases, I had occa- 
 sion to find that these members of the "grievance 
 committee" that had doomed me years before, 
 these leaders of the bar, are actually marked and 
 numbered in that department among the biggest 
 crooks of the country! And yet, as "leaders" 
 of the Chicago bar, they almost pass for respect- 
 able; they certainly were a great influence in 
 my day: and all that weight was concentrated 
 to crush — me ! In order that honest people 
 might fathom the large amount of evil organized 
 shyster practice can commit, just think of the do- 
 ings of one crooked lawyer you have known — ■ 
 and, mentally, multiply it, and back it up with 
 other people's money, left to them to spend as 
 they please — and give them the power to control, 
 if not terrorize, the courts! They try to control 
 courts by every means human nature can devise, 
 varied only to suit local and present conditions: 
 but one thing is general: all the judges of the 
 
THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 77 
 
 State are made honorary members of such 
 associations. 
 
 The Supreme Court referred the petition to 
 disbar to a pestiferous Kttle poHtician named 
 Rush, "master in chancery," to be heard and 
 reported by him. In order that people who did 
 not attend the many sessions may understand 
 the proceeding, they must take the word "mob" 
 Hterally. I was treated as by a mob; assaults, 
 leers, sneers, snubs — • there was nothing in the 
 shape of an indignity that I was not subjected 
 to by these lawyers of dirty shirt and frayed 
 garment. The "master" fell into the spirit 
 of the thing and became a part of the mob. It 
 was all I could do to pay the stenographer's 
 costs, for I depended on my earnings, and earn- 
 ing was now impossible. The newspapers saw 
 to that. I desired to perpetuate my evidence 
 and to keep a copy of it, although I had doubts 
 as to the ultimate justice I would receive, because 
 my means were limited, my health failing, trick- 
 eries many and too boldly ostensible — whilst 
 I was alone there, without even a witness that 
 was not a member of the mob. Under the 
 circumstances it was impossible to earn even my 
 office expenses. Indeed people whom I had 
 befriended, people who usually make the best 
 of friends, seemed to avoid me. Those who did 
 not believe or suspect — wondered. People are 
 not any too grateful, anyway, when they seem 
 not to see chances of additional favor. And 
 but for a few sympathizers as well might I have 
 been a leper for the way I seemed to be shunned. 
 
78 TEE BRIEF 
 
 Rush would have such disorders in his place 
 as to break up hearings suddenly. This pro- 
 longed the duration of the case, gave the papers 
 occasion for additional sensation, and gave him 
 and his friends additional opportunity to give 
 the press malicious misreports that were offensive 
 and humiliating to me and advertising for them- 
 selves. For instance: once this master, Rush, 
 told the reporters that I was confronted in his 
 "court" by a number of women, each of whom 
 identified me as her husband. The lie was 
 printed. The master denied being the author 
 of it. The reporters swore he was — and so on 
 with other such reports from time to time. That 
 is one of the many ways shysters and politicians 
 advertise themselves, drag down their victims, 
 and at the same time secure the friendship of 
 a filthy press, useful for future favor, and the 
 gratitude of the — bar association! 
 
 Master Rush did not always act like a vulture. 
 He had occasional normal moments or lucid 
 intervals apparently : or his normal moments may 
 have been prompted by interests, as were the 
 apparently abnormal. Anyway he sometimes 
 told me his troubles; he gave me some of his 
 confidences, although I suspected that he hoped 
 that I would begin to confide with him if I had 
 anything to confide. I really had nothing, nor 
 would I have trusted him if I had. I recalled 
 the treachery of the United States office holders, 
 and was afraid to talk much with him: for I 
 feared he might swear I said something I did not 
 say. Once he came and explained that the law 
 
THE CATTLE OF CHICAGO LAWN 79 
 
 allowed him a fee at so much a hundred words 
 taken by the stenographers before him, and 
 that I would have to furnish a bond securing 
 his fee, of about $20 per hour, or pay from time 
 to time in advance, or I was not entitled to de- 
 fend, and I should be disbarred as by default. 
 Whilst such an approach ought to be shocking 
 to the average man, but very few things would 
 have shocked me; and I pleaded my financial 
 condition to him and offered him my promissory 
 notes. He said he did not want the notes, and 
 that some day I could make shorthand reports 
 for him in his law practice and give him receipted 
 bills, and he would get what amounts would be 
 due me from his clients and keep them. Any- 
 thing was reasonable to me as long as it indicated 
 the possibility of my getting justice, if there was 
 any to get, or at least of getting in my evidence. 
 Nor did he quite seem to believe that I was 
 "broke." I lived a proud life, did not talk 
 troubles, or ask favors, did not make debts, paid 
 all bills promptly and tried to be respectable in 
 my attire — a perfect symptom of riches to the 
 superficial observer. 
 
 There was an understanding between the 
 master in chancery, the bar association, the 
 justices' association, and Mack — the man who 
 sat in judgment on the Rhoades case — that the 
 master and Mack hear the Rhoades case and the 
 disbarment case alternately in installments, al- 
 lowing the injection of the evidence belonging 
 to each case into the other, for that insured 
 better advertisement for all of them, more noto- 
 
80 THE BRIEF 
 
 riety and trouble for me, and a prolongation of 
 these suits which just then were the paramount 
 topics in the press. By now I resigned as the 
 "Counselor," for it was a losing job financially, 
 anyway, and I could not bear to see the accumu- 
 lation of the mail to be answered. I answered 
 all the inquiries still due by mail, and a great 
 deal that was forwarded to me for years after- 
 ward. After that the paper I had so served 
 printed in the same vein as the others, and printed 
 those falsehoods about me in large red type. 
 It printed "interviews" with me that never hap- 
 pened, and some of them years after I had dis- 
 barred Chicago from my life for its ingratitude! 
 
X 
 
 THE TESTIMONY 
 
 IN the Rhoades case the wife proved a pitiful 
 state of cruelty, violence, abuse, nonsupport, 
 general neglect, and criminal intimacy with 
 women of his own type. It was all clearly 
 proven by the testimony of his best friends and 
 his own ten-year-old boy. He had played the 
 innocent husband before the public so far. Now 
 his only salvation was to show, if he could, that 
 the wife was as bad as he was — a plea of re- 
 crimination. 
 
 He collected his friends in Chicago Lawn, 
 whose testimony was to the effect that they had 
 seen Mrs. Rhoades and her mother talk with me 
 on my way to and from the depot while I lived 
 in the Lawn the preceding summer, and that 
 they had heard from Mr. Rhoades that I was 
 bad morally. This was to show me of bad 
 reputation; the idea being to show that she, 
 too, had been in bad society. This was to live 
 up to the legal definition of "reputation" — what 
 people say about you — and Rhoades was "the 
 people," who told his friends, the people. It 
 would be nonsense to try to figure that out for an 
 equivalent to his being found by his old friends 
 who testified with his "Helene" and others 
 behind locked doors, or to his correspondences 
 with such women, unfit to quote here. 
 
8£ TEE BRIEF 
 
 Then a Miss Frazier, step-daughter of a good 
 woman in whose house I hved, testified that 
 Mrs. Rhoades and her mother had been at my 
 residence to consult me, and while there Mrs. 
 Rhoades played the piano and sang, and that she 
 suspected the ladies came not to consult me but 
 to visit me because they liked me. Nellie Frazier 
 brought a tittering cousin along, whom she assured 
 would get her picture in the paper for corrobo- 
 rating her! Nellie left the stand saying: "I am 
 for Judge Rhoades!" She was an unfortunate, 
 one-eyed girl, whose mother took the stand later 
 and testified that she was very low mentally, 
 easy to impose on; that not long ago she had 
 run away with a boy many years her junior; 
 and that Mr. Rhoades had promised her fifty 
 dollars for testifying what she was taught to say 
 and she in turn had promised to buy her father 
 a suit of clothes with the money. Her father was 
 a bankrupt druggist and worked in the postal 
 service. Rhoades and his lawyers summoned 
 every one who ever saw me with his wife — ■ 
 who, by the way, never went anywhere without 
 her mother. For months before I filed the 
 Rhoades suit I delayed the matter, in the hope 
 of satisfactory arrangements in the family, and 
 so complaints at my ofiice and negotiations with 
 the members of the family prolonged an acquain- 
 tance before this. Nellie Frazier never got the 
 fifty dollars. 
 
 Another such witness was Kennedy, a night 
 watchman from the Morrison Hotel. He was 
 brought in to say that Mrs. Black and Mrs. 
 
THE TESTIMONY 83 
 
 Rhoades had been evicted from that place for 
 drinking, and that I had something to do with 
 the case. I was then and have for years before 
 been a daily guest of the restaurant of that place, 
 called the Boston Oyster House. I have had 
 these ladies with me there. The hotel used to 
 send me Christmas presents, as perhaps they did 
 to other patrons: and I received one from it 
 within a short time of this hearing. These 
 women never touched a drop of liquor and 
 neither did I. On cross-examination the wit- 
 ness admitted that some two years before 
 — and long before I had known the Rhoades 
 family — two women from Iowa were insulted 
 in that hotel by the proprietor and that their 
 husbands telegraphed me to get a written apology 
 from the hotel or sue it. I got the apology. 
 On cross-examination I brought out the names 
 of the women, the date of the incident, and 
 cited the proprietor, who produced the register 
 of the hotel, which I still retain, to nail the 
 lie. Then Kennedy explained that it was so 
 long ago that he was all mixed up on it; and 
 also that he was promised $25 for testifying as 
 he did; which, by the way, he never got. 
 
 The judge listened with all the delight of a 
 villain to such perjury, overlooked the wrongs, 
 and never held one of the crooks for the crime. 
 And when I would ask a question to which he 
 knew the response would be favorable to my 
 client he would screech — with that voice like 
 a whistle — "Objection sustained!" although 
 there was no objection. He was there to hear 
 
84 THE BRIEF 
 
 one side only; and to have heard two sides 
 seemed inconsistent with the pohcy to which he 
 was pledged. 
 
 A laundry man named Israel Louis, who belonged 
 to the same lodge with Judge Mack, testified 
 that he had seen Mrs. Rhoades with her mother 
 at my residence, and that is all. There was no 
 use of cross-examining him much, except that 
 I asked him whether or not once, since this case 
 was pending, at the instigation of Rhoades, 
 he and a Mrs. Decker, his friend whose husband 
 was away, contrived together to lock the door 
 of my room from the outside when Mrs. Rhoades 
 and her mother were inside with me, which he 
 admitted. The newspapers just gloated with 
 a perversion of this incident. On the evening 
 of that same day at least one yellow paper 
 had it in red letters, and the others in large 
 type, that I had written this man a special de- 
 livery letter threatening his life if he came to 
 testify and that is why he did not say more. 
 Next morning I summoned the washman. He 
 stated that he did say to Rhoades that he was 
 asked by letter not to testify, but that he did not 
 get any letter: and he did not speak of any 
 threats. The fact was, he said, he did not want 
 to be a witness. Rhoades promised him a sum 
 in consideration of saying certain things which 
 were not true. Rhoades, however, would not 
 pay for the perjury in advance; and so, when 
 summoned, Louis did not testify as agreed. 
 But he knew Rhoades's profession, the crowd 
 he belonged to, and feared him, so he made up 
 
THE TESTIMONY 85 
 
 an excuse that he was asked by letter not to be 
 a witness: and by the time Rhoades carried it 
 to his lawyers and fellow-justices and to the 
 newspapermen — the "reporters" of the yellow 
 actually drafted a letter, signed my name, turned 
 it in to the editor, and saw it printed. Perhaps 
 the editor did it all. The judge could not be very 
 hard on a brother of his lodge, so he just made 
 Louis sit an hour in his chambers — for failing 
 to lie about me in connection with Mrs. Rhoades 
 as he had originally agreed with her "judicial" 
 husband. This man Mack has since, by the 
 fortunes of politics, been promoted to other 
 public places and is still on the pay-roll. 
 
 A Miss Cross, who testified she worked for a 
 justice of the peace, said that Mr. Rhoades 
 hired her to "shadow" Mrs. Rhoades and her 
 mother; that the office in which she worked was 
 in the house adjoining the ofiice building in which 
 my office was; and that she saw on certain dates 
 Mrs. Rhoades kiss me, in the presence of her 
 mother. She said she was reading these facts 
 from a diary which she held before her. This 
 was about the most serious testimony against 
 Mrs. Rhoades, although no man was ever kissed 
 by a better woman. But it was not true. On 
 cross-examination I asked the witness why she 
 looked at the notebook while she testified, to which 
 she replied that she was looking at the entries she 
 had made at the various times in shorthand. 
 I took the book from her hand, and there in short- 
 hand were written the personal descriptions of 
 Mrs. Rhoades and her mother, and of the clothes, 
 
86 THE BRIEF 
 
 coats, and hats they were wearing, and nothing 
 about kisses. Out of the "diary" two cards fell 
 on the floor bearing the same data in the writing 
 of Mr. Rhoades. In order to divert my attention 
 Mr. Greenacre, a scorbutic gentleman in cellu- 
 loid collar and slippers, one of the counsel for 
 Rhoades, objected to my coming too close to the 
 lady. I assured the court I would not touch 
 this lady. When Miss Cross heard me read 
 her shorthand notes aloud in court she "fainted." 
 The judge accused me of being too strenuous in 
 my cross-examination. He was abusive because 
 facts were brought out in favor of my client. 
 The woman was coached to faint in case she were 
 cornered, and she obeyed. As the lawyers led 
 her by the arms tenderly away from the stand she 
 opened a bag and handed her photograph to a 
 newspaperman, who saw that it was in the papers 
 next day. When she "came to" I made her 
 resume the stand for further cross-examination, 
 when she admitted that to see into my office 
 from where she "worked" was impossible, that 
 she had been at some cheap places of entertain- 
 ment with Rhoades and his lawyers, that Rhoades 
 and his friends had given her money, that her 
 employer, a justice of the peace and friend of 
 Rhoades, told her to be as helpful as she could 
 to Mr. Rhoades in the case, for that would help 
 the cause of the justices' association to defeat 
 the bill pending in the Senate to put them out of 
 business. She also admitted that she spent such 
 moneys as these people had given her in com- 
 pany with another Bohemian woman, who also 
 
THE TESTIMONY 87 
 
 agreed to help her in this "work" and to testify 
 as instructed, tending to make out Mrs. Rhoades 
 as bad as her husband was shown, in order to 
 defeat her suit. At a certain signal from Rhoades 
 or his brother or one of his crowd, or from a female 
 " heart-story " writer for a yellow paper who was 
 with them, the gang would issue a forced horse- 
 laugh. When this became too great a nuisance, 
 and useless to ask for decency, I told Mack, at 
 last, that if he had a grain of decency he would 
 put a stop to it. Then he told the " heart-story 
 lady " to please desist! 
 
 When "Justice" Rhoades, the defendant, took 
 the stand he shed tears masterfully and said to 
 the judge, fearfully, that before he testified 
 I should be searched for a revolver in my clothes 
 with which I intended to shoot him. This was 
 for dramatic effect. He and his friends had long 
 been shadowing and annoying me in the streets 
 and in my office, and hounding me generally; 
 and as I displayed no signs of fear, maybe he 
 felt sure I had a revolver — and to carry one 
 was against the law; to bring one into court, 
 more so. He hoped, and so did his colleagues, 
 that I would be fined there and then. What 
 a wonderful effect that would have had in the 
 papers! Of course I said I did not have any 
 revolver, and that ended that spectacle. 
 
 Between sessions Mack would send for Mrs. 
 Rhoades to see him in his chambers, alone. She 
 invariably came with her mother. At these 
 interviews he would promise her all sorts of 
 favors, if she would only dismiss me and get a 
 
88 THE BRIEF 
 
 lawyer he would give her, free of charge. At 
 other times he would threaten to take the boy 
 from her if she would not look for another lawyer. 
 He resented that she did not come without her 
 mother. The reasons were plain: Mrs. Rhoades 
 was respectable; and, also, she wanted a witness 
 — her almost constant companion and mother. 
 Invariably he would tell the women to keep 
 from me the information that they had seen him! 
 They reported everything to me, except the 
 fact that they posed to the newspaper photog- 
 raphers in spite of my instructions not to. The 
 pictures would come out, but to the last the women 
 would stick to the story that they did not 
 know how those pictures were made; and they 
 instructed even the boy, who was photographed 
 with them — who must now be quite a man, 
 somewhere — to stick to that story. This is 
 the only thing I regret in my relations with them. 
 I suppose they saw a lying press and thought 
 they would mollify its venom and indecency by 
 yielding, contrary to my advice. Anyway, every 
 one begged them to deceive me. The enemy 
 knew the chief trick whereby to defeat an adver- 
 sary — by making trouble in the opposite camp. 
 Feminine vanity, too, I suppose, had a great 
 deal to do with it. It was one life's chance 
 to see their pictures in the papers daily, for 
 months. Still, I have seen men — as vain. 
 
 During the hearings the court room was usually 
 crowded with spectators, and officers kept hun- 
 dreds out for lack of standing room. 
 
 The lowest of the dregs of humanity, limited 
 
THE TESTIMONY 89 
 
 in number only by the means of Rhoades and the 
 fund he collected from his fellows, were enlisted 
 to help drag the reputation of his wife down by 
 trying to show, first, that she was as bad as he 
 was, and second that her associations with me 
 were as bad as his with the women with which 
 the overwhelming undisputed evidence indicted 
 him. It all was confuted by few but respectable 
 witnesses, among them Dr. Alexander Proudfoot, 
 Mr. W. F. Nehf, and Colonel Frank Marsh, 
 whose testimonies were emphatic and unanimous. 
 Sheer gratitude prompts me to quote at least 
 one of them. Mr. Nehf said: 
 
 "I own a lot of property in Chicago Lawn. 
 All this array of human cattle from that town 
 are beneath trash. Chicago Lawn is the cheapest. 
 community I ever knew. I have known Mrs. 
 Rhoades and her mother for years. Their law- 
 yer's office is in the same building as mine. I 
 know all three well: and whoever says a word 
 against the character of any of them is a liar 
 and beneath contempt." 
 
 Mr. Nehf was excused without cross-exami- 
 nation. 
 
XI 
 
 TEE CHANCERY CROOK 
 
 I WAS thrown alternately before Rush the 
 master and Mack the judge. Nothing that 
 was tolerable with Mr. Rush was permanent. 
 No agreement was permanent. Also, there had 
 been neither brawl nor challenge to fisticuffs for 
 some time, and the monotony had to be broken 
 again. So, during the proceeding of a hearing, the 
 master, without any present provocation, called 
 me a common debt-beat. I never owed any one 
 a cent beyond about the tenth of the following 
 month. I never had a collector in my place. 
 I paid all bills by mail, by check. He said I 
 owed him a master's fee, and that I ought to pay 
 it. I reminded him of his agreement with me. 
 I added, to be frank with him, that I did not think 
 it was good practice, in the first place, nor is it 
 written anywhere that it is just, that they should 
 trump up a job like this on one at one's expense 
 and then subject one to indignities just because 
 one has not money left to pay at the rate of twenty- 
 five cents a hundred words taken before him in 
 shorthand, besides paying at that same rate for 
 the transcript of the brawls of himself and his 
 friends; but that I was willing to do what I could, 
 and that I thought the agreement he had sug- 
 gested, which I accepted for the sake of peace, 
 
THE CHANCERY CROOK 91 
 
 was conclusive. The like conversation, differ- 
 ing only in degrees of violence and abusiveness, 
 was matter of frequent occurrence. It usually 
 concluded with a condescension on his part to 
 stand by the agreement. When he had nothing 
 else to fight about he resented the fact that I 
 kept a copy of the proceedings: he thought one 
 copy ought to be enough — his copy. I told 
 him that I wanted that copy, paid for it, and 
 was entitled to it. It was hard to conclude 
 anything with him. He said that if I paid him 
 the money I paid the stenographer it would be 
 that much less to his credit against me. I wanted 
 a copy of the proceedings — and I have it. 
 
 He was not an insane person; nor was any 
 one in that group. They were simply unhanged 
 villains. After these disorders motions would be 
 made to the Supreme Court asking it to fine me 
 because I insulted the master. The Supreme 
 Court would order me to go to Springfield and 
 listen to its reprimands and abuses: once it 
 fined me fifty dollars. No matter what I pleaded, 
 they never read my answers, and usually, after 
 they ordered me to go to Springfield they refused 
 to listen to me. They put me to that waste of 
 time and expense for the fun of the persecution. 
 The master's report was law to them. Maybe 
 that is a good rule, but then there should have 
 been an honest master: and the Supreme Court 
 well knew what was going on. 
 
 There were many licentiates at law on the 
 side of the prosecution. I was alone. They all 
 seemed to sit up nights wondering and thinking 
 
92 THE BRIEF 
 
 out new schemes, new tricks, new indignities, 
 and new troubles — for me. New things did 
 happen. New forms of Kes told to the papers; 
 or my office would be broken into in the hope of 
 stealing documents. Always it was something 
 unexpected. Besides looking out for my inter- 
 ests, I had to watch out for some such surprises. 
 They followed and hounded people who entered 
 my office. They sent indecent anonymous letters 
 to my friends. A Mr. and Mrs. Field, after 
 leaving my office, were surprised by a bottle of 
 vitriol being poured over them. It burned their 
 clothes and their hands. The faces escaped, 
 fortunately. Then the newspapers reported that 
 Mrs. Field was an admirer of mine and a jealous 
 rival poured vitriol over her — and the papers 
 hooted. The residence telephone would ring doz- 
 ens of times an hour all night long to break up 
 my rest and render me obnoxious where I lived, 
 calls alternating from requests of females to meet 
 them to male voices insolently resenting the "mak- 
 ing of appointments with their wives," until we 
 got in the habit of muffling the bell. It does 
 seem a shame that females or their names should 
 always be used by specialists in the business of 
 blackmail and the wrecking of reputations! I 
 might as well have been attainted for all the pro- 
 tection the law gave me. I was doomed. 
 
 Every line of all the testimony was in my favor. 
 The master had a copy of all the evidence pre- 
 sented. I had documents which proved practi- 
 cally every day of my life — even old passports 
 which were issued for traveling in foreign countries. 
 
THE CHANCERY CROOK 93 
 
 These were read and copied in evidence. The 
 master resented that I would not let him keep 
 these papers. That was one of the recent sur- 
 prises. He demanded that I leave with him my 
 documents as security for his costs as master in 
 chancery. I would have parted with my life 
 before I would have trusted him with one piece 
 of that paper, and I indicated that sentiment; 
 but I did give him copies of everything. Then 
 he made his demands stronger. There was more 
 disorder. I could not afford to pay any more 
 fines, so I did not reply to him. His fellows 
 leered, jeered, and scowled. Then he amended 
 the order by demanding also my copy of the tran- 
 script of the evidence I had submitted in defense. 
 He already had a copy of it for his use. It was 
 all of no avail. I packed my papers and left. 
 Later he again sent me written notices to appear 
 before him for continuation of the hearing next 
 day, that I there and then pay him some hundreds 
 of dollars for master's fee, that I surrender to 
 him my copy of the evidence, together with all 
 my documents. I had gone to his place too 
 often; now I would not go again. In vain did 
 I ask the Supreme Court for another master. 
 They scowled at me. Then again, and at the same 
 time, as a counter-motion to my petition for 
 another master, this master made motion to 
 the Supreme Court to fine me for contempt, 
 for failing to obey his latest orders — to sur- 
 render my papers, to pay him for acting as 
 master, to appear before him for further hear- 
 ings, and all. 
 
94 THE BRIEF 
 
 The justices' and constables' fund was con- 
 siderable. These desperate barnacles did all they 
 could to annoy me on all sides. They would 
 file suits in the names of fictitious parties or of 
 each other in their several "courts," all to be 
 heard at the same date and hour, well knowing 
 that at such times I was to be either before Mack 
 or Rush. The "suits" would be so many and 
 at such distances apart, and I had my hands so 
 full with so many things, that it was impossible 
 to attend to them. They would enter judgments 
 by default, as of course: their myrmidons, the 
 constables, would then come to levy. At first 
 I would pay the judgments, it seeming the cheap- 
 est way out and there being no other way. But 
 later the "judgments" became so many that 
 I sent notices by registered mail, reciting my 
 objections to the fraud and notifying them that 
 any constable that would attempt to levy upon 
 such fake judgments would be treated as a rob- 
 ber should be. I won the case of Mrs. Rhoades: 
 the justice had to get out and keep out of her 
 house and pay alimony. 
 
 Rhoades got all this money to spend because 
 he succeeded in making his friends believe that 
 if I was undone, so was every cause I was in- 
 terested in, and then the status quo of the justice- 
 shop system would be safe. It is wonderful 
 how much money can be raised that way in a 
 hurry, before people have time to think: but 
 the pending bill meant everything to the justice- 
 shop system and its kin chain of votaries and 
 parasites. And even that fund had its vam- 
 
THE CHANCERY CROOK 95 
 
 pires. Cheap lawyers hired themselves out to 
 serve these interests at five and ten dollars a 
 day, and obeyed like lackeys. State's Attorney 
 Deneen, who later became governor, said that 
 jurors and witnesses could be bought at fifty 
 cents per case in Chicago. There were "lawyers" 
 of that stamp galore, and all that would serve 
 were enlisted here and now. These lawyers 
 usually lived entirely on the victims and system 
 of the justice-shop. Nay, Ogden, the lawyer 
 I had dismissed for offering to sell out to Dela- 
 hun, now offered his services to the bar association 
 and the justices both. He was offered $10 as 
 a witness if he had anything that would help 
 them. He had nothing as a witness; he wanted 
 to act as lawyer, for that would advertise him.. 
 There being too many lawyers now, and every- 
 thing being fixed as they wanted it, his applica- 
 tion was merely filed. But one of the justices 
 rendered a fake judgment against me in his 
 favor. Then his partner called me up and said 
 that if I shoot and kill any scoundrel who tries 
 to levy on that judgment he would stand by, 
 and vindicate me! Some time later Ogden 
 stopped his buggy to say that if I would give 
 him a hundred dollars he would cancel the judg- 
 ment, give me $100 worth of stock in the Na- 
 tional Home Buyers' Union, a corporation organ- 
 ized to rob people of their savings lawfully: and 
 also throw in a diploma from the law- school 
 which he conducted making me a doctor of laws. 
 I told him — where to go. That judgment was 
 not paid. 
 
96 THE BRIEF 
 
 The first evidence submitted before Rush was 
 a copy of that fraudulently obtained default 
 divorce decree of Pittsburg in which the exist- 
 ence of a previous wife had been alleged. I met 
 this by showing certified copies of the records 
 of the New York City registry of marriages, 
 where it was pretended I had been married, 
 showing that the registry is forty years old, and 
 that no one of my name married in New York 
 in those forty years. I was now a gray-headed 
 man of twenty-seven. I also produced Mr. 
 Berthold Starke, engraver and cousin of Miss 
 Starke, who testified that his said cousin was 
 married in 1892 (when I was a schoolboy 
 in Belgium), that she had ten children, and 
 that she was now living in Philadelphia with 
 the only man she ever married. Then the 
 myrmidons introduced the certified copy of 
 that "paternity" case of the Newburg woman 
 whom Delahun had financed to come and sue, 
 and who got her money and went back to her 
 paramour. To this I produced letters from this 
 same woman addressed to her friends, showing 
 that she was still in a bawdy house. Then 
 Dr. Putney, now dean of a law school and author 
 of many law books, took the stand, and in his 
 testimony, which covered several interrupted 
 sessions, explained the manner in which counsel 
 for the "State" cheated us out of the defense, 
 that the trial was not fair, and that there was 
 every evidence to clear me had I had a fair, 
 honest, and decent trial. Then he was shown 
 the postals which Delahun had written to him- 
 
TEE CHANCERY CROOK 97 
 
 self in my name; and Dr. Putney said that he 
 had known my writing for years and that those 
 postals were not written by me, nor the letters 
 which were made up to match the envelopes 
 that I had addressed to the gossips of Chicago 
 Lawn. There were many other people who knew 
 my writing and testified that those papers were 
 forgeries. 
 
 Nothing remained now for the bar assassination 
 but to make the best they could of — nothing. 
 It was not really the association that acted. 
 It let these shysters do the work. It was not 
 necessary for it to act. The outcome was all 
 fixed. It usually is, when organized shysters act, 
 under a bar association charter. In many States 
 these organized barnacles secured legislation to au- 
 thorize the judges to direct the treasurers of the 
 counties to pay fees — for such dirty work ! 
 
 They presented the file of the divorce which I 
 obtained, claiming that I obtained it irregularly, 
 although no one claimed to be a loser by that 
 decree because the folk in Pittsburg were appar- 
 ently glad to get rid of me. Now they quibbled 
 on the words "lived and cohabited," which were 
 printed in the official two-cent form, which I 
 had not erased. It was on the record of the 
 stenographer's transcript on file and present that 
 I explained to the court that in spite of that 
 printed form the facts are just a desertion of two 
 years and more ago and there was no "living 
 and cohabitation." 
 
 Mack of the Superior Court had told my 
 enemies in advance that in the Rhoades case 
 
98 THE BRIEF 
 
 he was going to have to allow separate main- 
 tenance and permanent eviction of the husband 
 from the wife's home because the evidence was 
 strong: hut, that he would prolong the case as 
 much as he could, would make it as hard for me 
 as he could, and would treat me in such manner 
 that I would have to go to ruin by the sheer 
 weight of his persecutions. 
 
 The hearings in both cases was mere matter of 
 form. Results were prearranged. What took 
 place in court was only for the galleries and its 
 effect upon me and upon the public measures 
 I was interested in for the general good. Mack 
 took the weight of his office with him to Spring- 
 field to lobby the Supreme Court and tell the 
 judges that I ought to be disbarred. His nefa- 
 rious doing in Chicago was not enough. Nor did 
 any one ask why Mack should be so willingly 
 active against me, or what I knew about him! 
 (He would lie me out of a few things I would 
 like to say: so I stick to the indisputable evi- 
 dence on record in depicting him. The picture 
 of him is not overdone.) He purposely let it 
 be known that he did me harm in Springfield, 
 and bragged of it to newspapermen, in order 
 to gain the political following of the justice- 
 shop, for whatever that might be worth, and the 
 bar association! And although he concluded the 
 Rhoades case in favor of my client, because 
 the evidence was so overwhelming, he did not 
 have the heart to do that decently. He supple- 
 mented his "finding" by saying that I was 
 insane: for that no sane man would have stood 
 
THE CHANCERY CROOK 99 
 
 by Mrs. Rhoades as I did! This nasty observa- 
 tion in open court was designed not only to 
 make his fellow conspirators who sought to dis- 
 credit me morally, and the head-line makers, 
 happy, but in the idea that being also discounted 
 mentally, as he would have it, would destroy my 
 usefulness against such as he is, forever. Well, 
 it did not, for I have done more good in the aver- 
 age day since, than he did in all his parasitic life. 
 
XII 
 
 A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 
 
 AMONG the shysters my enemies secured 
 to help them before the master and behind 
 was one of my surname. The interests con- 
 sidered him quite an asset, because the surname 
 was suggestive of relationship, and, therefore, 
 of lack of hostility, but rather suggestive that 
 even a relative, forsooth, is against, and that, 
 therefore, I must be wrong. I had not even seen 
 the skunk since the preceding Christmas, when 
 I addressed the church of which he and all his 
 relatives were members: and he was on the com- 
 mittee that had asked me to speak. He was no 
 relative. And it did have such an effect before 
 the newspaper-reading public: nay, even the 
 court used his name for that very effect! He got 
 a larger per diem than the other shysters received 
 for that very reason; and one of the "justices" of 
 the peace gave him a fraudulent judgment for 
 some $200 — well knowing that as a matter of fact 
 this shyster owed me that amount and that I 
 owed him nothing. They would not dare try 
 to enforce it, however. That whole coterie of 
 shysters had a hand in securing that fraudu- 
 lent judgment, and agreed to stand behind the 
 "justice" who "rendered" it and protect him! 
 And that cheap verbiage of the "Court" treated 
 facts and common sense with such reckless con- 
 
A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 101 
 
 tempt in its vehemence to misbrand me that 
 it predicated its justification upon just such 
 inconsistencies as the quoting of this biped's per- 
 jurious statements. For instance: that in Sep- 
 tember, 1903, I consulted him about getting a 
 divorce, when that same paragraph of that same 
 Court's "finding" recognizes the fact that I 
 aheady had my divorce six months before Sep- 
 tember, 1903: and to-day this viper points with 
 pride that his name — of my surname — is printed 
 in that crooked Supreme Court report. 
 
 It is so hard and so expensive and such a task 
 sincerely and truly to prepare to be useful, as 
 I tried to be; and how easy it is to undo and 
 destroy! What a great and good man it would 
 require to be helpful in times of distress and 
 persecution; and what ordinary, cheap, and con- 
 temptible human skunks can make trouble 
 and ruin and undo: and to think that masters 
 in chancery. United States attorneys, bar asso- 
 ciations and Supreme Courts would confederate 
 with them and use them as weapons and means 
 to justify injustice, to make wrong seem right, 
 and utilize such moral dirt as their own lateral 
 support! Nor is there anything more contempt- 
 ible than a crooked judge who is bound to find 
 a crooked verdict contrary to the evidence: for 
 he usually — and all crooks are alike in that 
 respect — prefaces his verdict with a finding 
 of "fact," and that finding not based on the 
 evidence at all, but his own invention or mis- 
 construction, sometimes from nothing like a 
 fact, to justify a prejudged, crooked verdict. 
 
102 THE BRIEF 
 
 The master made his orders on me to appear 
 before him again and to givQ him money, and his 
 motions to the Court to punish me for not having 
 the money to give him and for refusing to appear 
 before him some more, and to ignore my defense 
 therefor. I saw that the concrete idea of the 
 scheme was to annoy me until I would be ex- 
 hausted and unable to pay any more fines 
 and be landed in jail for the lack of such funds; 
 so I went to see Mr. Cartwright, the chief jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court, to tell him. He said 
 he understood that the scheme was to beat me 
 out of my evidence and defense and cheat the 
 Court to decide against me "as by default," 
 but with the more disastrous effects of its oper- 
 ation against me as having had my "day in 
 court," because I entered my appearance and 
 had tried to defend. This judge told me that 
 I need not go back to the master's thieves' 
 kitchen or leave my papers with him. ''But,'' 
 he added, "send to the Supreme Court copies 
 of the papers you showed me. Do not send the 
 originals, for you want to keep them. Send the 
 copies with your brief, together with the story 
 you now told me. I will look out for you." 
 "No, I will not forget it." This was a very 
 encouraging interview, and I obeyed. 
 
 I made a good defense, but was cheated out of 
 every chance. The master hounded me on unfair 
 ground. He even made motions that witnesses 
 who testified for me be punished for the con- 
 tempt they had for him. The clerk of the 
 Supreme Court wrote me at last that the chief 
 
A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 103 
 
 justice directed him to write me that unless I paid 
 what the master demanded my evidence would 
 not be taken into consideration. My plea to 
 it was ignored, as of course. Rush at the same 
 time again demanded that I leave my copy of 
 the proceedings before him as well as the papers 
 I produced in evidence. He had his copy; so 
 the only purpose for which he wanted mine 
 was to deprive me of it. I knew, too, that if I 
 left my documents with Rush I would never 
 see them again: for had not these myrmidons 
 broken into my oflSce twice during the pendency 
 of the suit, in the hope of stealing these very 
 papers .f^ I do not know whether the master 
 was a member of that particular plot of bur- 
 glary or not. When the police reported that my. 
 oflSce was broken into, at least the papers made 
 fun of it! Before the Supreme Court there 
 was no use of taking issue with the master; 
 for it treated me with the most utter contempt. 
 I was helpless and they knew it. Behold the 
 chief justice ordering the clerk to write me as he 
 did after talking to me so encouragingly! And 
 anon deciding against me, prefacing the judg- 
 ment like this: 
 
 "The respondent, in disregard of the order 
 of this court, refused to file with the master 
 a transcript of the evidence taken in behalf 
 of the respondent or to pay the master his 
 fees. The case was thereupon submitted to 
 this court upon the evidence, briefs and ab- 
 stracts in behalf of relator only,'' 
 
104 THE BRIEF 
 
 The "relator" is the prosecution. The court 
 well knew that the "master" had a copy of both 
 the evidence and my papers. This is not all 
 the lie told by the court, but it even perverted 
 the evidence and added to it in order to justify 
 the unclean language with which it attempted to 
 stain my life, all through its "opinion." That is 
 all the gratitude I got in return for all the good 
 I have done for the State of Illinois ^-nd Chicago! 
 
 I wrote to the chief justice after that, remind- 
 ing him of the directions he had given me and of 
 his promise to look out for me, which he had vio- 
 lated. He answered that he later decided that 
 the papers I had sent up were merely copies; and 
 on further thought, he did not believe that the 
 many high-minded lawyers would fail to stand 
 by a lawyer who was persecuted. He also accused 
 me of having represented him as my lawyer. 
 That was false. He had warned me not to send 
 originals but copies! Another judge, Carter, then 
 recently appointed to that bench, whom I had 
 known for years — when I wrote him asking 
 if he was not afraid of God for having been a 
 party to the commission of such a terrible crime 
 upon me, answered that he would have me 
 prosecuted for threatening his life! 
 
 People who had known the whole proceeding 
 to be a judicial farce for ulterior motives and 
 a systematic persecution, organized a condem- 
 nation meeting which was held in a church, 
 participated in by clergymen, mechanics, busi- 
 ness men and — relatives of the Starkes, one 
 of the priests presiding. At that meeting, and 
 
A SKUNK OF A NAMESAKE 105 
 
 in order to meet the words of fire with the like, 
 these people passed a resolution that certain 
 editors — naming them — had received moneys 
 and other favors and promises in consideration 
 of lying about me, that a certain judge, nam- 
 ing Mack, was corrupt, that certain lawyers 
 were partners to men in the business of " hold- 
 ing up " and robbing pedestrians, dividing 
 loots with police officials, and that certain such 
 shysters have been made judges. I was not at 
 that meeting at all: but the local papers re- 
 ported it as a meeting called by myself, that I 
 presided, and that I offered that resolution to 
 a band of red-shirted socialists! 
 
XIII 
 THE OFFICIAL LIE 
 
 THE world was dark to me now. In vain 
 did I make motion for a rehearing: the 
 Court freely admitted that it would be useless, for 
 had it wanted to hear me at all it would not have 
 refused to pay attention to my defense in the 
 first place. No other court in America would 
 dare put in writing that it would not give justice 
 to a party because that party had no money, 
 or because it was biased: and there are judges 
 that will cover up their corruption by injecting 
 falsehoods into their findings for the justification 
 of injustice. That was done here; except that 
 here it was done with so much venom and in 
 such haste that the story told and written by 
 this corrupt court is self -contradictory, and very 
 patently unjust. Read it! I have seen more of 
 such things since — and in matters other than 
 my own. Attorneys connected with the Depart- 
 ment of Justice in Washington see such things 
 frequently. Anyway, my friends persuaded me 
 to go to Philadelphia and see what the Starke 
 woman, whose name was mentioned as having 
 been my wife before I married the Delahun 
 girl, could do for me. I well knew that precious 
 little can a tradesman's wife with ten children 
 in Pennsylvania do when her cousin's evidence 
 
THE OFFICIAL LIE 107 
 
 and the evidence of the New York marriage 
 registry records and the evidence of scores of 
 witnesses and a thousand pages of testimony 
 are ignored by a court of original jurisdiction 
 and last resort in Illinois in a case as im- 
 portant as that, involving, as it did, a reputa- 
 tion and the right to practice one's profession. 
 But I had nothing more to lose, and there 
 was a danger of losing the confidence of the last 
 few friends left, who insisted that I go to 
 Philadelphia. So these friends, busying them- 
 selves to get up funds to enable my locomotion, 
 immediately bought from me the last two type- 
 writers I owned. The other valuables including 
 thousands of volumes of books having already 
 been gradually sold and sacrificed during the 
 crisis while I was unable to earn, the few remain- 
 ing things were stored, and I went. 
 
 I presented my respects at the residence, on 
 Front Street, of Mrs. Starke-Steenburg, with a 
 note of introduction from her cousin, which she 
 did not open. I asked whether she knew me. 
 She told me she could neither read nor write, that 
 she had heard about my having trouble on account 
 of her name having been linked with mine, that 
 she did not know what sin she had committed 
 to be such a curse on my life, and that her 
 husband had never treated her the same since the 
 newspaper articles mentioned our names together, 
 and detectives, lawyers and newspapermen had 
 been coming to inquire in regard to her alleged 
 relationships with me. Newspapers do not care 
 how indelicate a story is, or whom their scandal 
 
108 THE BRIEF 
 
 will drag down: all they want to know is: Is it 
 sensational? — Is it legally safe to print? — If it 
 is on a paper filed in court, it is generally safe, 
 no matter how false. In like manner: whilst 
 it is held otherwise inethical for lawyers to ad- 
 vertise, if they usually file nasty papers in court, 
 the newspapers will advertise them free of charge, 
 of course. Lawyers make it improper for us to 
 advertise. Perhaps wisdom will become known 
 without shouting it on the advertising page: but 
 somehow, and nevertheless, those who belong to 
 "elements" always make some sorts of noises 
 and put each other on committees of no work, 
 for the sole ultimate purpose of getting into the 
 papers — an indirect method. And if some igno- 
 rant beggar licensed to practice law marries a 
 millinery shop, or a saloon, or a department store 
 — or anything that advertises, then the adver- 
 tising managers of the newspapers see to it that 
 there shall be no end to writing him up and 
 advertising his wisdom. Papers call that re- 
 ciprocity of patronage! Unless the advertising 
 manager is first influenced by an advertising 
 customer, who in turn gives his orders to the 
 editorial department, nothing else is considered. 
 Once I prosecuted a manager of a department 
 store for assaulting a little girl who applied for a 
 job, after first making an appointment that she 
 see him after business hours. The defendant had 
 first to be brought into a justice-shop. About 
 thirty justices of the peace surrounded him. 
 The hearing was postponed, and postponed. It 
 was a farce. The newspapers did not notice it. 
 
THE OFFICIAL LIE' 109 
 
 although the reporters brought in the reports. 
 He was an advertiser, and also a patron of the 
 justice-shops. Mack's partner, Pflaum, defended 
 Kesner of the department store. The chief busi- 
 ness of counsel for the defense was to call up the 
 justices and the advertising managers of news- 
 papers, to come and help. That is the way 
 Mack practised law: and then his wife's people 
 secured his nomination by contributing to the 
 Democratic campaign fund and he became a judge 
 through the political election landslide, and has 
 been on some public payroll or other ever since. 
 In like manner a colored man was elected to the 
 superior bench some years later. The average 
 voter follows the sound of a name or a party: 
 there was nothing in the name to indicate that 
 the candidate was a negro: nor could the Re- 
 publicans afford to offend the colored voters by 
 rejecting him as a candidate, nor did they ex- 
 pect him to get elected. And so when the negro 
 was elected, and fairly and lawfully elected, his 
 friends " counted him out," in order to keep the 
 peace. Voters, like sheep, fall in and follow the 
 avalanche! In the Rhoades case the thousands 
 of advertisers, and the advertising managers, 
 were adverse, of course: because the justices of 
 the peace turned thousands of their bad book- 
 accounts into judgments, attachments, arrests and 
 executions — and I was ruining that business of 
 judicial oppression. I made the like success with 
 the like system in another jurisdiction, at the like 
 cost to me, of persecution and ingratitude. — But 
 Humanit;^ profited: and so it was worth it. 
 
110 THE BRIEF 
 
 Full of the story, I seem to diverge from the 
 Front street flat in Philadelphia: The poor 
 woman said that she married fifteen years ago 
 and had ten children, some of which were present. 
 During the conversation her husband, an elderly 
 man, entered. She told him who I was and he 
 immediately began to roar at me like a beast that 
 is infernal and to scream and yell. I seemed too 
 large to assault, although he could have thrown 
 me over with very little violence just then. When 
 he came to his reason he said he was glad to see 
 me and that my name had haunted him for a long 
 time; for whilst he had no reason to think ill 
 of his wife, yet he suspected at times, for they 
 say "where is smoke there is fire." It was not 
 a smoke and fire affair, I assured him, but of 
 liar and lie. He had my sympathy. "I am so 
 thankful I saw you," he sobbed when I left. 
 There was nothing the woman could do for me, of 
 course; and I did not see what I came to Phila- 
 delphia for. One will do a lot of gratuitous things 
 on the insistence of others at such times: and 
 here I was, having wasted what was then to me a 
 lot of money and all that time to no purpose. 
 But I felt that I must do something now that I 
 was in Philadelphia. So I went to the ofi^ices of the 
 prosecuting attorneys. There were two, one for 
 the State and one for the County: they would di- 
 rect me from Bell to Robinson, and from Robin- 
 son to Bell, prosecutors of State and County re- 
 spectively, and from one set of assistants to an- 
 other, in each place being quizzed by numbers of 
 underlings first. I "complained" that my wife 
 
THE OFFICIAL LIE 111 
 
 was married to this Mr. Steenburg and that I 
 wanted justice. I was a very bad complainant, 
 however, for I had no marriage certificate with 
 Miss Starke, nor could I give any satisfaction as 
 to when and where I had married the lady. I was 
 thin and emaciated, and they evidently ascribed 
 my stupidity to troubles. I was told to come again 
 at stated times, and that during the intervals 
 they would look into the case; which they did, 
 and I came. I came so often that at last, after 
 I passed a big tough in an antechamber, who, 
 coarse-voiced and hoarse and between chews of 
 tobacco, received me with " You! Have! Been! 
 Here! Before!'' I was led in; and a prosecuting 
 attorney received me with — "What's the game.^ " 
 Then he turned to an assistant and told him to 
 hold me for mental examination. 
 
 '''E-a-s-y," I said; "I have seen gentlemen 
 like you before. I suppose you have too steady 
 and easy a job to be decent to one; but give 
 me a few minutes of your time and charge for 
 it. I want your attention." Then he listened 
 half contemptuously, while his lieutenant stood 
 there as all mamelukes do, ready to do what- 
 ever he was bid by his boss, in order to hold 
 his job. 
 
 I handed him a typewritten copy of the decision 
 of the Supreme Court of Illinois. He read it 
 patiently, and saw that the chief reason why 
 they disbarred me was the mention or rather 
 plausible subterfuge in it that this woman was 
 my lawful wife and that as such married man 
 I was wedded to Mary in Pittsburg. 
 
112 THE BRIEF 
 
 "The Supreme Court of Illinois is a damned 
 liar!" he roared at me, when he finished reading. 
 
 I knew it, but that was no fault of mine. 
 
 "Can you see the reason for my coming to see 
 you.f^ " I asked. He could not. 
 
 "I say it's a lie," he repeated. "I looked 
 through the birth records of this city, and this 
 woman had a child almost every year since she 
 married — the only husband she ever had. Here 
 are the certified copies of births in this file." 
 He opened the file. It was on the table. 
 
 "A divorce was granted against me in Pitts- 
 burg, on this same allegation, that this lady is 
 my wife — " 
 
 "That's a fake, too, and a lie! " he said. 
 
 "That's just what I am anxious to prove. 
 Don't you want to prosecute her for me and give 
 her a chance to prove that she never even knew 
 me? It would help her — and help me." 
 
 "On what.f^ On no better evidence than a 
 fake default divorce obtained in Pittsburg.'^ Can 
 I swear that I am informed and believe that she 
 is a bigamist, when I know better.^ " 
 
 "But the Illinois court respected that default 
 divorce enough to disbar me." 
 
 "That's up to them. You know as a lawyer 
 that such evidence is not admissible — it is not 
 primary evidence." 
 
 "Don't you see what it means to me.^ Suppose 
 I were to marry now: the same kind of courts 
 would brand me as a polygamist next, and the 
 newspapers make a — Mr. Bluebeard of me. If I 
 am married enough to this lady to be disbarred 
 
TEE OFFICIAL LIE 113 
 
 for it, then why not married enough to prosecute 
 her for having another husband and vindicate — 
 us both, if it is false? " 
 
 "No, I only see what some damned courts 
 amount to. They're crooked. I suppose you 
 got in wrong with poHtics. I hear you've been 
 on Front Street, to annoy the poor woman." 
 
 "I just went there to meet the lady with letters 
 from her cousin," I pleaded. 
 
 "Much good it did you," he laughed. "She 
 could not read the letters. 
 
 "I realize that you're in a devil of a ^^: but 
 I cannot prosecute her: what else can you sug- 
 gest that I can do for you.^^ " 
 
 "You have done it already," I said. "Give me 
 those certificates of birth and all." 
 
 Which he did, and I left. 
 
XIV 
 
 THAT EDITION OF FILTH 
 
 4 LL judges know that anything they certify 
 _i\_ on the records of the court passes for truth 
 not only, but is guaranteed to be the truth by the 
 Constitution: all the greater is the crime in this 
 case. And these parasites print their falsehoods 
 with the same spirit as they did when they were 
 struggling politicians and tried to blacken the 
 character of their competitors; or, as some judges 
 I have known, when they used to write their 
 opinions of people they did not like on the walls 
 of the rooms in the rear of dram-shops. 
 
 I have had to contend with that edition of 
 filth all these years since: for every time a 
 shyster would not pay a reporting bill after 
 having collected the amount due from his client, 
 or in my law practice he was caught red-handed 
 at crooked work, or wanted to gain some other 
 advantage not due, he reminded me that he 
 had read this falsehood and threatened to talk 
 about it! It was no small struggle. 
 
 There were times when I longed for my 
 beloved vindication, my justice. I would write 
 to new district attorneys in Chicago: I would 
 write to the bar association, reminding it of the 
 fraud it committed upon me years ago, asking 
 for a chance to be heard, only to find that 
 
TEAT EDITION OF FILTH 115 
 
 the curs would write to my new connections, 
 advertising that printed lie. Yes, I wrote to 
 some lawyers: but they saw only a chance to 
 make enemies, no chance to oflfset that by making 
 big money on the case — and they were mem- 
 bers of the bar association. Some wrote that 
 they were in consultation with officials of the 
 association who promised to help them undo that 
 fraud, and asked me to write to such "officials" 
 thanking for their kindness. That was a mere 
 trap to vindicate such crooks by my admis- 
 sion that they made a mistake and are capable 
 of kindness. Others answered asking that I send 
 unlimited funds and ask no questions. One 
 wrote that I send in affidavits to the bar asso- 
 ciation to the effect that I repented and re- 
 formed, asking it to have pity on me: and he 
 will do the rest: and it will be all right! Some 
 years ago I wrote up these adventures in greater 
 detail: and in some detail the impositions, indig- 
 nities, losses, shame and all which I sustained by 
 reason thereof in these many years: then I wrote 
 to a man named Hoyne, a recent new state's at- 
 torney in Chicago, calling attention to the fraud 
 and saying that I wrote it up in book form which 
 I would be glad to have him read, if his office 
 would want to be decent and undo that lie. Mr. 
 Hoyne answered asking that I send him my 
 manuscript, promising that he would take it up 
 with assistants and justice would be done me. 
 I sent the papers forthwith. The receipt was 
 never acknowledged, and the result was that 
 I never got my manuscript back, my letters for 
 
116 THE BRIEF 
 
 more than a year were ignored, and the brute 
 utilized the story therein told to turn it over 
 to Fogle, the myrmidon of the bar association 
 who wrote and kept on writing to my new friends, 
 reaffirming the lie and the persecution committed 
 upon me and recommending that I be further 
 hounded. This is a mere additional suggestion 
 of official promise in Chicago. I shall write that 
 stolen manuscript over again; and maybe I will 
 add something about the manner in which the 
 right to fill out attachment-writs already signed 
 by the courts is abused by a certain brand of 
 licentiates at law and voracious constables and 
 collection shops in Massachusetts, — not quite 
 as bad as Chicago was, but getting pretty bad. 
 
 In the general courts-martial, which we hear 
 so much abused, the accused is entitled to counsel 
 furnished by the court from among law-trained 
 officers of his own choice, free of charge: one is 
 entitled to be tried by his equal- or superior- 
 commissioned officers only, and to a full verba- 
 tim report of the proceedings for the use of the 
 court and the reviewing authorities, and to a 
 copy also for his own memorandum, as well as 
 to the presentation of witnesses and depositions 
 in his favor at public expense. — This does not 
 apply to officers of a " staff ": once I saw a note 
 from a governor reading: "I heard something 
 about you. I won't say what or where. But I 
 don't want you on my staff no longer." — Before 
 each trial the members of the court and the prose- 
 cuting officer, and even the reporter, are separately 
 sworn to be just; and he may object to certain 
 
THAT EDITION OF FILTH 117 
 
 members of the court. The commander of a 
 regiment has to certify that he investigated 
 the case and believes the prosecution just, be- 
 fore action is brought at all. — None of your 
 getting people in trouble for blackmail or in 
 order to please a member of a special secret 
 order, or a scorbutic politician, or a friend, or 
 for a fee! And then his case, although de- 
 cided by a bench of five or more officers, is 
 automatically appealed to a higher court of 
 trained lawyers for review and approval, modi- 
 fication in his favor or reversal. No soldiers' 
 home jurors there! And in spite of all that sys- 
 tem, miscarriages of justice due to frivolity or 
 summary power are not uncommon. 
 
 Elements of human nature pervade the Army, 
 at that. There was a golden-headed major in 
 charge of a coast artillery fort who, even as junior 
 officers know when they are not popular with the 
 men, knew that his fellow-officers treated him only 
 with the strained respect the regulations demanded. 
 He would cringe to those who ranked above — and 
 one of a rank below he made to feel, with undue 
 emphasis, his inferiority. Officers who served with 
 him were always in danger of being charged with 
 crimes and misconducts by him in the general 
 court. He was advanced by the seniority rule. I 
 sometimes report the proceedings of the general 
 courts-martial, so I made friends around him 
 through the natural order of propinquity : and by 
 now I ranked above him, too, in the National 
 Guard. I used to care to speak no more with him 
 than did others, if they could avoid him. 
 
118 THE BRIEF 
 
 In the officers' cabin of the boats faring to and 
 from the forts he would hear me speak with his 
 fellows in languages and on subjects he knew 
 nothing about, and our innocent diversions both- 
 ered him. So one day he evolved the idea that 
 this National Guard civilian that I was — was 
 too well accepted; and he proceeded to make a 
 gossip that I was a spy for a foreign government. 
 His fellow-officers whispered among themselves of 
 the absurdity of the slander. I knew their 
 wives. I knew their children. They were my 
 friends. I have been in their homes. I already 
 had one bunch of lies to live down. When it 
 came to my attention I traced the source. Then 
 I wrote to this major upbraidingly for the 
 slander, accusing liim of insubordination, and 
 concluding that he was a scoundrel and a liar 
 — for experience taught me that polite language 
 is useless with his brand. And I am tired 
 of "turning the other cheek." I used much 
 stronger language, too. 
 
 Then, Bill failing to apologize, I complained 
 at the War Department. The Department made 
 an investigation, and on finding that the major 
 offered no better explanation for his misconduct 
 than that in his opinion one of my abilities would 
 not do such work as court reporting, except 
 with ulterior motives, I was advised that Secre- 
 tary of War Baker ordered the incident closed 
 with the remark that Pinkhead Bill Chamberlain 
 having called me a spy behind my back and I 
 having called him a liar to his face and in the 
 official files, — substantial justice was done, and 
 
TEAT EDITION OF FILTH 119 
 
 no apology should be enforced. — And yet they 
 say that the Administration simply acknowl- 
 edges receipts of complaints, answers that they 
 are referred further, and that is the end. — This 
 fellow is typical of his brand: they cannot 
 comprehend that one will work for the Gov- 
 ernment at a financial sacrifice! How could 
 one ever explain to his like that I had mort- 
 gaged my holdings when the Government first 
 called for aid in order to buy "Liberty" bonds 
 and so help induce my friends and neighbors 
 to aid the country.? And if you want to 
 know where all the crooked judges and crooked 
 lawyers and crooked newspapermen and other 
 loafers and parasites are hatched, the answer is 
 plain : any of the crooks herein depicted would still 
 be crooked if they were chiefs of Government or 
 Country; and the fortunes of politics are still in 
 the hands of such parasites, to a large extent. 
 
 I don't believe that any one asked Chamber- 
 lain for the favor of committing the slander, 
 or that he is a member of any plot; or even 
 that he is a spy, as some of my friends suggest, 
 who tries to cast suspicion upon others ; but rather 
 that Bill is one of those accidents or mistakes 
 that fall or intrude into a busy life, or into the 
 corps of officers, for that matter. For, after all, 
 he is on the pay-roll of the public; and, like 
 many others, inefficient but ambitious to be 
 noticed, throws a stone, and when confronted 
 with error, like the rest of his kind he pleads 
 that it was an honest mistake and "that there 
 was nothing personal to it." No, they all want 
 
120 TEE BRIEF 
 
 you to blame the Government for their own per- 
 versity, officious obnoxiousness and dishonesty. 
 
 In countries where duels are tolerated among 
 those classified as gentlemen there is less slander, 
 less insolence of office and blackmail, less back- 
 biting, less stifling of justice and general reck- 
 less immorality among the "better classes," and 
 less official anarchy; for though a bureaucratic 
 parasite know that he has power to abuse his 
 discretionary or summary rights under politics 
 or law, he also has the consciousness that some 
 one may scratch his skin in a fight more fair and 
 open than the cowardly violation of the rules of 
 decency which he would fain commit: and the 
 respect that such wrongs as would not come within 
 the cognizance of what we technically call a 
 court would thus be redressed — • for whilst it is 
 true that hardly any one is ever seriously injured 
 in a civilized duel, still, by reason of the thousand 
 collateral advantages of the system corruption 
 is reduced to a minimum where duels are allowed. 
 Nor is any country worth dying, fighting, or work- 
 ing for whose principal aim and glory is not a 
 system of sincere and fair actual justice for every 
 one alike, for there are plenty of highminded men 
 who feel that a lie cannot be borne without 
 satisfaction except by a base-born churl; and 
 every one at least pretends that a fair fight is 
 more manly than a stab in the back. Duels 
 would still be subject to regulation by law as 
 are all things. And even if the system would 
 bring about a scar to an occasional aggrieved 
 party, it would, on the other hand, also render 
 
THAT EDITION OF FILTH 121 
 
 public the report of the reason of the conflict. 
 It is better that occasionally one who is in the 
 right, even, be scathed in a cause that is just, 
 if at the same time he brand and stigmatize a 
 criminal against whom there is no written law 
 or whom the rules of evidence cannot reach, 
 than that people should continue to be robbed 
 and justice miscarried in a pretext at good law, in 
 the name of the other people — the good citizens 
 of the State — who know nothing about it, and 
 asylums be filled with unfortunates housed in 
 padded cells because they could not fathom, 
 comprehend, or brook that corruption is justice, 
 and poverty crime, and that courts which you are 
 taught to consider just help wring away your 
 right and property because you cannot spend 
 any more money on blackmail and fines and 
 masters in chancery who are corrupt in tribu- 
 nals where justice is judicially miscarried: and, 
 as also truly related in the manuscript which 
 State's Attorney Hoyne stole, that people should 
 be punished because they protect the orphan and 
 the just against criminal threats, and demands 
 of organized shysters, encouraged by *' judges" 
 of unlimited jurisdiction; for people refuse to 
 believe that courts are not meant to be fair, 
 and honest people not to be free about their 
 legitimate affairs. Nor is there one who would 
 not rather fall — yes and die — like a man, 
 in a fair face-to-face conflict, than be deprived 
 of reputation, right, property and all by licensed 
 political anarchy and judicial dastardy. Nor 
 would manslaughters be so common among the 
 
122 THE BRIEF 
 
 respectable class who kill not to rob and steal but 
 to avenge wrongs for which there is no prompt 
 redress at what we are taught to call law: and it 
 is generally admitted, too, that cowardly black- 
 mails, libels, slanders, judicial-, political-, shyster-, 
 and general corruption and unfair influence are 
 most rampant in those countries in which duels 
 are not tolerated. 
 
 The new general military law should, if made 
 permanent, tend for better citizens, better jurors, 
 a better country. I don't know about better 
 lawyers: except that a son of a decent woman 
 will try to be an honest man, no matter what 
 his occupation — which is probably another way 
 of saying that all good men are so because they 
 had good mothers. Perhaps, while departing to 
 the subject military, it is well to suggest that 
 assurances that in public callings men of such 
 training are to be preferred would tend for a bet- 
 ter race not only, but eliminate the necessity of 
 teaching hatred by false reports of the enemy in 
 times of war — which does not, really, stimulate 
 voluntary enlistments as much as patriotism 
 coupled with an interest: and patriotism is as 
 much made up of the gratitude you owe the State 
 for its bounties and protection as of the instinct 
 to shield the home, — natural ties and obedience 
 to the laws: and the reciprocity the Government 
 owes for good citizenship, as also politicians for their 
 salaries, is a clean government for everyone and a 
 guarantee of justice. Mock-statesmanship, licensed 
 corruption, favoritism and criminal immunity make 
 for contempt of government and anai^chy. 
 
XV 
 
 RASCALS AT LAW 
 
 AMR. BANCROFT was the leading villain 
 of the '* grievance committee" of the bar 
 association called to undo me, arguing that I was 
 a growing power and a menace to the corrupt 
 status quo of Chicago. About ten years later I 
 again had occasion to see some of his doings, and 
 no wonder he feared me. He was now engaged 
 as one of the many lawyers in the Harvester 
 case, and his special assignment was to organize 
 the most influential politicians of the West at the 
 expense of the trust for the purpose of running to 
 Attorney-General Wickersham and begging him 
 not to print the names of the owners of the hun- 
 dred million dollars' worth of stock in Volume IV 
 of the evidence and suppress that the majority 
 of the stockholders of that enormous wealth failed 
 to schedule the property in the sworn statements 
 they filed under the income-tax law; and well 
 do I remember the desperate, frantic begging 
 letters he had written to Washington and the 
 trips he and his fellows had made. The Gov- 
 ernment's counsel declining to participate, in 
 spite of all that influence, in the corrupt sup- 
 pression of facts, Bancroft went to " work " 
 
124 THE BRIEF 
 
 upon the Illinois politicians and succeeded in 
 securing the immunity for himself and others 
 who had perjured themselves year after year 
 to rob the Government. 
 
 And "lawyers" of this caliber had the power to 
 pick me to pieces, by bombarding what they knew 
 to be my only base of supplies, the right to work. 
 Nor will I ever forget a trip through the country 
 some years ago, when the McNamara dynamiting 
 case was pending in California. All through 
 that trip, from the train I saw workmen parade 
 the streets of the cities, carrying large placards 
 reading "Justice for the McNamaras" — and 
 they did stick to their fellow- workers to the end: 
 — and I could not help meditating how much 
 higher a group of men and more noble was organ- 
 ized labor than my colleagues of the law, who, 
 instead of declaring so conspicuously a demand 
 for justice for one like me, tacitly, treacherously, 
 and criminally organized, conspired, combined and 
 confederated for purposes of injustice and judicial 
 rape. And for years after I had come back to 
 the region of more civilization and culture, have 
 these human whelps and hounds sent broad- 
 cast nasty libels about me and lies. And the more 
 they have been lying, the more did my neighbors 
 feel inclined to inquire and investigate, and the 
 more did they shower me with help and honors, 
 for which I shall ever remain thankful. 
 
 Nor must a very recent adventure be left out. 
 Captain F. S. Long of the Coast Artillery Corps 
 of the United States Army, stationed at Fort 
 Revere, sent me a client. He was a corporal in 
 
RASCALS AT LAW 125 
 
 my friend's company, married a few months 
 before. The corporal and his commander were 
 sent letters by a Pennsylvania lawyer accusing 
 the young man of the paternity of a child. It 
 seemed from the story that the young farmer's 
 son joined the Army in order to escape the perse- 
 cution. The corporal brought his wife with him 
 to my office. I told the young man that those 
 nasty cases are usually stigmatizing, whether the 
 accused won or lost, and I told the wife that 
 his chances of getting out of the scrape were 
 better if she stood by him; and that if she did 
 mean to go "back on him," to do that after 
 the mess would be over. — See what an expert 
 I wsis? — She said she would stick. 
 
 I took the files of correspondence and threats 
 and demands of money from both the Captain 
 and the client. I started out by looking up 
 the lady and traced her whereabouts for some 
 six years back, within which time she was already 
 reported to have made two money settlements 
 with young men just married. Beyond the six 
 years I had no clew, so I wrote to a local lawyer 
 to have the woman photographed. On receiving 
 a small snapshot, the visage looked rather familiar; 
 and on applying to it a ten-diopter biconvex 
 magnifier, more so. I looked long and hard, 
 wondering where I saw that face before — when 
 behold, I seemed to see her at Mr. Delahun's 
 desk, where I first saw her in the distant past: 
 the very one whom Mr. Delahun furnished 
 with counsel and my money to follow me to 
 Chicago. Then an easy way occurred of ascer- 
 
126 THE BRIEF 
 
 taining whether it was she: and I wrote upon 
 
 my stationery to the lady's counsel: 
 
 "Be good enough to show this letter to 
 your fair client and tell her that I represent 
 the defendant. Tell the lady to read rny 
 name carefully." 
 
 That was more than two years ago, and neither 
 Captain Long nor his corporal nor I heard any 
 more of the case; and I advised my client and 
 his wife that I had written one letter and expected 
 that that would just about put an end to their 
 trouble with the lady in Pennsylvania. Even if 
 it was the same lady, there was no use of telling 
 the client how many bucketfuls of tears shed in 
 years past had cost me the success of his little 
 case. 
 
 Nor do I begrudge that another lady in Pennsyl- 
 vania displayed jewels of my family and mine 
 to friends she made in the new neighborhood 
 and represented them sometimes as heirlooms 
 of her own and other times as gifts from grateful 
 pupils at music. Nay, in these j^ears there have 
 been times when I mused about her as a victim 
 of the wiles of her father, who had told her artful 
 lies which she believed: and I have wondered 
 how she often must have thought of me with 
 pity and remorse in cogitation as to that scoun- 
 drel's good faith to her or bad; and how she 
 must herself be waiting for a day when the whole 
 truth would be plain — until the 26th of June, 
 1916, when I was in Pittsburg on other matters, 
 and recollection of the series of outrages and pro- 
 
RASCALS AT LAW 127 
 
 pinquity drew me to attempt a call, only to find 
 a woman weatherbeaten, harsh-voiced, and ear- 
 marked with the character perfectly consistent 
 with what she had done to me and to others 
 since, and to find, too, that so far from the re- 
 morse and the pity of it all she had since then 
 landed and ridded men, and enforced her rights 
 at law, and was now looking for new conquests. 
 I saw and heard her now with matured eyes and 
 ears such as I did not possess in that early age, 
 and a great awakening and relief it was to my 
 hounded soul. Her father, like herself, is older 
 now by seventeen years, and her mother a hope- 
 less invalid — the moneys of mine that her father 
 was to hold for me and those he borrowed from 
 me and those she appropriated have long since 
 vanished, the whole family barely existing with 
 the help of others. 
 
 A member of their church, under date of Feb- 
 ruary 12, 1917, writes: 
 
 "As I have told you before, I have had a 
 personal dislike for Delahun for many years, 
 both instinctively and now since I know of 
 his baseness. I rode out on the street car the 
 other night and he seated himself with me 
 and started to talk about church matters. 
 I told him abruptly that I was reading my 
 paper and did not care to talk with him. 
 
 "I asked a friend of mine that I knew 
 knew his daughter well, who said: *Poor 
 Mary, she has a hard time of it.' 'How so.^' 
 I queried. ' Oh, don't you know? ' she replied; 
 
128 THE BRIEF 
 
 *then let us not say more.' Another friend 
 of mine of whom I made inquiry said, *Who 
 told you to ask me?' 'No one,' I said, 'why?' 
 'Oh, nothing, only you are the fifth person 
 in two days speaking to me regarding her;' 
 and we let the matter drop. 
 
 "I did inquire further and did find out 
 some: and my report to you is: 'Poor Mary; 
 she has had a hard time; let's say no more;' 
 and yet what she has been up to very lately 
 I can only conjecture." 
 
 In reply I wrote my friend to find some reli- 
 able way to help her with funds from me without 
 disclosing their source. 
 
 And I am so thankful that the Fates willed it 
 thus, for I had rather have been the humble 
 messenger of all this light if it served any good 
 purpose than the unawakened companion of the 
 one behind all this — my Brief. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 "... For if he show us his wounds and tell 
 us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into 
 those wounds and speak for them. So if he 
 tell us his noble deeds, ive must also tell him 
 our noble acceptance of them, ..." 
 
 — Shakespeare.