feflf
 
 
 , 
 
 I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 u 
 
 Pussyfoot" yohnson
 
 MR. \V. E. JOHNSON 
 
 \ y 1920 
 
 Ptiolo : \ice.
 
 "Pussyfoot" Johnson 
 
 By 
 
 F. A. McKenzie 
 
 Author of '" Korea's Fight for Freedom," " Through the 
 Hindenburg Line" etc. 
 
 " Let Johnson alone : more power to his elbow." 
 
 Pretident Roosevelt. 
 
 Rodder and Stoughton 
 Limited London
 
 52 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Prohibition movement ranks among 
 -- the most remarkable crusades of 
 modern times. That is a fact hardly to be 
 denied even by those who differ most 
 strenuously from it. The majority of the 
 English-speaking communities of the world, 
 and some non-English-speaking nations, have 
 voluntarily, within a few years, renounced 
 a favourite and established habit a habit 
 which literature, tradition and custom had 
 caused mankind to regard as one of the 
 pleasures of life. 
 
 Alcohol had been for generations untold 
 an anodyne In grief, a symbol of joy, a 
 medicine for the invalid and comfort for the 
 mourner. It accompanied men literally 
 from their birth to their grave. No christen- 
 ing was complete without it ; every birth- 
 day was made an occasion for the 
 drinking of healths : a wedding-feast with- 
 
 V 
 
 112809
 
 vi Introduction 
 
 out strong drinks would have seemed like 
 a banquet without meat ; and before they 
 laid a corpse in its final home the mourners 
 gathered together and decorously drank 
 wine. 
 
 Then came the movement against alcohol. 
 Men ceased to drink, at first individually. 
 After a time they banded themselves in 
 societies and formed an easy butt for novelists 
 and satirists. Next they started to cut off 
 the sale of drink in their own communities, 
 village by village, town by town, state by 
 state. More recently whole nations agreed 
 voluntarily to stamp out the traffic. To- 
 day men are dreaming of a " dry " world, 
 and it is a dream that many hope may come 
 true in our time. 
 
 Of all those associated with the Prohibi- 
 tion movement the name of only one has 
 become, up to now, a household word 
 throughout the world " Pussyfoot " John- 
 son. 
 
 Fortune brought me in touch with Mr. 
 Johnson in an exciting and adventurous 
 hour. Our experiences then led to further 
 meetings. In time I came to see the man as
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 he is, and to understand why he has won the 
 place he holds. 
 
 When it was suggested by others that I 
 should write this brief sketch of his life, 
 Mr. Johnson hesitated. He would prefer to 
 work for to-morrow and leave the adven- 
 tures of yesterday to themselves. "I do 
 not believe in a biography that is all 
 praise," he once said to me. " The only 
 perfect beings that I know are in heaven." 
 His only request was that I should write 
 as critic rather than eulogist. " I have 
 learned a lot from criticism," he de- 
 clared, " and I have a lot more to learn 
 yet." 
 
 This narrative is a plain record of some of 
 the main incidents in the adventurous life 
 of an adventure-loving man who has been a 
 fighter from his youth up. I have come to 
 admire William Johnson because of his 
 directness, his simplicity, his courage, and 
 his shrewd capacity. It is a good thing to 
 observe the life of a man who goes straightly 
 and strongly on, with his eyes set at one 
 mark, a man who is neither weakling nor 
 pietist, trimmer nor ranter, who can and
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 does give hard blows, and who is ready to 
 take them without malice. 
 
 " Pussyfoot " Johnson won the admiration 
 of two continents by his cheerful courage 
 when he lost his eye as the result of a 
 students' " rag " in London. The qualities 
 that he revealed then were not assumed for 
 the moment, but were part of the man. I 
 do not profess to share all his views, but I 
 am proud to have the honour to tell of the 
 life-work of a real " white " man. 
 
 F. A. McKENZIE.
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGB 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM NEW YORK TO NEBRASKA ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE REAL START 13 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 BACK TO NEW YORK ... 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LIFE IN THE " BAD LANDS " . .51
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 How " PUSSYFOOT " WON His NAME 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MORE ADVENTURES IN THE WEST ... 90 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 JOHNSON RESIGNS ..... 107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE CAMPAIGN FOR NATIONAL PROHIBITION . 116 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 LAUNCHING THE WORLD CAMPAIGN . . 127 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 How " PUSSYFOOT " LOST His EYE 142
 
 Contents xi 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE " BOGEY MAN " BECOMES A POPULAR 
 
 HERO 154 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 ENGLAND "DRY" BY 1930 170
 
 Chapter I From New York to Nebraska 
 
 WILLIAM EUGENE JOHNSON was 
 born in the village of Coventry, New 
 York, on March 25th, 1862. He was the 
 son of a farmer, and descended from good 
 New England stock. His father's family 
 was from Connecticut, his mother's (the 
 Stiles) from Massachusetts ; and they could 
 trace their line back for two hundred years 
 of pure Yankee strain. An ancestress on his 
 mother's side was hanged as a witch in Salem, 
 during the great witchcraft craze at the end 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 His grandfather had come to Coventry in 
 the days when Central New York was a 
 wilderness, walking all the way from Col- 
 chester, Connecticut, to spy out the land, 
 that he might settle there if he found it 
 suitable. He discovered a good plot of 
 eighty acres owned by a land company, and 
 bargained for it with the company's repre-
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 sentative, a Frenchman. He had saved 
 $300, which he had left in the care of his 
 brother in the old home town. A deal was 
 made with the land company, and the 
 grandfather walked back to Colchester for 
 his wife, his ox-team, and the $300. On 
 reaching home he found that his brother had 
 got drunk and had spent all the money. Un- 
 daunted, he took his ox-team, his axe, and 
 his wife and travelled once more to Coventry, 
 to tell the Frenchman that he could not 
 complete his bargain because his money 
 had gone. 
 
 " How much money have you ? " the agent 
 asked. 
 
 " None," was the reply. 
 
 " You take the land and pay for it when 
 you can," was the unexpected response. 
 The land agent even helped to fit him out 
 with a barrel of flour. 
 
 It was on this land that, two generations 
 later, William Johnson was born. 
 
 The grandfather had two sisters, Clarissa 
 and Jerusha, both missionaries among the 
 Cherokee Indians in Arkansas. A medical 
 missionary there, Dr. Marcus Palmer, mar-
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 ried Clarissa, and when she died, married 
 Jerusha. He lost his sight, and came back 
 East to Fitzville, Ohio. Here he was 
 apparently engaged as a preacher, but his 
 main work was very different. He was an 
 active worker in the Anti- Slavery campaign, 
 and he ran a station on the famous " Under- 
 ground Railway " by which escaping negroes 
 made their way in safety to the North. 
 
 The Palmers took a negro-boy, Henry M. 
 Wynder, into their home, and educated him 
 so that he was able to become a teacher in a 
 private school kept by their daughter. He 
 was, for a time, William Johnson's teacher. 
 Heredity and early home training mould the 
 man. William Johnson, reformer, received his 
 bent in the roomy old farmhouse at Smithville 
 Flats, to which his family moved when he 
 was two years old, and where he passed his 
 childhood. It was a temperance farmhouse 
 all the time. Trie Johnsons had had their 
 pew in the Presbyterian church near by as 
 long as men could remember. The ideals of 
 the old anti-slavery campaigners were bred 
 in them. 
 
 The lad was brought up to an open-air
 
 From Neiv Tork to Nebraska 
 
 life. He early learned to master horses, 
 which is not a bad beginning in the art of 
 learning to master men. The last time he 
 was thrown off a horse was when he was five 
 years old. His old friends still recall him as 
 a square-toed, sturdy -shouldered youth, full 
 of physical and mental energy, always ready 
 for a fight, and going through with it to a 
 finish. 
 
 Johnson himself declares that the supreme 
 influence in his life was his mother. She was 
 " just a mother." She lived to a ripe old 
 age, and her son to this day always carries 
 her portrait with him. It is to her, he de- 
 clares, that he owes all. People who knew 
 her describe her in her last years as "an 
 old, old, white-capped lady, supremely proud 
 of her son's battle for an ideal, supremely 
 confident that, no matter what the over- 
 whelming obstacles, he could not fail. When 
 she died there passed a fine woman who had, 
 more than anyone else, implanted in the son 
 the ideas and the steadfastness that had 
 made him suffer for his ideals, and laugh at 
 his persecutors, with a gameness that almost 
 disarmed thwn."
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 The son paid tribute to her in the preface 
 of one of his books : 
 
 " To my Mother. 
 
 From the beginning she has been an 
 eternal inspiration to higher and 
 better things." 
 
 Johnson when a very young man spent 
 two winters in his home state of Ne\\ York, 
 " teaching school," taking out part of his 
 payment in board, as was the custom in 
 country districts at that time. Most houses 
 had one room facing the north-west for the 
 preacher or the teacher when they visited 
 their district. In some homes the 
 " preacher's room " was not so carefully 
 looked after as in others, and sleeping in a 
 damp bed gave the young fellow a severe 
 illness which left him a physical wreck and 
 with an asthma from which he suffers to this 
 day. 
 
 He went out West to regain his strength, 
 to a ranch near Fremont, Neb., owned by his 
 father and his uncle, and there put in a sum- 
 mer of open-air work, increasing his weight 
 from 120 to 165 Ibs., and regaining condition. 
 As winter approached there was nothing more
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 for him to do on the ranch, so he thought 
 that he would teach school again. He called 
 on the State Superintendent of Education 
 and asked for work. The Superintendent 
 informed him that all teachers had to pass 
 an examination, and that the examinations 
 for that winter were already over. 
 
 " Couldn't you hold a private examination 
 for me ? " asked Johnson. 
 
 The Superintendent agreed, and fixed the 
 next morning for the ordeal. He handed 
 Johnson a list of the subjects in which he 
 must pass. One was physiology. Now the 
 lad from New York knew nothing of physi- 
 ology. He was not even quite sure what it 
 was ; but he went to a second-hand book- 
 stall, bought an old text-book, sat up all 
 night studying, and next morning passed his 
 examination triumphantly. 
 
 There were only two schools vacant, and 
 Johnson was warned not to try for one of 
 these as he would not like it. The first school 
 was twenty miles away. He borrowed a 
 horse and set out for a ride across country to 
 see the authorities there. The horse was 
 a real bucking broncho. It took two men
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 to hold it when he mounted, and once in the 
 saddle there came a right royal fight between 
 man and beast. But Johnson had not been 
 brought up on a farm for nothing. The 
 horse did not throw him, and by the time 
 the day was over even the broncho had 
 lost its " pep," for man and horse rode 
 sixty-eight miles that day. He found 
 when he reached the first village that the 
 place was already filled, so there was noth- 
 ing for him to do but to turn round 
 and ride another forty miles to the second 
 district the place he had been warned 
 against. 
 
 This district was the home of a number 
 of German-American families. The local 
 authorities told Johnson that he could try 
 his hand at keeping school there if he liked, 
 but on their terms. " We will pay you 
 forty dollars a month salary, but we will 
 only pay it if we are satisfied that you are 
 maintaining proper discipline. We are to 
 be the sole judges as to whether you are or 
 not." 
 
 The young teacher readily agreed. A 
 form of contract was drawn up. He signed
 
 8 From New Tork to Nebraska 
 
 it, scarcely troubling to read it, and was 
 duly installed. 
 
 He soon learned what was in front of him. 
 There had been no school at this place for 
 two years, because no teacher was willing to 
 undertake the work. For two years before 
 that no one had succeeded in remaining 
 there for more than about a week. The 
 boys prided themselves on their ability to 
 beat any teacher in that time. 
 
 School opened, and thirty pupils came 
 twenty-eight boys and two girls. Johnson 
 studied them carefully as they clumped in, 
 their wooden shoes clattering on the floor. 
 They were an ordinary-looking group. He 
 anticipated no difficulty with any except 
 one, a young giant as old as the teacher 
 himself, of amazing muscular develop- 
 ment, and weighing quite 220 Ibs. Johnson 
 knew who would win if it came to a 
 straight trial of strength between him and 
 that youngster. So he made his plans 
 accordingly. 
 
 Here, as in many other parts, the school- 
 teacher was school- janitor also. Johnson 
 provided himself with a good heavy poker
 
 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 for the stove, and saw that the poker was 
 always within reach. 
 
 For the first few days nothing untoward 
 happened. Then one afternoon the teacher 
 noted that his dangerous pupil was throwing 
 a book at another lad. 
 
 " Cut that out," said Johnson shortly. 
 
 " Haw ! You shut up ! " retorted the 
 young giant. " We've had enough of you. 
 You've been here long enough. Get out ! " 
 And he rose from his seat and made for his 
 teacher, the others jumping up at the same 
 time and following in his wake. 
 
 Johnson remained absolutely still until 
 the young fellow was within easy reach of 
 him. Then with a quick movement he 
 hit out, and hit effectively. 
 
 There was no more trouble in that school. 
 A fortnight afterwards the young giant re- 
 turned to his place in class, the meekest of 
 the meek. The authorities paid Johnson 
 forty dollars a month without a question. 
 They admitted they had at last found a man 
 who could maintain discipline. 
 
 From school Johnson went to Nebraska 
 University, working his way through by
 
 io From New York to Nebraska 
 
 doing all kinds of odd jobs. He remained at 
 the University for three years, but did not 
 graduate. His career from an academic 
 point of view was not a great success. 
 
 The new West was in the making ; fresh 
 population was pouring in. All kinds of 
 enterprise were afloat. A man had to be 
 ready to put his hand to anything, from 
 doing chores to maintaining law and order. 
 A local newspaper badly needed a circulation 
 manager. It had a subscription list of 
 eight hundred. Johnson took up the post, 
 and by hard work raised the number to 
 three thousand. 
 
 Just about this time one of the periodical 
 land booms which swept over the West 
 struck Nebraska. These land booms are the 
 maddest form of gambling. Values go up 
 on paper out of all reason. When the boom 
 is at its height a plot in a back street in a 
 country town will sell for nearly as much as 
 a small plot in Michigan Avenue in Chicago, 
 or in the City of London. " A " buys a 
 plot for $100. He sells it to " B " next day 
 for $200. Some one else pays " B " $20 for 
 a short time option to buy the plot at $300,
 
 From New York to Nebraska 1 1 
 
 and succeeds in selling it for $350, and so on. 
 For a time every one makes money, and there 
 is an appearance of amazing prosperity. 
 Outside speculators are drawn in. Costly 
 undertakings are launched, and the boom- 
 sters-in-chief metaphorically " light their 
 cigars" with $5 bills. This is the hour for 
 the wise man to step from under, but very 
 few people are wise. A slump always follows 
 and leaves a sadder and wiser community 
 behind it. 
 
 Johnson bought an option on a plot of 
 land for a few dollars, and sold it next day 
 at a profit of $150. Why should he go work- 
 ing hard and making a scanty living as 
 circulation manager when he could pick up 
 hundreds of dollars in that way ? 
 
 He threw up his job and opened an office 
 as Real Estate dealer. He bought and sold, 
 dickered and bargained, and secured an 
 interest in all kinds of enterprises, from a 
 Turkish bath to central town lots, until at 
 the end of a few months he was worth 
 $30,000. Like nearly every one else, he kept 
 on too long, was caught in the slump, and 
 finished up worth $4000, less than nothing.
 
 12 From New York to Nebraska 
 
 He had married during this time Miss 
 Lillie M. Trebitt, of Lincoln, and found a 
 wife ever ready to stand by him in dark hours, 
 to cheer when things looked most threatening 
 and to take her full share of toil. There was 
 a stiff row to hoe before he recovered his 
 financial stability again. He took seriously 
 to journalism, became manager of the 
 Nebraska News Bureau, and here the way 
 opened up that led to his real life-work.
 
 Chapter II The Real Start 
 
 WILLIAM JOHNSON'S life has been 
 so bound up with the movement for 
 the prohibition of the manufacture and sale 
 of alcoholic drinks that it is impossible to 
 appreciate the one without knowing some- 
 thing of the other. The modern Prohibition 
 movement took its rise in the State of Maine 
 over eighty years ago. A Committee of the 
 Maine Legislature reported in 1837 that : 
 44 The traffic (in strong drink) is attended 
 with the most appalling evils to the com- 
 munity. It is an unmitigated evil. Your 
 Committee are not only of the opinion 
 that the law giving the right to sell ardent 
 spirits should be repealed, but that a law 
 should be passed to prohibit the traffic in 
 them, except so far as the arts or the practice 
 of medicine may be concerned." 
 
 Neal Dow, the son of a rich Quaker farmer, 
 began a vigorous agitation to have this 
 
 '3
 
 14 The Real Start 
 
 opinion embodied in the law, and the first 
 Prohibition Act was passed in Maine in 1846. 
 It was an imperfect and experimental mea- 
 sure, only the sale of ardent spirits, not wine 
 or beer, being forbidden. The Act was a 
 failure. Learning from experience, Mr. Dow, 
 five years later, framed a more drastic Bill. 
 This was carried through the State Legisla- 
 ture in two days and was actively enforced 
 immediately in spite of much opposition and 
 some rioting. 
 
 The Maine example was quickly followed, 
 and by 1855 thirteen states, including New 
 York and Pennsylvania, had adopted pro- 
 hibition. Then came a time of reaction. 
 In some states the law was not enforced. 
 The nation became more and more absorbed 
 in the battle over slavery and in the 
 growing cleavage between North and 
 South. Prohibition was declared uncon- 
 stitutional, a decision which was reversed 
 some years later. In state after state pro- 
 hibition was repealed and in some where 
 it was retained it was only enforced in a 
 half-hearted fashion. 
 
 The movement received a set-back, from
 
 The Real Start 15 
 
 which it took many years to recover. Maine 
 remained faithful, but even in Maine enforce- 
 ment of the law was irregular. In the early 
 eighties the new West launched a fresh 
 campaign, the State of Kansas in particular 
 presenting an example of successful pro- 
 hibition which was to have wide-reaching 
 effects. The fight was much harder now 
 than in the early days. The liquor trade 
 had become thoroughly organised and had 
 reduced the bribing of legislatures and the 
 manipulation of the Press to a fine art. 
 
 The prohibitionists at this stage aimed to 
 secure, not merely the passage of State Laws 
 forbidding the sale of drink, but the passage 
 of State Constitutional Amendments embody- 
 ing prohibition an integral part of the Constitu- 
 tion of each State. One large section of 
 temperance reformers made what is now 
 generally recognised as a mistake in estab- 
 lishing a separate political party of 
 their own, the Prohibition Party, rather 
 than in working through the established 
 parties. 
 
 A number of well-intentioned people, 
 including many men of great influence,
 
 1 6 The Real Start 
 
 believing prohibition to be impracticable, 
 introduced measures for the more effective 
 control of the drink trade. High licence, the 
 chief of these, was fathered at first by many 
 prohibitionists as being a step towards their 
 desired goal. The principal planks of this 
 were a great reduction in the number of 
 saloons and the payment by each saloon- 
 keeper of a high licence fee. In place of 
 being a step towards prohibition, high licence 
 was quickly found to be the most effective 
 weapon for fighting it. It gave the tax-payer 
 a financial interest in maintaining the drink 
 traffic, the licence fees going towards the 
 reduction of taxes. The Dispensary system 
 originated in South Carolina ; under it 
 the State itself became the retailer of 
 intoxicants. 
 
 When the historian of the future comes to 
 analyse the forces that lay behind the Pro- 
 hibition movement, he will find one of the 
 chief among them to be the revolt of decent 
 citizens against the influence of the saloon 
 in public life. The saloon-keeper was not 
 the old " mine host " of ancient times, the 
 landlord who cared for the comfort of man
 
 The Real Start 17 
 
 and beast, but the seller of strong drinks, 
 directly concerned with selling as much strong 
 drink as possible and with nothing else. It 
 was to his interest to control the police so 
 that they might not be too active against 
 the disorderly conduct of his customers. 
 In order to make his control more effective 
 be became partner with the local " bosses." 
 His overlords, the brewers and distillers, did 
 the same, only on a bigger scale. The saloon 
 became the centre for the worst elements 
 in national, state and local politics. It 
 was partner with the gambling hell and 
 house of ill-fame. The decent citizen who 
 wanted to " clean up " corruption and 
 immorality in his locality found the saloon 
 his greatest enemy. The saloon-keeper 
 had no real friends. Even the men who 
 patronised him most freely scorned him 
 and were often the first to fight for his 
 elimination. 
 
 A struggle was developing at this time in 
 Nebraska which was to have a profound 
 effect on Johnson's future life. Nebraska 
 was the first State in the union to adopt high 
 licence. In 1889 the prohibitionists made
 
 1 8 The Real Start 
 
 ready to put up a real fight for a constitu- 
 tional prohibition amendment, and Johnson 
 threw himself into the campaign. He was 
 well under thirty years old at the time, full of 
 energy and of great physical strength. His 
 experiences as a newspaper-man had taught 
 him ingenuity and resource. If he had to 
 fight the devil, he believed in fighting him 
 with fire and turning his weapons on the 
 forces of evil themselves. 
 
 Johnson was brought into the reform move- 
 ment by heredity, through the influence of 
 Andrew G. Wolfenbarger, a Lincoln attorney, 
 by the influence and example of his mother, 
 and by his association with a remarkable 
 character, " Bishop " Skinner. The Bishop 
 was a livery-stable keeper in Lincoln who 
 was given his nick-name because of his epis- 
 copal appearance, his white hat and long 
 whiskers. He had a picturesque and varie- 
 gated past and his language was noted for its 
 variety and profanity, even in the West. He 
 reformed, quit drinking, and cut off all his 
 vices except swearing. He started a temper- 
 ance movement the Red Ribbon Club 
 which was for a time famous.
 
 The Real Start 19 
 
 One Sunday afternoon, while at college, 
 Johnson was at his hall with a dozen other 
 students. There had been music and 
 speeches, and an appeal was made for men 
 to come up and sign the pledge. Johnson 
 turned to his companions. " What is the 
 matter with you fellows ? " he demanded. 
 " Come up and sign." 
 
 " We will, if you do," some one de- 
 clared. 
 
 " Come right along," Johnson responded. 
 He led the way to the front, ten or twelve 
 following him. They had not gone half-way 
 before the organ and viola struck up the 
 Sankey hymn : 
 
 " See the Mighty Hosts advancing, 
 Satan leading on." 
 
 There came a quick burst of laughter 
 from the audience. The advance paused. 
 But from that time Johnson was openly 
 committed. He was one of the re- 
 formers. 
 
 He gave quick proof of his qualities. There 
 had been a great deal of talk of wholesale 
 corruption by the " wet " leaders. The
 
 20 The Real Start 
 
 subject was a matter of common gossip. No 
 one had any real proofs. Johnson set about 
 obtaining them. 
 
 He had some letter-heads printed, " John- 
 son's Pale Ale," and wrote to a number of 
 prominent liquor dealers and others who had 
 taken a leading part in the anti-prohibition 
 campaigns in other States, asking them 
 how best prohibition could be defeated in 
 Nebraska : 
 
 " DEAR SIR, 
 
 " There is a prohibition amendment 
 pending in this state, and I would like to kave 
 your advice, as a member of the trade. You 
 have had experience in fighting prohibition 
 in your state, and you know what the best 
 plans are. 
 
 " Please tell us frankly what you think 
 we should lay the most stress on in Nebraska, 
 for accomplishing the best result for the 
 liquor trade. It is my opinion that if the 
 Nebraska dealers will take up high licence 
 and show its advantages as a revenue mea- 
 sure, and a plan for regulating the traffic, 
 etc., they will get the support of the best 
 people, and even some preachers. What do 
 you think of this ?
 
 The Real Start 21 
 
 ' What effectiveness is there in using 
 anti-prohibition documents ? What class 
 of documents are best ? Do you know 
 of any documents that will have weight 
 against prohibition among the religious 
 people ? 
 
 ' How should campaign funds be dis- 
 tributed for the best results ? Is it worth 
 while to hire speakers or to engage in debates 
 with the prohibitionists ? I think myself 
 that the trade will accomplish more by 
 spending the bulk of the funds among 
 newspapers, and for quiet work with men of 
 influence, especially politicians. Give me 
 your best plan for working through political 
 machinery, and especially how to silence the 
 pulpit and the press." 
 
 The organisers of the liquor dealers' cam- 
 paigns fell into the trap, and wrote him long 
 letters describing their plans. One of the 
 chief among them, Mr. Harry P. Crowell, 
 suggested that Johnson should come and see 
 him. " If you are going to have a fight, if 
 you was to come here I would give you, I 
 think, in three hours, more than I could 
 write in a week." Johnson did not go 
 himself, but sent a deputy, and Mr. Crowell
 
 22 The Real Start 
 
 opened up in conversation his whole plans, 
 how he had raised money, how much he 
 had paid to different politicians for their 
 support, his methods with the newspapers, 
 and the like. " Make a plea for high licence 
 and the battle is yours that is if you have 
 the papers and politicians with you, and you 
 can get them if you have the money," was 
 the substance of his advice. 
 
 The publication of these letters and of the 
 interview caused an immense sensation and 
 had the effect of drawing national attention 
 to Johnson's work. The New York Voice, 
 the leading organ of the prohibitionists, offered 
 him an engagement during the campaign in 
 the West. He at once became a marked 
 man. Every abusive adjective that could be 
 strung together was used in describing him. 
 Journalism in the West was very full- 
 blooded in those days. Johnson's opponents 
 would start by describing his personal appear- 
 ance in anything but complimentary terms. 
 Then they would turn to his morals and 
 his manners. 
 
 Apparently the only good thing they could 
 find in him was his personal courage, and this
 
 The Real Start 23 
 
 even his bitterest enemies never attempted 
 to deny. " Whatever may be said about 
 this prohibition detective Johnson, to 
 his disadvantage, it must be admitted 
 that he is a brave man," wrote the Omaha 
 Journal. 
 
 Johnson gave his enemies as good as he 
 got. He was in real fighting form. He 
 smiled when the other side hit him and then 
 punched harder back. Here, for example, is 
 his description of Omaha, where he was 
 engaged in a fierce prohibition battle : 
 
 " Omaha has degenerated into an incor- 
 porated band of outlaws. It presents to- 
 day the most extraordinary spectacle ever 
 witnessed in the politics of any state. The 
 whole city is in a state of moral stupor and 
 mental delirium trcmens. It has absolutely 
 lost sight of every consideration of decency, 
 fairness and respect for law which usually 
 govern the relations of men in social and 
 business life, and is wallowing in the filthy 
 embrace of the saloon, while it fortifies itself 
 by abuse, vilification and slander on the 
 street and in the press, and defies the law by 
 a criminal use of the boycott in business
 
 24 The Real Start 
 
 circles. Claiming a majority of six to one 
 against prohibition, it is in a crazy apprehen- 
 sion lest the prohibitionists will intimidate 
 licence voters, impede registration and vot- 
 ing, and inaugurate a reign of terror. It 
 is a truly remarkable combination of 
 crime, degradation and absurdity. If it 
 were not damnable it would be pitiable. 
 If it were not pitiable, it would be 
 ridiculous." 
 
 The fight at Omaha was of unusual interest. 
 The big Nebraska city was the centre of the 
 struggle over prohibition. Johnson went there 
 to help his side. One of the first things that 
 he did was to make a careful study of the 
 conditions under which the ballot for the 
 constitutional amendment would be taken. 
 He discovered that the last census returns 
 had been padded to an amazing extent. He 
 put enumerators to work, and found in one 
 ward three times too many names. The 
 census returns made Omaha appear as a city 
 of 139,000 people : Johnson declared that 
 the real population was not over 115,000. 
 This estimate was subsequently confirmed.
 
 The Real Start 25 
 
 The bogus names had been added to enable 
 the liquor party to cast a number of dummy 
 votes on their side. 
 
 Johnson published these facts. Once more 
 the vials of wrath opened on him. He was 
 a : ' prohibition liar," " conscienceless," 
 " notorious," " shady," " a slimy serpent," 
 and so on and so forth. 
 
 His articles dealing with the situation 
 were published in the New York Voice and 
 the Lincoln Call. Thousands of copies of 
 these papers containing the exposure were 
 mailed to the people of Omaha. The anti- 
 prohibitionists, however, were in control of 
 the machinery of administration, and they 
 discounted Johnson's activities by holding 
 up the copies sent for sale and by de- 
 laying the distribution of the mailed issues 
 of the Voice until after the election was 
 over. 
 
 A few days before the election Johnson 
 proposed that he and his friends run a 
 temporary daily paper of their own. The 
 leading newspaper in Omaha was the Bee. 
 The new paper was to be called the Bumble 
 Bee. It was a hard-hitting sheet. Ten
 
 26 The Real Start 
 
 thousand a day were printed, and boys were 
 sent out to distribute them in the streets. 
 By now the anti-prohibitionists were concen- 
 trating their fury upon Johnson, who had 
 become the outstanding figure in the cam- 
 paign. Day by day the papers attacked him, 
 in some cases directly urging the people to 
 do away with him. His friends seriously 
 feared that he would be murdered. Mr. 
 V. O. Strickler, a prohibition lawyer, went 
 to the newspaper offices and warned them 
 of the probable results of what they were 
 doing. He told them that they had no right 
 to stir up bitter animosity against Johnson. 
 He was a newspaper correspondent and in no 
 sense a detective, simply reporting for his 
 paper. " If Johnson is murdered while in 
 this city it will be because the papers have 
 inflamed the public mind against him," he 
 told them. Johnson himself was the least 
 disturbed man of all. He quietly went on 
 with his work, producing his paper day by 
 day. 
 
 At first the other side did not see how to 
 stop him. On the last day, however, a group 
 of men lay in ambush in side-streets waiting
 
 The Real Start 27 
 
 for the boys as they emerged from the 
 printing office with their Bumble Bees. They 
 caught them, took their papers away, gave 
 them a kick and a cuff, and told them 
 to " Cut off home." All did so, except 
 one youngster who hurried back, showed a 
 wound in his head, and told how he had 
 been treated. 
 
 Johnson saw red. He gave the boy some 
 more papers, and sent him out again. " I 
 will see that you are not hurt," he said, and 
 he followed after the lad, who was barely 
 out of sight of the office before a street- 
 corner man jumped on him. That street- 
 corner man must have imagined the next 
 second that a cyclone had struck him. He 
 was scarcely on the lad before Johnson was 
 on him. 
 
 Johnson admits that he could never recall 
 afterwards what happened during the next 
 few minutes. A very limp-looking opponent 
 was left on the pavement. A crowd gathered 
 and the man's friends made a rush for 
 Johnson, who cleared them off by a vigorous 
 use of his fists, and got his back to a tele- 
 graph pole. A sympathiser tried to reach
 
 28 The Real Start 
 
 him to hand him a revolver so that he might 
 defend himself. Johnson had a revolver of 
 his own in his pocket, but he had no inten- 
 tion of using it. At that moment a police 
 patrol came up. His friend was arrested, and 
 while Johnson was defending himself from 
 attacks in front, some one got behind the 
 telegraph pole and caught him by the neck, 
 so that he was soon firmly secured. 
 
 The police took him to the station. On 
 the way Johnson suddenly remembered his 
 own revolver and managed to slip it quietly 
 from his pocket up his sleeve. Inside the 
 station he was roughly searched down to see 
 if he had any arms on him. Then the police- 
 men and station hands attacked him. They 
 regarded him as fair sport. 
 
 The young reformer turned sharply on 
 them. " You mutts," he said ; " you thick- 
 heads ! Talk about catching anything ! 
 Why, you couldn't catch the itch, if you 
 tried. You felt me down for a gun and found 
 nothing. Look here ! " He took his re- 
 volver out of his sleeve and handed it over 
 to them. " You couldn't even find that on 
 me."
 
 The Real Start 29 
 
 This formed the basis of a fresh charge of 
 carrying dangerous weapons and threatening 
 the police with them. It was Saturday 
 night. Johnson was not even allowed to 
 communicate with his friends to obtain bail. 
 When some of them forced their way in and 
 demanded that they be allowed to go bail 
 for him, the police refused. 
 
 Then a fresh party arrived on the scene, 
 the father of the boy who had been injured. 
 He too saw red, and was full of fight against 
 the police and the politicians who had hired 
 the men who had hit his son. When the 
 case eame to court every one wanted to 
 compromise it, every one, that is, except 
 Johnson. " I don't want to be let off," he 
 said. " I beat that man up, and I want it to 
 go on record that I did. He deserved a 
 beating up. I did it, and I will pay a 
 fine for it." He did not go as far, 
 however, as another noted character in a 
 different trial, who paid double the fine 
 that had been fixed so that he might pay 
 in advance for the opportunity of doing it 
 again. 
 
 Johnson put away and carefully preserved
 
 30 The Real Start 
 
 in a place of honour the official receipt for 
 his fine. 
 
 No. 1647 $750 
 
 POLICE COURT. 
 
 State of Nebraska. 
 
 Omaha, Neb., Nov. 7, 1890. 
 
 W. E. Johnson. 
 
 Received of W. E. Johnson 
 
 the sum of Seven & T 6 ^ Dollars. 
 
 Fines and costs in the above entitled case. 
 
 LEE. HELSLEY, 
 
 Police Judge. 
 (Original.)
 
 Chapter III Back to New York 
 
 TOHNSON was now a busy and successful 
 *J newspaper-man, well-known, and in some 
 quarters well-hated, in the West, and with 
 established connections in New York. He 
 had become famous in his own sparsely- 
 settled section of the country both as an 
 organiser and a writer. 
 
 He did a great deal of work about this 
 time for a Kansas City paper, the Sunday 
 Sun. The Sun was out to attack anyone or 
 anything, no matter how highly placed or 
 how influential. No business, social or 
 political reasons were allowed to keep any- 
 thing out of the paper. Naturally it had 
 a very stormy career, having to fight about 
 three hundred libel actions in three years. 
 
 Johnson was one of its most fiery and racy 
 writers, and citizens of Dallas, Texas and else- 
 where have still lively memories of the battles 
 he raised and the fights he fought. 
 
 He had been keeping up his work for the 
 31
 
 32 Back to New York 
 
 New York Voice, and at the end of 1895 he 
 received an invitation to join the staff of 
 that paper at New York. He did so, remain- 
 ing there until 1900, when the Voice was re- 
 organised and transformed into the New Voice, 
 its head-quarters being shifted to Chicago. 
 
 Johnson came prominently to the front in 
 New York in 1896 over the examination then 
 being made into the administration of the 
 Raines Law. Under this law, which had 
 been introduced by Senator Raines with a 
 genuine desire to increase temperance, 
 various reforms were introduced. Saloons 
 were compelled to close on Sunday. Intoxi- 
 cants could be sold on that day only in hotels 
 and when served with meals, etc. ; the abuse 
 came in denning what constituted an hotel ; 
 the outcome was the addition of a few sleep- 
 ing rooms as an adjunct to the common 
 saloon, and the serving of a single sandwich 
 was considered a meal. 
 
 After his arrival in New York, Johnson 
 examined the " Raines Law " hotels care- 
 fully. The Senate of the State of New 
 York ordered an enquiry into the working 
 of the Raines Law, and Johnson was called
 
 Back to New York 33 
 
 as a witness. He gave first a number of 
 statistics which he had collected, showing 
 that as soon as the law came in force there 
 had been an increase of eighty-four per cent 
 of arrests for drunkenness and seventy-four 
 per cent for all causes under the new law. 
 He then proceeded to bring further evidence 
 proving that the new type of hotels had 
 become active centres for immorality. He 
 told the results of personal enquiries, and 
 went on to give a number of opinions he 
 had collected from prominent people. Soon 
 Senator Raines had had enough and suggested 
 that Mr. Johnson should stop. " I would like 
 first to give some letters from police cap- 
 tains," Johnson replied. These letters were 
 still more damning and difficult to refute. 
 
 He went on to describe how he had inves- 
 tigated faked clubs opened under the Raines 
 Law, and had found that they were simply 
 centres for unlimited drinking and assignation. 
 
 Johnson's evidence caused a sensation. It 
 was so precise, so documented, so free from 
 surmise and full of facts that it was im- 
 possible to ignore it. His testimony, to 
 quote the reporters present, " annoyed
 
 34 Back to New York 
 
 Senator Raines who gave evidence of temper 
 in questioning the witness." His crowning 
 blow was a letter from a famous police 
 officer, Captain Max Schmittberger : 
 
 " The fact is that under the Raines Law, 
 so-called ' Raines Law ' hotels are permitted 
 to keep open all night and dispense liquor 
 provided a sandwich is served. The back- 
 rooms of many of those have become sinks 
 of iniquity, where women of both colours 
 and of the lowest type resort and ply their 
 calling, and many of these places are 
 nothing more than disorderly houses. The 
 police are powerless to a certain extent, 
 and where arrests have been made upon 
 evidence obtained in my precinct of pro- 
 prietors of such places for keeping disorderly 
 houses, they have escaped on the plea that 
 the people registering at these places regis- 
 tered as man and wife, and that the char- 
 acter of the woman was unknown to the 
 proprietor. Although I keep the strictest 
 watch on these cases, I have succeeded in 
 only one case in having the proprietor 
 indicted by the grand jury. 
 
 MAX SCHMITTBERGER, 
 
 Captain Twentieth Precinct."
 
 Back to New York 35 
 
 This letter was, as one subscriber said, 
 " The blow that nearly killed father." At 
 the close of the day Senator Raines himself 
 practically acknowledged that his measure, 
 which was intended to take the saloon out of 
 politics and preserve the sanctity of the 
 Sabbath, had resulted in the establishment 
 of large numbers of doubtful resorts of all 
 kinds. " Lo ! The Religious Sleuth," was 
 the headline of one New York daily, above 
 Johnson's evidence. 
 
 It was recognised that a new kind of man 
 had come into the reform business, a man 
 who got up his facts as carefully and as 
 accurately as the most precise prosecuting 
 counsel, who dealt in facts and left emotional 
 appeals to others. 
 
 This same quality in Johnson's work was 
 again strikingly demonstrated by his investi- 
 gation into the South Carolina dispensary 
 system. This system was introduced by 
 Senator Benjamin R. Tillman to defeat 
 prohibition, because the Senator believed 
 that prohibition would not work. It gave 
 the State a monopoly of the liquor traffic, 
 abolishing all liquor shops and substituting
 
 36 Back to New York 
 
 for them dispensaries where the liquor could 
 be purchased in bottles for consumption off 
 the premises. A State Board of Control, 
 with five members elected by the Legislature, 
 supervised the trade. 
 
 Johnson made no secret of his belief that 
 Senator Tillman was honest and sincere 
 in his attempt and that he did his best to 
 give it a fair trial. " For ten years," wrote 
 Johnson, " he was the dominating interest 
 in its management. He fought for it fiercely 
 in season and out of season. No system of 
 liquor selling was ever tried out under more 
 favourable circumstances and with more 
 powerful support. The plan had every 
 advantage conceivable for its success. Yet 
 Senator Tillman, having tested his own 
 project in the furnace of experience covering 
 nearly two decades, was so convinced of its 
 unworkable character that he turned upon 
 it and helped to put an end to the project 
 which he had himself established. Thanks to 
 Senator Tillman, no man can now say that 
 the state monopoly plan has never been tried 
 out under favourable circumstances." 
 
 In May, 1899, Johnson visited South
 
 Back to New York 37 
 
 Carolina to study the working of the dis- 
 pensary law on the spot. He returned again 
 later. He adopted his usual methods of 
 collecting all the facts. He examined the 
 reports of the dispensary and the liquor 
 legislation of the State, and studied the 
 books of the Collector of Internal Revenue. 
 He visited the liquor dispensaries, inter- 
 viewed innumerable people and further 
 visited and examined more than 250 " Blind 
 Tigers," places where intoxicating liquors 
 were illegally on sale. He made maps of 
 some of these localities indicating where the 
 " Blind Tigers " were, and then he issued 
 his report. 
 
 It showed that there had been a large 
 increase in the consumption of drink under 
 the dispensary system, that it had no mono- 
 poly of the traffic except in name, that 
 illicit trade was very largely carried on, 
 that the illicit sellers were practically immune 
 from prosecution for political reasons, and 
 that it had had a disastrous effect upon the 
 morals and sobriety of the people. 
 
 His investigations received a very remark- 
 able testimonial to their accuracy. There
 
 38 Back to New York 
 
 came a dispute between the State of South 
 Carolina and the Federal Government over 
 the question of the payment of certain 
 liquor taxes. The State urged that the 
 dispensary system was an exercise by the 
 State of police powers, and therefore could 
 not be taxed under the Internal Revenue 
 Laws. The Federal Government argued 
 on the other side that the dispensary was 
 purely a business enterprise, operated for 
 profit and that it ought to pay. The Federal 
 Government had, however, no evidence to 
 back its contention. It called upon Johnson. 
 He produced the results of his enquiries 
 before the Court, and on his evidence the 
 Federal Government won its suit. His 
 enquiries had a still wider result. The 
 prohibitionists, who had been temporarily 
 defeated, reopened their battle with renewed 
 strength, and eventually the dispensary 
 system was abolished and prohibition re- 
 enacted in South Carolina by a popular 
 vote of nearly three to one. 
 
 When the New Voice shifted to Chicago 
 Johnson could not accompany it, owing to 
 his asthma. He still retained the post of
 
 Back to New York 39 
 
 staff correspondent and visited England to 
 study municipal enterprises. From there 
 he went to Sweden to study the Gothenburg 
 system, and his series of articles analysing 
 and condemning it was afterwards pub- 
 lished as a pamphlet, and led to consider- 
 able controversy, particularly with the 
 English authorities, Messrs. Rowntree and 
 Sherwell. 
 
 The Gothenburg System had been adopted 
 by the Municipal Council of that city to 
 check the fearful ravages caused by the drink 
 traffic there. The main part of the trade in 
 spirits, but not in beer, was managed by a 
 company, not for private gain, but in order 
 to remove as far as possible the evils of the 
 trade. The sale of food was encouraged. 
 Neither shareholders nor managers were 
 pecuniarily interested in pushing the sales 
 and the company received no profits 
 except a fixed percentage on its paid-up 
 capital. 
 
 Johnson, as a result of his investigations, 
 declared that the system had generally been 
 conducted in Gothenburg with remarkable 
 purity of purpose. It had always been
 
 40 Back to New York 
 
 managed by men of the highest standing, 
 and scandals such as had attended the 
 South Carolina dispensary had been conspicu- 
 ously absent. The drink-shops were clean, 
 attractive, light and well conducted : the 
 food offered in them was clean and whole- 
 some. Nevertheless, he summed up the 
 result of the system in some deadly find- 
 ings: 
 
 1. There are no reliable statistics of the 
 consumption of spirits in Gothenburg. The 
 statistics hitherto published on this point 
 have been misleading to the point of 
 fraud. 
 
 2. Since the bolag (liquor company) was 
 established, the number of paupers for each 
 1000 population has increased fifty per cent, 
 and the cost of maintaining them, per 
 inhabitant, had nearly doubled. 
 
 3. The number of convictions for drunken- 
 ness per 1000 population has nearly doubled. 
 
 4. The cases of delirium tremens per 1000 
 population has more than trebled in the past 
 eleven years.
 
 Back to New York 41 
 
 5. During the year 1898, Gothenburg had 
 1600 more arrests for drunkenness than the 
 most drunken American city of similar 
 population. 
 
 6. The number of liquor shops in Gothen- 
 burg is a Chinese puzzle. 
 
 Johnson was now brought into very close 
 intercourse with John G. Woolley, the tem- 
 perance orator and prohibition candidate 
 for the Presidency in 1902. They combined 
 in, among other things, the production 
 of a substantial book of over five hundred 
 pages, Temperance Progress in the Century. 
 To say that they combined to write this book 
 is, perhaps, a figure of speech, for practically 
 the whole burden of it fell on the shoulders 
 of Johnson. Woolley had entered into a 
 contract to write a book of 147,000 words, 
 and to deliver the manuscript by a given 
 time. A history of the Temperance move- 
 ment could not be undertaken without con- 
 siderable research, and Mr. Woolley's 
 brilliant talents did not incline him to heavy 
 labour on detail. Accordingly he engaged a 
 preacher to read up the matter, and make
 
 42 Back to New York 
 
 notes for him. The preacher duly made his 
 appearance with an enormous stack of notes 
 of all kinds. Woolley had no time even to 
 read them, so he appealed to Johnson to 
 join him in the enterprise, and to divide 
 the promised royalties between them. 
 Johnson agreed. He examined the notes 
 and found that they were worth nothing to 
 him, so he emptied them into his waste- 
 paper basket, and started at the book de 
 novo. It was completed in due course, but 
 the troubles were not over yet. 
 
 Mr. Woolley left his son to read the proofs 
 for him. The son proceeded to cut out some 
 40,000 words. This made the book too 
 short and led to trouble with the publishers, 
 and a charge for the matter held back. 
 Then the publishing firm became bank- 
 rupt, and the promised royalties were for 
 a long time invisible. One day John G. 
 Woolley received a letter saying that 
 the accounts for the book had been balanced, 
 and seventy-five cents were coming to 
 him. 
 
 Woolley wrote to Johnson that he did 
 not know what to do with so much money,
 
 Back to New York 43 
 
 so he sent him seventy-five cents to see 
 if he had any use for them. 
 
 By this time Johnson was in the Indian 
 Service. He had recently made a series of 
 raids on gambling establishments, and had 
 been breaking up a number of captured 
 poker- chips until he was tired. He had 
 quite a big pile of them. He put them 
 in a box, spent the seventy-five cents 
 on express charges and sent them to J. G. 
 Woolley. 
 
 While Johnson was abroad he received 
 a cablegram asking him to go to the Philip- 
 pines to investigate the drink question. He set 
 off at once for Hong-Kong, cabling back 
 to his people to send him some money there. 
 When he reached Hong-Kong there was a 
 letter waiting for him care of the Hong-Kong 
 and Shanghai Bank, saying that the money 
 was being sent in another envelope. The 
 envelope had not arrived. Johnson went 
 on, however, to Manila, expecting that his 
 remittance would follow him by the next 
 mail. Unfortunately for him the remittance 
 had been posted on the famous Peace ship 
 which was taking Mr. Taft on his mission
 
 44 Back to New York 
 
 of conciliation to the Philippines. When 
 the Peace ship reached Hong-Kong Mr. 
 Taft and his party learned that there was 
 a plan to burn Manila when they arrived, 
 in order to show the feelings of the populace 
 towards them. As they did not want this 
 kind of welcome they sailed to Nagasaki, 
 and killed two weeks' time, to give the 
 popular excitement time to calm down. 
 The mail remained on the ship, and people 
 in the Philippines had to wait for their 
 letters. 
 
 Johnson had no money for waiting. His 
 funds were soon exhausted. He pawned his 
 watch for $12 and received, in addition to 
 the money, a ticket big enough for the deed 
 for a town lot. 
 
 His $12 did not last long. One day as 
 he was getting to the end of it he met an old 
 Omaha newspaper man, Al Ewan, on the 
 street. 
 
 ' Al, what are you doing here ? 5: he 
 asked. 
 
 " I am managing editor of the Manila 
 Freedom," came the reply. 
 
 " How much do you get ? "
 
 Back to New York 45 
 
 " Sixty dollars a week." 
 
 1 Well, I am busted, so you had better 
 divide your salary with me until I get some 
 money." 
 
 Ewan split his salary until the Peace 
 ship arrived, and Johnson's financial troubles 
 were over. 
 
 Shortly after that Ewan left the paper, 
 and Johnson temporarily took his place, 
 becoming managing editor of the Freedom 
 for five or six weeks. This gave him every 
 opportunity to get all the details he wanted 
 of the drink question in the Islands. 
 
 He discovered that an army surgeon, 
 Dr. Ira A. Brown, had been investigating 
 the quality of the whisky sold in Manila, 
 and had severely condemned the kind 
 generally supplied to the troops. His report 
 was suppressed, and Brown was ordered 
 back to America. He actually went on 
 board ship, but there was a typhoon outside 
 the harbour, and the ship lay there for four 
 days. Johnson learned something of the 
 report, and wrote an editorial article demand- 
 ing that Brown be recalled and his report 
 made public.
 
 46 Back to New York 
 
 The military authorities who governed the 
 Philippines could not do anything against 
 the Freedom for this, but they watched 
 their opportunity. Shortly afterwards the 
 Freedom prepared a story about a fight 
 between a Frenchman and the Belgian 
 Consul. It was all ready when the military 
 censor came along and would not allow 
 it to be printed, declaring that it might 
 make war between the United States and 
 Belgium. 
 
 Next day an officer came round and called 
 Johnson aside. " We were not afraid of 
 war between the United States and Belgium, 
 and the suppression of your paper had 
 nothing to do with it. You keep your face 
 shut about the whisky, and it will be all 
 right. That was just a reminder that you 
 had no business to print that editorial about 
 Brown." 
 
 Johnson returned from the Philippines 
 in due course, and plunged into the Presi- 
 dency campaign when Woolley was candidate. 
 He wrote one pamphlet that ran into a 
 circulation of hundreds of thousands. It 
 was entitled Benevolent Assimilation of
 
 Back to New York 47 
 
 the Philippines, and consisted of a list 
 of two hundred outrages committed by 
 American soldiers when drunk. The point 
 of it was that the Government ought 
 to cut off the supply of drink for the 
 army. 
 
 The years up to 1906 were full up with 
 hard detail newspaper and organising work. 
 Johnson now made his home in Laurel, 
 Maryland, within easy reach of Washington. 
 In 1904 he was prohibition candidate for 
 Congress for the Fifth District, Maryland, 
 but was not elected. 
 
 The association between Johnson and 
 Woolley grew more and more intimate. 
 In 1902 Woolley secured control of the New 
 Voice and Johnson became managing editor. 
 They fought many battles together, both 
 inside and outside the ranks of the Pro- 
 hibition Party. Johnson's views of the 
 best ways to fight the liquor traffic were 
 developing. In 1905 they matured a plan 
 for an Encyclopedia of Temperance and 
 Prohibition, which was to give every fact 
 known about the liquor traffic in all the 
 ages.
 
 48 Back to New York 
 
 In that same year, Woolley set out on a 
 forty - thousand - mile temperance campaign 
 overseas, leaving Johnson as managing 
 editor of the New Voice. Johnson was 
 now consistently advocating co-operation 
 with other reform agencies, including the 
 Anti-Saloon League, in temperance work, 
 against the narrower section of the Pro- 
 hibition Party. While Woolley was far 
 away an event arose which terminated his 
 connection with the paper. The directors 
 of the New Voice sold, at regular advertise- 
 ment rate, nearly a page of pure reading 
 matter to the head of an organisation 
 opposed to trade - unionism. The article 
 was a severe attack on the Labour Union 
 movement and appeared without any 
 marks to show that it was advertising 
 matter. 
 
 Johnson thereupon wrote an editorial 
 denouncing the publication of advertising 
 matter as news. 
 
 " When organised corruption and greed 
 wish to fight against the development of 
 reform movements the crooks begin at once
 
 Back to New York 49 
 
 to hunt out the crooked newspapers and there 
 poison the springs of information. 
 
 " Just so when organised crookedness and 
 greed seeks to crush out the life of labour 
 organisation battling for their own uplift, 
 the crook comes sauntering into the business 
 office of a crooked newspaper jingling 
 gold in his breeches and asks, ' How- 
 much-a - line-for -news-space- to-fight-Labour- 
 with ? ' 
 
 " The business office of the modern 
 newspaper is the bedhouse where the two 
 classes of crooks meet for these assigna- 
 tions. 
 
 " There the boodler and the boodled meet 
 on common ground, with the curtains drawn 
 and cotton in the keyhole ; there the gold 
 is counted and the plots made to pollute the 
 streams of information which feed the 
 intellectual republic." 
 
 Not unnaturally the directors of the New 
 Voice had the editorial suppressed and 
 ordered Johnson to quit writing editorials 
 of that kind. The editor retorted by resign- 
 ing his post. 
 
 The door was soon to open for him to 
 a much wider field, but while waiting he
 
 50 Back to New York 
 
 engaged himself in a new campaign to 
 remove the tax on denatured alcohol in 
 order that it might be used for commercial 
 purposes. This measure was successfully 
 carried through Congress.
 
 Chapter IV Life in the " Bad Lands " 
 
 IN the summer of 1906 the United States 
 Government was seriously concerned 
 over the general lawlessness existing in the 
 Indian Territories and Oklahoma. These 
 regions had for forty years been a land of 
 refuge for criminals from every part of the 
 Union. The murderer in the East naturally 
 fled to Oklahoma if he could, knowing that 
 there he would be comparatively safe. The 
 bad whites intermarried with Indians and 
 negroes, and a half-breed population grew 
 up that knew little law but the law of the 
 gun. The U.S. marshals did their best to 
 keep order and were engaged in perpetual 
 war with the heavily-armed desperadoes who 
 defied them. But they were all too few. 
 This was the real Wild West, where murder 
 was counted as a comparatively small 
 offence, but where a man would be lynched 
 for stealing a horse.
 
 52 Life in the "Bad Lands " 
 
 The Territories were supposed to be under 
 prohibition, but this was openly defied. 
 Whisky peddling was carried on to a very 
 great extent. Large quantities of spirits 
 were brought in by express almost without 
 hindrance. Brewers outside the Territories 
 were openly shipping in low-grade beers 
 under various names : " Uno," " Ino," 
 "Long Hern," "Mistletoe," " Non Tox," 
 " Short Horn," " Pablo," " Tin-Top " and 
 the like. These beers had a way of growing 
 stronger as time went on, until even the 
 expert could not distinguish them from the 
 most potent brews. 
 
 There were hundreds of saloons, ostensibly 
 for selling temperance beer, but in nearly 
 every case also carrying on a heavy traffic 
 in whisky. Many of these saloons had 
 gambling-houses and resorts of vice run in 
 association with them. The beer- joints were 
 scattered all over the Territories. 
 
 Congress appropriated $25,000 towards a 
 special effort to enforce prohibition. The 
 authorities looked about for a really good 
 man, and their choice fell on William John- 
 son. He was selected, as the Commissioner
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands " 53 
 
 for Indian Affairs officially reported, 
 " Because he had already proved not only 
 his capacity for the sort of work to be 
 demanded of him, but his absolute contempt 
 of danger in the performance of a difficult 
 task." He was given the title of " Special 
 Officer of the Government, Indian Bureau, 
 for the Suppression of the Liquor Traffic in 
 Indian Territory," with a salary of $2500 
 a year and expenses, and the right to engage 
 his own assistants. 
 
 Johnson was fortunate in that he had at 
 the beginning the whole-hearted support 
 of his departmental chiefs. He was made 
 his own disbursing officer so that he should 
 not be hampered or delayed over questions 
 of payment. Roosevelt was President, and 
 he knew something of Johnson as a man 
 who " got things done." Mr. Garfield, the 
 Secretary of the Interior, backed him to 
 the full, and his direct chief, Mr. Francis F. 
 Leupp, gave him whole-hearted support. 
 
 When politicians tried to interfere with 
 Johnson's activities, the President pulled 
 tkem up quickly. " Leave Johnson alone, 
 more power to his elbow," was his direction,
 
 54 Life in the "Bad Lands " 
 
 written on the top of a letter of a promi- 
 nent politician who was trying to check his 
 work. 
 
 Mr. Garfield believed, like Roosevelt, in 
 the policy of " Thorough." On one occasion 
 when Johnson was visiting Washington he 
 called on Garfield to pay his respects. He 
 had just come out of three or four fights and 
 had a black eye, while one fist was knocked 
 out and bandaged. " Mr. Secretary," he 
 said, " have you any kicks about what I 
 have been doing ? Have you any in- 
 structions as to my conduct in the future ? ?: 
 
 Garfield glanced shrewdly at him. " Yes," 
 he said, " you go right back to your Indian 
 territory. Get as many folks there in jail 
 as you can and keep them there as long 
 as you can. When they come out, put them 
 back in jail again." 
 
 Johnson had scarcely arrived in Oklahoma 
 before, by one bold move, he created alarm 
 in the ranks of the whisky traders. He went 
 quietly to Tulsa, a town of about 5000 
 inhabitants, notorious even in Oklahoma 
 for the amount of whisky consumed there. 
 No one knew him. He thoroughly investi-
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands " 55 
 
 gated, located strategic points, mapped out 
 the town and then went away and had a 
 conference with a famous Government Mar- 
 shal, L. M. Bennett of Muskogee. A dozen 
 Deputy-Sheriffs were summoned and the 
 party, heavily armed, swooped down on the 
 place. The greatest pains had been taken 
 to keep the move secret, and even the Deputies 
 were not told their destination until the 
 last minute. They captured eight men and 
 secured eight barrels of whisky, which were 
 promptly emptied out on to the ground. 
 The city dog-catcher, who was also a special 
 policeman, was caught with a barrel of 
 whisky. One of the principal real estate 
 dealers was taken, Johnson personally raiding 
 his office and finding a number of empty 
 bottles and one full one in his desk. Of the 
 eight persons, two were held as witnesses, 
 two gave bonds for $1000 each, and the 
 remaining four were taken back to Muskogee 
 and put in jail. 
 
 " Booze busting has been due for some 
 time," said the local paper, the Democrat, 
 commenting on the event. It had come in 
 earnest !
 
 56 Life in the "Bad Lands " 
 
 During the next three or four weeks 
 similar raids followed one another so fast 
 that the trade was thrown into a panic. 
 Johnson and his men swooped down on 
 Eufaula and made a big catch there. They 
 spilled two thousand gallons of whisky 
 and put a famous " boot-legger " out of 
 business at South McAlester. They invaded 
 the railway stations and confiscated express 
 packages. They investigated drug-stores 
 and found some amazing traffic going on in 
 them. 
 
 Two events which happened within a few 
 weeks of his arrival made Johnson's fame 
 secure throughout the whole Territory. The 
 first was at Eufaula. A popular druggist 
 there was well known to be illicitly selling 
 liquor. Attempt after attempt had been 
 made to catch him, but in vain. In the 
 back-room of his store he had a monster 
 safe, in which he kept all his drinks. The 
 place was raided by the Deputy-Marshal, 
 Johnson taking part. The druggist managed, 
 however, before the men broke through, to 
 get his drinks in the safe, and to lock it. 
 When the deputies demanded that the safe
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands " 57 
 
 should be opened, he flatly refused. One 
 of the Marshal's men sought out Johnson 
 and asked what they should do. He told 
 them to hurry back and see that nobody 
 tampered with the safe. Soon afterwards 
 he returned and said, " Open that safe." 
 The druggist laughed at him. Johnson pulled 
 out his watch. 
 
 " I give you fifteen minutes to open that 
 safe," he said. 
 
 Then he went out, found a sixteen- 
 pound sledge-hammer with a long handle, 
 and returned with it. There were still three 
 minutes of the fifteen to spare. The druggist 
 had a lawyer by his side and a crowd of 
 several hundred men stood around, all with 
 guns, and ready to shoot down the Govern- 
 ment officials at the drop of a handkerchief. 
 Johnson had five or six deputies with him, 
 all armed, and he knew that his men, 
 trained to work together, were good for 
 at any rate twenty-five to thirty of that 
 crowd. 
 
 He again looked at his watch. 
 
 " Three minutes yet," he remarked.
 
 58 Life in the "Bad Lands " 
 
 The three minutes passed in silence. He 
 turned to the druggist. 
 
 " Time to open the safe." 
 
 The reply came from the lawyer, who 
 stepped forward and gave Johnson for- 
 mal notice that the safe must not be 
 touched. 
 
 Johnson had expected to bluff the druggist 
 into doing as he bade him. His bluff had 
 been called. 
 
 " All right," said he. " I will have to open 
 it myself." 
 
 He had not the slightest idea how to force 
 a safe open, but he believed that he could 
 at any rate fix the lock so that nobody else 
 could open it until he had had sufficient 
 time to think out a fresh plan of campaign. 
 He took off his coat, raised the sledge- 
 hammer as high as he could, and brought 
 it three times down with all his strength on 
 the nose of the combination, hoping to 
 jam it. At the end of the third blow he 
 turned a handle. To his surprise the door 
 came easily open. He had struck it with 
 such force that the flanges had flown out. 
 The druggist readily consented to open the
 
 Life in the " Bad Lands" 59 
 
 inside door, to save it being forced open 
 too, and there a great stock of whisky 
 was found. 
 
 " I was the most astonished man there 
 when the safe door opened," Johnson after- 
 wards admitted. " It was spread all over the 
 country that I was a safe expert, and that 
 there was no use locking a safe, for I could 
 break into it. I never had to ask a man a 
 second time to open his safe after that. I 
 never told anybody, however, that my 
 action was bluff." 
 
 The druggist was hailed before a Federal 
 judge and held in a $2000 bond. A gaming- 
 house-keeper arrested at the same time felt 
 that he had not had a run for his money. He 
 had built the gaming tables the day before 
 and had not yet started business when his 
 paraphernalia was seized and burned. The 
 whisky captured was spilt in the streets and 
 negroes tried to scoop it up with their hands 
 as it was running away. 
 
 The second incident, which happened two 
 or three weeks after the safe episode, was 
 certainly no bluff, for it involved a cool, open- 
 eyed march into about as ugly a position
 
 60 Life in the "Bad Lands" 
 
 as anyone could desire. A man called 
 John Harris lived with his two sons-in-law, 
 McKeehan and Jack Trumbly. They were 
 all thieves and made their home in a camp 
 and a house-boat in the heart of the Canadian 
 river, Bottom Thickets, spending their 
 time fishing, stealing and selling illicit 
 whisky. 
 
 McKeehan was married to Harris's sixteen- 
 year-old stepdaughter, Nora. He was a 
 thrifty man and had money in hand when 
 the others had none. They were often 
 forced to go to him to borrow a dollar, 
 and he would take the watches or other 
 effects as personal security and exact a high 
 rate of interest. Harris fell in love with his 
 own stepdaughter and she evidently fell in 
 love with him, so there was a double reason 
 for wanting to get rid of McKeehan. 
 
 Harris and the others determined to 
 murder McKeehan. They suggested to 
 him that they should go out and steal 
 some Sorghum cane. On the way to the 
 field Harris hit McKeehan over the head 
 with an iron bar, smashing his skull in. 
 He collapsed, killed at a blow. Then Harris
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands" 6 1 
 
 and Trumbly crammed the body into a bag, 
 tied the bar of iron to it, and sank the bag in 
 the river. 
 
 About a month after this a ferryman 
 went out fishing. It was low tide, and 
 suddenly the head of a corpse emerged from 
 the water, the feet still being held down by 
 the bar of iron. The sack had come away 
 from the head, and it seemed to the man 
 as he moved hastily away that the face 
 of the corpse gibbered at him. He hurried 
 back to Paw Paw, and raised a hue and 
 cry. 
 
 At first no clue to the criminals could be 
 discovered. A little later the police of Fort 
 Smith raided Harris's house-boat, not in con- 
 nection with the murder but when search- 
 ing for some stolen goods. They found 
 some clothes stained with blood, and think- 
 ing that here was a clue, they arrested 
 Trumbly and his wife, and put them in jail. 
 Nora, McKeehan's wife, and John Harris 
 had disappeared. The blood-stained clothes 
 had nothing to do with the murder, but the 
 police, believing in their clue, cross- 
 examined Trumbly and his wife so relent-
 
 62 Life in the "Bad Lands" 
 
 lessly day after day that in the end they 
 bluffed and bullied the wife into a confes- 
 sion. 
 
 Harris, the main criminal, and Nora 
 McKeehan could not, however, be found. 
 Johnson arrived at Fort Smith just about 
 this time, and the police appealed to him 
 for aid. He asked a number of questions 
 about what they had found in the house- 
 boat. They mentioned that, among other 
 things, there was a grip (bag) containing 
 some clippings. " Had they examined 
 it ? " he asked. " Only casually," he was 
 told. 
 
 Johnson took the bag and went over 
 all its contents. In it was an unsigned 
 letter : " Send my fishing-tackle to Eufaula." 
 That was all. Johnson suspected that this 
 letter might be from one of the missing 
 parties, and knowing where they would 
 most likely go for fishing, he immediately 
 took train to Eufaula. There he went to 
 the Express Office and asked if a package 
 had come from Fort Smith for John Harris. 
 It had, about a week before, but the Express 
 people could give no description of what the
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands" 63 
 
 man was like, nor did they know where he 
 was. Johnson had, however, also found in 
 the bag a group photograph with Harris in 
 it. He had the photo enlarged. Employing 
 his common sense he concluded that if they 
 were going fishing the most probable place 
 would be where the Canadian river and the 
 Verdigris river met, about eight miles from 
 there. He went there. 
 
 Acting on the old belief that a ferryman 
 knows all about everybody in the district, 
 he made for the ferry. The ferryman was 
 half-drunk. He had just piloted somebody 
 across the river, and taken as his pay a 
 bottle of whisky. Johnson showed him the 
 photo, and asked if he knew that man. 
 The ferryman recognised him at once. He 
 and the woman were in a camp some distance 
 away with a number of outlaws. Johnson, 
 keeping silence about the murder, declared 
 that they had been stealing, and he had got 
 to have them. 
 
 '* You can't go near them," the ferryman 
 replied. " They all have rifles and they are 
 crack shots. You go, and you will be a dead 
 
 man."
 
 64 Life in the "Bad Lands" 
 
 Johnson, however, borrowed a double- 
 barrelled shot-gun, obtained two horses, and 
 impressed the ferryman into his service to 
 show him the way to the outlaws' camp. 
 After a time they saw a camp-fire in the 
 distance. The ferryman now revealed 
 considerable signs of alarm, and wanted 
 to get out of it. Johnson turned sternly 
 to him. 
 
 " This is a murder business," he said. 
 " These people have to be captured, and you 
 have to help me to take them." 
 
 He ordered him to stand by with the 
 horses until he heard a whistle, a signal. 
 Then he was to come quickly, and if there 
 was any shooting he was to take part in it and 
 was to shoot to kill. 
 
 Johnson saw, before he reached the camp, 
 that there were seven men, and their rifles 
 were leaning up against a tree. He pulled 
 his vest down to hide his revolvers, and 
 walked into the camp playing the part of a 
 casual tourist. 
 
 " Have you any fish to sell ? " he asked. 
 " I have been out fishing all day and have 
 got nothing. I don't want to go home empty-
 
 Life in the "Bad Lands" 65 
 
 handed. Every one will have the ha ha ! on 
 me. If you have any fish I will buy them." 
 
 The men agreed to sell. 
 
 All this time Johnson was quietly edging 
 himself so as to reach a spot where he would 
 be between them and their rifles. Suddenly 
 he whipped out a couple of revolvers and 
 ordered them to put up their hands. They 
 promptly did so, when he bade them turn 
 round with their backs to him. The signal 
 whistle brought the ferryman. Johnson 
 bade him search the party for guns. 
 Two had revolvers which were taken 
 away, and all the ammunition was appro- 
 priated. Putting Harris and Nora on 
 a horse and fastening them securely there, 
 Johnson started to go, the ferryman leading 
 the one horse, and he riding behind. Before 
 he started he turned to the outlaws, who 
 thought that their moment for revenge was 
 approaching. 
 
 " I suppose you think you are going to try 
 to rescue these two," he said. " Well, you 
 won't do it alive at all events. At the first 
 bad sign I am going to shoot the man. Then 
 I will shoot the woman. I will shoot to kill.
 
 66 Life in the "Bad Lands" 
 
 Then I will kill you if I can, if you don't 
 kill me first." 
 
 He got back in safety. Harris and Trumbly 
 were convicted, and sent to the penitentiary 
 for life. 
 
 The story of the capture of John Harris 
 and the woman made his reputation secure. 
 The West knew that a real man had arrived.
 
 Chapter V How "Pussyfoot " Won His Name 
 
 T)HOTOGRAPHS of Johnson taken in 
 -L his early days as special agent show 
 something of the man. He was in the prime 
 of life, with face and bearing telling of 
 strength, vigour and resolution. He wore 
 a soft round felt hat, broad-brimmed and 
 trimmed in cowboy fashion. He usually 
 carried a cloak which served to conceal 
 the featherweight Savage rifle which was 
 his constant companion. 
 
 He gradually gathered around him a staff 
 of deputy-marshals who, as he was ever 
 ready to proclaim, were the finest men to 
 be found anywhere. There was Bud Led- 
 better for instance, a strapping six-footer, 
 with a keen grey eye, whose fame as a 
 fighter was known wherever Westerners 
 met. Ledbetter would go anywhere and 
 face any crowd. He could draw and shoot 
 like lightning and was reputed to have killed 
 
 67
 
 68 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 at least eighteen men. He always claimed 
 that he had never fired a shot until the other 
 man had tried to shoot him first. Led- 
 better's name carried such awe that often 
 enough when word came that he was 
 approaching the criminals made quick tracks 
 away. There were Grant Cowan, Bass 
 Reeves, Sam Roberts, and the like. Some 
 of them were within the next few months 
 to be shot down while helping Johnson to 
 enforce the law. 
 
 He made use of the Indian police, and the 
 grim nature of much of his work may be 
 judged from the fact that eight of his 
 assistants were killed by outlaws. One of 
 these assistants bore a somewhat striking 
 personal resemblance to him, and was mis- 
 taken for him when he was shot at. Johnson 
 handled over six thousand criminal cases 
 during this phase of his career, most of them 
 mixed up with the whisky business. Out of 
 all the cases which he brought to trial, he 
 secured a conviction of over ninety-seven per 
 cent. He endeavoured never to prosecute 
 unless he was absolutely certain. " I would not 
 present a case unless I was entitled to a con-
 
 How ^Pussyfoot" Won His Name 69 
 
 viction," he says, " and when I put in a 
 case I expected a conviction. I not only was 
 careful to have a perfect case, but I was 
 also careful to have it intelligently presented, 
 with the same energy and the same fullness 
 of detail that you would employ in a murder 
 prosecution." 
 
 Very soon his activities became the subject 
 of common talk. His lightning strikes 
 became famous. Men nicknamed him the 
 " Booze Buster," and cartoonists loved to 
 picture him, revolver in hand, accompanied 
 by his agents, fighting the demon rum. 
 " He is one of the cleverest ' Booze Specialists ' 
 that has ever invaded the territory," de- 
 clared the Oklahoman. " The presence of 
 Mr. Johnson seems to have redoubled the 
 efforts of the deputy-marshals all over the 
 territory and there has developed a sort of 
 rivalry to see who can locate and destroy 
 the most liquor." 
 
 He had great trouble from the delivery 
 of spirits by express from areas outside his 
 districts, so he went to the heads of the 
 Express companies and convinced them 
 that it would be genuinely to their interests
 
 70 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 to observe the law against carrying drink 
 into the Indian territory. At Christmas- 
 time he put an Indian agent outside every 
 railway station to seize any consignment 
 of liquor that might have got through. He 
 had the so-called " soft " drinks analysed, 
 proved that they were " soft " only in name, 
 and then opened a campaign against them. 
 The drink-sellers tried threats. They tried 
 entreaties. They tried every method known, 
 but in vain. One South McAlester paper 
 dropped into poetry as Christmas drew 
 near : 
 
 " TO MR. JOHNSON 
 
 "Say, Mr. Johnson, turn me loose, 
 And let me have my Christmas juice. 
 Don't break these bottles ; let them be ; 
 There's plenty there for you and me. 
 Just shut your eyes, don't make a row ; 
 Be good this once, right here and now. 
 
 " Say, Mr. Johnson, please go 'way, 
 And come around some other day. 
 Be good this Christmas, what's the use 
 Of spilling all our good red juice ? 
 Say, Mr. Johnson, you're too fly ; 
 Come, old man, just wink your eye. 
 Just let expressmen turn it loose ; 
 It's Xmas now, a good excuse.
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 71 
 
 " Say, Mr. Johnson, what's the use 
 Of spilling all the good bug juice ? 
 You won't make good, there'll come a time 
 When you must find another clime. 
 Say, Mr. Johnson, just you skiddoo, 
 Let 23 be good for you. 
 You're on the slate when we're out loose ; 
 We'll then get plenty of red juice." 
 
 Never within the memory of man had 
 there been such a dry Christmas in Indian 
 territory as that of 1906. On December 
 14th, Johnson invaded the Ardmore Express 
 Office and destroyed 1920 bottles of so-called 
 temperance drinks. It took about two 
 hours to break all the bottles. At McAlester 
 the agents for one beer, supposed to be a 
 temperance beer, brought suits aggregating 
 $157,000 against him for smashing their stock. 
 The local papers reported that $25,000 
 of this was for mental anguish. Johnson 
 retorted by presenting twenty-three in- 
 dictments against the men who filed the 
 suit. 
 
 A day or two after the destruction at 
 Ardmore, he paid a visit to the Choctaw 
 nation and destroyed twenty-three con-
 
 J2 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 signments of liquor. Then he moved across 
 the line to serve notice on the brewers to 
 stop shipping into Indian territory. While 
 there he met the instigator of the damage 
 suits against him. " Well ! " the man jocu- 
 larly said. " I am still selling the stuff at 
 McAlester." "Thanks," said Johnson. "I 
 will stop on my way up." He did so and 
 broke up 900 bottles there. At Welch a few 
 days earlier he had smashed six consignments 
 of " red-eye " whisky. 
 
 The drink-sellers tried to serve legal 
 injunctions on him restraining him. He 
 dodged what injunctions he could and defied 
 others. The men who issued the injunctions 
 usually found that they were soon indicted 
 before grand juries. 
 
 It was shortly after this that his famous 
 sobriquet first came into use. I find in the 
 Muskogee Democrat for December, 1907, two 
 little notes : " The Booze Department of 
 the United States Government under the 
 able direction of ' Demon-fighting ' Johnson 
 has saved many a man from swearing-off 
 this New Year's Day. . . . Special Agent 
 Johnson, he of the c Panther ' tread, has
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 73 
 
 resented the action of the peddlers of bogus 
 beer and had them all indicted by the Grand 
 Jury. It is evidently lese-majeste to sue a 
 velvet-shod emissary of Uncle Sam's Booze 
 Department." 
 
 The owner of a pool-hall at Haskell sent a 
 public notice to Johnson that if ever he came 
 to Haskell he would shoot him at sight. 
 Everybody knew that Johnson had been 
 challenged. He could not afford to refuse 
 to notice it for, in the West in those days, 
 the man who showed a sign of weakness or 
 cowardice was done. He enquired if the 
 po6l-hall-keeper had ever seen him. He was 
 told that he had not, but had a very good 
 description of him. Thereupon Johnson 
 altered his make-up, mounted his horse, and 
 went to Haskell. He tied up his horse in 
 front of the pool-house, and walked in, 
 pretending to be drunk. Slamming a dollar 
 bill on the counter he demanded a drink. 
 The pool-hall-keeper passed him over a 
 bottle of sarsaparilla. Johnson flung the 
 bottle down in sudden passion. 4 What's 
 the use of that to me ? " he yelled. " You 
 give me real hell-fire ! "
 
 74 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 The pool-hall-keeper studied him, and 
 concluding that he was a genuine customer, 
 opened a trap-door, took out a bottle of 
 spirits arid handed it over. Johnson poured 
 out the drink and then demanded some 
 tobacco. The saloon-keeper had a .44 
 revolver sticking out of his pocket and 
 was of the type that would shoot at 
 the first suspicion. Johnson wanted to get 
 him so that he could not readily reach 
 his gun. The man turned round to take 
 his tobacco- jar down out of a cupboard. 
 Instantly Johnson had whipped his revolvers 
 out of his pockets and placed their cold 
 barrels on the ears of the bravo. He had 
 his man disarmed and led out a prisoner 
 in no time. The West after this little 
 adventure named him " Pussyfoot." 
 
 Johnson's activities naturally made him 
 many enemies. On one occasion a reward 
 of $3000 was offered for the man who would 
 kill him, and the reward was nearly won. 
 The story is worth telling. 
 
 There were two notorious law-breakers, 
 the Tittsworth brothers, Eugene and Ben, 
 who lived in part of the Indian territory
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 75 
 
 wilderness, famous in Western annals for 
 cold-blooded murders. Johnson hearing of 
 their doings made a raid on one of the Titts- 
 worth brothers' joints, accompanied only 
 by one assistant, Deputy-Marshal Sapper. 
 It was near midnight when he reached the 
 place. He knocked at Tittsworth's door, 
 and a man came to answer. " Is this 
 Mr. Tittsworth's house ? " asked Johnson. 
 " Yes," said the man, " and I am Titts- 
 worth." 
 
 " My name is Johnson, and I came 
 down here to get you," said the chief 
 officer. 
 
 " I guess not," came the curt reply. 
 
 Johnson asked him if he was armed, and 
 when he said no, he took off his revolvers 
 and threw them aside. Then they started 
 at a hard fight. Titts worth was no mean 
 antagonist, and he gave his opponent 
 at least one mark which he bears to 
 this day, but in the end Johnson won, 
 and took his man off to the jail at Fort 
 Smith. 
 
 Johnson was invited to Porum to help to 
 maintain order on July 4th when there were
 
 j6 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 to be some seasonable celebrations. The 
 Tittsworth brothers were opening a cider- 
 booth there. 
 
 Johnson was called away at the last 
 moment on some more urgent business and 
 sent one of his assistants, Sam Roberts, 
 accompanied by Deputy-Marshal Dr. Sapper. 
 Roberts unfortunately resembled his chief 
 in height and figure. The two deputies 
 went to the cider- joint to seize the liquor 
 there. A professional " bad man," commonly 
 known as Jack Baldridge but whose real 
 name was afterwards found to be Jack 
 Pattman, shot at Roberts, instantly killing 
 him, and then turned his revolver on Sapper, 
 inflicting a serious wound. 
 
 Pattman at once cleared out. He con- 
 cealed himself in the wild country and sent 
 back messages of defiance, daring anyone 
 to come and fetch him. Bud Ledbetter and 
 Grant Cowan were put on his track and 
 traced him across the Canadian river into 
 the Choctaw lands. Pattman's brother was 
 with him. Suddenly they found themselves 
 face to face with Ledbetter, who had 
 revolvers levelled on both of them and
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 77 
 
 curtly bade them throw up their hands. 
 They were quickly handcuffed and shackled 
 together and taken back to Muskogee, the 
 people gathering at every point to see them 
 pass. 
 
 When Pattman was in prison, however, 
 his nerve failed him. He turned State 
 evidence and declared that he had com- 
 mitted the murder because he had been 
 offered $3000 reward by Tittsworth to kill 
 Roberts. Afterwards this confession was 
 amended and he said that the money was 
 offered to him to kill Johnson and Dr. Sapper. 
 The Tittsworth brothers and Pattman were 
 put in jail. 
 
 Ben Tittsworth was first tried. The 
 evidence in his case was very conflicting, 
 some witnesses declaring that he shot Sapper, 
 and others that Pattman fired both shots. 
 Dr. Sapper's own account was that when he 
 entered the booth and took hold of the 
 cider-keg Ben Tittsworth seized him, and 
 a struggle followed and he then lost 
 consciousness. The jury was unable to 
 agree, eight voting for conviction and four 
 for acquittal.
 
 7 8 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 Eugene Tittsworth was then placed on 
 trial. Pattman went on the witness-stand 
 and stated that while in jail at Fort Smith 
 with Tittsworth, the latter wanted him to 
 work for him. " He said that if I would do 
 away with Sapper and Johnson I would 
 be paid $2000 or $3000." The jury, however, 
 refused to accept his statement and the 
 second Tittsworth brother was found " Not 
 Guilty." 
 
 On at least one other occasion a reward 
 was offered for Johnson's murder. This 
 second affair had its humorous side. Let 
 Johnson tell the story : 
 
 " I went up to Byars and an enterprising 
 fellow, J. W. Lincolnman, was running a 
 pool-hall there. He sent out letters stating 
 that he had a man who would kill me for 
 $1000 and he wanted a fund to be collected 
 for this purpose. One of my scouts got hold 
 of one of those letters and found that Lincoln- 
 man had collected about $700. So my 
 assistant arrested him and telegraphed to 
 me and blazed it out to the newspapers. 
 At Byars I looked into the matter and 
 satisfied myself that he did not have anybody
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 79 
 
 to kill me and had no intention of killing me. 
 All he wanted was the dollars. That rather 
 amused me, and so I went round to the jail 
 and told him, ' Get out and get the rest of 
 that money.' ' 
 
 There was a man on the borderland 
 between Kansas and the Indian territory 
 who claimed that he had discovered a strip 
 of land that belonged to neither state nor 
 territory. On it he put up a gambling 
 establishment, sixty feet long and ten feet 
 nine inches wide. At the front of the build- 
 ing there was a bar where drinks were 
 freely sold, while at the rear of the bar 
 roulette, faro, craps, three-card monte, stud- 
 poker and baccarat could be indulged in to 
 the heart's content. One side of the build- 
 ing faced Kansas, the other side Indian 
 territory. " The Sheriff and Marshal from 
 Montgomery County, Kansas, can sit upon 
 the outside of the building and see the 
 thirsting patrons pass in and out ; they can 
 hear the monotonous rattle of the ball 
 around the roulette- wheel but they are 
 powerless," wrote one local scribe. " On the 
 other side of the structure the United States
 
 8o How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 Marshals of Indian territory sit astride their 
 ponies and roll cigarettes as the dice bounce 
 on the table and they can hear the pop of 
 the bung from a fresh beer-barrel of Bud- 
 weiser but they are helpless. Lewis insists 
 that he will go on forever, unmolested by 
 the law. It will remain for Congress to take 
 some action before Lewis can be ousted 
 from his gambler's paradise." 
 
 Alas for Ernest Lewis ! He had forgotten 
 to reckon with Johnson. A few days later 
 the house was going at full blaze when 
 Johnson quietly stepped in with two deputies 
 behind him. He did not seem to care whether 
 the place was in Kansas or Indian territory. 
 He broke the gambling paraphernalia, poured 
 out the whisky, scattered the frequenters, 
 arresting three bar tenders and landing these 
 managers of a new Monte Carlo in jail. ' The 
 Monte Carlo of No-man's-land has been 
 put out of business by the velvet-footed man 
 with the soft voice and the veiled fist," said 
 the Muskogee Phoenix. 
 
 A vivid picture of Johnson's work at this 
 time was given in the Literary Digest of 
 June 15th, 1907. It was headed, " Special
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 8 1 
 
 Agent Johnson, a Prohibitionist who pro- 
 hibits," and was sent from Tulsa : 
 
 " A few days ago, Special Agent Johnson 
 began his campaign by slipping into the 
 city accompanied by three picked men, 
 arriving shortly before midnight. Their 
 movements were so swift and sudden that 
 many believed there were ten times that 
 number. For four hours the business section 
 of the city was in a fever of excitement. 
 In that time three big gambling-houses were 
 destroyed. The flames from the big bon- 
 fires reached as high as the tallest buildings. 
 In addition to the burning out of three 
 gambling-houses, about five hundred bottles 
 of whisky were seized and destroyed and 
 eleven men arrested. The names of the men 
 who assisted Johnson in this wild night's 
 work were Sam Cone, Ed. T. Egan and 
 Frank West, the latter being an allotted 
 Creek Indian of mixed blood. 
 
 " In the two days following, in which the 
 boot-leggers and gamblers were chased all 
 over the city, it was estimated by the Tulsa 
 World, the leading daily paper here, that 
 one hundred and fifty gamblers and boot- 
 leggers left the city.
 
 82 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 " The raiders in pairs then began making 
 forays in the surrounding towns of the oil- 
 field where the Texas gamblers had found 
 abiding-places, and were attempting to sell 
 whisky as a side-line. Many of these trips 
 were made in wagons as the 4 spotters ' of 
 the gamblers would telegraph to all the 
 towns on the railways whenever the raiders 
 started by train in any direction. 
 
 " At Collinsville, the gambling-house was 
 destroyed, a wagon-load of paraphernalia 
 being burned in the streets, and about 
 fifty gallons of 4 spiked cider ' destroyed. 
 At Mounds, a small quantity of liquor was 
 destroyed in a drug-store. At Skiatook, 
 the gambling-house of * Snake ' Morris was 
 burned and about twenty bottles of whisky 
 destroyed. Morris and his brother were 
 arrested and taken to Tulsa where they 
 were placed under $1000 bonds each for 
 boot-legging. Here an advertised * bad 
 man ' named Bill Burke armed himself 
 and sought to frighten the officers out of 
 town. Johnson at once turned the two 
 prisoners over to his assistant, Cone, and 
 taking his magazine - rifle started down 
 the middle of the street to give battle to 
 the 4 terror.' The special agent was covered
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 83 
 
 with sweat and mud, and blood was run- 
 ning from a fresh cut in his hand received 
 on broken glass. Burke failed to ' make 
 good ' when thus confronted. On the 
 contrary he jumped on a horse and galloped 
 for the woods without even waiting to 
 saddle his horse or get his coat. At 
 Tullahasse there came near being a tragedy. 
 Johnson sent Cone on a hurry-up trip to 
 head off a couple of trunks full of whisky 
 which had been sent there as baggage. Cone 
 seized and destroyed the liquor, and found 
 it necessary to spend the night in an old 
 house, in company with Dr. Mann, a physician 
 at Wagoner. Tullahasse is a settlement of 
 ' Creek negroes.' About midnight a gang 
 of negroes began shooting at the house. 
 Some of the bullets struck the bed on which 
 Cone and Mann were lying. One grazed 
 Cone's hand and another pierced his clothes. 
 Mr. Cone and Dr. Mann went into the dark- 
 ness and returned the negroes' fire, driving 
 them away and arresting two of the culprits 
 whom they succeeded in landing in jail in 
 Muskogee. 
 
 " At Red Fork a small quantity of liquor 
 was destroyed. Two raids were made on 
 Sapulpa, the last one being marked by the
 
 84 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 destruction of two big gambling-houses, one 
 for the second time. Two dray-loads of 
 gambling paraphernalia were burned at noon 
 of the following day. John German, a 
 leading meat-dealer of the city, was caught 
 in the first raid by Johnson, who found 
 twenty-three bottles of whisky hidden in the 
 walls of the back part of his butcher-shop. 
 German is now under $1000 bonds as a result 
 of the find. Numerous other seizures were 
 made in Tulsa, the largest being that of one 
 hundred pints of whisky which came into the 
 city tied in gunny sacks and tied to the rods 
 under freight cars arriving from Oklahoma. 
 This capture was made by West and Egan. 
 Two more gambling-houses that attempted 
 to reopen in this city a few days ago 
 were promptly burned out by West and 
 Cone. 
 
 " The climax came in this city in a monster 
 bonfire of gambling outfits and paraphernalia, 
 the result of a ruse on the part of Special 
 Agent Johnson. Johnson had sent all of 
 his men out on special assignments, and 
 left town himself, allowing the misinforma- 
 tion to leak out that he had departed for 
 another part of the territory and was 
 through with Tulsa for the present. But
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 85 
 
 instead he suddenly slipped back into the 
 city at nightfall. In the meantime Dick 
 Borden had rushed from a warehouse a 
 full, new and elaborate gambling outfit for 
 his hall over Tate Brady's store. He had 
 installed poker tables, a faro bank, crap- 
 tables, a roulette -wheel, Klondyke tables, 
 and hung mirrors on the walls and installed 
 a new outfit of furniture, electric fans, a side- 
 board, and had called in the ' customers.' 
 About thirty gamblers were playing when 
 suddenly Johnson, accompanied only by 
 United States Deputy-Marshal O. S. Booth, 
 forced open the door. 
 
 14 In an instant all was bedlam. Every- 
 body made a rush for the back window and 
 began jumping out on the roof of an adjoin- 
 ing building. Johnson jumped out too, and 
 drove the gamblers back into the hall, firing 
 a few shots at their feet with his revolver 
 to enforce his orders. The gamblers then 
 made a rush for the front stairway, but were 
 met at the door by Deputy-Marshal Booth 
 with a drawn revolver. After the gamblers 
 had deposited cash bonds for their appear- 
 ance the next day, there came a dramatic 
 struggle for the $400 roulette-wheel. One 
 gambler seized it and ran down a hall-
 
 86 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 way, but was overtaken and floored by a 
 blow from Johnson's fist. Another then 
 seized it, threw it out of a window into an 
 alley where a confederate grabbed it and 
 ran. But the fugitive was instantly covered 
 by Johnson, who appeared at the window 
 with his six-shooter. The fleeing gambler 
 dropped the wheel, which was later consumed 
 in the flames. At this juncture a squad of 
 police arrived, and an enormous crowd, 
 which had been attracted by the shooting, 
 filled the street, and witnessed the bonfire 
 of a thousand dollars' worth of gambling 
 paraphernalia." 
 
 Incidentally Johnson and his assistants 
 seized and dumped into the Arkansas River 
 some 25,000 bottles in that little raid. 
 
 The warmest and most detailed com- 
 mendation of Johnson's services during his 
 first year of office was given in the report of 
 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, dated 
 September 30th, 1907. He declared that the 
 hope expressed in his last report that the sale 
 of intoxicating liquors to Indians would be 
 greatly diminished, had been realised beyond 
 all expectations. For this he gave credit to
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 87 
 
 the services of Special Officer William E. 
 Johnson. 
 
 " During the eleven months of his service, 
 he and his deputies have made, or directly 
 caused to be made, 491 arrests in whisky 
 cases that have resulted in grand jury 
 indictments, though in a considerable number 
 of instances the indictment was procured 
 first and the arrest followed. This list is 
 exclusive of arrests in cases where the 
 United States Commissioner failed to bind 
 the prisoner over to the grand jury, as well 
 as of many arrests made by deputy-marshals 
 on information furnished by him. 
 
 " Owing to the fact that nearly all the 
 gamblers in the Indian territory also traffic 
 in whisky or are active abettors of whisky 
 peddling, Mr. Johnson has had occasion to 
 make war on those people, and his raids have 
 resulted in the conviction of fifty-three 
 gamblers and the destruction of forty-nine 
 gambling-houses and the collection of nearly 
 $15,000 in fines. The value of the gambling 
 paraphernalia captured has been estimated 
 at some $12,000. Arrests in other cases 
 incidental to his work but not exclusively 
 for traffic in intoxicants have been more or
 
 88 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 
 
 less frequent, and include seven for the high 
 crime of murder. 
 
 " These results have not been attained 
 without hardship and peril. Two of Mr. 
 Johnson's men and one posse man have been 
 killed in skirmishes with boot-leggers and 
 ten violators of the liquor laws have met a 
 like fate. Mr. Johnson has had several 
 narrow escapes himself, and during a good 
 part of the time has worked in the face of 
 a reward of $3000 offered by outlaws for his 
 assassination. His courage and devotion 
 to duty deserve the highest praise. I know 
 of no more efficient officer in the Indian 
 Service ; and indeed I may safely give him 
 the credit of turning what used to be a rather 
 dreary farce into an actual accomplishment 
 in the enforcement of the Acts of Congress 
 forbidding the liquor traffic in the Indian 
 territory. . . . Mr. Johnson has seized 
 thirty-two horses, thirteen wagons, thirteen 
 sets of double harness and five saddles 
 which have brought at public sale 
 $482. During the eleven months ended 
 on June 30th, he and his deputies have 
 made 902 separate seizures, and destroyed 
 intoxicating liquors in the following quan- 
 tities :
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Won His Name 89 
 
 Alcohol 
 
 gallons 
 
 269 
 
 Choctaw beer 
 
 do. 
 
 247 
 
 Spiked cider 
 
 do. 
 
 3,329 
 
 Intoxicating bitters 
 
 bottles 
 
 3,286 
 
 Beer 
 
 pints 
 
 4,637 
 
 Wine 
 
 do. 
 
 286 
 
 Low-grade beer 
 
 do. 
 
 25,949 
 
 Whisky 
 
 do. 
 
 28,559 
 
 Brandy and liqueurs 
 
 do. 
 
 175."
 
 Chapter VI More Adventures in the West 
 
 JOHNSON'S reputation as a fighter was 
 now assured throughout the West. 
 Rumour and report credited him with 
 marvellous deeds. One widely-quoted story 
 told how he fought threescore men single- 
 handed, killing three of them, during one 
 particularly daring raid. 
 
 This story arose, however, out of a mis- 
 understanding. Johnson heard that there 
 was a pool-hall at Chelsea, in Indian territory, 
 selling a new kind of drink. He determined 
 to go there and obtain some of the drink 
 for analysis. He went, apparently single- 
 handed, but he adopted a device which he on 
 several occasions found of the greatest service 
 in his work. While entering the place alone 
 from one side he sent one of his deputies 
 in from the other side. It was the business 
 of the deputy, who was without distin- 
 guishing marks, to mingle with the crowd 
 
 90
 
 More Adventures in the West 91 
 
 as one of them and to prevent anybody 
 shooting Johnson from the rear. On this 
 occasion the device undoubtedly saved 
 Johnson's life. 
 
 The two left their horses in the wood and 
 came into the town by different directions 
 after dusk. Johnson entered the pool-hall, 
 turned most of the people there out, locked 
 the door, made a search and found the 
 liquor he was after. 
 
 Meanwhile the people of the place held a 
 meeting in the street, and determined to 
 give Johnson a hammering. The former 
 Town Marshal was elected to do the job. 
 Johnson opened the door to go out. He had 
 four bottles under one arm. As he stepped 
 into the darkness of the street, the Town 
 Marshal gave him a tremendous blow in the 
 eye with his fist. Johnson staggered back, 
 and the bottles fell. A second blow came 
 swiftly, but he had recovered sufficiently to 
 ward this off and retorted with a heavy 
 blow on the Town Marshal's jaw, knocking 
 him clean off his feet. The crowd thereupon 
 called for fair play and formed a ring. 
 Johnson waited until the man stood up
 
 92 More Adventures in the West 
 
 again and soon had him down for a second 
 time. Once more the Marshal came on, 
 and a third time he was knocked over. Then 
 somebody slipped a knife into his hand 
 and he rushed at Johnson with it, but 
 Johnson *hit him on the head with the 
 butt of a billiard cue and he went down 
 like a log. 
 
 A free fight followed. One of the crowd 
 standing about three feet from Johnson's 
 head, drew a revolver and aimed at him. 
 Lowe, his deputy, who was in the crowd, 
 hit the man over the wrist with a "billy" 
 and the bullet went wide. Then the Special 
 Officer and his deputy went for the crowd. 
 When the battle was over one of the men 
 had to be carried out and two others led out 
 by their friends. The Associated Press 
 representative circulated the story and told 
 how Johnson had " sent three men to 
 sleep " down at Chelsea. This was quickly 
 made into a story that he had killed three 
 men. 
 
 Oklahoma was nowemerging into statehood. 
 A dual election was held on September 17th, 
 1907, for the people of the then Indian
 
 More Adventures in the West 93 
 
 territory and the territory of Oklahoma, 
 on the adoption of a constitution for the new 
 combined State and on a provision for 
 state-wide prohibition. There was a des- 
 perate fight over the prohibition proposal, 
 in which Johnson took a very promi- 
 nent part. Prohibition was in the end 
 carried by 130,361 votes for and 112,258 
 against. 
 
 One result of Oklahoma's changed status 
 was to modify considerably Johnson's 
 position and powers. The new State wiped 
 the slate clean of a large number of cases 
 awaiting trial. The State now became 
 largely responsible for law enforcement 
 formerly carried out by the Federal authori- 
 ities. The liquor- dealers thought that John- 
 son would at any rate shut his eyes 
 while they held final celebrations of the 
 change. They made a great mistake. 
 He raided them remorselessly to the very 
 end. 
 
 In the summer of 1908 he was promoted 
 to the post of " Chief Special Officer." His 
 field now covered the suppression of the liquor 
 traffic on all the Indian Reserves in the United
 
 94 More Adventures in the West 
 
 States. His head-quarters were removed 
 from Muskogee, Oklahoma, to Salt Lake City, 
 and he was given two special lieutenants, 
 Jess E. Flanders in the North- West, and 
 A. G. Pollock in the South- West. The annual 
 appropriation for the carrying out of the 
 work of liquor suppression was increased in 
 Congress from $25,000 to $40,000. 
 
 Johnson entered into his new duties with 
 the same zeal he had shown in the old. His 
 hand was soon felt in California, where 
 sixteen arrests were made. A Deputy- 
 Sheriff found himself suddenly arrested in 
 New Mexico. Then there came a big raid in 
 the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. The 
 place was first carefully examined, a number 
 of deputies specially sworn in for the occasion 
 and Indian police moved forward in posses. 
 All the principal towns were raided at the 
 same time, over a dozen prominent boot- 
 leggers arrested and their stocks of liquor 
 destroyed. 
 
 " A whirlwind has been playing havoc 
 among the whisky peddlers of the Indian 
 Reservation west of the Rocky Mountains 
 since July 1st, when William E. Johnson
 
 More Adventures in the West 95 
 
 of Maryland was made Chief Special Officer," 
 one Chicago newspaper stated in the follow- 
 ing September. In six weeks Johnson and 
 his deputies had thrown more than a hundred 
 whisky peddlers into jail. One of them was 
 now in prison on a fifteen months' sentence 
 and many more were bound the same 
 way. 
 
 During the first weeks of this new service 
 a dozen officers had knock-down fights, two 
 had shooting affrays, and they were com- 
 pelled to beat one man into submission who 
 attacked one of the officers with a bowie- 
 knife. Their prisoners included one Justice 
 of the Peace in Montana, two policemen and 
 one official of the Government Forest Reser- 
 vation Service. In Montana, where Johnson 
 personally operated for two weeks, the 
 criminal business piled up so rapidly that 
 the United States Attorney arranged for 
 a special grand jury to take care of the 
 fifty cases awaiting attention. One Cali- 
 fornian " bad man," who had a collection 
 of Indian scalps, and boasted that he used 
 to kill Indians so as to get their teeth for 
 rifle-sights, publicly declared that he would
 
 96 More Adventures in the West 
 
 " meet Johnson in the road with a rifle " if 
 ever he came to his section. Johnson met 
 him in the desert, sixty-five miles from the 
 nearest railway, captured him and carried 
 him overland to jail. When he arrived in 
 court the advertised " bad man " broke 
 down and wept. One of Johnson's deputies 
 captured three whisky-peddlers across the 
 South Dakota border, and there being 
 no jail at hand, he chained them to a 
 tree and waited until a Government Com- 
 missioner could be summoned twenty miles 
 away. 
 
 What made the liquor interests specially 
 apprehensive was Johnson's reputation for 
 never letting go. If men tried to escape 
 conviction by committing perjury he would 
 hunt down their lies and prove them to be 
 lies. The whisky-peddlers found that the 
 best thing they could do when Johnson had 
 them, was to own up, plead guilty and take 
 their medicine. Another habit of Johnson's 
 was to go after the biggest men and secure 
 their conviction. This helped to drive the 
 smaller fry away. 
 
 One very important prosecution which
 
 More Adventures in the West 97 
 
 Johnson initiated was known as the Ninety- 
 mile Alibi Case. In the autumn of 1908, 
 two of his assistants who were work- 
 ing in the vicinity of the Crow Reservation 
 in Montana caught a saloon-keeper, D. R. 
 Willis, red-handed, selling drink to a squaw 
 over the bar. Willis was indicted by the 
 grand jury, but having abundant resources, 
 he hired lawyers and put up a stiff fight. He 
 pleaded an alibi. " I had a bar -tender who 
 impersonated me, sold the liquor and has 
 since disappeared," he declared. Six men 
 came into court and swore that he was 
 ninety miles away at the time when the 
 drink was sold. The jury, however, returned 
 a verdict of " Guilty " and Willis was 
 sentenced to seventy days in jail and $100 
 fine. 
 
 Johnson reproached the judge for the 
 inadequacy of his sentence. " This case cost 
 me a lot of work," he said. " If you only 
 give the man a trivial sentence like that when 
 found guilty it is not worth my while." 
 " You go out and get these fellows for 
 perjury," the judge replied, " and then I 
 will show you some."
 
 98 More Adventures in the West 
 
 Johnson promptly put two of his best 
 men on the trail. The District Attorney, 
 during the trial, had spent two days examin- 
 ing the witnesses as to where they were, who 
 they talked to, and so on. Every statement 
 of theirs was carefully analysed, and as a 
 result four men were arrested on a charge of 
 perjury. Johnson concentrated on the one 
 of the four whom he judged to be the weakest, 
 William Bartlett, and induced him to con- 
 fess the whole business. 
 
 When the trial for perjury came on Bartlett 
 took the stand and told his story. The 
 remaining prisoners promptly abandoned 
 their defence, pleaded guilty and received 
 sentences of from three to eighteen months' 
 hard labour, with substantial fines. Liquor 
 perjury was at a discount for a time in the 
 Indian territory after this. 
 
 In the summer of 1909 one of Johnson's 
 deputies, Charles Escalanti, a full-blooded 
 Yuma Indian, was fatally stabbed by two 
 Mexicans who came to the Indian Reserva- 
 tion with whisky and whom he intended to 
 arrest. Escalanti was badly cut about, 
 and after lingering for two weeks, died.
 
 More Adventures in the West 99 
 
 He had been conspicuous in the effort to 
 break up the liquor traffic among his people 
 and a year before had been set upon and 
 nearly beaten to death by a crowd of toughs. 
 He was only one of several killed in the 
 work. 
 
 Special campaigns were planned in differ- 
 ent cities, and with both sides armed, the 
 fights that occasionally followed demanded 
 nerve and resource. The year ending June 
 30th, 1909, can be taken as fairly typical. 
 During that period Johnson and his men 
 made 1091 arrests, secured 548 convictions, 
 including about 350 grand jury convictions 
 mostly for selling liquor to Indians. Forty- 
 nine men out of every fifty who went to trial 
 were convicted. 
 
 Johnson caused a certain number of men 
 who were notorious law-breakers to be turned 
 out of the Indian territory on the ground 
 that they were detrimental to the peace and 
 safety of the Indians. Some of these 
 promptly brought damage suits against 
 him. 
 
 A very interesting battle was fought in 
 Minnesota in 1909. Johnson hunted out
 
 I oo More Adventures in the West 
 
 Article 7 of the Treaty with the Chippewa 
 Indians in 1855, which provided that the 
 Prohibition Laws in the Indian country 
 should continue and be enforced within the 
 entire boundary of the ceded country until 
 otherwise provided by Congress. Congress 
 had never made any provision revoking this 
 section of the Treaty. The greater portion 
 of the northern half of Minnesota lay within 
 the boundaries of the territory. Johnson 
 gave the liquor-dealers of Mahnomen County 
 thirty days' notice to close up their saloons 
 and remove any and all of their intoxicating 
 liquors to points outside the district. 
 
 The announcement caused a great sensa- 
 tion and the liquor authorities determined 
 to defy the Federal directions. The General 
 Counsel of the Minnesota State Breweries 
 Association made three trips to Washington 
 to have the matter squashed, but the Depart- 
 ment of Justice took the same view of the 
 law as Johnson. Counsel for the breweries 
 offered to co-operate with Johnson and 
 eliminate traffic with the Indians. He held 
 meetings of liquor -dealers and secured 
 pledges in writing from all of them in one
 
 More Adventures in the West 101 
 
 district, the Leech Lake Reservation, to 
 quit selling to Indians. In other districts, 
 however, the liquor-dealers refused to have 
 anything to do with the movement, declaring 
 that they were operating their own saloons 
 and would do as they pleased. 
 
 Johnson began his operations by notifying 
 the saloon-keepers of Mahnomen to quit 
 business in thirty days. All except eight 
 did so. 
 
 After the time-limit expired Johnson 
 allowed the eight dealers a few days to get 
 rid of their stock. They regarded his order 
 as a bluff. So one night a simultaneous raid 
 was made at ten o'clock on a number of 
 
 s 
 
 saloons in and around Mahnomen. Johnson 
 quietly brought his deputies into the place, 
 divided them up into squads for each saloon, 
 and gave them the signal for action by step- 
 ping out of his hotel with a cigar in his mouth. 
 He took as his part of the work two saloons 
 where trouble was expected. The first of these 
 was thoroughly smashed up. He was busy in 
 the second saloon when some people knocked 
 at the door, and a voice said, " We are the 
 Mayor and City Council. We are going
 
 IO2 More Adventures in the West 
 
 to stop this." " Get away," Johnson replied 
 brusquely, " I am busy." He slammed the 
 door and kept on. 
 
 A few minutes later the City Marshal, 
 accompanied by a posse of armed citizens, 
 arrived on the scene. The Marshal had his 
 gun with him, but he forgot to hold it in the 
 right position for action. As he forced his 
 way in with the gun hanging by his side he 
 found himself suddenly looking into the 
 black muzzle of Johnson's business-like 
 revolver. " I represent the Department of 
 Indian Affairs," said Johnson quietly. " I 
 represent the United States Government, 
 and you and your men had better get out of 
 here until we finish our work." The Marshal 
 protested. " Suddenly smiling, Johnson 
 became transformed," wrote a local reporter 
 at the time. " Get out of here," he thundered 
 advancing a step in the direction of the 
 frightened Marshal and his posse, and they 
 accepted the invitation." They went out, 
 rang the fire-bell, and soon the whole town 
 came marching down the street. Everybody 
 who had a gun carried it and those who had 
 no guns brought pitchforks.
 
 More Adventures in the West 103 
 
 Johnson had now almost completed his 
 work of breaking up the bottles of liquor. 
 He quietly went out into the street and 
 walked up to the Marshal and asked gently, 
 " Do you want to arrest me ? " " Yes, I do," 
 stammered the Marshal. " Well, go ahead 
 and arrest me," and so the arrest was made. 
 " Come and be arrested," Johnson called 
 to his deputies. He asked the Marshal if 
 he wanted any more. The rest were at 
 the hotel, he could go round and get them. 
 Then he invited him to arrest the deputies 
 who were elsewhere in the district, offering 
 to ring them up on the long-distance tele- 
 phone. 
 
 By this time the Marshal had be- 
 come uneasy, and suspected that Johnson 
 was fooling him. "Go to hell," he said 
 roughly, " I have had more than I 
 want." 
 
 The saloon-keepers in Mahnomen had at the 
 first alarm sent out telephone calls to their 
 fellows in the neighbouring places, warning 
 them that Johnson was on a raiding expedi- 
 tion, and that they had better look after 
 themselves. " Too late," came back the
 
 104 More Adventures in the West 
 
 mournful reply, " our places have all been 
 raided, too." 
 
 Johnson and his men were arraigned 
 before the local Justice of Peace. He told 
 his deputies to say nothing, and to let him 
 do the talking. The Justice read the warrant, 
 and asked if he desired an examination, or if 
 he pleaded guilty. Johnson replied that he 
 would not plead. " But you have to plead." 
 " Have I ? " came the reply. " Suppose I 
 don't plead, what will happen then ? " The 
 Justice thereupon put down a plea of not 
 guilty. Johnson refused to offer bonds. 
 " But you must get a bondsman," said the 
 Justice, " we have no jail to keep you in." 
 " Well," replied Johnson, " we will wait 
 here until you build a jail." 
 
 Finally the party were taken to the City 
 Hall and shut up there. Some humorist 
 telephoned to the Sheriff that 150 Indians 
 were on the way to rescue Johnson and his 
 men. 
 
 It was Johnson's purpose, and the purpose 
 of the Federal authorities, to secure a clear 
 legal pronouncement that would place 
 beyond question once for all what the law
 
 More Adventures in the West 105 
 
 was. They feared that if he was brought 
 up before a judge merely on a charge of 
 smashing, the judge would dismiss the 
 whole case on a technicality. To avoid this 
 Johnson sent for the Assistant County 
 Attorney. " I and my men have smashed 
 up 7000 dollars' worth of your goods," 
 he said. " Why don't you put yourself 
 in a position to get your money back ? 
 You have a record of what I actually broke, 
 and I won't dispute it." The County Prose- 
 cutor, wondering at Johnson's simplicity, 
 was ready to assent, but feared that it was 
 too late. The party were already arraigned 
 Dn charges. " Wipe off the record," said 
 Johnson generously, " and make a new 
 one." 
 
 The Attorney was so overcome that he 
 offered to sign half a bond for Johnson's 
 men if Johnson signed the other half, and 
 let them go. That did not suit Johnson's 
 purpose. He forced the authorities to take 
 him and his men to Crookston jail. From 
 there they were released on a plea of habeas 
 corpus. When the trial came on a definite 
 ruling was secured not only that Johnson
 
 106 More Adventures in the West 
 
 had the right to do what he did, but that 
 it was his duty to do so. 
 
 The case was taken up to the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. Johnson won. 
 "This is how I deliberately went to jail," 
 he says when telling the story.
 
 Chapter VII Johnson Resigns 
 
 PUSSYFOOT ' JOHNSON has put more 
 saloons out of business in a given 
 time than any man now on earth," a news- 
 paper writer in Minnesota declared early in 
 1911. The statement was justified. John- 
 son and his assistants were convicting 
 men, many of them men of means, at the 
 rate of a hundred per month, month in 
 and month out. His service had been 
 extended until it received an appropriation 
 of $80,000 a year, and about one hundred 
 men worked under him on the one task of 
 preventing the sale of liquor to Indians. 
 
 Wherever possible these assistants were 
 Indians themselves. They did not let red 
 tape stand in the way of effective action. 
 " We have not been very tender in our 
 dealings with these hyenas who would get 
 an Indian drunk so as to rob him of his 
 blanket," wrote Johnson in that same year. 
 " Nothing but the unrelenting cold steel 
 of absolute justice will have any effect on the 
 
 107
 
 io8 Johnson Resigns 
 
 cuticle of such. There is no quarter asked 
 or given, and no sympathy wasted." 
 
 But there was one offence for which 
 Johnson never invoked the law. He did not 
 once prosecute a man for making an assault 
 on him or attempting his life. In place of 
 that he went for the man. 
 
 Here is a typical statement of his, made 
 about the same time : "In some States we 
 follow a radically different course than in 
 others. Conditions and laws are not always 
 the same in different localities, even of the 
 same State. This not only confuses friends 
 but confuses the enemy. When I get a joint- 
 keeper on the carpet, he often asks why I 
 do this with him and do something else 
 with the offender in the adjoining State. 
 My stereotyped reply is ' Go hire a lawyer. 
 The lawyer usually skins the offender out of 
 most of the money that he has skinned out 
 of the Indians. The scamp is thus punished 
 even though we fail to convict, which seldom 
 happens." 
 
 Between 1907 and the end of January, 
 1911, Johnson and his deputies made 5473 
 arrests. He aroused a very great amount 
 of bitter personal enmity against himself. 
 The liquor-dealers saw in him not merely
 
 Johnson Resigns 109 
 
 an active official but a personal foe. Many 
 of these men used all their political influence 
 to have him removed. While Roosevelt 
 was President they tried in vain, but when 
 Roosevelt was followed by Taft and Mr. 
 Leupp was succeeded by a new Commissioner 
 of Indian Affairs, it became evident that 
 Johnson's enemies in the Interior Depart- 
 ment were obtaining more influence. 
 
 Adverse influences in this Department 
 sought to compel Mr. Johnson to recommend 
 to the President the annulment of all the anti- 
 liquor clauses in Indian treaties involving 
 the State of Minnesota and some neighbour- 
 ing States. Johnson prepared an elaborate 
 report, recommending the annulment of cer- 
 tain anti-liquor clauses that, for one reason 
 or another, were ineffective, but strongly 
 recommending the retention of the useful 
 clauses, especially involving territory really in- 
 habited by Indians. He secured the approval 
 of Robert G. Valentine, for a short time Indian 
 Commissioner, to this recommendation, and 
 thus fortified, he laid the matter before the 
 Department. There followed a stormy scene 
 in which Johnson was violently accused of 
 insubordination, but he stubbornly held his 
 ground, backed by Commissioner Valentine.
 
 no Johnson Resigns 
 
 The outcome was that President Taft finally 
 followed the recommendation, revoking only 
 those clauses which were ineffective, and 
 retaining those of real value. Johnson's bold 
 stand in defeating the plot to destroy the 
 effectiveness of these Indian treaties involved 
 him in further trouble with Department chiefs 
 who, from that time on, redoubled their 
 efforts to " get him." 
 
 Following this a number of prominent 
 offenders were pardoned by Presidential 
 action after being convicted of selling drink 
 to Indians. The Chief Officer found in differ- 
 ent ways that spokes were being put into 
 the wheels of his activities. 
 
 The relations between Johnson and the 
 Department at Washington reached a crisis 
 later in 1911, over the case of Juan Cruz, 
 one of Johnson's assistants among the Pueblo 
 Indians, charged with murder. 
 
 The condition of things in New Mexico 
 had for some time been unsatisfactory. 
 For several years a group of American and 
 Mexican politicians had run their cattle on a 
 Pueblo Indian thirty-thousand-acre reser- 
 vation without compensation. It was openly 
 stated that the Local Superintendent of 
 Indian Affairs played into the hands of
 
 Johnson Resigns III 
 
 these land-grabbers, and he was further 
 charged with permitting the sale of drink 
 to Indians in a drug-store at Santa Fe in 
 which he was interested. 
 
 Conditions were very strained between 
 the Superintendent and the Indians 
 themselves. Johnson found himself up 
 against the same Superintendent in various 
 ways. 
 
 The Santa Clara Indians became crusaders 
 in a big voluntary total abstinence cam- 
 paign. They sent delegates to other Indian 
 communities and formed a federation which 
 soon included almost every Pueblo Indian 
 in New Mexico, for the purpose of stamping 
 out the liquor traffic and protecting them- 
 selves from the robbery of their land and 
 pasturage. 
 
 Juan Cruz was one of the early recruits 
 in this federation. Johnson described him 
 as " a young Indian Sir Galahad. . . . 
 Cruz had the spirit of a crusader. He was 
 devoted to his church, to his young wife, 
 Dolorita, and to their baby, Jose." One 
 of Johnson's assistants made Juan posseman 
 deputy and employed him on various 
 occasions, Juan being officially paid for his 
 services.
 
 112 Johnson Resigns 
 
 The Superintendent advised some Indians 
 who objected to Juan's activities that he 
 had no authority and that no attention 
 should be paid to him. Four rough Indians 
 of bad character attacked Juan while he 
 was seizing a bottle of whisky which one of 
 them had just purchased. They beat him 
 with stones and clubs, smashing in his 
 mouth and loosening two of his teeth. 
 Juan drew his revolver and fired, hitting the 
 leader, Garcia, who died an hour later. 
 
 Juan was arrested for murder. The 
 Superintendent took up an unfriendly 
 attitude, and to Johnson's astonishment 
 the authorities at Washington telegraphed 
 to him to take no steps in the matter of his 
 defence since Cruz was not a commissioned 
 employee. " I could not see the boy go to 
 the gallows undefended," said Johnson. 
 Since the Department refused to help he 
 went to some leaders of the Women's 
 Christian Temperance Union. They 
 promptly organised a Defence Committee. 
 The affair had by this time received so 
 much publicity that the Department can-
 
 Johnson Resigns 113 
 
 celled its first instructions and ordered 
 Johnson to do all that he could for Juan. 
 In the end the Indian was found " Not 
 Guilty " and released. 
 
 But there was now a condition of almost 
 open war between Johnson and the Washing- 
 ton Department. He protested vigorously 
 against the theft of the Indian lands. He 
 was called up to Washington, and there 
 given a very unfriendly reception. " You 
 are getting too many convictions and it is 
 causing trouble," one politician told him. 
 
 Attempts were engineered to make trouble 
 over some of his payments. He was charged 
 with insubordination, and after a hot con- 
 troversy resigned his office. The Acting 
 Secretary of the Department of the Interior 
 gave out a statement that no fault had been 
 found with his integrity or with his character, 
 but both the Department of the Interior and 
 Mr. Johnson himself thought that it would 
 be better for him to quit the service because 
 certain views he held regarding the adminis- 
 tration of his office did not coincide with 
 those held by the Department.
 
 1 1 4 Johnson Resigns 
 
 The resignation excited widespread com- 
 ment. The newspapers openly attributed 
 it to a cabal of the liquor interests. Johnson 
 received many expressions of sympathy. 
 But what perhaps pleased him most was a 
 letter from his Indian friends : 
 
 "Espanola, N.M., 
 
 Sept. 19, 1911. 
 MR. W. E. JOHNSON, 
 
 Chief Special Officer U.S.I.S., 
 Denver, Colo. 
 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 The Pueblo of Santa Clara, mindful 
 of its regeneration through your efforts, most 
 cordially invites you to be its guest for as 
 long a time as you will enjoy it. Horses, 
 saddles, guns, guides and tents, with the 
 best rations at our command, will be pro- 
 vided you as long as you can make use of 
 them. We hope you will come to us and go 
 to the mountains for a much needed rest. 
 All we have is yours now and always. This 
 is but small pay for the manhood you have 
 restored to this village by stopping the liquor 
 traffic here. We know you helped us at the
 
 Johnson Resigns 115 
 
 price of your position. No other man in the 
 Indian Service would have risked his head 
 by staying with us and saving the life of 
 Juan Cruz. You may go down in apparent 
 defeat before the whisky ring at Washington 
 but in the hearts of a quarter of a million 
 American-Indians you are a hero. There 
 is probably not one of this great number 
 but what had come under the influence of 
 your work. 
 
 Come and be a good Indian with us. 
 
 Very sincerely, 
 The Council of Santa Clara, 
 
 By VlCTOBIANO SlSNEROS, 
 
 Acting Governor." 
 
 As a result of Johnson's battle for them, 
 the Indians recovered the use of their thirty- 
 thousand-acre reservation.
 
 Chapter VIII The Campaign for National 
 Prohibition 
 
 TOHNSON went straight back to his old 
 V business as a temperance writer and 
 organiser. He took up, for a time, literary 
 and research work for the Presbyterian 
 General Assembly Committee on Temperance, 
 and shortly afterwards accepted the post 
 of managing editor of the American Issue 
 Publications, the literary side of the Anti- 
 Saloon League. He started a paper for the 
 League, the New Republic, at the beginning 
 of 1913. 
 
 The Indian Department tried to create 
 trouble for him and made a battle over his 
 accounts. Johnson had engaged a doctor 
 as medical expert at the trial of Juan Cruz. 
 The Indian Office questioned the engage- 
 ment, refused to pay the doctor's hotel bills 
 and cut down his fees from $10 a day to 
 $5, out of which the doctor was to meet all 
 
 116
 
 Campaign for National Prohibition 117 
 
 his own expenses. Johnson promptly hit 
 back. He sent a letter to all the medical 
 papers, stating the facts and asking them if 
 they thought the official estimate by the 
 United States Government of the value 
 of an American physician's services was 
 fair. This publicity produced such a storm 
 of protest in the medical press against the 
 Government's action that the authorities 
 were glad to yield. But they still kept back 
 certain accounts, and the dispute over these 
 was not ended until the beginning of 1920, 
 when a special Act of Congress was carried, 
 settling the matter in Johnson's favour. 
 
 The fighting reformer soon made his 
 personality felt in his new field. The Rev. 
 U. G. Robinson, formerly an Anti-Saloon 
 League official, had for some time, while 
 professing to be a temperance reformer, 
 devoted himself to stirring up strife within 
 the ranks of the prohibitionists. The people 
 he attacked had submitted quietly, not 
 knowing what else to do. Johnson got 
 after Robinson, investigated his career, and 
 published a detailed exposure which finished 
 that particular adventurer's activity. He
 
 1 1 8 Campaign for National Prohibition 
 
 showed that Robinson was really in the pay 
 of the liquor interests, and he secured and 
 reproduced letters from Robinson to the 
 liquor organisations and from the liquor 
 organisations to Robinson, placing this 
 beyond doubt. 
 
 " For a year or more," wrote Johnson, 
 " this monumental Iscariot has been playing 
 both ends against the middle. He has been 
 getting money from radical prohibitionists 
 to fight the Anti-Saloon League with. He 
 has been getting money from the National 
 Liquor League to fight the Anti-Saloon 
 League with and using it to fight the very 
 prohibitionists who were giving him the 
 money with which to fight the Anti-Saloon 
 League people. From his dark cellar in 
 St. Louis he has been pouring into the mails 
 with liquor money a veritable flood of slime, 
 smearing indiscriminately nearly everybody 
 who has lifted up his voice against the saloon. 
 He has been blocking, thwarting, under- 
 mining the work of all prohibitionists to 
 secure any legislation whatever." 
 
 Robinson retorted with a savage attack 
 on Johnson. Johnson riposted with a suit
 
 Campaign for National Prohibition 1 1 9 
 
 for libel. After two trials Johnson was 
 awarded $1500 damages, and the Rev. 
 U. G. Robinson was finished. 
 
 Next came the adventure of the Trevitt 
 Letters. A fight was being waged for State 
 prohibition in West Virginia and the pro- 
 hibitionists had reason to believe that some 
 papers there were looking for an opportunity 
 to sell themselves to the liquor side. John- 
 son had letters sent out, signed by C. L. 
 Trevitt, a " literary agent " at Washington, 
 D.C., offering to furnish matter and to pay 
 liberally in advance " for the privilege of 
 laying arguments against prohibition before 
 your readers. . . . Advise me what rate 
 per line you will charge for pure reading 
 matter without advertising marks and also 
 what rate you will charge for editorial 
 matter. I am willing to pay for editorials 
 against prohibition, even if written by 
 yourself." The letter was sent to a large 
 number of papers, and the majority 
 fell into the trap. Some editors asked 
 that the promised money might be sent by 
 wire. " I am in the market for business," 
 wrote one editor, a Sunday-school super-
 
 1 20 Campaign for National Prohibition 
 
 intendent, " and I accept your proposition. 
 I am hard up too, and the sooner you send 
 your matter, and a small cheque, the better 
 it will be for me." 
 
 Out of seventy papers approached, less 
 than ten unequivocally refused to sell their 
 columns. 
 
 When Johnson published his exposure 
 with photographic copies of the various 
 letters, there was a furore in West Virginia, 
 and the editors naturally turned on him and 
 could find no words hard enough for him. 
 " Forger," " Vulture," " Blackmailer," were 
 among the mildest of their adjectives. 
 Many people not sympathetic to the liquor 
 trade disliked this method of fighting it. 
 Johnson had no hesitation. " These were 
 the rascals I was after," Johnson told 
 Collier's Weekly. " I have no apologies to 
 make. I went out after scamps and got 
 them. It is not the first time I have set 
 bear-traps for crooks." 
 
 Johnson was now finding himself more and 
 more absorbed in the work of the Anti- 
 Saloon League, to which he was from this 
 time to devote his life. The Anti-Saloon 

 
 Campaign for National Prohibition 121 
 
 League, the main force in carrying national 
 prohibition in the United States, differed 
 materially from the Prohibition Party. 
 The purpose of both was the same, to end 
 the liquor trade, but the Prohibition Party 
 had as a Party to frame a programme 
 covering all kinds of political and social 
 issues on which there were profound differ- 
 ences of opinion among men opposed to the 
 liquor traffic. The American people were 
 becoming growingly wearied of party 
 machines. The whole tendency of recent 
 years had been in the direction of placing 
 more and more power in the hands of the 
 electors. The Australian ballot, the Power 
 of Recall, and similar measures, all meant 
 ensuring the elector more direct authority 
 in actual legislation and control. The Pro- 
 hibition Party was pulling right against the 
 stream all the time. 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League went on another 
 plan. " The League pledges itself to avoid 
 affiliation with any political party as such 
 and to maintain an attitude of strict neu- 
 trality on all questions of public policy not 
 directly and immediately concerned with
 
 122 Campaign for National Prohibition 
 
 the traffic in strong drink," was the second 
 clause in its constitution. 
 
 The League owed its life largely to the 
 activities of Dr. Howard H. Russell, who 
 organised the Ohio Anti-Saloon League in 
 1893 and who carried on a fight under very 
 discouraging circumstances for ten years. 
 He had special qualities for his task. He 
 had been a lawyer with seven years' active 
 general practice before entering the church, 
 where he had seven years of successful 
 pastoral work previous to undertaking his 
 special campaign. An able organiser, a 
 convincing speaker, a man of great physical 
 strength and full of passionate devotion 
 to his cause, he faced dark days cheerfully. 
 By 1903 his work had led to the organisation 
 of Anti-Saloon Leagues in forty states and 
 territories. 
 
 He then retired, to be followed by Dr. P. A. 
 Baker, also a clergyman, a man bred in 
 poverty who had forced his way to the 
 front rank by sheer executive ability and 
 tremendous enthusiasm. It was under Dr. 
 Baker that the League made its full develop- 
 ment. With him have been associated men
 
 Campaign for National Prohibition 123 
 
 like Mr. E. H. Cherrington, who controls the 
 publicity work of the Anti-Saloon League 
 and whose activities are felt everywhere in 
 America ; Mr. W. H. Anderson, who is re- 
 garded by the American liquor interests 
 as one of their most dangerous enemies ; 
 Dr. Dinwiddle, and Mr. W. B. Wheeler. 
 When these entered into their campaign 
 the brewing and whisky interests, with 
 almost limitless funds behind them, seemed 
 in secure control of the political machine. 
 They set to work, educating, organising, 
 fighting. A tradition is already beginning 
 to grow up around them and their methods. 
 The liquor interests, fighting for their lives, 
 spared no effort to defeat them by the vilest 
 scandal, by expenditure of money and by, 
 when occasion served, the organisation of 
 personal violence. 
 
 The first fight was for State prohibition. 
 In 1913 a fresh step was taken when the 
 Anti-Saloon League launched a campaign 
 for National prohibition embodied in the 
 Constitution of the United States. A com- 
 mittee of one thousand from the Anti- 
 Saloon League, with a committee of one
 
 124 Campaign for National Prohibition 
 
 thousand women reformers, marched to 
 the Capitol at Washington and officially 
 presented a petition to Congress, demanding 
 a prohibition amendment to the Federal 
 constitution. 
 
 The demand seemed to many at the time 
 a mere extravagance of uncontrolled and 
 irresponsible fanaticism. These folk soon 
 discovered their mistake. State after state 
 in the Union and province after province in 
 Canada were now rapidly going " dry." In 
 1915, urged and aided by the spirit of 
 individual and national sacrifice aroused 
 by the war, a resolution calling for the 
 submission of a National prohibition amend- 
 ment to the legislatures of the several States 
 was carried in Congress by the necessary 
 two-thirds majority. From that time the 
 landslide began which ended in victory four 
 years later. 
 
 To this campaign, first for State and then 
 for National prohibition, Johnson wholly 
 devoted himself from 1912 to the autumn of 
 1918. It was a time of great battles. There 
 were States to be organised, books to be 
 written, economic and political studies to
 
 Campaign for National Prohibition 125 
 
 be made, funds to be raised. The business 
 interests had to be convinced that prohibition 
 would be good for them, that it was their 
 duty to support it with all their force. 
 Churches had to be kept at white heat, and 
 Legislatures had to be watched. 
 
 Johnson and his friends were aided by 
 the foolish tactics adopted by the defenders 
 of the drink trade, who succeeded in arousing 
 against themselves the women, the reformers, 
 the churches, a large part of the manufactur- 
 ing and business interest and all the forces 
 making for the uplift of the Nation. They 
 despised their opponents, and even when 
 prohibition was sweeping like a prairie fire 
 over the Union, they continued to assure 
 the world that the thing was absurd, that 
 it could never pass into law, and if it did pass 
 into law, could never be enforced. 
 
 Johnson, before leaving the Indian Service, 
 had written a detailed and careful study of 
 the national aspects of the drink question 
 under the title, The Federal Government 
 and the Liquor Traffic. He issued other 
 volumes and pamphlets during this time. 
 One of the most remarkable and attractive
 
 126 Campaign for National Prohibition 
 
 of these was on the liquor question in Russia, 
 written during the war. To obtain the 
 facts for this he visited and spent some 
 time in Russia. This book contains what is 
 generally admitted to be the fullest and most 
 exact account of the vodka monopoly to 
 be found in the English language. 
 
 His activities were more and more extend- 
 ing outside of America. He visited England 
 to study the situation there ; he went to 
 the Continent of Europe as delegate to various 
 conferences. His name became well known 
 in temperance circles in many lands. 
 
 In the summer of 1918 he and his colleagues 
 looked around and knew that the battle, 
 over the passage of National prohibition in 
 the United States, was already won. The 
 hour had come for still more ambitious 
 campaigns.
 
 Chapter IX Launching the World Campaign 
 
 IN November, 1918, a new step forward 
 was taken in the history of the Pro- 
 hibition movement, when the Ant i- Saloon 
 League of America resolved to launch a 
 great campaign to make the world " dry." 
 A Conference was held at Columbus, 
 Ohio, attended by delegates from all parts 
 of the United States and from many foreign 
 countries. A world-wide programme was 
 there fixed. 
 
 It was decided to extend the movement 
 into other countries by sending speakers 
 and writers abroad, by cultivating publicity 
 and by using varied means " to establish 
 in the minds of the people of other countries 
 the facts as to the benefit and successful 
 operation of prohibition in the United 
 States." 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League pledged itself to 
 render financial assistance to temperance 
 
 127
 
 ia8 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 organisations working along these lines, 
 and to help to create fresh organisations. 
 The League further proposed to take up 
 with similar bodies in other countries the 
 importance of international action, with the 
 idea of calling for a conference " for the 
 purpose of organising a League of Nations 
 in the interests of the complete extermination 
 of the beverage liquor traffic throughout 
 the nations of the earth." 
 
 Johnson started out as a pioneer in the 
 world campaign some weeks before the 
 Columbus Conference passed its resolutions. 
 In the summer of 1918 he was invited by 
 Mr. W. J. Allison, Secretary of the Scottish 
 Permissive Bill Association, to cross the 
 Atlantic and help in a coming liquor option 
 campaign there. A measure had been passed 
 through the British Parliament, giving the 
 people of Scotland the right to decide by 
 ballot whether they would have prohibition 
 in their localities or not. This was a radically 
 new departure in British legislation and a 
 battle had been maintained for two genera- 
 tions before the right had been granted. 
 Even now the powers extend only to Scot-
 
 Launching the World Campaign 129 
 
 land and not to the rest of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Under this measure, the local authorities 
 were required, on receipt of a requisition 
 signed by not less than one-tenth of the 
 electors in any area, to cause an election 
 to take place, each elector being given the 
 choice of voting for leaving things as they 
 were, for reducing the number of licensed 
 houses by one quarter, or for prohibition. 
 Fifty-five per cent of the votes must be 
 recorded in favour of no licence in order to 
 carry prohibition, and these must represent 
 not less than thirty-five per cent of the 
 electors on the register. The first election 
 was to take place at the end of 1920. It was 
 now up to the prohibitionists to convince 
 the electors, hence the appeal for Johnson's 
 aid. 
 
 At first he refused, but after a con- 
 ference with his friends he changed his 
 decision. 
 
 Johnson arrived in Britain on September 
 13th, 1918. He first travelled over Scotland 
 and investigated conditions there. He sent 
 a series of reports home to his colleagues
 
 130 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 in America, and they thereupon suggested 
 that he should go to London, take an office 
 and begin work there. He found admirable 
 head-quarters on the first floor of a building 
 in Fleet Street, in the very heart of news- 
 paper land. 
 
 The Englishman by tradition and instinct 
 places great emphasis on the liberty of the 
 subject. He absorbs almost from infancy 
 an atmosphere of hostility to officialism and 
 to regulations which prevent him from 
 doing what he likes with his own. 
 
 He learns in youth that " An Englishman's 
 house is his castle." " If any policeman or 
 State official dared to try to invade the 
 privacy of my home," said an outspoken 
 reformer, Mr. W. T. Stead, on one occasion, 
 with passion, " I would shoot him down 
 without hesitation." 
 
 The war with Germany had for the 
 time removed the individual Englishman's 
 personal rights. He had " voluntarily made 
 a temporary surrender of liberty in order 
 to secure permanent liberty for all men." 
 But the results of this voluntary surrender 
 made the Englishman more bitterly hostile
 
 Launching the World Campaign 1 3 1 
 
 to officialism than ever before. The ex- 
 travagances, the excesses and the absurd- 
 ities of Government service were the favourite 
 topic of conversation wherever half a dozen 
 men gathered together. 
 
 There was one field in which Government 
 regulation had, without question, produced 
 enormously beneficial results. The Govern- 
 ment had, as a war measure, instituted 
 a stricter control of the liquor traffic, 
 closing all public -houses except for two 
 hours and a half at midday and for three 
 hours and a half in the evening, forbid- 
 ding treating, forbidding the sale of spirits 
 in bottles from Friday afternoon until 
 Monday morning, and forbidding the sale 
 of drink on credit. The alcoholic quantity 
 and strength of beers and of spirits had 
 been considerably lowered, and the price 
 greatly increased. Spirits for sale were 
 limited in quantity. 
 
 As a result of all this the convictions for 
 drunkenness had declined by over seventy 
 per cent in two years, and diseases and 
 crimes associated with drunkenness had 
 shown a corresponding decrease. Cases
 
 132 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 of delirium tremens were becoming re- 
 duced to a minimum, the number of deaths 
 from diseases caused by alcohol sharply 
 dropped, the over-laying of infants, due 
 in the vast majority of cases to the acci- 
 dental smothering of the babies in bed by 
 drunken mothers, had been reduced by over 
 two-thirds. 
 
 On the other hand the brewers and dis- 
 tillers had made enormous profits during 
 the war and had accumulated greater funds 
 than ever before. The public, in its impa- 
 tience of control, was ready to jump at any 
 relaxation of Government regulations about 
 anything, including the liquor traffic. The 
 Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, was 
 individually exceedingly sympathetic to 
 temperance reform, and was an old advocate 
 of strict regulation, if not prohibition. But 
 anyone who had studied the situation 
 at the beginning of July, 1919, must have 
 regarded the outlook as almost hopeless 
 from the prohibitionist point of view. 
 Then in a day, by a single newspaper 
 interview, the whole aspect of affairs was 
 changed.
 
 Launching the World Campaign 133 
 
 A member of the staff of the Daily Mail, 
 Mr. Ferdinand Tuohy, heard of Mr. Johnson's 
 campaign and went to see him. Next day 
 nearly a column and a half in the most 
 prominent position in the Daily Mail was 
 given to a vividly written interview with the 
 " Field-Marshal of the Prohibition Forces of 
 North America, who is reputed to have done 
 more to make the United States ' dry ' than 
 any other single man." 
 
 " Mr. ' Pussyfoot ' Johnson," said the 
 writer, " is to-day established in commodious 
 Fleet Street offices. He is a stout, heavy- 
 featured, bespectacled man with the gentlest, 
 almost inaudible, pleasantly - modulated 
 voice. He first made Oklahoma 4 dry ' 
 it took him ten years then Kansas, 
 then largely the United States. Now he 
 has come over here to make this country 
 4 dry.' 
 
 4 The Anti-Saloon League, an organisation 
 that it would be infantile to scoff at, has sent 
 its best man to this country. It has sent him 
 with carte blanche in strategy, tactics and 
 finance. The others are coming, c large 
 numbers of men and women experts, includ-
 
 I 34 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 ing Mr. Bryan ' ; meanwhile Mr. ' Pussyfoot ' 
 Johnson is inaudibly, invisibly clearing the 
 field for action." 
 
 What, however, particularly startled the 
 British public was a statement, based on a 
 misunderstanding of what Johnson had said, 
 that the Anti-Saloon League was going to 
 take active part in the British elections. 
 Johnson had been telling of what they did 
 in America and of what might happen in 
 England. His interviewer understood him 
 to say that this was what the Anti- Saloon 
 League would do : 
 
 44 Your British organisations have been at 
 us for over a year to come over here. The 
 whole thing has been in response to their 
 asking. We're going to teach them how to 
 get this country dry. I've reported to my 
 head-quarters that the position here is 
 entirely different from that back home, but 
 that it is far from being as hopeless as appears 
 on the surface. Our workers who come over 
 here field representatives are all going 
 to be paid by us 300 dollars (60) a month 
 and upwards. 
 
 44 The United Kingdom Alliance may,
 
 Launching the World Campaign 135 
 
 of course, pay their expenses when they 
 speak at their meetings, but we'll pay their 
 expenses as well. Our steady income at 
 home is about 300,000 a year, though, of 
 course, we have good capital besides. We 
 have 500,000 regular subscribers and 500,000 
 irregular ones. We don't particularly search 
 out for wealthy men. Rockefeller used to 
 give us 1500 dollars a year till we butted in 
 and beat one of his Congress candidates. 
 That made him mad." 
 
 " Are you going to butt in on our elec- 
 tions ? " 
 
 " Why, yes. Our intelligence service will 
 keep us informed as to when a district is 
 possible, and down we'll send our cam- 
 paigners. We'll bill the place and buy 
 space in the local newspapers and show 
 films at the kinemas, and give addresses. 
 Why, we're over here to get behind all 
 your organisations and press the matter 
 home." 
 
 The average Englishman after reading this 
 interview was convinced that the Americans 
 were sending an army of spell-binders across 
 the Atlantic to sweep the country, with 
 enormous funds behind them, and that they 
 were going to enter into a great campaign,
 
 136 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 obtain control over the newspapers, subsi- 
 dise kinemas and flood the country with 
 printed matter. The interview created a 
 profound sensation. There was no more 
 question of the temperance movement being 
 in a rut. It had been lifted out of the rut 
 at a bound. 
 
 Johnson, by the time the interview had 
 been published, had gone to Finland to 
 assist in helping to celebrate the coming 
 of prohibition there. He first learned of the 
 furore the interview was causing from the 
 Scandinavian and the Finnish press. He 
 purposely remained away from England for 
 some weeks to give the situation time to 
 cool down. 
 
 The general reception given to the inter- 
 view was exceedingly hostile. There were 
 furious protests everywhere, and even lead- 
 ing British temperance advocates expressed 
 their doubts and hesitations as to the 
 possibilities of a forward movement. The 
 brewers and distillers came together and 
 established organisations to fight the new 
 prohibition campaign. An Anti-Prohibition 
 League was established, and the retail trade,
 
 Launching the World Campaign 137 
 
 the brewers and distillers all entered into 
 movements of their own against this new 
 menace. 
 
 When, after an absence of five weeks, 
 Johnson returned to England, his office was 
 besieged by newspaper-men seeking state- 
 ments. " I understand that you have been 
 having a sort of Sioux-Indian-ghost-dance 
 over my affairs and the affairs of the Anti- 
 Saloon League in America," he said. 
 
 ' What I have been doing, and what I 
 expect to do in the future," he told a repre- 
 sentative of the Manchester Guardian, " is 
 merely to explain the American action 
 against drink. Neither I myself nor the 
 Anti-Saloon League has had the slightest 
 intention of interfering in any way with 
 British affairs. We will not take any part 
 whatever in any British elections. I am 
 under the most positive instructions not to 
 interfere in any way with such things : I 
 have not discussed British affairs in Britain, 
 and will not in the future. What I have been 
 doing, and what I expect to do in the future, 
 is merely to explain the American action 
 against the drink, tell why and how we 
 did it, and the result of this action. The
 
 1 3 8 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 British people are under no obligation to 
 adopt the same policy unless they choose 
 to do so. 
 
 " All this is in the direction of promoting 
 friendly relations between the two countries 
 along the line of the work of the English- 
 speaking Union, of which I am a member, and 
 of which Mr. William H. Taft and Mr. 
 Arthur J. Balfour are the presidents. 
 America and England are arranging an 
 interchange of college professorships and 
 interchange of clergymen, and why not an 
 interchange in other things which will help 
 to make each side understand the view- 
 points and ambitions of the other ? 
 
 " We sent a couple of million soldiers over 
 to France to work side by side with the sons 
 of Britain. That helps us to understand each 
 other. Before America entered the war the 
 British publicists flooded America with 
 literature explaining the British purpose 
 in the war, and seeking American aid. The 
 British Government even opened a publicity 
 head-quarters on Fifth-avenue, New York, 
 in charge of a capable publicity man, Mr. 
 Geoffrey Butler, seeking to enlist American 
 sympathies for the Allied cause. No loyal 
 American objected to that. We welcomed 
 it all and only wish that it had been
 
 Launching the World Campaign 139 
 
 done on a larger scale so that we would 
 have seen our duty sooner and got into the 
 conflict sooner. 
 
 " During the past few weeks, according 
 to your own newspapers, British bond- 
 holders in brewery stocks and bonds have 
 sent large sums of money to America to 
 fight against the enforcement of our National 
 Prohibition Programme. According to 
 American newspapers this money has been 
 used in part in employing Mr. Samuel Unter- 
 meyer, of New York, one of the best American 
 lawyers, to fight against Prohibition in the 
 courts. Mr. Untermeyer himself announces 
 that he has been so employed. No loyal 
 American objects to this. We will help 
 British shareholders to spend the money. 
 The fact that British capitalists got stung 
 by investing their gold in German breweries 
 in America is no concern of ours. 
 
 " All this interchange of discussion helps 
 to promote a community of help and a 
 community of interest among English-speak- 
 ing people. I came over here at the urgent 
 and repeated invitation of the dry organisa- 
 tions of Great Britain to tell the story of 
 prohibition in America, and to counteract 
 some of the grotesque yarns that are being 
 circulated on this side of the water about
 
 140 Launching the World Campaign 
 
 the effects of the dry policy in America. 
 Those who wish to listen ought to have 
 the British right to do so : those who do not 
 wish to listen can have the British right 
 to stop up their ears and make whatever 
 comment they please about it. Then the 
 British public will likely exercise the good old 
 British right to do whatever they please 
 about it." 
 
 But the British public had received an 
 impression which no explanation could 
 remove. The country was quickly flooded 
 with literature, not prohibition literature, 
 but anti-prohibition. One cartoon which 
 was displayed in most of the public-houses 
 in the country showed the figure of a long- 
 nosed individual whose nasal extremity 
 stretched from the United States into the 
 private premises of John Bull in England. 
 " Pussyfoot Nosey Parker from across the 
 sea," it was headed. " Dollars for Dirty 
 work in England. Shall he Pro-boss-us ? " 
 
 Leaflets were issued widely, urging the 
 public to " send the alien agitators home." 
 Meetings called by the temperance supporters 
 in many parts of the country were broken up.
 
 Launching the World Campaign 141 
 
 The name of " Pussyfoot " was in every one's 
 mouth. It was introduced in the music- 
 halls and theatres, and the writers of 
 pantomime songs made ready to exploit him 
 to the full. " Pussyfoot " bade fair to become 
 the bogey man of England.
 
 Chapter X How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 AMONG the numerous invitations which 
 -Y. Johnson received to address all kinds 
 of assemblies in Britain was one from Major 
 Evelyn Wrench of the Overseas Club, asking 
 him to take part in a debate on the 
 " How and Why of American Prohibi- 
 tion." Mr. Johnson assented, and Novem- 
 ber 13th was fixed as the date. Mr. R. 
 Mitchell Banks, a barrister, representing the 
 anti-prohibitionists, was to speak on the 
 other side. 
 
 The Overseas Club is an active British 
 Imperial organisation with a large number 
 of members scattered throughout the world. 
 It has Club-rooms in Kingsway, London, 
 close to the Law Courts, and regular after- 
 noon lectures and debates are usually held in 
 these rooms. So many applications came, 
 however, for tickets for the Prohibition 
 debate that the Club-rooms were too small, 
 
 142
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 143 
 
 and Essex Hall, in Essex Street near by, was 
 taken. 
 
 About this time the students of the 
 University of London took it into their heads 
 to demonstrate to the world that London 
 is really a University city. On the Monday 
 of the second week in November two groups 
 of University students, from University 
 College and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
 had engaged in a pitched battle in the ground 
 of University College over the possession of 
 a gun valued by both of them as a relic. On 
 Tuesday they had marched down into Fleet 
 Street and demonstrated in front of a news- 
 paper office as a protest against some 
 criticisms passed on them. 
 
 The Prohibition debate was to be on 
 Thursday. The students from King's 
 College and University College, and from 
 the hospital schools, resolved to come to- 
 gether to rag " Pussyfoot " Johnson. There 
 was no intention to injure him. Word was 
 passed round by the organisers that no real 
 damage was to be done. If he was pelted 
 it was to be with little bags of flour and 
 nothing harder.
 
 144 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 Essex Street is a narrow thoroughfare 
 running from the eastern end of the Strand 
 towards the River Thames. The organisers 
 of the meeting knew nothing of what was 
 being planned. The newspapers, however, 
 were better informed and shortly before 
 four o'clock on the afternoon of the meeting, 
 flashlight photographers mounted various 
 points of vantage around Essex Street and 
 took possession of windows opposite the 
 entrance to the hall. Company after 
 company of students marched in military 
 formation for the one point. The first 
 section rushed the doors and occupied 
 the greater part of the seats in the hall. A 
 considerable host waited outside, with banners 
 and beer-bottles, to seize " Pussyfoot " on 
 arrival. Every taxicab approaching the 
 place was searched. Johnson, however, 
 quietly walked through the crowd into the 
 hall, no one recognising him. A few police- 
 men were on the scene and later on the 
 iron gates of the hall were shut. 
 
 Long before the meeting started the 
 students within and without were shout- 
 ing :
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 145 
 
 " Pussyfoot, Pussyfoot, we want Pussyfoot. 
 Bart's wants Pussyfoot ; 
 Guy's wants Pussyfoot ; 
 We all want Pussyfoot. 
 Pussyfoot ! " 
 
 As the chairman and the two speakers 
 mounted the platform, they were greeted 
 with wild shouts and cat-calls. The chairman 
 called upon the interrupters to be sports- 
 men and give the speakers a fair hearing. 
 He might as well have spoken to the winds. 
 Major Wrench supported the appeal for 
 fair play, mentioning that the Overseas Club 
 had collected 1,000,000 for the war and had 
 presented the Government with three 
 hundred aeroplanes. " As Britishers, as 
 I understand most of you are, I ask you to 
 give our guests a fair hearing." He was 
 shouted down. " I have as much time to 
 spare as you have," said the chairman, 
 " And I am prepared to wait here all night, 
 if necessary, until you are willing to listen." 
 Mr. Johnson intimated that he was willing 
 to wait also. 
 
 " We want Pussyfoot," came the chorus 
 in reply. Then the chairman offered to 
 allow a representative of the students to
 
 146 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 state their case from the platform. One of 
 them, disguised as a stage Irishman, 
 promptly came up from the back and was 
 enthusiastically greeted. 
 
 " We say that if Britain wants to be wet 
 or dry," he declared amid tumultuous cheers, 
 " that is a thing for Britishers alone to decide. 
 We don't want Americans coming over here 
 with elaborate and ornate speeches, telling 
 us what we ought to do. We won the 
 battle of the Somme on rum, and rum only, 
 and the sooner Mr. Johnson realises that the 
 better." 
 
 Several newspaper photographers who had 
 taken possession of the little gallery to the 
 rear of the hall were busy taking flash- 
 light pictures and the flashes added a weird 
 touch to the extraordinary scene. 
 
 Mr. Banks, the anti-Prohibitionist, now 
 asked for fair play for his opponent. 
 Then Johnson himself stepped to the 
 front, quiet, smiling, and looking, as the 
 reporters next day said, as cherubic as 
 Mr. Pickwick. The tumult had left him 
 quite unruffled. 
 
 He started by declaring that he quite
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 147 
 
 sympathised with the views of those people 
 who said that it was for Britishers alone 
 to decide if Britain wanted to be wet or 
 dry. " I came to this country not on my 
 own initiative, but on the invitation and 
 partly at the expense of a body of British 
 people. I claim the British right to invite 
 anybody into their homes that they think fit, 
 and if this right is denied them, then this 
 country is false to its traditions." 
 
 Amid yells and songs a party of students 
 rose from their seats as though going out. 
 Then, at an arranged signal, one section 
 opened a barrage of bags of flour on the plat- 
 form and another section rushed up. Picked 
 men had been allotted to the task of seizing 
 " Pussyfoot " and his chairman. 
 
 Chairs were smashed, tables overturned. 
 Johnson, getting his back to the wall, put up 
 a first-class fight, and with hands and knees 
 tried to keep his opponents back. A clergy- 
 man rushed up to his assistance and the 
 two together made it very lively for a 
 brief space of time for the army of lusty 
 youths around them. Johnson was momen- 
 tarily blinded by little bags of flour
 
 148 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 bursting in his face and was seized and 
 borne out triumphantly. The chairman had 
 already been knocked down a couple of times 
 while trying to reach " Pussyfoot's " side, 
 and he too was seized and carried into the 
 street. 
 
 The kidnapping occurred so quickly that 
 it was impossible for the ordinary members 
 of the audience to do anything to protect 
 them. Most of them, apart from the 
 students, were ladies. 
 
 " The situation in the body of the hall," 
 said one paper next day, " was at one time 
 distinctly dangerous. Chairs were over- 
 thrown and broken, and women who were 
 roughly pushed aside screamed for mercy. 
 One of them, turning boldly around and 
 facing the mob, shouted defiantly, ' You 
 scoundrels ! You cowards ! I wish I were 
 a man ; I would soon show you what I would 
 do with you.' ' 
 
 After the tumult had died down, Mr. 
 Mitchell Banks returned to the platform 
 and said, " I hope you will take my word of 
 honour that I know nothing of this disgrace- 
 ful scene. I repudiate it. I propose to you
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 149 
 
 that we pass a vote of condolence with Mr. 
 Johnson on the unfair and rough treatment 
 he has received." 
 
 Essex Street, and the Strand facing it, were 
 now packed with an army of close on two 
 thousand students. Some had comman- 
 deered a newspaper -cart and had taken the 
 horse out of the shafts. The chairman was 
 carried into this, the police vainly trying 
 to rescue him. Then he was dragged off to 
 King's College near by, the top of the covered 
 cart being smashed in by crowds of young 
 fellows around. Johnson was borne by 
 another route and the two were carried into 
 the yard of King's College amid triumphant 
 yells of " Pussyfoot, Pussyfoot, We've got 
 Pussyfoot." 
 
 The wilder spirits demanded that Pussy- 
 foot and his companion should be ducked 
 in the Thames or in the fountains at 
 Trafalgar Square, but the leaders of the 
 " rag " had the matter well in hand. They 
 wanted a " rag," not a tragedy. 
 
 Johnson was carried along to King's 
 College and offered beer, which he, of course, 
 refused to drink. Speeches were demanded,
 
 150 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 but there was too much noise for any except 
 those in the immediate circle around to hear 
 what Johnson and his companion had to say. 
 The Prohibition leader, realising now that 
 the thing was no more than a " rag,'! entered 
 good-humouredly into the spirit of the pro- 
 ceedings. Another enormous procession was 
 formed. Johnson was placed on a stretcher, 
 his chairman behind him in a cart drawn 
 by a number of lads, and they set out in slow 
 march through the West End of London, up 
 the Strand, around Charing Cross Road, 
 through Leicester Square and Piccadilly 
 Circus, and up Regent Street. Some of the 
 students carried banners. One of these bore 
 the inscription : 
 
 " Pussyfoot, Pussyfoot, why are we here ? 
 We've come to prevent you from stopping our beer. 
 Pussyfoot, Pussyfoot, there'll be a big riot. 
 We drink in pubs, but you on the quiet." 
 
 The streets were lined with thousands of 
 people. The police, having vainly attempted 
 rescues, marched alongside of the procession. 
 Chorus after chorus was sung, rival sections 
 of the students singing against each other.
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 151 
 
 " What won the war ? " one man would 
 thunder. 
 
 " Beer," the chorus answered amidst 
 tumultuous cheers. 
 
 College poets had written their rhymes 
 for the occasion. Some of these were very 
 halting. 
 
 *' We don't want beer and whisky, 
 We don't want gin and bitters. 
 All we want is frisky 
 Pussyfoot." 
 
 But the favourite chorus kept up nearly 
 the whole time was : 
 
 *' Pussyfoot, Pussyfoot, we've got Pussyfoot. 
 Guy's have Pussyfoot ; 
 Bart's have Pussyfoot ; 
 We've all got Pussyfoot. 
 Pussyfoot." 
 
 Meanwhile Johnson, his clothing covered 
 with flour, sat smiling on his stretcher. His 
 hat had gone ; one of the students offered 
 him his. Another student offered the chair- 
 man, who was securely guarded on his cart, 
 whose shirt was ripped open, and whose tie 
 had disappeared in the struggle, an overcoat
 
 152 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 
 
 to keep him warm, for it was a cold autumn 
 evening. 
 
 The procession reached Great Portland 
 Street at a point near where Oxford Street 
 and Regent Street meet. Police reserves 
 had been called for and arrived on the scene. 
 They manoeuvred in such fashion that they 
 cut off the section with Johnson from the 
 rest of the procession. Then they made a 
 rush and bore him away from his captors. 
 A motor-car was near by and they hurried 
 him into it. 
 
 Up to now the affair had been nothing 
 more than a " rag." At the last moment 
 it took a more serious turn. Some one on 
 the outside of the crowd the students 
 declare that it was none of them threw a 
 stone which caught Johnson full on the ball 
 of his right eye. The police took him quickly 
 off to Bow Street Station, where a surgeon, 
 Dr. Thomas Rose, attended to his injury. 
 The pain was intense and it was evident 
 that the damage was serious, but owing to 
 the suffusion of blood it was impossible to 
 tell its full extent. Johnson, despite his pain, 
 pulled a handful of cigars from his pocket
 
 How "Pussyfoot" Lost His Eye 153 
 
 and sent them to the police who had 
 rescued him. Then he returned home with 
 heavily-bandaged eye. The reporters sought 
 him out. They found him smiling, despite 
 the pain. " Tell the boys there is no ill-will 
 on my side," he said, " not a grain."
 
 Chapter XI The " Bogey Man " Becomes a 
 Popular Hero 
 
 THE Englishman loves a " good sport." 
 By a " good sport " he understands 
 a man who plays the game, who can 
 take punishment without whimpering and 
 who goes through hard times with a 
 smile. 
 
 When the news was published that John- 
 son's eye had been badly injured in the 
 struggle on the Thursday afternoon and that 
 he had made light of it and sent a message 
 of good cheer to the students who ragged 
 him, there was a tremendous reaction in his 
 favour, shared by every class of the com- 
 munity. The students themselves wrote 
 a letter of sympathy, and sent a deputation 
 to visit Johnson in his home and to express 
 their sorrow. " It was not one of us who 
 threw the missile," they said. " There was 
 a distinct order given from the first that 
 
 154
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 155 
 
 no sticks or other weapons were to be 
 used, and that there was to be no 4 rough- 
 house.' " 
 
 Expressions of sympathy were heard as 
 freely in public-house bars and hotel saloons 
 as anywhere else. The Chairman of the Wine 
 and Spirit Trade Defence Fund sent a letter 
 expressing sincere regret at his treatment. 
 ' Your campaign to secure Prohibition in 
 Great Britain will be strenuously opposed 
 by British methods, but we entirely deprecate 
 anything which is not fair play." 
 
 Johnson was removed on the following day 
 to a nursing home. " Tell everybody that 
 it is not serious, and that I had a good time," 
 he said. " It is only this little eye trouble 
 which is the fly in the ointment. I have 
 nothing against the boys. They are all 
 right, and I hope to meet them again soon, 
 when I will give them the interrupted 
 address." 
 
 A portrait of him sitting up in bed smiling, 
 with bandaged eye, which appeared in many 
 newspapers, helped still more to turn the 
 current of popular sympathy in his favour. 
 44 Anyone who could smile like that under
 
 156 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 the circumstances must be a real good sort," 
 said men to one another. 
 
 " Dont let the boys think that I am a 
 martyr," he told correspondents. " I'm not. 
 I am fifty -seven, but last night the boys made 
 me feel twenty years younger. I am feeling 
 to-day a bit stiff, and the eye gave me a 
 bad night, but the only thing that really 
 bothers me is that the doctors won't 
 let me read the story of the 4 rag ' in the 
 papers." 
 
 The King made enquiries about Johnson's 
 progress, and made no secret of his feelings 
 over the matter. The students had rather 
 a surprise when on the Friday evening Lord 
 Birkenhead, Lofd Chancellor of England, 
 took opportunity, when speaking at the 
 Connaught Rooms in London, to condemn 
 the " rag " in severe language. " I speak 
 with all sincerity," he declared, " when I 
 say that I profoundly regret the incident in 
 which a citizen of the United States was 
 concerned. Mr. Johnson holds views which 
 I do not happen to hold. He was invited 
 here by Associations of English people who 
 shared his views. He was entitled ta express
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 157 
 
 his opinion in this country just as freely as 
 I would be entitled to do if I were invited 
 by American Associations to express my 
 opinion in that country. Making every 
 allowance for the high spirits of youth, 
 I profoundly regret that a citizen of 
 the United States should have been 
 subjected to such an outrage. I do not 
 know that anybody would be advised to 
 treat with levity and flippancy what has 
 happened." 
 
 The public, encouraged by Johnson's cheer- 
 ful words, were not inclined to regard the 
 damage to his eye seriously. The suffusion 
 of blood continued to prevent an exact 
 diagnosis from being taken. After a few 
 days word came that the eye was worse. 
 It was feared that the optic lens had been 
 broken. Then the bulletins stated that 
 Johnson was in great pain and that there 
 was little hope of saving it. 
 
 A fortnight after the " rag " it was found 
 necessary to remove the eye. " We found 
 in consultation," said Mr. Harold Grimsdale, 
 ; ' that it was impossible to save a useful 
 eye ; so in view of the pain which could not
 
 158 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 be relieved, we found it necessary to remove 
 it." 
 
 The London Evening News promptly 
 started a popular subscription as a mark 
 of public sympathy. Johnson was in no 
 state to be told anything when the sub- 
 scription was opened, but when he learned 
 of it he found himself in a somewhat awkward 
 position. He fully appreciated the kind 
 intentions that lay behind the proposal, but he 
 was anxious not to do anything that might 
 make it appear that he was trying to exploit 
 the accident for his own benefit. He asked 
 that the money which had been subscribed 
 should not be given to him but should be 
 devoted to Sir Arthur Pearson's great work 
 for blinded soldiers at St. Dunstan's Hostel 
 in London. This was done. 
 
 The reformer's letter-bag at this time bore 
 striking evidence of the wave of feeling in 
 his favour. Messages of sympathy came 
 in from all parts of the country and from 
 many parts of the world. Societies of all 
 kinds met and formally expressed their 
 disapproval and regret over what had 
 happened. Non-prohibitionists wrote cordial
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 159 
 
 letters telling Johnson that while they did 
 not like his doctrines, they admired him. 
 Here is a typical letter : 
 
 " 45 Queen's Gate, 
 
 London, S.W. 7. 
 GOOD OLD PUSSYFOOT, 
 
 I don't agree with your opinions, but 
 no one can deny you're the greatest sport 
 living. I am just about to drink your health, 
 and not in water either ! Here's wishing 
 you the very best of luck, and every success 
 in your campaign. 
 
 Yours in Sport, 
 (Sgd.) ARNOLD L. HASKELL." 
 
 The Editorial Staff of the King's College 
 Review wrote : 
 
 " King's College, 
 
 (University of London,) 
 
 Strand, London, W.C. 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 We are sorry to hear of the accident 
 which happened to you last night and trust 
 that it may not prove serious.
 
 160 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 We are also sorry that your speech from 
 the balcony at the College was not given 
 a fair hearing. Therefore we are writing 
 to ask if you will send a letter to the students 
 of King's College through the medium of the 
 official magazine, K. C. Review ? 
 
 We are just going to press, and your letter 
 could be included in this number. This 
 would enable you to get a fair ' hearing ' 
 from every one of the students which, 
 unfortunately, you were not accorded last 
 night when in the College precincts. 
 
 We are, Sir, 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 (Sgd.) C. H. DRIVER (Editor), 
 MAY G. MINNS (Sub-Editor), 
 REG. HATTON (Business Editor)." 
 
 The message which Johnson looked at 
 first, however, was a cable from his wife 
 
 away in Ohio : 
 
 " Westerville. 
 ANTISALLEG LONDON. 
 
 Keep courage Will come right Am 
 praying for you. With love 
 
 LILLIAN JOHNSON. 
 Dated 18."
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 161 
 
 The Minister for Education, the Rt. Hon. 
 H. A. L. Fisher, sent this letter : 
 
 "Board of Education, 
 
 Whitehall, London, S.W., 
 
 15 xi 19. 
 DEAR MR. JOHNSON, 
 
 I am much concerned to hear of the 
 treatment which you have received from a 
 body of University students in London. 
 Had you been an Englishman, the pro- 
 ceedings which are described in the news- 
 papers and which have had the result of 
 inflicting on you a serious bodily injury 
 would have been generally condemned as a 
 violation of the canons of decency and fair 
 play. But you are not an Englishman. You 
 are the citizen of a foreign country bound to 
 us by the closest ties of friendly association 
 and you came to us on the express invitation 
 of a body of our countrymen to ventilate an 
 important question of social policy. All 
 the more should you have been protected 
 from ill-usage by the sentiment of hospitality 
 which all right-feeling Englishmen entertain 
 towards a guest. 
 
 I have not the least doubt that the students 
 acted from an impulse of thoughtless levity 
 
 M
 
 1 62 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 and from no feeling of ill-will and that they 
 will on reflection be ready to acknowledge 
 their fault. Indeed I am glad to hear that 
 expressions of contrition have already 
 reached you. 
 
 Nevertheless it is an incident most deeply 
 to be regretted and entitling you to the 
 expression of the most complete and un- 
 reserved apology. 
 
 With best wishes for your speedy recovery. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 (Sgd.) H. A. L. FISHER." 
 
 The Commissioner of Police of the Metro- 
 polis sent a message to the American Consul- 
 General : 
 
 " The Commissioner desires me to assure 
 you that there were no steps that he would 
 not have taken to prevent this deplorable 
 incident, had it been possible to have fore- 
 seen it, and he wishes me to express his 
 personal regret, which he hopes you will 
 convey to Mr. Johnson." 
 
 Here is a letter from a famous sailor, 
 Admiral Sir G. King-Hall :
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 163 
 
 " 7 Albany Villas, Hove, 
 
 17th November, 1919. 
 DEAR MR. JOHNSON, 
 
 I send you my sincerest sympathy on 
 the dastardly outrage that you have been 
 the victim of, so foreign to all gentlemanly 
 and chivalrous feeling, and as an Englishman 
 cannot understand the childish and un- 
 generous conduct of young men in having 
 treated you thus. 
 
 I am a life-long T.A. and President of the 
 Royal Naval Temperance Society, consist- 
 ing of some 50,000 members, and thank 
 you for having come over to show what 
 an advantage T.A. in America has been in 
 the cause of efficiency. 
 
 I sincerely trust your eye may not be 
 permanently hurt, and as a British officer, 
 apologise for the unwarrantable conduct 
 of a small number of my young countrymen, 
 for having forgotten the rules of hospitality 
 to a stranger. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 A. KING-HALL." 
 
 His old friends of the Anti-Saloon League 
 sent him long messages and the Executive
 
 164 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 Committee of the League passed a resolution 
 on the matter on January 19th, 1920. Two 
 of the letters are specially worth producing. 
 The first comes from Mr. E. H. Cherrington, 
 one of the foremost figures in the League. 
 He wrote : 
 
 " Your eyes have been of great service to 
 the cause of righteousness in general and the 
 Prohibition movement in particular, and 
 yet I am fully persuaded that all the great 
 service which both your eyes have rendered 
 in the years gone by is not to be compared 
 with the remarkable service which you have 
 rendered in the loss of one of them. 
 
 In fact, you have gone Samson one better, 
 for you still have one eye, and from all 
 evidence there are other assets still remain- 
 ing. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, first of all, 
 on the faithful, persistent, determined and 
 successful effort which you have made since 
 you have been in England to properly 
 represent the Anti-Saloon League movement 
 in America. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the second 
 place, on standing your ground to the point 
 of physical exhaustion in defending your
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 165 
 
 right as a free man and an American citizen 
 lawfully to express your views. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the third 
 place, for the masterly manner in conducting 
 yourself and the remarkable qualities of 
 good sportsmanship shown in the way in 
 which you accepted the inevitable and tried 
 to make the world believe you enjoyed it. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the fourth 
 place, for the superlative good judgment in 
 declining to accept for yourself the contri- 
 butions raised through the London News 
 and the turning of the same to the benefit 
 of the hospital for blind soldiers. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the fifth 
 place, for the fortitude and diplomacy you 
 have shown toward other temperance 
 representatives from America and the leaders 
 of other temperance organisations in England 
 and the British Isles other than those which 
 were first recognised in the formation of the 
 World League. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the sixth 
 place, because you have ' run true to form ' 
 and have been able to more than justify 
 the confidence which some of us have always 
 had in your ability to make good on practic- 
 ally any proposition. 
 
 I want to congratulate you, in the seventh
 
 1 66 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 place, for having the privilege of rendering 
 the greatest service to the prohibition cause 
 throughout the world that has ever been 
 rendered by one individual in the space of 
 time which it took you to make good in 
 England. 
 
 The Anti-Saloon League of America is, 
 and ' of right ought to be ' proud of your 
 remarkable achievement. 
 
 Most cordially yours, 
 (Signed) ERNEST H. CHERRINGTON." 
 
 Mr. William H. Anderson, New York 
 State Superintendent of the League, another 
 of the foremost figures in the American 
 Campaign, sent this message dated November 
 14th, 1919: 
 
 " In the opinion of the New York Office of 
 the Anti- Saloon League you are a Christian 
 gentleman and a game sport. 
 
 We have read the newspaper accounts of 
 your 4 ragging ' by a mob of London medical 
 students, and we feel a keen sense of pride 
 in the sportsmanlike manner in which you 
 took the experience. 
 
 Over here they have a way of presenting
 
 The '''Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 167 
 
 the prohibitionists as long-haired, sour- 
 faced kill- joys. If there are such and we 
 have never met them yet you don't belong 
 to that school. 
 
 It did us all good to read that when 
 you were interviewed after you had been 
 man-handled by the mob you were ' cheer- 
 ful and chuckling ' and said you had had 
 4 quite a good time and thoroughly en- 
 joyed it.' 
 
 It made us swell with pride to note your 
 gameness and absolute fairness in not want- 
 ing the medical students to be blamed for 
 throwing the missile which caused a haemo- 
 rrhage of the eye and in saying 4 The police 
 worked it very nicely indeed.' 
 
 It was a joy to hear as we could almost 
 hear you say ' At first I scrapped a little, 
 but when I found it was a " rag " then I 
 played the game.' 
 
 You have always played the game fair 
 and square. You have always come up 
 smiling and you have always won out in 
 the end. We trust your injuries are slight. 
 We know the gains to the cause of decency 
 and fair play will be great in England as a 
 result of your experience. 
 
 John Bull loves and admires a good, clean 
 fight, and you are making one."
 
 1 68 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 
 
 The Resolution adopted by the Executive 
 Committee of the Anti-Saloon League of 
 America on 19th January, 1920, was as 
 follows : 
 
 " The Executive Committee of the Anti- 
 Saloon League of America has learned with 
 deep regret of maltreatment of our Mr. 
 W. E. Johnson by students in London. 
 Concerning the moral quality of such treat- 
 ment we do not wish to say more than to 
 express our surprise and disappointment 
 that an honoured and eminent citizen of the 
 United States of America should be so 
 treated by the citizens of Great Britain, 
 when his only offence was to respond to an 
 invitation by Britishers to visit their country 
 and to give testimony concerning the bene- 
 fits of Prohibition in America. 
 
 It is a matter of great satisfaction to us, 
 and, we believe, to the American public, 
 that English public opinion as expressed by 
 telegram and letter, and through the press, 
 has strongly condemned the conduct of the 
 students. 
 
 We hereby record our unbounded admira- 
 tion for the fine qualities exhibited by Mr. 
 Johnson under the trying circumstances
 
 The "Bogey Man" Becomes a Hero 169 
 
 and throughout his suffering and loss. 
 While his course in no sense surprises us it is 
 none the less gratifying. We congratulate 
 Mr. Johnson upon the fortitude, chivalry 
 and good temper which he exhibited through- 
 out. 
 
 We would also hereby record and instruct 
 our secretary to convey to Mr. Johnson 
 reassurances of our continued esteem and 
 support in his faithful and efficient services. 
 We do not believe that such services will fail 
 of appreciation and moral support from the 
 British public." 
 
 Johnson's cheerful acceptance of his ill- 
 fortune did more to advance his cause than 
 three years of regular work could have 
 accomplished. Britons love a " good sport." 
 
 M 2
 
 Chapter XII England " Dry "by 1930 
 
 WHEN the Englishman wishes to do 
 anyone honour, he raises a fund for 
 him or gives him a public banquet. Johnson 
 had refused the fund, so as soon as he was 
 fit the temperance workers tendered him a 
 luncheon, followed by a big meeting at the 
 Central Hall, Westminster. The gathering 
 was described by the Methodist Times as 
 one of the largest, most enthusiastic and 
 representative of its kind ever held in 
 Britain. Over three thousand people were 
 present and many could not obtain admission. 
 "Our guest," said Dr. C. W. Saleeby, 
 who presided at the luncheon, " has given 
 his eye to lighten the darkness of the dupes, 
 victims and parasites of the liquor trade and 
 to free them from the miseries of their con- 
 dition. He has succeeded in making pro- 
 hibition in Britain a live political issue and 
 it will henceforth so remain." 
 
 170
 
 England "Dry" ^1930 171 
 
 " I can see the demonstration just accorded 
 to me with my glass eye," said Johnson 
 when the applause and musical honours 
 accorded him had died down. " So far as 
 the affair in Essex Hall was concerned, I 
 do not intend to grieve about that. The 
 benefits which I believe have accrued to the 
 cause we have at heart more than outweigh 
 my sense of personal injury through the 
 loss of an eye." 
 
 Sir Alfred Pearce Gould, the famous 
 surgeon, presided over the public meeting, 
 and it would have been difficult to surpass 
 it for enthusiasm and high spirits. When 
 Johnson arose the audience rose too, and 
 applause ended in the whole audience uniting 
 in singing, " For he's a jolly good fellow." 
 " The welcome you give me," he said, 
 " reminds me of the words of King Agrippa 
 to Paul, 4 Almost thou persuadest me to be 
 a Britisher.' " 
 
 Was it not possible, he asked, that under 
 the leadership of England's " oldest 
 daughter," the whole world and especially 
 the English-speaking world might speedily 
 see the end of a business which Gladstone
 
 172 England "Dry" by 1930 
 
 said was a greater curse than either pestilence 
 or war ? " If I can contribute in a small 
 measure to the consummation of this great 
 ideal, I shall esteem it to be the highest 
 privilege granted to me by my great Creator, 
 who I believe is with me in the effort. Once 
 again, may I say c Thank you ' for this 
 magnificent greeting. God bless you all." 
 
 The strain and suffering before the opera- 
 tion had told on the reformer and made it 
 necessary for him to go for a time to North 
 Africa to recover his health. On his return 
 to England he found a very different atmos- 
 phere awaiting him from the previous 
 summer, when he started his London cam- 
 paign. Then the temperance cause in 
 England had seemed almost moribund ; 
 now prohibition was in the air. 
 
 The apathy of the Government in dealing 
 with temperance reform in Parliament and 
 the growing relaxation of the old war-time 
 prohibition restrictions were producing a 
 marked increase in drunkenness and in 
 crimes due to drink. But many men were 
 convinced that this in itself would, when 
 the right moment came, lend real force
 
 England " Dry" by 1930 173 
 
 to the campaign for reform, proving in the 
 clearest fashion the relation between relaxed 
 control and crime. It would be too much 
 to say that even then any large section of the 
 British people in the United Kingdom were 
 in favour of prohibition, but the movement 
 had begun and great sections of influential 
 people were beginning openly to avow 
 themselves as favouring limitation of the 
 sale of spirits and the heavier alcoholic 
 drinks, to a degree never yet attempted or 
 thought possible. 
 
 Johnson was not to be long in England ; 
 urgent affairs were calling him to America. 
 The great Encyclopedia on Alcohol which 
 his assistants there had been working on 
 during his absence, now required his personal 
 supervision. He was wanted for a short 
 public campaign. He started from South- 
 ampton on April 13th. 
 
 A day or two before he sailed I discussed 
 with him the outlook in the United Kingdom. 
 I remembered how, some years before, he 
 had prophesied that the United States would 
 be " dry " by 1920 and how his forecast had 
 come true. What would happen in England ?
 
 174 ILngland "Dry" by 1930 
 
 " England will be ' dry ' by 1930," the 
 reformer assured me. " That is not my 
 view alone. ' If America stands firm and 
 makes good on prohibition, England will 
 adopt the same policy within ten years,' Mr. 
 Lloyd George told a friend a few weeks ago. 
 Many heads of industry admit that England 
 must, within a decade, follow America's 
 example if only for economic reasons, pro- 
 vided America makes good. 
 
 " America is going to make good. Let 
 there be no mistake about that. You will 
 hear much concerning reaction, but pro- 
 hibition has come to stay. On the surface, 
 the drink traffic seems to be triumphant 
 here. It is enormously wealthy, strongly 
 entrenched, and during the past few months 
 has won victory after victory. That is a 
 fact. It has secured the relaxation of war- 
 time restrictions on the sale of drink, despite 
 overwhelming official proof of the benefits 
 of these restrictions. 
 
 " It has obtained for itself such place in 
 the very Government itself that it can 
 prevent for the time all effective temperance 
 legislation.
 
 England "Dry" by 1930 175 
 
 " The Government has time after time 
 promised a Temperance Bill. The Bill con- 
 tinues to be postponed. When the Bill 
 does appear there is little hope that it will 
 mark any real advance. Welsh veto was 
 killed. I expect very little in the way of 
 genuine temperance legislation from the 
 present Coalition Parliament. The present 
 Government is not organised along the 
 lines that make advanced legislation 
 possible. 
 
 " You may ask me on what grounds, then, 
 do I base my prediction of England becom- 
 ing ' dry ' in ten years ? I expect it first 
 from the character of the Prime Minister. 
 Mr. Lloyd George is for the moment unable 
 to do anything effective. But Mr. Lloyd 
 George is known to be a fierce opponent 
 of the liquor traffic, and no man in Britain 
 more certainly has his own way in the end 
 than the Premier. 
 
 44 1 expect Britain to go 4 dry ' because 
 of what I know of the character of the British 
 people themselves. Here is a nation that 
 studies facts and acts on them. England 
 has led the way in all kinds of great reforms,
 
 176 England " Dry" by 1930 
 
 except in the reform of the liquor traffic. 
 Trace out history for the last hundred years 
 and see how often Britain has been in the 
 van for advance. 
 
 ' When the Englishman is first offered 
 a new idea, he grouses at it or ignores it. 
 If he grouses, it's hopeful. England has 
 been passing through the grousing stage 
 over prohibition. Meetings have been 
 smashed up all over the country. Now men 
 are beginning to cease grousing, and to 
 recognise the facts. 
 
 " Two great classes are being won, busi- 
 ness men and organised labour. The work- 
 ing-man knows what the cutting out of the 
 public -house will mean for him. 
 
 " Drinking habits among employees mean 
 a loss of ten per cent in efficiency. That 
 is the calculation of some of the largest 
 American employers. Great manufacturers 
 here are more and more recognising that a 
 drinking nation cannot hope to compete 
 economically with a nation that has finished 
 with drink. Some of the most important 
 gatherings I have had here have been with 
 the heads of great undertakings, who are
 
 TLngland "Dry" ^1930 177 
 
 to-day placing themselves behind the Pro- 
 hibition movement. Some of them are not 
 even teetotalers, but they are willing to have 
 their own whisky cut out for the general 
 benefit. The whole English-speaking world 
 is moving our way. The United States is 
 4 dry ' ; almost the whole of Canada is 
 4 dry ' ; the majority of New Zealand voters 
 have supported prohibition ; Australia is 
 growing ' dry ' ; Wales wants local option, 
 and is only prevented from having it by 
 the English votes ; Scotland will declare 
 large areas ' dry ' in a few months ; both 
 Ulster and the South of Ireland will adopt 
 local option when Ireland has Home Rule. 
 England will not remain permanently in the 
 tail of the procession. Like the man from 
 Missouri, she wants to be shown why. The 
 example of her own kinsmen will show her." 
 
 Confident, smiling, quiet-spoken, he made 
 his farewell. 
 
 A fortnight later, as his ship passed by the 
 statue of Liberty in New York harbour, 
 and approached the dock-side, he was to 
 discover that his own countrymen were 
 preparing for him a reception such as
 
 178 England "Dry" by 1930 
 
 Americans tender only to those of their 
 own people who have worthily upheld 
 American tradition and the American name 
 overseas.
 
 The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. 
 William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
 
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