With the simplicity which knows no better they deplore their ill-rewarded "industry," and describe their fraudulent practices as though they were a proper means of earning bread and butter. They have as little shame as repentance. Their only regrets are that they have been ruined by the police or forced to spend a few barren years in the State prison. And about them hover always detective and police-captain, ill-omened birds of prey, who feed upon the underworld. There is nothing more remarkable in this drama of theft and hunger than the perfect understanding which unites the criminal lamb and the wolfish upholder of the law. The grafter looks to his opponent for protection, and looks not in vain, so long as he has money in his pocket. The detective shepherds the law-breakers, whom he is appointed to arrest; he lives with them; he shares their confidences and their gains; he encourages their enterprise that he may earn a comfortable dividend; and he gives them up to justice when they are no longer worth defending. No dramatist that ever lived could do justice to this astounding situation, and it is the highest tribute to human ingenuity that few of the interlocutors fall below their opportunity.
And it may be admitted that New York gave, and gives, an easy chance to policemen bent upon oppression. What can the poor, ignorant foreigners, who throng the east side of the city, do against their brutal and omnipotent guardians? "An impressive spectacle was presented to us one day," reports the Committee, "in the presence of about 100 patrolmen in uniform, who during the period of three preceding years had been convicted by the police commissioners of unprovoked and unwarranted assault on citizens." Still more impressive than "this exhibit of convicted clubbers" was "a stream of victims of police brutality who testified before the Committee. The eye of one man, punched out by a patrolman's club, hung on his cheek. Others were brought before the Committee, fresh from their punishment, covered with blood and bruises, and in some cases battered out of recognition." The whole city seemed the prey of a panic terror. One day "a man rushed into the session, fresh from an assault made upon him by a notorious politician and two policemen, and with fear depicted upon his countenance threw himself upon the mercy of the Committee and asked its protection, insisting that he knew of no court and of no place where he could in safety go and obtain protection from his persecutors." From all which it is plain that too high a price may be paid for the philanthropy of Tammany Hall, and that a self-governing democracy cannot always keep an efficient watch upon its guardians.
What is it in the life and atmosphere of America which thus encourages crime, or rather elevates crime to a level of excellence unknown elsewhere? In the first place, the citizens of New York are the disciples of Hobbes. To them life is a state of war. The ceaseless competition for money is a direct incentive to the combat. Nature seems to have armed every man's hand against his fellow. And then the American is always happiest when he believes himself supreme in his own walk. The man who inhabits the greatest country on earth likes to think of his talent as commensurate with his country's. If he be a thief, he must be the most skilful of his kind; if he be a blackmailing policeman, he must be a perfect adept at the game. In brief, restlessness and the desire of superiority have produced a strange result, and there is little doubt that the vulgar American is insensitive to moral shocks. This insensitiveness is easily communicated to the curious visitor. A traveller of keen observation and quick intelligence, who has recently spent "a year amongst Americans," accepts the cynicism of the native without a murmur. After yielding to that spirit of enthusiastic hope which is breathed by the Statue of Liberty, he thus discusses the newly-arrived alien:
Even the stars in their courses [thus he writes] fight for America, if not always for the immigrant when he lands. The politicians would fain prevent his assimilation in order that his vote might be easily manipulated by them; but first of all he must have a vote to be handled, and to this end the politicians provide him with naturalisation papers, fraudulent it may be—the State Superintendent of Elections in New York estimates that 100,000 fraudulent naturalisation papers were issued in New York State alone in 1903,—and thus in the very beginning of his life in America the immigrant feels himself identified with, and takes delight and pride in, the American name and nature; and lo! already the alien is bound to the "native" by the tie of a common sentiment, the [Greek word] of the Greeks, which is one of the most powerful factors of nationality.
Poor [Greek word]! many follies have been spoken in your name! But never before were you identified with fraudulent naturalisation! Never before were you mistaken for the trick of a manipulating politician!
Such being the tie of a common sentiment, it is not surprising that the Americans are universally accustomed to graft and boodle. With characteristic frankness they have always professed a keen interest in those who live by their wits. It is not for nothing that Allan Pinkerton, the eminent detective, called affectionately "the old man," is a national hero. His perfections are already celebrated in a prose epic, and he is better known to west as to east than the President himself. And this interest, this sense of heroism, are expressed in a vast and entertaining literature. Nowhere has this literature of scoundrelism, adorned by Defoe and beloved by Borrow, flourished as it has flourished in America. Between the dime novel and the stern documents of the Lexow Committee there is room for history and fiction of every kind. The crooked ones of the earth have vied with the detectives in the proper relation of their experiences. On the one hand you find the great Pinker-ton publishing to the world a breathless selection from his own archives; on the other, so practised a novelist as Mr Julian Hawthorne embellishing the narrative of Inspector Byrnes; and it is evident that both of them satisfy a general curiosity. In these records of varying merit and common interest the attentive reader may note the changes which have taken place in the method and practice of thieving. There is no man so ready to adapt himself to new circumstances as the scoundrel, and the ingenuity of the American rogue has never been questioned. In the old days of the backwoods and romance Jesse James rode forth on a high-mettled steed to hold up cars, coaches, and banks; and James Murel, the horse-thief, celebrated by Mark Twain, whose favourite disguise was that of an itinerant preacher, cherished no less a project than an insurrection of negroes and the capture of New Orleans. The robber of to-day is a stern realist. He knows nothing of romance. A ride under the stars and a swift succession of revolver-shots have no fascination for him. He likes to work in secret upon safe or burglar-box. He has moved with the times, and has at his hand all the resources of modern science. If we do not know all that is to be known of him and his ambitions it is our own fault, since the most expert of his class, Langdon W. Moore, has given us in 'His Own Story of his Eventful Life' (Boston, 1893) a complete revelation of a crook's career. It is an irony of life that such a book as this should come out of Boston, and yet it is so quick in movement, of so breathless an excitement, that it may outlive many specimens of Bostonian lore and culture. It is but one example out of many, chosen because in style as in substance it outstrips all competitors.
Without knowing it, Langdon W. Moore is a disciple of Defoe. He has achieved by accident that which the author of 'Moll Flanders' achieved by art. There is a direct simplicity in his narrative which entitles him to a place among the masters. He describes hair-breadth escapes and deadly perils with the confident air of one who is always exposed to them. He gives the impression of the hunted and the hunter more vividly than any writer of modern times. When he is opening a safe, you hear, in spite of yourself, the stealthy step upon the stair. If he watches for a pal at the street end, you share his anxiety lest that pal should be intercepted by the watchful detective. And he produces his effects without parade or ornament. He tells his story with a studied plainness, and by adding detail to detail keeps your interest ever awake. Like many other great men, he takes his skill and enterprise for granted. He does not write of his exploits as though he were always amazed at his own proficiency. Of course he has a certain pride in his skill. He cannot describe his perfect mastery over all the locks that ever were made without a modest thrill. He does not disguise his satisfaction at Inspector Byrnes' opinion that "he had so deeply studied combination locks as to be able to open them from the sound ejected from the spindle." For the rest, he recognises that he is merely a workman, like another, earning his living, and that nothing can be accomplished save by ceaseless industry and untiring toil. Like many another hero, Langdon W. Moore was born in New England, and was brought up at Newburyport, a quiet seaport town. The only sign of greatness to be detected in his early life was an assault upon a schoolmaster, and he made ample atonement for this by years of hard work upon a farm. He was for a while a typical hayseed, an expert reaper, ready to match himself against all comers. He reached his zenith when he was offered fifty dollars in gold for six weeks' toil, and he records with a justified pleasure that "no man had ever been paid such high wages as that." But his energetic spirit soon wearied of retirement, and he found his way to New York, not to be fleeced, like the hayseed of the daily press, but to fleece others. The gambling hells knew him; he became an adept at poker and faro; and he soon learned how to correct or to compel fortune. His first experiment was made upon one Charley White, who dealt faro bank every Saturday night; and it is thus that Moore describes the effect of an ingenious discovery:
He kept his box and cards in a closet adjoining his room. One night during his absence I fitted a key to his closet, took out his cards, and sand-papered the face of eight cards in each deck. I then removed the top of his faro-box, bulged out the centre of the front plate at the mouth, and filed the plate on the inside at both corners to a bevel. I then replaced the top, put in a deck of cards, and made a deal. I found the cards not sanded would follow up and fill the mouth of the box after each turn was made; and if the mouth remained dark and the edge of the top card could not be seen, one of the sand-papered cards was next, and a loser. This would give me several "dead" turns in each deal.
By this means the great man, still despised as a Boston bean-eater, was able to bring his adversary to ruin. The adversary at last discovered the artifice, and "for the next five years," to quote Moore's own words, "we met as strangers."
It will be seen that from his earliest days Moore possessed a scientific ingenuity, which the hard experience of life rapidly improved. And it was not long before a definite direction was given to his talent. Arrested in 1856, as he thought unjustly, he determined "to do no more work until obliged to do it for the State." He therefore turned his skill of hand to account, and went into the "green goods business." His success in this venture was so great that he made the best dollar bills ever put upon the market, and he boasts legitimately that in the game he "never lost a man." Presently he discovered that there was a quicker profit in stolen bonds. "From my first venture in this bond-smashing business," to quote his own simple words, "in 1862 up to 1870, I made more money than in any branch of industry I was ever engaged in." "Branch of industry" is admirable, and proves that Moore had a proper appreciation of his craft. But bond-smashing compelled a perfect knowledge of locks and bolts, and in this knowledge, as has been said, Moore was supreme. At the end of his career, when he had hung his arms upon the wall, and retired to spend a green old age at Boston, it was to his treatment of Yale and Lillie locks that he looked back with the greatest pleasure. But no exploit flattered his vanity more easily than the carrying off from the Bank at Concord—the Concord of Emerson and Hawthorne—of some three hundred thousand dollars. That he purchased his freedom by an ample restitution mattered nothing to the artist. His purpose was achieved, his victory won, and if his victims came by their own again, he at least had the satisfaction which comes of a successful engagement.