My Adventures with Your Money

by George Graham Rice

Private papers were grabbed and bundles of certificates of stock, packages of money, checks, receipts and everything that came in sight were carried away. No complete record was made at the time of the raid of the documents and other valuables seized. The temporary receiver for B. H. Scheftels & Company, before his discharge later on, was able to gather together and take an accounting of part of the seized assets of the corporation, but I have no doubt that many thousands of dollars worth of securities and money were hopelessly lost.

When the wreck was complete the prisoners were driven like malefactors out of the front entrance, down the steps and loaded into the Black Maria. Five thousand people witnessed the act. The prisoners pleaded in vain to be allowed to pay for taxicabs to convey them before the United States Commissioner. They urged that as yet they had had no hearing and were innocent in the eyes of the law, and until convicted of some offense they were entitled to decent treatment. This request was refused. The delay in the start to the Federal building was just long enough to give the dense crowd that had filled the block time to insult the victims of the atrocity to the fullest extent. Friends of the arrested men boiled over with indignation and several fights occurred. Men were knocked down, trampled upon and the clothing torn from their backs in the desperate mêlée. The scene was disgraceful.

An army of newspaper reporters, attended by a camera brigade, were on the spot and snapshotted the prisoners as they entered the Black Maria. With bells clanging and whips lashing, a start was made up Broad Street to Wall. Then the vehicle turned up Broadway and ding-donged on to the Federal building. There the men were arraigned. Bail aggregating $55,000 was demanded. Later several of the men taken into custody in this brutal manner were not even indicted.

Called upon to identify the prisoners, the Special Agent of the Department of Justice was unable to point out any of them except Mr. Scheftels. A stenographer in the employ of the corporation was forced to single them out.

The warrant proved to have been sworn to by the Special Agent and had been granted on his affidavit that the corporation had committed crimes against some few of its customers. Two of them have already been mentioned in this article as Slack and Szymanski, whose statements had been furnished to the attorneys of the Engineer & Mining Journal.

From the Court House to the Tombs, the Scheftels desperadoes, in shackles, were escorted up Broadway. Later in the day when bail was ready and the prisoners were sent for, they were handcuffed again and marched in parade up streets and down avenues of the densest section of New York City.

I had worked all afternoon in the lawyers' offices with one object in view, namely, the securing of bail for the imprisoned men. I succeeded. I now got busy with my own bail, the court having fixed it in advance at $15,000. In the morning I walked from my lawyers' offices to the Post-Office Building and surrendered myself, being immediately released on surety which was waiting in the office of the United States Commissioner. As I left the building I recognized scores of Scheftels customers. Several grasped my hand.

My indignation grew as the circumstances came up under review and I had time to connect and collate the facts. Gradually the whole truth revealed itself. I can relate only part of it. The full, detailed story would extend itself into a volume, and the space here at my command is limited. I learned that from the moment the Special Agent had been put on the scent with permission to put us out of business he had never slackened his effort to turn the trick.

His efforts attracted the attention of sundry newspaper editors with Wall Street affiliations and also enemies generally who hastened to coöperate with him. His office as a Special Agent of the Department of Justice gave to his statements weight which would not have been given to them had he as an individual sponsored the charges. His official position imparted exaggerated importance to his statements in the eyes of newspaper men, and, after the raid, to the public.

A person whom we shall characterize as the Tool now appears on the scene with alleged information which he placed at the service of the Special Agent to back him up before the Assistant United States attorneys in New York with testimony since recanted over the signature of the false witness.