And it didn’t sound right to the bank’s counsel, either; therefore the prisoner got his free ride to New York and was not tried for the Ocean Bank robbery. But, unfortunately for him, there was an old indictment against him, and on that he got five years in Sing Sing.
There were lots of just such fake stories based on the robbery.
Then the pretended selling of the stolen bonds was another scheme. Billy Matthews, my former gambler friend, in conjunction with one Jack Sudlow, worked this game for some time. Sudlow was an East-side boy who had gone to West Virginia and by some means become president of a bank there. He finally wrecked the bank, taking everything but the safe and a five-cent postage stamp. He overlooked the stamp and didn’t think of it till he had reached Baltimore—then it was too late to go back after it. The safe had been too heavy for him to carry.
This Jack Sudlow could lie like a bulletin board and make one believe that black was white. Well, he and Billy juggled many a good dollar out of the people’s pockets and gave in return a package supposed to contain stolen bonds, but which, in reality, held naught but an old newspaper or two. And it was not only “come-ons” that they beat, either. They took fifteen hundred dollars out of Elias, the original “sawdust man,” who was called the “king of swindlers.” And they “beat” Banker Sam A. Way, of Boston, out of twenty-one thousand dollars. The mode of beating Way was as follows: Way was president, and practically the owner, of the Bank of Metropolis, 36 State Street, Boston. He was widely known as a purchaser of stolen bonds if the price was right and no risk, and he was considered a very slick man. Sudlow went to him, and, showing a genuine one-thousand-dollar bond, said that he had twenty-five more that he would like to sell, at the same time stating that they were part of the Ocean Bank loot. Way bit, and finally purchased the twenty-six at thirty per cent discount on the market price, which was then one hundred and sixteen. Therefore the purchase price was twenty-one thousand one hundred and twelve dollars. The price having been agreed upon, Sudlow said:—
“Very well, I will leave this bond with you”—laying the genuine bond on Way’s desk—“and will bring the other twenty-five to-morrow. Please have the money all ready in large bills.”
The next afternoon, just before time for the bank to close, and when business there was the liveliest, Sudlow rushed in and said:—
“Here are the bonds, Mr. Way. Have you the money ready?” at the same time laying down a package marked “25—$1000—$25,000—U. S. Coupon Bonds 5/20 of 1863,” and fastened with wax seals bearing the imprint of the Park Bank of New York.
The successful pulling off of a swindle of this kind lies in the manner of the swindler. Sudlow had the right manner, and Way paid over the money without opening the package. Later he found that he had one good bond and a collection of newspapers.
When the Ocean Bank robbery had become an event of the past, it can be readily understood that I realized a comfortable sense of relief and security, as far as wealth could bring about that satisfactory state. I felt as though I was in that class of men known to the present period as Captains of Industry. In accumulating wealth I had the same object in view as have Russell Sage, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Charles M. Schwab, John W. Gates, the United States Ship Building Company, and similar financiers and corporations, whose scheming to-day is to obtain something for nothing. I piled for myself earthly treasure outside of the Golden Rule, and they are accumulating colossal fortunes for themselves with the same persistent and bold disregard for that biblical admonition before them. However, I proceeded on somewhat different lines to gather in the shekels, though our incentives sprang from the same parent—desire for riches. Instead of employing expensive attorneys to keep me from getting into jail, I solicited the valuable assistance of the inner Bank Ring of the Police Department, whose services were expensive, I frankly admit, as was demonstrated in the percentage I paid the members of the Ring from the Ocean Bank haul. Nevertheless the Ring’s protection enabled me to remain in New York without being compelled to hide behind the cellar door, which is considerably more than some of my co-speculators of that period could say for themselves.
No doubt there are memories able to recall how Jay Gould and Russell Sage drove the Missouri Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad into insolvency by playing Wall Street tag with its stocks, and then through shrewd legal counsel secured for themselves the receivership of that valuable property. The same memories will also recall how Messrs. Gould and Sage so juggled the finances of that railway that the original stockholders were practically frozen out of their holdings, and how those stockholders rose in their righteous wrath and appealed through the criminal courts for justice and the recovery of their own. In that great crisis Jay Gould, the master wrecker of railroads, suddenly found himself in ill health, and, hastily provisioning his palatial steamer the Atlanta, sailed away on an extended ocean voyage, thus making himself safe against the pursuit of the officers of the law armed with warrants for his apprehension.