And thereafter American railway bridges and embankments were safe, though their owners may not have been aware of the fact at the time.
It is no mere metaphor to say that during 1915 and 1916 the smoke of German explosions in factories in the United States was spreading across the sun, casting the deepening shadow of war over America. There was dynamite found in the coal tender of a munitions train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at Callery Junction, Pa., on December 10, 1915, the day on which enormous quantities of wheat were destroyed by fire in grain elevators at Erie. A few hours earlier a two-million-dollar explosion had occurred at the Hopewell plant of the du Pont works. Shortly before Christmas a ton and a half of nitroglycerine exploded at Fayville, Illinois.
During 1916 there were a dozen major explosions in the du Pont properties alone and literally dozens of lives were lost. Two arms plants at Bridgeport, Conn., were blown up. An explosion in May wiped out a large chemical plant in Cadillac, Michigan. A munitions works of the Bethlehem Steel Company at Newcastle, Pa., was destroyed. The climax in violence came, however, in the sultry night of August 1-2. Shortly after midnight the rocky island of Manhattan trembled, and the roar of a prodigious blast burst over the harbor of New York. Two million pounds of munitions were being transported in freight trains and on barges near the island of Black Tom, a few hundred yards from the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty. Some one, somehow, supplied the spark. The loss of life was inconsiderable, for that neighborhood was not inhabited, but the confusion was complete. Heavy windows in the canyons of lower Manhattan were shivered, and for a few moments many of the streets rained broken glass. Shell-laden barges near the original explosion set up a scattering fire which continued for some time, most of the projectiles losing their power through lack of a substantial breech-block. But the immigration station on Ellis Island was in panic, and its position became more unpleasant as one of the blazing barges drifted down upon it. The shock was felt far out in Jersey, and northward in Connecticut. An estimate of damage was placed at thirty millions of dollars, probably as accurate as such an estimate need be; the event was utterly spectacular, and from the point of view of the unknown destroying agent, effective.
Exactly one year after von Papen gave up the first attempt upon the Welland Canal, a second enterprise began with the same objective. Captain von Papen felt that von der Goltz had bungled. This time he intrusted the mission to the doughty and usually reliable Paul Koenig. On September 27, 1915, Koenig, with Richard Emil Leyendecker, a "hyphenated American" who dealt during the daytime in art woods at 347 Fifth Avenue, New York, and Fred Metzler, of Jersey City, Koenig's secretary, went to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, accompanied by Mrs. Koenig. They had no trouble in crossing the border and making a thorough investigation of the canal, its vulnerable points, its guards and the patrol routes of those guards. Koenig selected men whom he detailed to watch the guards, and he fixed on satisfactory storage places for his explosives. The party then returned to Niagara Falls and later to New York.
They did not know that they were being trailed. All three men had been under surveillance for nearly a year, and after their migrations near the canal, the guard was reenforced. It became impossible to carry out the plan. A few weeks later the detectives who were shadowing Koenig noticed that George Fuchs, a relative whom he employed at a meagre salary, was seldom seen in his company. They sought Fuchs out and plied him with refreshment. A few glasses of beer drew out his story: Koenig owed him $15, and he therefore bore no affection for Koenig. The detectives turned him over to Superintendent Offley of the Department of Justice, who sympathized with Fuchs to such an extent that the latter retailed enough evidence of the Welland plot to secure Koenig's indictment on five counts. Thus did a debt of thirty pieces of silver—in this case half-dollars—rob the Hamburg-American Line of a six-foot, 200-pound detective, and the German spy system in America of one of its roughest characters, for, thanks to Fuchs' revelations, Koenig was indicted for a violation of Section 13 of the Penal Code.
Herald Square, New York, was the center of open-air oratory every evening until after America entered the war. Those who had stood and fought their verbal battles during the day about the bulletin board of the New York Herald remained at night to bellow to the idle passersby along Broadway, and one night Felix Galley, a leather-lunged contractor, gave an impassioned discourse justifying Germany's entrance into the war. When the meeting broke up he was followed home by one who rather passed his expectations as a convert.
The stranger was Harry Newton. He had been employed in a munitions plant in St. Catharine's, Ontario. He suggested to Galley that he would take any orders for arson which the Germans had in mind, and recommended that as proof of his ability he would oblige with a dynamiting of the Brooks Locomotive Works at Dunkirk, N. Y., for a retainer of $5,000. Or, he said, he could arrange to destroy the Federal building or Police Headquarters. This was more than the German had bargained for, and assuring Newton that he would first have to consult the "chief," he ran straightway to the police and in great agitation told what had happened. Captain Tunney, of the Bomb Squad, assigned Detective Sergeant George Barnitz to the case.
The detective, posing as a German agent, found Newton at Mills Hotel No. 3, and opened negotiations with him. After several talks, they met on the afternoon of April 19, 1916, at Grand Street and the Bowery. Barnitz said: "Now, I'm in a hurry—haven't much time to discuss all this. You say you're in the business strictly for the money. The chief is willing to pay you $5,000 if you will smash the Welland Canal or blow up the Brooks Locomotive Works or burn the McKinnon, Dash Company's plant at St. Catharine's. But how do we know you won't demand more from us after you are paid? Maybe you'll want more cash for your assistants."