CHAPTER VII.
KING MCNALLY AND HIS POLICE.
The Confidence Trick is perhaps the form of crime that would most naturally commend itself to the police banditti of New York. For the force was engaged all day long in playing a gigantic Confidence Trick upon the citizens. The gold brick which the swindlers sold to the credulous countryman was hardly more mythical than the enforcement of the law which was supposed to be secured by the organisation of the City police. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the police were hand-and-glove with the gang of swindlers which, under King McNally, carried on the Green Goods trade in the City of New York. It was one of the most lucrative of all the crimes which were carried on under police protection, and one of the safest. Few of all the stories told before the Lexow Committee display quite so unblushing a co-partnership between the law-breakers and the law officers as was revealed in this Green Goods swindle. The rascality of the rogues was so audacious that it provokes a laugh. For it is possible to carry impudence to a point where indignation is momentarily submerged by the sense of the ludicrous. Sheer amazement at the existence of such preposterous villains begets such a sense of its absurdity, that any censure seems as much out of place as in the nonsense tales of the nursery. Yet when the grotesque impression subsides, it is difficult to find terms strong enough to characterise this systematic misuse of the powers created for the protection of life and property and the due observance of the law for the purpose of facilitating fraud and of aiding and abetting and protecting swindling.
The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee contains a mass of materials for an exhaustive description of the criminals of New York, and the various methods by which in 1894 they preyed upon the public; but the person who undertakes the compilation of such a work is not to be envied. The Report of the Committee is a very striking illustration of the wickedness of issuing books without indexes. Here we have five bulky volumes of evidence without even an index of the names of witnesses. There is no subject-index of any kind. Witnesses are called and recalled in bewildering confusion. Nevertheless, even the most cursory perusal of the evidence brings to light a great many interesting and extraordinary facts as to the organisation of the criminal classes of the city.
Green Goods are forged or counterfeit bank notes. The pretence is either that there has been an over-issue of certain denominations of paper money by the Treasury, or that the plates have been stolen from the Government, and by this means it is possible to offer to sell ten dollars for one.
McNally, the King of the Green Goods men, employed at times a staff of thirty-five men. He began his career some twenty years ago as a bully who was kept by a prostitute. He swindled out of all her money a mistress of his who kept a restaurant, and started an Opium Joint. He then embarked in the Green Goods business, kept his carriage, and made his fortune.
The men who work this Confidence Trick seem to have carried their organised system of swindling to a very high pitch of perfection. Their master-stroke, however, was the admission of the police to a working partnership, which enabled them not merely to carry on their swindling with impunity, but also stood them in good stead whenever a victim had to be bullied and driven out of the city. King McNally was, unfortunately, not available for examination, owing to his precipitate departure for foreign parts as soon as the inquiry began. The Committee, however, was able to secure evidence which brought out very clearly the main lines of their operations.
The chief witness was one William Applegate, whose sister accompanied McNally in his hurried departure to Paris. Applegate had been employed for three years as one of the gang. He began when nineteen as a circular-folder, for which he received 8s. a week. These formed the foundation of the Green Goods business. A Green Goods gang in full operation is constituted as follows:—
(1) The Backer or Capitalist, who supplies the bank roll—a roll of 10,000 genuine dollar bills, which are shown to the victim. He receives fifty per cent., out of which he pays the police, and so guarantees the protection of the gang.