This assessment made Graves the likely culprit, rather than Bennett, whose potential involvement was dismissed by McParland at an early stage. “[T]he reference to ‘your friend in the woods’ on the New Year’s greeting can only refer to the Adirondacks,” he stated. “It was therefore practically certain that suspicion would at once fall on Bennett as ‘the friend’, but that he would be so foolish as to leave a clue pointing directly to him is unthinkable. The inevitable conclusion therefore must be that the murderer intended that Bennett should be suspected and that the message on the bottle was written solely with that end in view.”43
McParland next turned to finding out whence the bottle had come. It had originally been unwrapped at the investment firm of Schermerhorn & Worrell—of which Ed Worrell was a partner—and the wrapping paper was thrown away. However, John Schermerhorn had kept the stamps for his son’s collection, and they enabled a new phase in the investigation. “[T]he package was mailed in Boston,” McParland concluded. “I have learned that the postage was overpaid thirty cents, indicating that the sender didn’t care to take the chance of having it weighed for fear that later he might be identified. I have sent the cancelled stamps to Superintendent John Cornish of our Boston office and have asked him to ascertain if they were purchased in Boston.”44
The point man in the eastern investigation was Hanscom, who discovered that a new series of 15¢ stamps had been issued on February 22 to commemorate George Washington’s birthday, and that no older format stamps, as were on the package sent to Mrs. Barnaby, had been sold there since. Pushed by Conrad to investigate every one of the more than nine thousand postal branches in New England if necessary, Cornish’s operatives found that it had only been possible to obtain the older stamps at the Providence post office.
Meanwhile, Hanscom joined Conrad in an amateurish effort to gain an admission of Graves’s guilt. Inviting the doctor to the Barnaby household in Providence several times, the two—with Hanscom introduced as Conrad’s brother Charles—again and again tried to weasel a confession that he had sent the bottle, even if it had not contained any poison. Later they testified that he had admitted just that, although Graves vehemently denied it.45
The investigation convinced Denver district attorney Isaac Stevens that he could gain a conviction. But to put Graves on trial, he needed him in Denver, where there was no reason he would go if he were the chief suspect. In early May, McParland wrote and sent a telegram—signed as if it were from the chief of police—indicating that there was clear evidence that the poison had been put in the whiskey after its arrival in Denver. Claiming an indictment of Ed Worrell was in preparation, it stressed the significance of Graves returning to Denver to give a deposition about Mrs. Barnaby’s physical condition prior to her death.46
The deception was successful, and shortly thereafter, Graves headed for Denver. He was questioned upon his arrival, and a week later was indicted for murder and arrested. “I have been fully expecting this,” he told reporters. “I am glad it has come to an issue, very glad indeed, for now I shall have the opportunity to vindicate my character.”47
The result was not, however, what Graves had expected. The trial took place in December and January, and although McParland testified briefly, the key witnesses were Conrad and Hanscom, who claimed Graves had admitted sending Mrs. Barnaby the bottle. Graves disputed their statements, but the jury found him guilty, and in January he was sentenced to hang. He appealed, and when his conviction was overturned, remained in prison waiting for a retrial.48 On September 3, 1893, he was found dead in his cell, having, according to the official determination, committed suicide, a verdict since disputed.49
• • •
Through his early years as a superintendent McParland showed that he could obtain results, crack difficult cases, and put away criminals (one way or another), whether as a primary investigator, as a member of a team effort, or by enabling the efforts of others. He demonstrated that he could keep a handle on the vast area of the United States that fell under his purview, including acting as the key planner behind Western operations, serving as a salesman by seeking out new customers, and showing diplomatic skills by elegantly easing any concerns or doubts that existing clients might have about ongoing investigations. These abilities, combined with his formidable reputation with the press, public, and other law-enforcement agencies—based primarily on his Molly Maguire successes—would be of great significance in future years when he was considered for further promotion.
At the same time, McParland’s personal characteristics earned him esteem (and perhaps fear) from those who served under him. There could be no question that he understood the operative’s problems and tasks, and there could never be the excuse that he didn’t know what a younger man was going through. His no-nonsense manner, that he had risen through the ranks (unlike the Pinkertons), and the fact that a subordinate always felt he knew where he stood with him would all also have garnered respect from his men.
But most important of all, both with the Pinkertons and his operatives, was the knowledge that McParland had almost always been successful, and that in order to achieve that success time and again, he would do anything necessary—whatever it took.
CHAPTER 15
A NEW DIRECTION
When McParland was in Schuylkill County Pinkerton’s was comprised of three regional offices: Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. By 1890, there were seven; by 1903, a dozen; and three years after, there were twenty. The key reason for this exponential growth was not a concentration on criminal activities against banks, jewelers, and railroads, but rather the concurrent expansion of what became the agency’s greatest targets and critics: the labor movement and its large unions.
Although there were national labor organizations for various trades, the first national labor federation in the United States—attempting to bring together all the country’s unions—was the short-lived National Labor Union, founded in 1866 and dissolved seven years later.1
In the midst of that period, the Knights of Labor was founded in Philadelphia by members of a local tailors’ union. The new organization grew slowly, and in 1879, when Terence Powderly became its head, membership still numbered only about ten thousand. However, the success of the Knights in the Union Pacific Railroad strike of 1884, and in Powderly’s early negotiations with Jay Gould during the strike against his Southwest Railroad System, led to a surge in membership, increasing it to more than three quarters of a million. After incidents of violence, arson, and sabotage helped turn public opinion against the strikers, several governors ordered out state militias, contributing to the strike’s eventual disintegration in the summer of 1886.2 That failure, combined with negative publicity linking the Knights to the Haymarket affair, severely tarnished the organization’s reputation, and its numbers fell dramatically in the next few years, to below one hundred thousand.
Into the vacuum created by this collapse stepped the American Federation of Labor (AFL), led by Samuel Gompers. The new body was essentially a reincarnation of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, which had been founded in Pittsburgh in 1881 and was, like the National Labor Union, a federation not a union. Formed in great part due to widespread union dissatisfaction with the Knights of Labor, the new organization emphasized the autonomy of each affiliated union; the federation tended to be composed primarily of skilled labor while somewhat ignoring unskilled workers and women.
These organizations proved fervent opponents of Pinkerton’s, but they also benefited the agency by bringing in new employment from big businesses willing to pay to have operatives infiltrate them. An especially valuable boon to the agency’s coffers came from one industry that had not yet been effectively unionized nationally—mining. In 1883, in the aftermath of the failure of John Siney’s WBA and Miners’ National Association, the coalfields saw the formation of the Amalgamated Association of Miners, which, decimated after a strike, was succeeded by what would become the
National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine Laborers. In 1890 that body merged with Trade Assembly 135 of the Knights of Labor to found the United Mine Workers of America.3
But hard-rock mining—for quartz, gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, and other valuable metals and minerals—had not been organized successfully on any national scale, despite local efforts starting in the 1860s in Nevada’s Comstock Lode.4 Certainly local unions dotted the western mining regions, but the very absence of a large-scale union encouraged the wealthy companies that owned the mines to prevent the formation of one and, as a step in that direction, to crush any fledgling locals. For this task, many such businesses looked to Pinkerton’s.
• • •
Ever since Allan Pinkerton’s early investigations of embezzlement and fraud by postal and railway workers, his agency had been viewed by some as a tool of big business.5 McParland’s involvement with the Molly Maguires only enhanced that reputation. In 1874, the miners at the bituminous coalfields near Braidwood, Illinois, were locked out when they rejected lower terms offered by the Chicago, Wilmington and Vermillion Coal Company. When the company brought in strikebreakers it also hired fifty armed members of Pinkerton’s Protective Patrol for security.6 Three years later, when the company announced another wage cut, miners in both Braidwood and Streator walked out, and Pinkerton’s agents again served as guards for the strikebreakers.7
Pinkerton’s quickly became a fixture in major strikes throughout America, with some holding that the agency caused more violence than it prevented. In 1886—the same year its operatives entered Kansas during the railroad strike—a member of Pinkerton’s Protective Patrol killed a bystander during a series of strikes at the Chicago stockyards, inciting a riot. The next year, a boy was killed by a Pinkerton’s guard during strikes at the Jersey City coal wharves. And in the 1888 strike against the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, Pinkerton’s not only provided guards and detectives but helped recruit the strikebreakers.8
It was against this background that McParland began his major antistrike, antiunion actions in the gold, silver, lead, and zinc mines of Colorado, Montana, and Idaho.
One of the most mineral-rich regions on Earth was a district in the northern panhandle of Idaho known as the Coeur d’Alenes. To the east of the lake bearing that name, and near the border of Montana, was a mountainous area covered with heavy pine forests and gouged by deep canyons, through which rivers fed by winter snows raced down steep grades. There, along the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, surrounding the nascent towns of Kellogg and Wallace and dotted up ancient streambeds bearing names such as Nine Mile, Deadwood Gulch, and Silver Creek, were developed mines that eventually earned the region the nickname Silver Valley. In the century and a quarter since the first of these opened, more than 1.2 billion troy ounces of silver, 8.5 million tons of lead, 3.2 million tons of zinc, and sizable deposits of gold, copper, cadmium, and antimony have been extracted.9
It was in 1883 that the first gold was found on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, sparking a rush that brought thousands of prospectors.10 The initial frenzy had subsided within a few years, but those still seeking their fortunes spread out. The lucky ones found that the South Fork was rich in other precious metals.11 The Bunker Hill Mine—near what is now the town of Wardner—became the most productive in the region, and the smelting complex built in Kellogg was at one time the largest in the world. Another mining center grew up down the river along Canyon Creek, where the tiny towns of Gem and Burke were founded in response to the discoveries of ore deposits that led to the start of the Frisco, Black Bear, and Gem mines. Just down the canyon a few miles, nestled along the Coeur d’Alene, was Wallace, the area’s most important mercantile center.
Not long after the beginning of mining operations, the inevitable differences between the goals of the owners and the workers began to appear, and in 1887 the Bunker Hill men formed the Wardner Miners Union. Others soon followed.12 Conflict became inevitable within several years, and the unions joined together to establish an executive committee. Thirteen owners followed suit, founding the Mine Owners Protective Association of the Coeur d’Alenes (MOA). Relations between capital and labor were further soured by a fall in the price of silver. The turndown meant some mines closed and others decreased wages.13 As the two sides jousted for control, gauging the intentions and strengths of the other, the MOA employed Pinkerton’s to provide them with inside details about the unions.
• • •
In August 1891, McParland told Siringo that he was sending him to the Coeur d’Alenes, because the “Miners’ Union of that district was raising Hades with the mine-owners,” and the MOA “wanted a good operative to join the Miners’ Union, so as to be on the inside of the order when the fast approaching eruption occurred.”14 Siringo told his boss that his sympathies lay with “labor organizations as against capital,” so McParland agreed to send another man and detailed Siringo to a railroad operation in Utah and California.
A month later, Siringo was recalled to Denver. “Now Charlie, you have got to go to the Coeur d’Alenes. You’re the only man I’ve got who can go there and get into the Miner’s Union,” McParland told him. “They are on their guard against detectives and they became suspicious of the operative I sent up there, and ran him out of the country. We know the leaders to be a desperate lot of criminals of the Molly Maguire type and you will find it so. I will let your own conscience be the judge, after you get into their Union. If you decide they are in the right and the Mine-owners are in the wrong, you can throw up the operation without further permission from me.”15
McParland’s flexibility won Siringo over, and he headed to Idaho, where, under the name of C. Leon Allison and with the knowledge of the mine superintendent, he took a job as a mucker in the Gem Mine. For an unknown reason, his reports were sent to John McGinn, the superintendent in St. Paul, where they were typed and sent on to the secretary of the MOA.16 As the postmaster in Gem was a member of the union, Siringo had to walk to Wallace, four miles down the valley, at irregular intervals to send them.
Two weeks after arriving, Siringo joined the Gem Mine union; in so doing he took “an iron-clad ‘Molly Maguire’ oath that I would never turn traitor to the union cause; that if I did, death would be my reward.”17 A few months later he was elected the union’s recording secretary, placing him in frequent contact with its financial secretary, George A. Pettibone, “a rabid anarchist.”18 From this position, Siringo could access the union records and monitor the key dissidents. Not long after, he contrived to be fired from his job in such a way that it would be impossible to find another in the local mining industry. Having informed his coworkers that his wealthy father would help him financially, he was able to spend all his time “working for the benefit of the union.”
In the winter, Siringo was horrified by the union practice of “gathering up scabs . . . taken from their homes, sometimes with weeping wives and children begging for mercy. They were marched through the streets of Gem and spat upon amidst the beating of pans and ringing of cowbells, this being a warning to others who might . . . criticize this noble union, or refuse to pay dues.” Then, high up the canyon above Burke, they “were told to hit the trail for Montana and never return, at the peril of their lives, and to give them a good running start shots would be fired over their heads. In this Bitter Root range of mountains the snow in winter is from four to twenty feet deep, so you can imagine what those scabs had to endure on their tramp without food or shelter to Thompson’s Falls, the first habitation, a distance of about thirty miles.”19
Siringo “found the leaders of the Coeur d’Alenes unions to be, as a rule, a vicious heartless gang of anarchists . . . while others were escaped outlaws and toughs.”20 He therefore decided he had no qualms in revealing their schemes, one of which was to flood several mines that used nonunion workers. Siringo recorded the details while keeping the minutes of a meeting, but Oliver Hughes, the president of
the Gem union, ordered him to cut out the page where he had done so, so it could not be used in evidence. Siringo did so, but then sent the page directly to the secretary of the MOA.21
The long bubbling cauldron of mistrust finally boiled over during an exceptionally hard winter. When the railroads increased their rates for hauling ore, the MOA, arguing profits would disappear, shut down the mines in January 1892.22 When the MOA finally offered employment again it was at substantially reduced rates, and in April, as the owners hoped, the miners went on strike.
The MOA now decided to break the unions once and for all.23 The unions were no less determined to prevail, and Pettibone told Siringo that “they had selected a secret crowd of the worst men in the unions to put the fear of Christ into the hearts of ‘scabs’; that if these secret men committed murder the union would stick by them.”24 Arms, which had been stealthily obtained, were openly distributed when it became known that immigrant miners were being taken to Wallace as strikebreakers. The local sheriff, a union sympathizer, was “on his fine horse with a gang of union deputies to preserve order, but in reality to help shoot down ‘scabs.’” However, Siringo got a message out, and the train stormed through Wallace and straight to the protection of the Union, Gem, and Frisco mines.25
Siringo’s valuable reports almost proved his undoing. In June, the Coeur d’Alene Barbarian, a weekly newspaper representing the mine owners, included information that had obviously been leaked from an insider. Gabe Dallas, the secretary of the Butte, Montana, union, arrived to investigate. Described by Siringo as “a one-eyed, two-legged, Irish hyena,”26 Dallas soon began to suspect Siringo, and called a meeting at which it was thought he would unmask the spy. Warned in advance that he was suspected because he had so often been seen mailing letters, Siringo nevertheless attended the meeting. In a packed union hall, Dallas launched into a fiery speech in which he vowed the traitor would never leave the hall alive and glanced ominously at Siringo. The detective, outwardly calm, was in fact thinking about the Colt .45 in his shoulder holster and the pearl-handled Bowie knife strapped to his waist. Siringo later recalled: “My mind was made up to start business at the first approach of real danger. Of course I didn’t expect to last long among those hundreds of strong men, many of whom were armed, but I figured that they couldn’t get but one of me, while I stood a chance to kill several of them. I would have been like a cat thrown into a fiery furnace—spit fire so long as life held out.”27
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