Empty Mansions

by Bill Dedman

  W.A. cast the 1898 Senate election as having one goal, “overthrowing the power of one man in the state of Montana: Mr. Daly.” If there was any evil in buying an election, he seemed to be saying, it was necessary in order to do good. He said that he did not seek the office but was persuaded to do so to end “this state of despotism.”

  “Nobody could expect to have any recognition whatever,” W.A. later said, “unless he bowed the knee and crawled in the dust to these people. It was impossible to break their power in that state unless large sums of money were used, legitimately, to do it.”

  For his part, Daly was said to have threatened “to run W. A. Clark and his family out of the state of Montana.” He denied making the statement, testifying, “I have not the slightest personal feelings against Mr. Clark or any member of his family, and it is a villainous lie.”

  The stage was set for a three-ring circus of a legislative session, one that would send W. A. Clark to Washington.

  • • •

  Violence broke out before the legislative session even began. During the election of the state legislators themselves in November 1898, two armed men burst into Butte’s Precinct 8, an Irish stronghold known as Dublin Gulch, in an attempt to steal either the ballot box or cash. One election judge was shot and killed. The Daly forces blamed Clark, calling him “the arch-boodler of the century.” Clark’s forces claimed that the robbery had been staged to discredit W.A.

  On January 9, 1899, the day before voting for the new U.S. senator began, a state senator named Fred Whiteside dropped a bombshell. On the floor of the state senate, he presented thirty crisp thousand-dollar bills that he claimed had been directed by Clark’s forces to be delivered to legislators. Whiteside, who had been a whistle-blower in a previous corruption case, said he had launched his own sting operation, putting out the word that he could be bribed. “My object was to break up the band of boodlers that have so long infested this state.”

  Whiteside described how the payoffs worked. One of Clark’s attorneys would show a legislator ten one-thousand-dollar bills, seal them inside an envelope, and then have the man write his initials on the outside. The attorney would keep the envelope and deliver it to the legislator only if he voted for Clark throughout the session, whether or not Clark won. It was bribery and blackmail rolled into one act.

  Whiteside said that he did not think Clark knew all the details but that W.A. did know in a general way what his men were doing. “There seems to be no end to the supply of money,” Whiteside testified. “I think they expected to use nearly $1 million, and, as near as I can judge, have already paid out about $200,000.… They ran short of money several times, because large-sized bills were hard to get.”

  He went on, quoting Clark’s campaign manager, John B. Wellcome. “Every man who votes for Clark is to be paid. And the man who votes for him without being well paid is a fool.”

  Clark’s newspaper, The Butte Miner, responded that it was all a Daly trick.

  A DAMNABLE CONSPIRACY—DALY CROWD SPRING THEIR PROMISED SENSATION—BUNGLING WORK AT THE OUTSET

  ABORTIVE ATTEMPT TO STAMPEDE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE BY THE EXHIBITION OF MONEY AND CHARGES OF BRIBERY—WHOLE THING BEARS EVIDENCE OF HAVING BEEN COOKED UP BY THE ARCH-CONSPIRATORS

  And that was just part of the headline.

  A grand jury began investigating even while the legislators started voting for senator on January 10, 1899. Clark was in fourth place on the first ballot, receiving only seven votes to thirty-six for the leading Republican. No candidate had a majority, so the voting continued. Nearly every day for three weeks, there was a new ballot. W.A. crept into third place, then second. By January 23, he was in the lead. On January 26, the grand jury failed to indict anyone.

  In a precursor to the alternative realities displayed a century later by competing cable news outlets, Clark’s Butte Miner hailed the grand jury’s decision:

  HIS VINDICATION IS COMPLETE.… CONSPIRATORS FOILED

  Daly’s Anaconda Standard lamented:

  THEY SIMPLY FELL DOWN FLAT

  The day after the grand jury failed to issue an indictment, Republicans began crossing party lines, tilting toward the Democrat Clark. Not all were persuaded by money; some went over to W.A. because he had declared himself to be a protectionist, favoring tariffs to aid Montana products such as wool, lead, and hides.

  On January 28, Clark won on the eighteenth ballot, by a vote of 54 to 39. The young state had elected its fifth U.S. senator and its first Democrat. At long last, W.A. would be Senator Clark.

  A QUIET DINNER

  To celebrate his election to the U.S. Senate, W.A. gave a banquet for a couple of hundred friends and supporters, held at the Helena Hotel on Tuesday evening, February 7, 1899. A copy of the menu, printed in French, survives. It is presented here with an English translation in parentheses. Alcoholic beverages were listed in capital letters.

  Caviar à la Russe (caviar with egg, cream, and vodka)

  Huîtres à l’écaille (oysters on the half shell)

  Céleri (celery)

  HAUT SAUTERNE (French sweet white wine from Bordeaux)

  Green Turtle (soup)

  XERES AMONTILLADO (Amontillado sherry)

  Cheese Straws

  Radis (radish)

  Pompano Planche (planked fish)

  Pommes Parisiennes (Parisian potatoes)

  Ris de Veau en Caisse (veal sweetbreads dressed in paper)

  PONTET-CANET (French red wine from Bordeaux)

  Côtelettes d’Agneau (lamb chops)

  Petit Pois Français (French peas)

  PUNCH A LA ROMAINE (lemon, orange rind, egg white meringue, wine, and rum punch)

  Cailles Farcies aux Truffes (quail stuffed with truffles)

  Salade Laitue (salad with lettuce)

  DRY MONOPOLE–EXTRA (champagne)

  Asperges à la Vinaigrette (asparagus in vinaigrette)

  Biscuit Glacé (a dessert with cream or ice cream, fruit)

  Fromage—Dessert (cheese—sweets)

  Café—LIQUEURS (coffee—liqueurs)

  Clark’s Miner rejoiced:

  VOICE OF THE PEOPLE HEARD.

  Daly’s Standard summed up:

  THEY TOOK THE ARCH-BOODLER’S GOLD.

  Handbills were distributed:

  THERE WILL BE A HOT TIME. GRAND CELEBRATION TO-NIGHT TO ENDORSE THE ELECTION OF HON. W. A. CLARK TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE. PROCESSION. FIREWORKS. MEETING AT THE AUDITORIUM. EVERYBODY WELCOME.

  W.A. again bought drinks for the town. His son Charlie spent half the next day signing checks to the bars.

  “I DESTROY ALL MY CHECKS”

  AS SOON AS W.A. TOOK HIS SEAT in the U.S. Senate in 1899, a delegation of citizens from Montana petitioned to throw the rascal out, to have his election invalidated on account of bribery. After a delay of nearly a year, the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections held a trial lasting from January to April 1900.

  Witnesses were caught in lies. Others were paid to testify. A few were paid by one side, then changed their testimony when paid more by the other. And who put up unlimited sums to pay for the detectives to produce evidence, the attorneys to prosecute the case, and the newspapers to editorialize about it? Marcus Daly, who testified he had no interest in politics.

  The evidence that hurt W.A. the most was the changed economic circumstances of the Montana legislators who voted for him.

  W. W. Beasley, a Republican who started voting for Clark on the eighteenth ballot, ended the session with $5,000 in his pocket, including at least one thousand-dollar bill, which he claimed to have taken to Helena and kept in his vest pocket the entire session, even as he owed his boardinghouse $400.

  H. H. Garr, who began the legislative session with $75 and had to borrow $25 for the trip to Helena, ended it with enough money to buy a ranch for $3,500, in the name of his wife’s aunt. He testified that he didn’t know what it meant when he wrote his initials on the back of one of those fat envelopes.

  John H. Geiger
, who had no regular job, carried home $2,600 from the legislative session, including $1,100 he said he found in his room and $1,500 he said he won by gambling at faro, a popular card game (and one often rigged in favor of the house).

  H. W. McLaughlin sold his woodlots and sawmills to W.A., who set him up with a job.

  D. G. Warner’s ranch and building lots were sold to an employee of Charlie Clark for $7,500.

  E. C. Day, leader of the Clark forces in the state house, received personally from W.A. $5,000 after the vote “as a testimonial of friendship.”

  And for S. S. Hobson, the chairman of the Republican caucus, who owed $22,000 to the Fergus County Bank, W.A. bought the whole bank and cleared his debt.

  The total paid out was estimated at $431,000, but there was no way to know the exact figure.

  • • •

  When it came his turn to testify, W.A. said that he had not campaigned for the Senate at all, that he had never sought the office, that he had left any electioneering to his son and others, that he couldn’t recall what instructions he might have given in letters because he dictated as many as one hundred letters a day and required the use of two or three stenographers, that he had no knowledge of any money being paid to anyone, and that when the subject of money was raised by anyone fishing for a payout, he would say firmly, “I don’t expect to secure any votes for a financial consideration.” He said that Charlie had the authority to write checks on his account. “I never asked a question of any of them where they spent a dollar.… Of course I did not authorize or expect that they would spend any money unlawfully.”

  As for the canceled checks themselves, they were drawn on the bank W. A. Clark & Brother and were nowhere to be found. “About every six months,” W.A. explained, “I destroy all my checks.”

  The best case that W.A.’s lawyers could make was that he had not been directly tied to any bribery. “A man does not forfeit his seat because he obtained it under suspicious circumstances.” The case against him was based on “hearsay evidence, rumors, the gossip of the street corners and barrooms.” No one had been convicted, or even accused, of a crime. The Daly banks were the ones that had run short of thousand-dollar bills. In sum, the attorneys claimed that the case against Clark assumed a scheme of political corruption more degraded than the world had seen, committed in the open, clumsily, in front of witnesses.

  Yet, in private, W.A. conceded to a friend that “it cannot be overlooked that money has been used improperly.”

  Indeed, the Senate committee vote against him was unanimous. Even if W.A. didn’t make any payoffs himself, the senators found that “the friends of Senator Clark illegally and improperly used large amounts of money.” The Senate committee found on April 23, 1900, that “the election to the Senate of William A. Clark, of Montana, is null and void on account of briberies, attempted briberies, and corrupt practices by his agents.” This was not the final verdict. The full Senate would have to ratify the committee’s recommendation, but that seemed inevitable.

  The gossipy New-York Tribune described W.A.’s reaction: “His face was somewhat flushed, but his voice was calm and his manner collected.”

  A SERIES OF SURPRISES

  IN MONTANA, Governor Robert B. Smith, a lawyer by training, didn’t suspect a thing. He was offered a side job, an easy $2,000 for a bit of freelance work examining the title to a valuable mining claim. All he had to do was take the train from Helena to San Francisco, a trip that happened to keep him out of Montana for several days. Thus began a most daring political scheme.

  In Washington, before the full Senate could ratify the committee’s decision to throw him out, W. A. Clark gave a tearful speech to the Senate on May 15, 1900, condemning “the most devilish persecution that any man has ever been subjected to in the history of any civilized country.” He said the men who had paid off their debts during the legislative session must have come by it honestly. He likened his situation to the renowned case of Alfred Dreyfus, the French artillery officer who had been presumed guilty of treason, convicted based on false evidence, and imprisoned before finally being exonerated.

  He closed with a flourish: “I was never in all my life, except by such characters as are now pursuing me, charged with a dishonorable act, and I propose to leave to my children a legacy, worth more than gold, that of an unblemished name.”

  And then, after weeks of saying he would never quit, he surprised the Senate by revealing that he had written a resignation letter.

  Here’s how the entire scheme unfolded.

  1. W.A. addressed his resignation letter to “His Excellency, the Governor of Montana.” No name, only a title.

  2. The governor, Robert B. Smith, was not a friend to Clark.

  3. The lieutenant governor, one A. E. Spriggs, was friendlier, a manager of W.A.’s Ruby mine.

  4. The newspapers spread the word that Lieutenant Governor Spriggs was out of the state, in South Dakota, at a weeklong convention of his Populist Party.

  5. Clark’s men arranged the publication in the Montana papers of a firm statement that he would never resign.

  6. Trusting too much in all this, Governor Smith was induced by a Clark associate to travel by train to San Francisco to examine the mining claim.

  7. Immediately after the governor left the state, W.A. made his resignation speech, and his son Charlie sent a telegram to Lieutenant Governor Spriggs in South Dakota with the agreed-upon signal that it was time to return to Montana: “Weather fine, cattle doing well.”

  8. Spriggs rushed back to Helena. Charlie filled in the date on his father’s resignation letter, then handed it to the lieutenant governor, who filled in the name on an order appointing Clark’s successor in the Senate.

  9. That successor? W. A. Clark. Forced to resign on a charge of corruption, he was now appointed to fill his own vacancy.

  10. The lieutenant governor wired a confirmation to W.A., adding, “I trust you will accept the appointment.” He did.

  The headlines in the New York Herald captured the plot: “Clark Resigns; Then Appointed. Daly Caught Napping. All a Series of Surprises.”

  After the scheme was found out, W.A.’s supporters said that he had no idea of the shenanigans done on his behalf, that reckless son Charlie must have been responsible. It aided their narrative that Charlie drank and gambled and womanized too much, and failed to repay loans. (Several years later, in 1908, W.A. wrote with optimism to a friend, “Chas is with me and is in fine shape and has not drunk anything spirituous.… I am happy over it and I do hope it will last always.”) Charlie is usually credited with making the comment during the campaign, “We’ll put the old man in the Senate or in the poorhouse.”

  The idea that Charlie was to blame was bolstered when he was implicated in 1902 in another scandal in which he was accused of offering $250,000 to a judge to fix a case. Before he could be served with a warrant, he left Butte for San Francisco, leaving behind his lovely French château not far from his father’s mansion. For many years thereafter, Charlie dared not enter the state of Montana.

  W.A.’s correspondence, however, shows that he was intimately involved in this cynical scheme to lure the governor out of the state, as he was intimately involved in all his business. On April 28, 1900, before he resigned, he wrote to a fervent supporter, John S. M. Neill, editor of the friendly Helena Independent. Responding to Neill’s description of the plans, W.A. objected at that point, not on moral grounds but on practical ones: “I have canvassed the proposition referred to in your letter. The plan of getting a certain party out of the State while action might be taken by another is not feasible.”

  After the plan was indeed executed and W.A. was appointed to succeed himself, he wrote again to Neill, this time approvingly, with his usual confidence that he was in the right: “The appointment by the Governor improves the situation and has thrown consternation into the ranks of the enemy. So far as we have been able to discover there is no legal reason why the Senate should not immediately order the oath of office ad
ministered upon the presentation of the credentials made in accordance with the appointment of Governor Spriggs.”

  Cleverness was not enough. Governor Smith heard the news in San Francisco, was back in Helena in three days, and sent notice to the Senate to disregard this “contemptible trickery.” The seat stayed vacant, leaving the people of Montana missing a voice in the Senate for the next fourteen months.

  “This man, Clark, has been convicted by the United States Senate of perjury, bribery, and fraud,” Governor Smith told the newspapers, somewhat overstating the case, “and it is an insult to the Senate to send him back to that body. It is a disgrace, a shame and humiliation upon the people of Montana, and the Senate should adopt the resolution and show him that they do not want him there, as it seems he can take the hint in no other way.”

  • • •

  The comical events made Montana a laughing-stock, and had long-lasting effects on W.A. and on the nation.

  For the United States, the Montana episode strengthened the voices calling for an end to the Founding Fathers’ design for state legislators to choose U.S. senators. The Clark case was an important event in the long march toward the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified by the states in 1913. This amendment gave the people the power to elect senators.

  For W. A. Clark, the election scheme left a blot on his reputation. His supporters, then and now, argue that frontier politics were notoriously corrupt. Clark’s partisans echoed his claim that he had to put up his own money to get elected, fighting fire with fire, to stop Daly money from controlling the state.

  The voice of history, however, was summed up, or influenced, by Mark Twain’s evisceration of W. A. Clark as a shame to the American nation. W.A. could have been the greatest Horatio Alger character, the boy who made good by hard work, education, and luck, but his was a legacy squandered in pursuit of political power and baronial extravagance. “Life was good to William A. Clark,” wrote Montana historian Michael Malone, “but due to his own excesses, history has been unkind.”