Smith never involved himself with these affairs and at no time became entangled with the law. He sought, instead, to maintain the impression that his only interest in the law-breakers was to preserve such influence with them as would enable him to get them at times to make restitution to needy victims. But all the plunder snatched from well-heeled suckers was taken straight to his safe, where it lay until the furore was over. Smith took a fifty-per-cent commission, much of which he used to bribe law officers, conduct legal defences, or make a partial restoration to the victims to prevent them from complaining too loudly. The more direct methods of silencing a man were left to his bouncers – to the villainous Yeah Mow Hopkins, whose name meant wildcat in Chinese and who had once been a bodyguard for wealthy Orientals in the San Francisco tong wars, or to Big Ed Burns, who had been with him since Denver days and who made a habit of chewing cigars whole.
Smith was philosophical about the beatings that Burns or Hopkins administered to the swindled clerks and bookkeepers who came to his parlour and protested too loudly. “The greatest kindness one can do such people is to force them to get out of Skagway and to take the first boat home,” he once remarked.
This was Smith’s great propaganda argument on the street corners of Skagway and in the various places of business where his smooth tongue was seldom still: the sure-thing men were a public benefit to the town, he argued, for they not only kept business brisk by putting into circulation money that would otherwise leave the city, but also they performed an act of charity in keeping the innocent from going deeper into the Arctic wilderness.
“Infinitely better,” Smith would argue, “that any man who is such an infant as to try to beat a man at his own game should lose money here at the seaport, than he should get into the inhospitable Arctic, where such an idiot would lose it anyway or be a burden on the community.”
And then he would go on to discuss the universal corruptibility of character and to praise the public-spirited attitude of the saloon men and gamblers, while his flunkies applauded and the hangers-on nodded their heads sagely and said, yes, there was something to that, all right.
In some ways Smith was a generation ahead of his time, for, although he operated on a small stage, the tactics he used in Skagway were remarkably similar to those employed by various European dictators in the years that followed. All the basic elements were present: the hard and disciplined core of ruthless men who swiftly went to work under cover; the leader who presented himself as a champion of the people; the spy system and the secret police; the relentless propaganda machine; and, most important, the careful cultivation of the basic elements in the community – business, labour, church, and press.
The business community tolerated him and, in some cases, applauded him because he seemed to bring order out of chaos; as is so often the case, men preferred order to liberty, which they confused with anarchy. One of Smith’s first moves, on consolidating his power, was to make it a rule never to fleece or molest a permanent citizen of Skagway, but only transients. When some of his men sheared the youthful chief of the local fire department, he was aghast and returned the victim’s money, at the same time giving his followers a tongue-lashing. Moreover, he managed to exude an aura of law and order by halting minor misdemeanours and performing such incidental acts of justice as returning runaway daughters to frantic fathers.
When another group of outlaws tried to take possession of the toll road that George Brackett of Minneapolis was attempting to open up along the White Pass trail, Smith came to the rescue. He told the trespassers they ought to be ashamed of themselves: “The opening of that highway was being done at great expense and … without it none of them could have any money or get through the country.” When the gang refused to move, Smith told them that he would give them so many hours to get off the road “or I will come up with my Indians and throw your whole gang into the Skagway river.” He did not need to make good his threat; the outlaws had vanished by the following morning.
He made himself popular with the workingmen by taking the side of the stevedores in a strike that swept the waterfront. He distributed twenty-dollar goldpieces among them “just to see the fun,” as he put it, and the speech he made to the strikers was in the best tradition of labour agitation:
“Your cause is just – make ’em come through! These owners are clearing fortunes by the sweat of your brows. They’re making slaves of you. Stick for better wages, and if they won’t pay, let their ships lie at the wharves.… They’re raking in barrels of dough.”
With that he appointed himself strikers’ representative in negotiations with the dock-owners and continued to back the stevedores until they won the dispute.
He continued his policy, established in Denver, of outward support of the church, and there are two recorded instances of charity drives backed by Smith in the Skagway area, although there is some evidence that, at least in one case, all the money was stolen back within twelve hours.
He had very little difficulty in suborning the press. It was generally agreed that the editor of the Alaskan was in his pay. And when a prominent newspaperman, Billy Saportas of the New York World, lost his money at one of Smith’s gaming-tables and found himself stranded in Skagway, the dictator installed him on the staff of the paper at a salary of three hundred dollars a month. Saportas became his willing tool, describing him in print as “the most gracious, kind hearted man I’ve ever met” and adding that “to know him is to like him.” When Edward F. Cahill was sent to Skagway by the San Francisco Examiner to investigate reports of lawlessness, Smith handled him with delicacy and dispatch. He took Cahill under his personal wing and showed him the town. Cahill was charmed by Smith’s attention. “Soapy Smith is not a dangerous man,” he told the outside world. “He is not a desperado. He is not a scoundrel. He is not a criminal.…” Cahill exhausted his stock of superlatives in describing the dictator. He called him cool, fearless, generous, and honourable, and wrote that “he bitterly resents the imputation that he is a thief and a vagrant.” Before Smith was through with Cahill, the newspaperman had turned to poetry to eulogize him and had soon produced a flowery ode which extolled Smith’s patriotism and Americanism.
All this time Smith kept in touch with the world outside, and especially with the underworld, through a remarkable correspondence which ranged far and wide, from the Pacific northwest to Central America. He got letters from politicians, lawyers, professional men, journalists, and crooks. He got letters from El Paso, Texas, and from Guatemala, from confederates who had “bought” towns and civic governments. He got letters from Cy Warman of McClure’s magazine, which wanted to publish an article about him. He got a letter from a congressman in St. Louis enclosing two pairs of brass knuckles, and another from a political fixer named Mulgrew who wrote: “I can get police indulgence if anybody can.” He got letters from chance acquaintances asking for money, which often enough he sent as insurance against the future, and he got letters from old accomplices warning him of enemies in Skagway or advising him of suckers en route north.
“It seems you will be the next chief [of police],” one correspondent wrote from San Francisco on February 28, “and, if so, I am glad of it so that you can regulate some of the wolves that’s in our line of calling. They must have some man of judgement to regulate them or they will break up any place they try to go. There is one in particular who is strictly out for himself and I hear he is in your town.… I tell you, Jeff, he would put you and everyone else in jail to have the graft himself.”
Smith’s staff of correspondents formed an endless chain, a sort of continental spy-network, and he carefully pasted every letter into a huge scrapbook, which he kept up to date and concealed in a drawer of his old-fashioned roll-top desk along with the badges and emblems of the Masons, Oddfellows, and other fraternal organizations which, from time to time, were of value to him.
On the local scene Smith operated an equally efficient spy system. “You never knew who was who in Skagway, in Smith’s day,” J. E. C.
Beatty, a worker on the White Pass Railway, once recalled. “Your next-door neighbor, or the man at the next table in a restaurant, might be in his pay.” Smith’s methods of recruitment were straightforward enough. Harry L. Suydam, who served as city assessor, wrote that “while ‘Soapy’ Smith was not implicated in all the black deeds of the trail, he never failed to take the side of the guilty party, and often fought hard to have him go unpunished, no doubt anticipating that the rescued villain would not fail to do anything for him when called upon.” Both the Land Commissioner and the Deputy Marshal, whose office was in the same building as Suydam’s, “willingly stood in with ‘Soapy’ in his atrocious deals, for a consideration.” Suydam personally helped arrest several men on the White Pass trail who were caught stealing from caches; in every case, after they were turned over to the marshal, they were allowed to escape.
If Smith understood the principles of espionage, he was also well aware of the value of good public relations. Stray dogs and helpless widows have long been recognized as proper subjects for front-page stories, and Smith fully understood the necessity of cultivating human-interest items about himself. By the spring of ’98, Skagway was ridden with abandoned dogs of every size, shape, and pedigree. They had all been purchased at astronomical prices in Seattle by greenhorns, who brought them north under the mistaken impression that they could be trained to pull a sled. When the stark truth was discovered and the cheechakos realized that the dogs were eating them into early bankruptcy, the canines were abandoned to roam the streets in packs. Smith launched an “Adopt-A-Dog” campaign and set a good example by taking on six strays himself.
At the same time he publicly began to provide for women whose husbands had met death on the trail and for luckless stampeders who had lost their money before reaching the gold-fields. As many of the unfortunate ladies had been brought to widowhood by Smith’s own men, and most of the penniless Klondikers had been deprived of their funds in Smith’s own establishments, they were thus being supported with their own coin. An astonished Denver merchant, on arriving in Skagway, wrote to a friend that their former townsman had accounts at merchants’ stores for provisions and fuel for needy people that amounted to “several hundred dollars a week” and that “he pays for the funerals of friendless persons, and I can assure you that is no small item.”
Now an odd thing happened: Soapy Smith’s character began to undergo a subtle change. He had been playing Santa Claus in Skagway for coldly practical reasons, but as time went on he began to relish the applause that his small philanthropies brought him. There had always been a streak of vanity and of prodigality in his nature; years before when William De Vere, the “tramp poet,” wrote a ballad in his honour, Smith was so pleased he gave him a thousand dollars. Now wealth and power were no longer enough for him; he wanted homage. Like everybody else, he had gone north seeking a fortune, but in the weeks that remained money ceased to have meaning to him and he gave the entire fortune away. He liked to see his name in the papers; he liked to be known as a good fellow; he liked to be seen patting children on the head and tipping lavishly. For him, the fealty of his followers had become insufficient; he craved the devotion of the entire community. And when, at the end, the community turned against him he acted quite humanly, with pain, astonishment, hurt, resentment, and finally unreasoning rage.
The outbreak of the Spanish-American War on April 24 gave Smith a further opportunity to entrench himself in Skagway. Within three days of war’s declaration he had appointed himself captain of Company A, 1st Regiment, National Guard of Alaska, and, in a burst of old-fashioned patriotism, had opened a military office in a tent and begun recruiting soldiers for service in the Philippines. This move gave him an excuse to arm and drill his followers, so that he had a disciplined force under his command. It also provided his cronies with a perfect base of operations for an ingenious confidence game. The wave of patriotism that swept the nation following the sinking of the Maine rapidly made itself felt on the trails to the Klondike, and many stampeders decided to forsake the gold-fields for the service of their country. Pouring back through Skagway, these would-be soldiers were attracted to a sign on a tent reading “United States Army Recruiting Station.” Inside, a brisk, military-looking man, flanked by armed guards, swiftly signed each man up for service, congratulated him on his patriotism, and waved him into the rear for the necessary medical examination. While a fake doctor examined the recruits, others swiftly went through the pockets of their discarded clothing for valuables; if the patriots protested they were thrown out into the street in their underwear.
Captain Smith’s military staff were all close cronies. His lieutenant was a three card monte man known as “the Senator.” The bouncer at Clancy’s Music Hall was named sergeant. The bartender at the Klondike Saloon became chaplain to the Guards, while Stroller White of the Skagway News was placed in charge of publicity – an item that Smith never ignored. The Captain bought up all the ribbon in town to make badges for his men, and when the supply ran out he made do with butcher paper. In a few days scores of his followers were decked out in bright badges bearing the words “Smith’s Alaska Guards.”
On Sunday, May 1, Smith arranged the greatest demonstration that Skagway had yet seen, in honour of his newly formed military unit. He marched at the head of a procession that stretched for two blocks, while two thousand people cheered on the sidelines, hundreds of them wearing badges of gold, white, and blue which read: “Freedom for Cuba! Remember the Mainel Compliments of Skagway Military Company, Jeff R. Smith, Captain.”
The parade, which was accompanied by a brass band hastily organized by Jake Rice of the People’s Theatre, suffered only one major interruption. When it passed the so-called Princess Hotel, a group of scantily-clad young women, headed by one Babe Davenport, demanded that Smith stop proceedings long enough to organize a women’s auxiliary. “Your turn will come later,” Smith is said to have replied, somewhat cryptically, and the parade got under way again.
At the meeting that followed, the crowd howled for Smith to make a speech, and the self-appointed captain mounted the rostrum, and in a ringing voice offered the services of himself and his men for president and country. As the crowd applauded Smith cried:
“There is one man who, in this terrible strife, has transcended the bounds of fair war. He has murdered the helpless and the weak, debauched women, butchered and starved little children. Mr. Chairman, this man we have with us today. I have him here, and we will proceed to hang and butcher Weyler!”
At a pre-arranged signal, an effigy of the Spanish general in Cuba was swung in the breeze and a bonfire kindled beneath. According to Stroller White, who was present, Smith then cried: “You are fine and brave men, each and every one of you, and I am sure you will unhesitatingly follow me anywhere and at any time.” With that he turned on his heel and marched into his saloon, where seven extra bartenders had been retained “aproned and waiting to start, as they put it ‘shovin’ de booze over de wood.’ “ The Stroller claimed that Smith took in twenty-five hundred dollars that night.
Smith continued to mix patriotism with profit. Shortly afterwards he announced that a benefit would be staged for the widows and orphans of his troops, though he did not explain (nor did anyone dare ask in that emotion-charged period) why such an event was necessary. Smith was able to sell fourteen hundred and fifty tickets at a dollar apiece for the affair whose treasurer, a long-time crony, subsequently vanished with all but seventy-five dollars of the proceeds. Few there were by this time who doubted that Soapy Smith was the benefactor of Skagway, its guiding light, the symbol of its honour and its pride, the emblem of its future prosperity. And when a few days later a personal letter came to Smith from the Secretary of War, thanking him for his patriotism (but politely declining his offer to serve in foreign climes), it seemed to set the seal on the affair. Smith treasured the document. He had it framed and hung in a prominent place on a wall in his oyster parlour. It told the world that Jefferson Randolph Smith was something m
ore than just another tinhorn gambler.
5
Shoot-out at the Juneau dock
Independence Day in Skagway … The sharp white peaks look down upon a sea of waving flags. The wind, whistling incessantly through the long shaft of the White Pass, rustles the gay bunting with which Jeff Smith has bedecked the main streets. The air is blue with gun-smoke and the scent of burning powder, and the mountain walls resound with the shouts of the holiday crowd and the blare of martial trumpets.
On a flag-draped rostrum the Governor of Alaska is speaking, and beside him, cross-legged and smiling, sits the dictator of Skagway. This is his moment of triumph. The world is his oyster. And yet, almost at this very instant, his nemesis is trudging down the White Pass trail towards the town….
J. D. Stewart, the prospector, did not look at all like an instrument of fate. There is a picture of him extant, and if ever a man looks like a sucker, it is he. There he stands, in front of a Skagway shack, clutching his poke of gold fiercely in his right hand, his cloth cap, a little too small for him, perched squarely across his bullet head. It is ironic that this square-faced, sombre-eyed man, with his thickly knotted tie, his heavy boots, and his shapeless, high-waisted trousers, should have been the unwitting instrument that brought the sudden downfall of the suave and elegant con man.
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