Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-06-09
.SLEUTHS OF THE RAIL
Exacting Duties of a Novel
Secret Service.
DOWNING THE CARD SHARPS
How Confidence Men and Other Crooks
Are Nabbed.
DOUBTFUL OFFICIALS SPOTTED
Passengers Were Formerly at Mercy
Of Light-Fingered Gentry on
Many Railroads.
OFFICIALS SPOTTED

at the Ebbitt House most of the present
week. Is In reality an organization COM
/ posed of members OF the secret police OF
/ the railroads of the United States This
secret police service Of the railroads oper-
ates not only for the protection of the
| railroads themselves from thefts and pecu-
| latiens on the part OF employees and others.
but 1t works for the general public using
/ the railroads. shippers and passengers, at
1 the same time.
Before the railroad secret service was
1 organized said one of the members. in
speaking of the work OF the organization. :"
the railroads. the shippers. and the travel
/ ing public were virtually at the mercy of
| all sorts of thieves and swindlers.
THE railroads had no reliable method of
discovering and stopping peculations or
outright robberies on the part OF their
own employees. The tracing system, So
called. In the course of which the railroads
sent supposedly honest employees on the
In practice. The men chosen to do the trac-
| Ing work generally proved Incompetent, or
| they were easily led into believing any
| thing they were told by the employees I'M
der suspicion. or, for a rake-on of the
swag. they turned accessories themselves,
| so that the railroads were all but hopeless
in running down their plunderers.
1T took the railroads good many years
helplessness in this respect. The fact did
| finally dawn upon a group Of powerful rail-
! road men, however, and then 1t was de-
| termined that railroad secret service. Or
ganlzed along the general lines of the gov
| ernmental secret service, was needed in the
United States. The fine work accomplished
| by the secret service OF the American
| Bankers Association and the American
| Jewellers Association was an argument In
| favor of the organization OF similar ser
vice by the united railroads. The American
| Bankers Association secret police will
spend a hundred thousand or a million dol
lars, IL necessary. to run down and tab
| 'scratcher, or forger who lays down a
| bad check. and no manipulation Of worth
less paper can by any possibility keep out
| OF the clutches Of that service once the
American Bankers secret service gets after
| the crook. There is an instance in which a
| sscratcher' was followed twice completely
around the world by member of that
/ service. and the check transaction upon
which this crook was wanted only involved
| a matter Of S33. at that.
Gem Thieves and Grafters.
1.-THE secret service Of the jewelers. AS
| ISOLATION was equally determined and re-
| ientless In running down gem thieves ana
grafters. and the jewelers. belonging to the
association have been saved literally mil
| lions of dollars through the organization OF
| this secret service of their own.
a
the railroad secret police should be con-
| fined exclusively to the protection OF the
railroads from dishonesty the part CT
employees and to running down robbers OF
| freight in transit. In fact, the service ope-
rated along these lines exclusively for a
considerable time, and with extraordinary
| success 1t Is now thoroughly understood
| by railroad employees tempted to engage IN
dishonest practices that they have about
| the same eventual chance of being nailed
| with the goods as counterfeiters in this
country have Of being corraled with the
merchandise by the United States secret
service, and 1t is, Of course not necessary
| TO enlarge upon the dimensions of that
chance. Our work for the railroads is COM
parable, In way, with that of the post
| Office inspectors. When 1t is understood
how inevitably the post Office Inspectors
get the post Office employees who yield to
the temptation to be dishonest, this COM
parison will be the better understood.
1--WE are in no sense spies or spoilers
But we have devised and systematized our
methods thoroughly that If, for example
a crate of Strawberries shipped from Flor
Ida to Washington gets mixed up in me
shuttle or discard and disappears we can
ccme pretty nigh finding out what became
of that crate of strawberries and running
down the individual responsible for its loss
or theft. We have all but dispersed and
landed in state prisons all over the coun-
try those cleyerly organized bands OF hobos
whose game was to rob freight cars on the
move or side-tracked in yards and freight
car robberies have fallen off about so per
cent since the railroad secret service was
organized. No CRATER in the employ of a
railroad is too big or too little to fall into
the net IL he makes himself liable. We've
put all kinds of them away, from travelling
auditors to clerks of little way stations, and
l don't think there'd be the least hesita-
ton in going after the president of rail-
road IL he was suspected of crooked work
Clever Card Sharpers.
he
protecting the railroads thoroughly under
way and running smoothly. it branched out
into the formulation of methods for the
protection of the travelling public. and this
is now one of the most important features
of the work Of the organization.
The downing OF the card sharpers who
until Few years ago, were preyfng upon
the gulible element among railway travel
ers was one of the first of the tasks m
dertaken for the protection of the travel
Ing public For various reasons the most
essential of which was that the evil was
most pronounced out west, the western
arm of the service was the most keen in
ing card swindlers, although the work has
now extended until 1T covers practically
every railroad In the United States.
THE eradication of the card sharks was
found to be very difficult and delicate WORK
The travelling secret service man engaged
upon this work had to make very sure
tnat ne was rlgnt before he took any ac-
ton The man who Is idiotic enough to
allow himself to be drawn into a game of
cards fer a money stake while travelling
on a railroad win often, out of a sense of
foolish vanity, play squarely into the hands
OF the card crook. He resents the irnpu-
tation that he Is imbecile enough to allow
himself to be cheated by a professional
short card player. and this vanity will not
only cause him, IN many cases to noisily
protest that he believes the crook who is
yfctamizing him to be all right but It will
In most cases andnce him to decline to
appear against the crook in the case of
an arrest. But not one mistake has been
made up to date by any of our men sent out
to trail these professional card crooks. The
secret service agents In charge of this
branch of the work travelled the roads for a
long time, without making an arrest for
the purpose of familiarizing themselves with
the faces and methods Of the short card
players. In many instances they actually
engaged in card games with the sharks.
So that. by the time they were ready 10
act. they had a most complete line upon
ali the regulars In the short card bust
ness. and with this data In hand they did
not fear to go ahead with the work OF elm
nation,
Standing on Their Dignity.
The card crooks began to find them
selves pinched' In sets of fours. the
saying goes. They roared and ramped