The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-10-20
HOW He COT THEM
Facts About the Standard Oil
Letters Out.
We're Stolen by a Negro, Says
the Report.
RECEIVED A BIG SUM.
Twelve Thousand Dollars Is the
Amount.
RumOr That the Best Are Yet
RumOr That the Best Are Yet
to Come.

New York, Oct. 2o-The John d.
Archbold Standard Oil letters, involv-
ing Senator Foraker, Representative
Sibley and others, which William
Randolph Hearst has read in the pres
ent campaign, were stolen from the
Archbold files by a negro in Mr.. Arch
bolds Office and sold by him to the
Hearst papers, through a white man,
confidential messenger of the STAN
dard Oil company, according to an ar
ticle in Golfers Weekly for october
"a. The negro and the white man are
said to have made $4,000 out of the
transaction. The white man hints
that the best of these letters are yet
to be used-and that those which have
been held in reserve have to do with
Senator Aldrich and Senator Penrose.
The article is headed, "Mr. Hearst's
Thieves" and is written by Arthur
H. Gleason. One of the men. who,
according to Mr.. Gleason's story, got
the letters for Mr.. Hearst, is William
w. Winfield. a negro file clerk, mes
senger and door tender in Mr.. Arch
bold's office, and stepson of Mr.. Arch
bold's negro butler, James N. Will
kins, who has been in Mr.. Archbold's
family twenty years. Winfield had
been in the Standard Oil office ten
years when he was discharged in 1908.
The others man was Charles Stump,
white. in the Standard Oil office for
six years, WHSn lie, lOOs was OlSCudT SCQ
in 1905. Winfield is represented as
furnishing the brains of the combina-
ton. while Stump was merely used
by him a white go-between to ar
range the negotiations with the Hearst
people.
The white man and the negro are
said to have played the races Satur-
| days. Along in 1904, Just after the
presidential election, Winfield brought
to Stump the first batch of Archbold
Ik.0,- nd a
began making visits to the offices or
the Hearst publications. These offices
were the natural market for such
merchandise at that time, because the
Hearst Cosmopolitan Magazine was
running a series known as THE Trea-
son of the Senate" But the material
was a sort which could be used with
greater effect at another time and the
letters were put away in a safe.
Mr.. Gleason quotes Charles Stump as
follows: "Mr. Hearst hasn't begun to
read the best of the letters. He's begin
ming easy. Wait till you hear him read
! the Senator Penrose and the Senator
Aldrich letters. Then there'll be a sem
sation. What's happening now Is moth
ing. He hasn't the originals, you know.
These were returned to the Standard
OIL files. Photographic copies We're
made and these are the ones Hearst is
using. He hasn't originals except of
few Hanna letters, which may not come
copies were sold to the Hearst people
some of the letters were returned to
Mr.. Archbold by friend of mine. Mr..
Archbold had offered US $1,000, but he
didn't pay it after he got his hands on
| the letters"
Stump also is quoted as saying that
since Mr.. Hearst began reading the
| letters he wrote to him suggesting that
Mr.. Hearst might send him a little
more money, but he adds that nothing
came of that letter. Mr.. Archbold dis
covered the theft early in 1905 and dis
| charged Winfield and Stump.