Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1920-05-19
East is Becoming Wild and
Woolly. Armed Men Hold
Up Banks.

Wooily. armed NiSh iaoio
Up Banks.
Washington, May IA few days
ago seven armed men walked into a
little country bank near here, shot
and killed an officer of it, locked the
rest of the officers and employees in
the vault and went away with about
$4,000 in cash and securities. No
one even found out what had hap
pened for quarter of an hour after
they had left. Detectives, policeman,
constables and all the other varieties
of sleuths are hot on the tracks OF
the bandits, but have caught nothing
so far except lot of very vague
clues and great deal of space in the
newspapers.
Three days after the above hap
pening, seven armed men went into
one of the offices of the Fifth Avenue
Bus Company in New York, held up
80 men, took $4,000 and escaped
without leaving behind so much as a
clue.
This may or may not have been
the same gang. There is no special
reason to suppose it was the same
gang. This country is full of gangs
and individuals who make an easy liv
ing by robbery and murder. Crimes
like the two above narrated have be-
come so common that we scarcely
realize how common they are.
Jesse James Outdone.
Jesse James and his brother, Frank
won fame by their success as bandits
during the generation following the
Confederate war. We are accustora-
ed to think of the deeds and the
times of the James boys as something
romantically and especially criminal.
Yet the James boys never did any
thing more bold than these two rob-
berries, and they never got away with
anything so easily. They held up a
number of small country banks in
Western towns successfully, but they
were often shot at, and members Of
their gang were repeatedly wounded.
Finally, when they tried to rob the
bank in Mortified, Mimi, the citi-
zens surrounded them, fired on them
with rifles and six shooters and final
ly killed all of the gang but two. The
James boys had hard life compared
to modern auto bandits, who make
our highways unsafe and make
every isolated store and bank a more
or less hazardous enterprise.
We also like to read tales of the
Wild West, throughout the period
from about 1860 TO 1890, when the
six shooter was supreme in all the
great regions west of the Mississippi.
MANY fabulous fiction tales have
been constructed about that era
which cause the hair of the unso-
phisticated to stand on the end ard
make the Eastern citizen thank God
that he lives in a civilized country.
Yet, as a matter of fact, excepting
where hostile Indians were involved,
both life and property were vastly
safer in the West of that day than
they are in the East of this day. This
you can easily ascertain for yourself
if YOU will read, not the hair Drained
fiction which has been written about
the early West, but the accounts OF
actual experiences there.
For example, young Englishman
named Bell, in 1867, accompanied
the surveyors who were exploring a
route for the Santa Fe railroad
across the continent, and afterward
wrote book about it. He passed
through New Mexico during one OF
it's widest epochs, when there were
still a few Indians on the warpath
and when there was absolutely no
effective legal organization. Coun-
ties had sheriffs, who were generally
highly efficient men, and sometimes
a town would have marshal. But
there was no adequate policing-no
guardian of the law walking his beat
to prevent you from doing this or
that-and the courts were an aoso-
lutte farce. On the other hand, every
man went armed. Nobody walked IN
to any place and held up SIX men or
80 men, because he knew that every
man had a gun on his person, ana
c.o4 oynau without