The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-05-10
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HAsKIN. Director.
Washington, D. c.
THE WILD AND WOODY EAST.

into a little country bank near here,
shot and killed an officer of it, locked
the rest of the officers and employees
into the vault and went away with
about thirty thousand dollars in cash
and securities. No one even found out
what had happened for a quarter of an
hour after they had left. Detectives,
policemen, constabies and ell the other
varieties of sleuths are hot on the
tracks of the bandits, but have caught
nothing SO far except a lot of very
vague clues and a great deal of space
! in the newspapers.
Three days after the above happen
ing, seven armed men went into one OF
the offices of the Fifth Avenue Bus
company in New York. held up thirty
men, took two thousand dollars, and
! escaped without even having to shoot
anyone and without leaving behind so
F! much as a clue.
This may or may not have been the
| same gang. There is DO special reason
to suppose it was the same gang. Tn s
country is full OF gangs and individuals
| who make an easy living by robbery
and murder. Crimes like the two
above narrated have become SO COM
mon that we scarcely realize how COM
mon they are.
Jesse James Outdone.
Jesse James and his brother Frank,
won fame by their success as bandits
during the generation following the
Civil war. We are accustomed to
think OF the deeds and the times of the
James boys as something Economically
criminal. Yet the James boys never
did anything more bold than these two
robberies, and they never got away
with anything so easily. They held UP
number of small county banks in
western towns successfully, but they
NO .kx1
their gang were repeatedly wounded.
FINALLY, when they tried to rob the
bank in Mortified, Mimi. the citizens
surrounded them, fired on them with
rites and six-shooters. and finally
killed all Of the gang but two. The
James boys had a 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, turnout the period from
ABOUT 1850 TO 1880, when the six
shooter was supreme in all the great
region west of the Mississippi. Many
fabulous fiction tales have been con-
structed about that era, which cause
the hair OF the unsophisticated to
stand on end, and make the eastern
citizen thank God that he lives in a
civilized country. yet, as a matter of
TACT, 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 il you will read not the hair
Drained fiction which has been writ
ten about the early west, but the ac-
counts OF actual experiences there.
FOR example, young Englishman
named Bell, in 1857, accompanied the
surveyors who were exploring a route
Tor the Santa Fe railrad across the
continent, and afterward wrote a book
about it, He passed thru New Mexico
during one of its widest epochs, when
there were still a few Indians on the
warpath, and when there was abso-
lutely no effective legal organization.
Counties had sheriffs, who were gen
orally highly efficient men, and some
times a town would have a marshal
But there was no adequate policing,
as We understand it today-no guar
dian OF the law walking his beat to
prevent you from doing this or that
and the courts were an absolute farce
On the other hand. every man went
armed. Nobody walked into any place
and held up six men, or thirty men.
because he knew that every man had
gun on his person, and that he
would not get away without having
each and every one of them take a
shot at him.
Wild West Was Safe.
Both life and property wereLe-
markably safe in those days, when
every man went armed and knew how
to shoot There were many shootings
and killings, to be sure, but these were
generally Quarrels between bad" men.
The individual who minded his bust
ness was not molested. There is
abundant testimony to that effect. Mr..
Bell, for example, was never in any.
n - LII e.
which he was molested in any way
was in the center of a United States
military post where there were more
than q. thousand soldiers on hand to
enforce the law. At this place, Fort
Union, his horse was stolen from the
stable of an officer. In Trinidad, Colo,
a typical western town, more than
half Mexican, having neither courts,
nor officers of the law, he reports
that both he and his property were
perfectly safe. Nobody stole his horse
because the good people of Trinidad
made a speciality of lynching horse
thieves. While he was there, miner
came in from the mountains who had
killed his partner about a year before.
Meantime he had grown a heavy
beard and he trusted to this disguise
and time to have obliterated the mem
DRY of his crime. But when he went
into saloon and began to drink the
saloon began to fill up with quiet.
determined looking citizens The
miner was very quietly surrounded
and disarmed. He was given an in
formal trial and hung to a cottonwood
tree just outside the window of the
room where Mr.. Bell, the genteel
young Englishman, was sleeping. But
the only annoyance Mr.. Bell ever suf-
fered in Trinidad was that of having
this corpse for a neighbor.
Thus the social conscience was &C
tive and effective in the early west
Now and then a band of robbers was
successful for a while, but il was al
ways broken up by posses of citizens
sooner or later. and nearly every rob-
Der died a sudden and violent death
before many years Most of the long
hard fights in that country were over
crimes. like cattle rustling. which had
once been legitimate business and
were slowly outlawed After the Civil