Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/614

596 But the best witness was Puter. Like most men who have kept secrets for years, Puter enjoyed talking, so he talked and talked; he would go away and, recalling things he had forgotten, would come back to Heney with them. And now, when no one is left to listen, Steve Puter is making a book.

Well, it would take a book to tell all that Puter and his pals know of the land and other grafts of Oregon; and most of it was brought out in the trials, the long, hard-fought trials which lasted two years and are going on still. Heney won all of his; at least he got 33 convictions out of 34 cases. And now W. C. Bristol is carrying on the work. But our interest, as I have said, is not in crime, but in the effect of crime on men and government—as Francis J. Heney saw it.

And the first thing Heney saw in these confessions was that United States Attorney Hall did indeed represent the graft system. Bums had been right all along. The reason Hall was prosecuting Puter et al. was cleared up by the inside story of the case: Puter and McKinley had had a row over some stolen land and they unloaded their troubles on a young man named Lloyd, whose father, a lumberman of Minnesota, had sent him West to learn the (land-graft) business. Lloyd "squealed" to Col. Greene. The Special Agent was loyal to the government then and he reported this and a fraud in the surveyor-general's office to Mr. Hitchcock. The Secretary directed Greene to co-operate with United States Attorney Hall. Hall needed the information Greene furnished him. His term had expired and Charles W. Fulton had promised his place to George C. Brownell as pay for his (Fulton's) election to the United States Senate. Brownell was President of the Oregon Senate; he had been the Southern Pacific's man there for years; as chairman of the railroad committee, he headed the "combine" of "corrupt politicians" who accepted campaign contributions from big businessmen and held up little business men. Brownell delivered the decisive votes which elected Mitchell and other men besides Fulton to the United States Senate. His claim to promotion into the Federal service was "good," therefore. But Greene's eidence in the surveyor-general's case involved Brownell, and Hall used it to drive him out of the race. Brownell named his partner, J. W. Campbell, as his heir to the senatorial gratitude; he did not know that there was anything "on" Campbell. There was and there was something "on" somebody else, too. The Puter-McKinley cases reached up to Binger Herrman and Senator Mitchell himself, so Hall rushed off to Washington, where he explained to the senators just what Col. Greene's evidence meant. The result was the now famous letter to Brownell, dated in the Senate, Washington, Jan. 18, 1904, part of which follows:

""I can assure you we are both anxious to discharge in some proper way the great obligations we are both under to you. I have received your several dispatches since Hall left Portland and both Senator Fulton and myself have done everything in our power to protect you, and also Campbell—who is also under the ban of Greene and others, as we learned to our great surprise and regret—and, without going into particulars, I think we have been able to so arrange matters as to protect you both. Of course, friend Brownell, this letter is to you in the strictest confidence. The best way for the present is to drop all talk about the District Attorneyship; let the matter stand for the present. Both Fulton and I have for the purpose of protecting your interest gone very much farther in a certain direction than we ever supposed we would. I cannot explain fully to you until I see you just what I mean. Hall leaves this evening for home. My advice would be for you to say nothing to him unless he says something to you. Just let the matter drift for the present. This is all-important.""

This was signed by John H. Mitchell and there was added a line saying: "I have read the above and fully concur in it," signed C. W. Fulton.

Here then was a full explanation of Hall. But here also was something far more important: the two senators from Oregon apologizing to Brownell, a crook, for not having him made a United States District Attorney, but reporting to him a bargain with the present United States District Attorney not to prosecute him and "others." This was the System and Heney saw it, and he saw how he, by speaking for Hall at Washington, had assisted the corrupt bargain. But he made amends. Such treason to the United States Government in office is not a crime, either in law or in public opinion; not yet. Heney had to get some-