The Web

CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF PHILADELPHIA

The City of Brotherly Love gives us pause. Is it indeed the truth that Americans do not know their own country? The story of the American Protective League, covering some millions of typewritten words, some hundreds of thousands of pages of typewritten copy, might be called one of the largest and one of the best histories of America ever written. It offers no pretense at deductions, but only an abundance of facts, objective and not subjective, concrete and not abstract. Popular impression hath it that the city founded by good William Penn is a simple and quiet sort of community, where life goes on lawfully and all is ease and comfort, peace and content. The facts do not seem to bear out this supposition. Philadelphia was as lawless as the next city during war times, possessed of as many undesirables and offering as many urgent problems in national defense. Tucson, Arizona, reports peace. Philadelphia is bad and borderish!

Among the many hundreds of reports coming in during the closing days of the American Protective League, there are some which run forty, fifty, or seventy-five pages of single space type. A very few of such reports would make a book the size of this one in hand. It has been, let it be repeated, with a most genuine regret that such work had to be condensed by the press. The Philadelphia report, for instance, covers ninety pages, and is an absolute model in every way. Indeed, a visit to the Philadelphia A. P. L. offices would have left any visitor certain of the high level of efficiency which has been attained by that division in every phase of its work. There was not a neater, better-systematized or smoother-running division in all the League than that in bad and borderish Philadelphia. The installation in that city was not so large as some. A Swiss watch is not so large as a Big Ben clock, but the latter does not keep any better time and makes much more noise about it.

It being impossible to print all of the Philadelphia report, it is quite in order to give rather a full summary of it, that we may correct the old impression regarding Philadelphia as a place of peace. The tabulated records cover only eleven months, from December 26, 1917, to November, 1918. In that period, 18,275 persons were examined, not counting those who were released in the big slacker raids. In order that the lay reader may have a perfect idea of the many different heads of activity in any one of these great offices, the Philadelphia table is offered in full, precisely as sent in:

The beginnings of the A. P. L. in Philadelphia lay in a meeting of fifty business men, who came together April 9, 1917, and organized as the Philadelphia Branch of the A. P. L. From that time on, varying fortunes and different personnel attended the League activities. On December 26, 1917, Mr. Mahlon R. Kline, who for years had been in charge of the Claim Department of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company and had been engaged in secret service work in other corporations, was appointed Chief of the division. In February, 1918, there came in with Mr. Kline, Mr. Frank H. Gaskill, formerly Superintendent of the Franklin Detective Agency, who also had been associated with the Claims Department of the Rapid Transit Company. Although no pretense is made of naming all their associates, it should be mentioned that to these two men must be accorded a great deal of the credit for the last year’s work.

Naturally the question of finances came in early. In January, 1918, Mr. Horace A. Beale, Jr., president of an iron company, volunteered to purchase any furniture and office equipment which might be necessary. This brought out the need of a permanent fund, and Mr. Beale was one of the League’s staunchest supporters along these lines. There was put before the members of the Chamber of Commerce a plant protection system which has been in practice in many American cities. Factory owners paid into the treasury of the League twenty-five to one hundred dollars a month, which, for a time, covered the running expenses of the office even in its growing condition. When this income became inadequate, Mr. Kline with the Executive Committee later arranged for an expense account through the War Chest Fund of $3,000 a month.

There was a handy little cabinet made up by the Bureau Chief in charge of slackers and deserters, which contained the following card index information: Names, addresses and telephone numbers of members to be counted on at any hour; names of members taking assignments in the several districts; names of members willing to accept assignments in any section. This cabinet contains the address and telephone numbers of all members owning yachts, motor cars, etc.; also a record of members speaking the following languages: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish, Hungarian, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, Pennsylvania Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Greek, Esperanto, Laplandish, Korean, Japanese, Austrian, Slavish and Latin.

The League in Philadelphia did not attempt secrecy. On the contrary, it openly availed itself of the services of the newspapers, and had the confident backing of all the great journals. It did not always go out after its man personally, but saved a great deal of time by inventing a little form letter which read as follows:

This was the letter sent out to draft evaders. It was thought at first it would not work, but, as a matter of fact, it brought in a stream of men who otherwise would have needed to be found. Once in the office, the rest was easy.

At the time that Mr. Kline came into the League there were 1,225 members. Additional members were selected with great care, but politics, religion, lodge affiliations, and so forth, were not factors in the working of the League. There were on February 7, 1919, 3,440 members of the A. P. L. in Philadelphia, all working for purely patriotic motives.

The training of operatives under the skilled secret service instruction available in the division offices resulted in losing a good many men to the Department of Justice forces, who were not slow to recognize the value of good, well-trained men when they saw them. There were many departments of the United States Government which lie under deep debt to-day to the Philadelphia office of the American Protective League.

The Philadelphia work was perhaps most famous through its great system of drives. That city is indeed the original drive center, and there, better than anywhere else, perhaps, may be seen the working of a thoroughly differentiated system of drag-nets. There were a number of these raids which may be summarized briefly.

The first was a small affair conducted on May 17, 1918, which took in a couple of roadhouses where uniformed men were buying liquor.

The second raid was conducted on July 15, 1918, when about 2,000 members swooped down on the Tenderloin district of Chester, Pennsylvania, arresting about four hundred persons, mostly of the lowest type. About ninety per cent of these prisoners were convicted for bootlegging or crimes of a worse character—denizens of the section known as Bethel Court and Leiper’s Flat, which the officers call the worst hell-holes they have ever seen—“such places as make the Mexican border look like a Sunday School picnic,” says one. In this tough district many desperate characters were met who were quick to use weapons; but the agents of the law sustained practically no personal injuries.

Other raids followed, the sixth taking place on August 2, 1918, at Woodside Park, an amusement place which was filled with slackers. Two hundred A. P. L. members and agents of D. J. surrounded the place and handled in all 2,000 men, out of which more than three hundred were detained.

The seventh raid was August 6, 1918—the great slacker raid on Shibe Park, at the time when there was a crowd of 8,000 men gathered to witness the Jack Thompson-Sam Langford prize fight. There were twenty agents of D. J., two hundred A. P. L. members and one hundred Philadelphia police. They examined over 2,000 men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-two, and held one hundred and forty-one as deserters or evaders.

The eighth raid, August 15, 1918, was set at Atlantic City, N. J., and is considered the daddy of them all. At that time four pleasure piers were raided, and more than 60,000 men, women and children were handled without commotion. Preparations for this raid were left to Mr. Gaskill, since he had done so well with other raids. In the call for the assembly the members did not know where they were going—they got sealed directions. At 10:00 P. M. sharp, the entrance and exit guards took up positions and refused to allow any males to leave the pier without showing classification cards, if within draft age. The other squads of from fifty to seventy-five men were instructed to proceed to the ocean end of the pier, form a solid line and sweep all men within the above mentioned ages, found without papers, to a point at the board walk end of the pier where they were detained until the work had been completed, after which they were transferred to the armory for further examination. There were about seven hundred men apprehended in that raid and sixty real slackers. It was an all-night job, the members from Philadelphia arriving home about seven o’clock as quietly as they had slipped out of town.

On November 6, 1918, the Olympia Athletic Club was raided, and out of the 8,000 men who had gathered to witnessed the Dempsey-Levinsky prize fight, more than 1,000 were detained, thirty-six of which proved real draft evaders. This bunch of fight fans was handled by one hundred and twenty-five A. P. L. members, forty police, and twelve agents of the Department of Justice.

The signing of the armistice on the eleventh of November ended the slacker raids, but having its hand well skilled by this time, the A. P. L. went on with vice raids and picked up a great many people who had not complied with the draft laws. On November 20, 1918, Chester, Pa., was again raided and an additional forty-two prisoners apprehended. The next three days were put in with Tenderloin raids for bootleggers, of whom sixty were sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment.

It is probable that the Philadelphia division has worked out the raid matter as exactly as any other division of the country. The Chief had a carefully-drawn diagram or map made, showing the system by which the men were stationed. It is a good instance of the Web of the Law. The chart shows fifteen squads of men traveling north and south, east and west, in a systematic covering of a bootleg territory 10 by 15 squares. Therefore, one squad travels north on one street and south on another street, while the squad working on opposite sides to them travels east and then west in the same manner. This makes it absolutely impossible for an offender to operate without an agent seeing him. It was often noticed that a bootlegger approaching a uniformed man would be almost instantly surrounded by one or two or even three squads who closed in to make the arrest. Philadelphia had the hunting of the bootlegger down to a fine point.

Mr. Todd Daniel, Superintendent of the Department of Justice for Philadelphia, has always been an ardent admirer of the A. P. L. In return, the League has supplied him on request with fifty to one hundred motor cars each month, and investigated as many as 1,000 cases which his staff would have been unable to handle. No wonder he admires them.

Surveillance such as this kept property damages in and around this great industrial center at a minimum. The Eddystone Munition Plant explosion occurred previous to the organization of the League. The Woodbury Bag Loading Plant, Woodbury, N. J., was so well covered that although a great many attempts to cause explosions and set fires were made with bombs and inflammable materials, they all failed of their purpose. No one can tell how much property loss was averted through the work of the Philadelphia division. It would be invidious to quote any, and hopeless to quote all, of the many letters of approval received from persons high in Government, political and commercial circles, complimenting the division upon its efficiency.

Needless to say, Philadelphia had her own share of causes celébrès. One of the most unique and interesting of these was that of the Philadelphia Tageblatt, a German daily newspaper prosecuted under the charge of seditious and disloyal utterances. In the fall of 1917, a raid was conducted by D. J. and A. P. L. upon the headquarters of this paper, at which time many files, books, papers, and so forth, were seized, with the result that warrants were issued for the editor and all his staff. When they were called for trial, members of the division were again used for the purpose of investigating the jury panel, as well as for the procurement of evidence essential to the case. In one item, this work took the form of securing through banking members, proofs of certain signatures without which the Government’s case would have been crippled.

These men were tried for treason, but were discharged for lack of evidence. They were subsequently prosecuted under a charge of conspiracy to hinder voluntary enrollment and for violation of the Espionage Act. On the latter charge, they were found guilty. Louis Werner, the editor, and his associate, Martin Darkow, got five years’ imprisonment each, Herman Lemke two years, Peter Shaefer and Paul Vogel, one year each.

The Tageblatt had been warned often against its unseemly utterances, but to no avail. It was a sheet of no great consequence, and about fifteen years ago was anarchistic. Then it turned to Socialism. When war was declared, it was outspoken against the Allies. After the declaration it became more cautious, but its columns were full of propaganda. It had no telegraph or cable service, but its policy was dictated by the selective choice of its editorial staff. Louis Werner was a naturalized citizen born in Germany. Darkow was a non-registered alien enemy and wrote the editorials. The president was Peter Shaefer, the treasurer Paul Vogel, and the business manager Herman Lemke. The trial for treason lasted only ten days. The second trial, for conspiracy, was more successful from the viewpoint of the law. Upon the stand, both Werner and Darkow were insolent. They will have time to think over all these matters in quiet for a while.

Red Cross frauds attracted some attention on the part of the League in Philadelphia, which investigated all sorts of fanciful rumors, as well as several schemes of fraudulent or nearly fraudulent or unworthy nature. One of these, purporting to collect for a central hospital, seemed at first to have merit; but when advertisements appeared offering solicitors a highly lucrative connection, the A. P. L. agents discovered that this was for the purpose of raising about $1,500,000—out of which a commission of twenty per cent was to be paid to the solicitors. A halt was called on this, but the same people got busy again about three months later with a campaign purporting to collect $1,000,000 for the care of “crippled negro soldiers.” There was a fund of about $10,000 which had been contributed by colored persons. Some of the people connected with this movement were well-meaning and absolutely disinterested; yet in the background were others who appeared to be out for the coin. The campaign was closed down again. This is but a sample of other affairs of the same sort.

One of the notable Philadelphia affairs was that of Norman T. W——, scholar, patent attorney, chess expert and draft evader. This case originated in Washington where he failed to appear for examination or to turn in a questionnaire. He asked to have his examination transferred to Philadelphia, so the whole matter was transferred to Philadelphia. On July 15, W—— was mailed his order for induction into the service and was told to report July 24, but he did not appear. Philadelphia A. P. L. then took on the matter.

W—— was the son of respectable Philadelphia parents and of good connections. Without doubt, he and his brother were shielded by their relatives and friends as long as possible. On November 8, the Philadelphia Division of the A. P. L. wired Washington stating that W—— had been apprehended. On November 16, 1918, he was sent to Camp Dix.

The public has some notion of the great plant for ship construction erected at Hog Island, near Philadelphia, by the United States Shipping Board. All sorts of stories came out regarding affairs at this shipping yard, and the charges were so direct and well-supported that Congress finally investigated the matter. The Philadelphia Division of the A. P. L. had some part in this investigation, which had to do with charges of extravagance, graft and waste of public moneys. There was one item, the employment of thousands of jitney drivers, which was severely criticised. These cars were employed by the Emergency Fleet Corporation to transport their workmen from their homes to the Island, since it was thought the regular transportation lines could not handle them. The charge was made that large amounts were collected by the jitney men from the Shipping Yard without rendering any service; the shipping yards, in turn, charged these amounts back to the Government. There were thousands of reports turned in by the operatives to D. J. on these “jitney cases.” It was found that a good many men in authority were in the habit of ordering the drivers, after they had brought them down to the Shipping Yard, to go back home and place themselves at the disposal of the members of the families of the foremen or officers—the Government thus supporting a large number of private automobiles for salaried persons. The entire matter quieted down when the increased cost of tires and gas deprived the jitney drivers of their profits, and when competition came on through the installation of better service and equipment by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company.

There was no branch of the A. P. L. activities in Philadelphia so carefully handled as that having to do with the I. W. W. and other radical organizations. There were five Locals found and fifty-one revolutionary clubs with a total membership of 5,000, ninety per cent of whom were of foreign birth, absolutely opposed to all government and ever ready to overthrow law by revolutionary tactics.

The A. P. L. made a raid upon one club solely for the purpose of seizing literature and files. As a result of this, fifty I. W. W. agitators were dismissed from shipping yards and government plants. Some of these were in the Government Bag Loading Plant at Woodbury, in the shipping yard at Bristol, and in the Emergency Fleet Corporation at Hog Island. All these Philadelphia radicals contributed heavily to the defense fund of the I. W. W. members who were on trial in Chicago.

It was thought desirable to find any possible connection of German interest with these radicals. At one meeting the discovery was made that two men appeared and made a contribution to the foregoing defense fund. They came from a Fairmount German singing society—where they sang anything but American patriotic airs. The League kept close watch on all these radical organizations, so close that they have not dared to make any outright break. The slightest step out of the proper path would mean an immediate reckoning with men who have been rather stern in matters of justice.

After the Tageblatt case, which was the first case in the entire country resulting in a conviction under the indictments which were brought against Werner and his associates, the Grover Bergdoll case of mysterious disappearance is perhaps Philadelphia’s greatest contribution to detective literature. Indeed, there is still chance for a good detective in Philadelphia who can give bond for the production of the body of Grover C. Bergdoll, college athlete, wealthy young man-about-town, skillful mechanician, student of law, X-ray experimenter, radical editor—and draft evader. The Bergdoll brothers, Grover and Irwin, are known as the “slackers de luxe.” They were sons of a wealthy brewer, and having money, it seemed to them that they need not respect the law. They had shown their contempt for it before the draft reached out for them. Grover C. did not register, and Irwin failed to file his questionnaire. A. P. L. was set on their trail, but the young men had both disappeared. From that time until now neither of these men has been apprehended. Grover C. Bergdoll was seen in Mexico, was alleged to have been in the West on a ranch, was reported to have been in Spain, was said to have been seen in Western New York, and was reported also to have been in Philadelphia twice. Sometimes he would send a card to the newspapers just to tantalize the public, or to the officials whom he knew to be after him. Well, money is a present friend in times of trouble. For a time the Bergdoll mystery will remain a mystery. One of these days the life of the Bergdoll boys will fail to interest them. One of these days the law will lay its hands on them, and they will have to settle with the country which they have slighted and scorned and whose citizenship they do not deserve.

It may have occurred to readers of these pages that there was not enough blood and thunder stuff pulled off by the operatives of the A. P. L. It is quite possible that the Department of Justice men have had the harder load to carry in these more violent affairs, because quite often they are obliged to make the actual arrest, on warrants under evidence obtained by the A. P. L. One Philadelphia incident resulted in the killing of the man sought—a negro desperado who carried several aliases but was best known in the saloon district as “Porto Rico.”

On Friday, November 8, two men of the League, in trying to locate a suspect, found two colored men in military uniform whom they followed. These gave up the whereabouts of two of their companions who were in a certain house. When found, these men claimed they had been drugged and robbed by some colored women there. It had been their present plan to wait there in the darkness until the women came back and then to kill them. The whole scene was in a tough part of town where the uniform of the United States does not belong.

Out of these proceedings the operatives got the address of four other men, one of these Porto Rico, who were supposed to be in the habit of robbing colored soldiers and other men in uniform. A certain saloon was visited by the operatives, and a few minutes after they appeared, a burly negro entered and was accosted as “Porto Rico” by the owner. The two operatives were C. H. Keelor of the League and Mr. Sprague of the Department of Justice. Keelor tapped Porto Rico on the arm and asked him for his card. The man got into action at once, kicked Keelor in the leg and struck Sprague, knocking him down. He made a leap to the open and pulled a heavy revolver, starting to retreat northeast on Lombard Street.

Operative Logan was on the opposite side of the street, and he now closed in. There was a shot fired, perhaps by a friend of Porto Rico. The latter raised his revolver and took aim at Sprague. Sprague was armed with a heavy holster gun and beat the negro to the shot, killing him with a bullet through the heart. Porto Rico fell, his revolver dropping from his hand, and such was his vitality that for a long time he struggled to reach the gun as it lay close by him. Sprague was cleared in court, as he shot obviously in self-defense. Charles Seamore, alias John E. Manuel, alias Porto Rico, was a notorious gun man. Beside his revolver he carried a razor and a number of 38-calibre cartridges. His registration card showed that he had registered under a false name. In almost the same place a little while later a Philadelphia policeman was shot by a negro, who in turn was killed by a lieutenant of the police department.

In May, 1918, Major C. N. Green, U. S. Engineers, came into the League Headquarters of the Philadelphia Division and said he wanted assistance in organizing secret service work for plant protection and that he had been directed to the A. P. L. offices. Out of this later grew the connection of the A. P. L. with the Woodbury Bag Loading Plant.

At first there were about one hundred buildings on the 1,800 acres of unfenced land, about two hundred men being engaged in guarding the place. An organization of proved men had been made, which went directly into Government service. Five strikes were settled and no serious labor trouble resulted. It seemed marvelous that no disaster occurred in this plant. Time and again enemies attached time bombs to powder cars on their way to the munition plant. These cars were all stopped on an outside siding and searched, sometimes as many as thirty in one night. One time a bomb was found and two sticks of dynamite. A great deal of oily waste was found, which was no doubt attached in the hope that it might be set afire and so cause destruction of the car. There were two hundred and ten arrests made under charge of disorderly conduct, and one hundred under charge of trespassing. In each of these cases a conviction was secured. About two hundred violators of the Selective Service Act were put under arrest, and, as has been stated, thirty-five members of the I. W. W. were removed from the premises. More than one hundred and ten Austrians and Hungarians were discharged, and about two hundred aliens sent to the Department of Justice for examination. Over 1,500 investigations of suspects were made by the League, largely of men whose names seemed to proclaim them of German extraction. The record of this plant is unique, it probably being the only plant that has had so low a record of fires, explosions and accidents in all the history of our war work.

Guards often found people endeavoring to do damage. One such man had piled up scrap lumber and rags and was touching it off when fired upon by the guard. Two other attempts were made to destroy another one of the buildings. Not content with protecting the property from without, the A. P. L. even protected it from within. Charges were made of extravagant prices paid by the Government, a fact which strongly indicated graft somewhere. A corporation had made a bid to furnish boxes at $450 each, delivered. This bid was refused. Volunteer workers were called on to make these boxes. The work was done on Sunday, double time being paid—each man receiving $14 a day—and even with such labor charges, it was found the boxes could be turned out at $17.25! This particular expenditure of money was stopped by the artless Ordnance Department. One or two chiefs were dismissed on the strength of reports from the A. P. L. of inefficiency, graft and irregularities.

This, then, all too briefly and lamely done in review, is the story of Philadelphia, which operated one of the very best amateur detective agencies the world has ever seen and which was a credit not only to Philadelphia itself but to every operative of the A. P. L. wherever he was located in the United States.

It only remains to say that in the monthly report for December, 1918, the Philadelphia Division turns in forty-eight bootleggers additional, two hold-up men, and nine soldiers absent without leave. It furnished D. J. in that month six hundred and forty-five men and sixty-five cars, investigated in that month two hundred and fifty-two draft evaders, seven hundred and forty-three cases from D. J. and various branches of the A. P. L., and 1,812 office assignments and Washington investigations. The Division closed the month of December, after the Armistice, going strong, with a membership of 3,438.

On the last day of the year, and after Philadelphia had finished all its reports for the year, there was a bomb outrage in that city in which lawless persons blew up the homes of three citizens. A call to the City Hall brought out every available detective and policeman, and houses of other prominent men were placed under guard for that night. Once more the drag-net was put out to take in the lawless and all those of Bolshevik tendencies. The outrage was of such a nature that the Philadelphia papers carried editorials almost appealing to the American Protective League not to disband. Truly it will be missed in that city and in many another city of America. In this bomb outrage the lives of women and children were endangered. What are we to think of America for the future if at will the superintendent of police, a judge of the court, and a president of a chamber of commerce are to have their houses blown up as an act of vengeance of wholly irresponsible people such as no doubt committed this crime!

Early in January, 1919, Mr. Frank H. Gaskill, Assistant Chief, was promoted to be Chief of the Philadelphia Division for its closing days, Mr. Mahlon R. Kline resigning in his favor. The demobilization banquet of Philadelphia Division A. P. L. was held on the night of February 5, 1919, and it was as fine and ship-shape as all the other activities of the Division. It was hard for these men to say good-bye. Indeed, it is quite probable that many of the old Philadelphia A. P. L. members will organize, under another name, for purposes somewhat similar.