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REFORMED BURGLAR TELLS OF ATTEMPT ON DENMARK BANK. (Continued from page 1, column 5.) they gathered an idea They decided that a safe must be built that could not be drilled, and worked years , to develop that idea. Finally, their efforts were crowned with success. The automatic timelock steel safe, built very compactly, with seven closely fitting sheets of steel in the door, and an extra steel chest for money behind the door, was -*-1? ?nf f.hoip lahnr me piuuuti, yjL vu?t> The safe burglar was stopped. A drill applied to this safe simplytwisted and sung without leaving the slightest impression. The burglar was up against it, at last. News of this kind spreads like wild fire, and it was not long before the old iron drillable safe became a dead issue. The bankers and merchants of the country lost no time getting the new automatic time lock safes. < After the cracksmen had made v dozens of unsuccessful attempts to blowf the new safes open, the confidence of the owners and safe makers increased by leaps and bounds. A victory sustained after a battle of ' thirty years causes thrills of joy and enthusiasm. Of course, the safe and bank burg lars realized that they were strictly * up against it. Consternation and pessimism predominated among these aristocrats of the Underworld. For thirty years they had sipped the wine of victory; now, the gall of defeat ^ . was theirs, and their only field was the few remaining old iron safes that could be drilled and blown open with powder. And these old safes seldom contained much money. With every robbery their opportunities for a livelihood diminished. The automatic time-locker was everywhere. Banks, stores, railroad and express offices, every wide-awake merchant, used the . time-locker. The safe makers capitalized the inability of the safe burglar to open their latest invention by * * > flooding the country with advertising literature, pointing out that the bur* > / glars had tried and failed to open ' thftm. Finally some of the safe burglars, l believing the time-lock safes to be unbeatable, deserted the "knights of the cracksmen,x for other formsx of ^ . criminality. Some went in for train robbing: others became sneak . thieves. Those who remained cracks> . men, realizing the futility of powder 4 - f v 1 and drills, began to devote their attention to dynamite. Dynamite was tremendously more powerful than powder, but it had this drawback: like powder it had to be confined be; fore it would produce results, and to confine it required space. Space meant drilling, and as this was impossible, with the new safes, why, dynamite was, to the cracksman, but powder under another name. There was one more explosive with which to experiment, and that was "soup"?nitroglycerin^. But where was it to be got No safe burglar could buy it without question, as he did gunpowder. It was \ . not used in the quarries; therefore it could not be stolen. How was it made? None of the /ilrsm^n lrnonr onvthinor ohnilt if l/l aV/XVOUigii ivu^/ n au; wuiug auuuv iw. But they had the brains to know that the manufacture of explosives came under the science of chemistry. They bought books on chemistry and learned that nitro-glycerine was a mixture of glycerine, nitric acid sul/ phuric acids. They also ascertained that dynamite was merely nitroglycerine mixed with certain ingredients to assimilate the liquid! Then they directed their thoughts to the problem of extracting the nitro-glycerine from the sticks of dynamite, a precarious undertaking. Two of the first cracksmen who tried -were blown to pieces, and a third man of the party had his right arm blown off. One might readily conclude that fliann fofoTitiof. wrvn 1H rlotov nthpr -VMUU^O ? VU4V4 uvvv* safe burglars from experimenting with sucb a dangerous explosive, but they didn't. Fear was not in tbeir vocabulary. They were determined to outwit the safe maker and conquer the time-locker. I vividly recall the terrible catastrophe that attended the last unsuccessful experimental extracting process. Eddie Howard, George Blake .and Harry Edwards rented an apartment in a vacant two-family house in the surburbs of Richmond, Virginia. T^wenty-five sticks of dynamite exploded, the house was demolished, ' -i VI 4 windows were uiu?u um ui icor dences three blocks away. The three cracksmen were mutilated beyond . recognition. Arms, legs and other pieces of their bodies were picked up by bewildered, mystified citizens. Nobody understood what had caused the catastrophe. The police had no theory. The papers printed a sensational story, but only the comrades of the dead men knew that three more lives had been sacrificed in the battle against the safe makers. At that time I was the protege of the king of American bank burglars, Eddie Porland. We were so horrorj stricken at the fate of our comrades i that we decided not to do any more I ; experimenting until we learned more about dynamite. We hired out as laborers in a quarry at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and learned so much j from an old miner and quarryman i there that our first extracting process | was successful. One of the unexI npnteri rpsnlts was that we were made disgustingly sick. One gets a severe headache from merely having a bottle of nitro-glycerine in his pocket. We were a couple of highly elated cracksmen as we sat back and looked at the bowl of gold-like fluid that was to revolutionize not only the robbing of banks but the building of safes. The safe maker had beeu sitting on the lounge of victory for two years laughing at us. It was now our turn to don the laurels of the victor. We had no idea how much nitroglycerine to use, but we reasoned that if it took two ounces of gunpowder to blow off the door of the I rklrl.timxi irnn en fp snrplv two Oiince? | of nitro would certainly blast off the j sheeting of the new time-lock safe. We thought it best to do bur exj perimenting outside of a city, so we : selected a coal office near Baltimore. ' We built a small cup around the jam j of the safe door, poured the contents of our two-ounce bottle into it, lighted the fuse, and ran across the j street to await results. They came ; rapidly: First the flash before the ! explosion, which illuminated the in-,, terior of the coal office;-then, a terrific, ear-splitting detonation... The I coal office was blown to pieces. God j only knows where the safe went. All ' we could find was a piece of one of the cast-iron rollers. All the dogs in the world, it seemed, started barking, and even the ClilUfteilb uegeill uuwiug auu vavanug. Emloyees from a mill close by came running. We hastily made our getaway satisfied that two ounces was enough nitro to blow up a dozen safes. After, a number of experiments we discovered that a small teaspoonful of "soup" was sufficient?and we were ready for banks. The first bank selected was the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Deninark, South Carolina. I spent three nights in the town lqoking the job over. The night watchman of the town invariably went home every night at 12:30 for his supper, and did not return until he had taken a nap?usually about three o'clock. He was very methodical and regular, so we naturally assumed that his movements would be the same every night. About 1 o'clock we got to the bank. It was a one-story granite building with great barred windows four to six feet high. Before we jimmied our way into the front door we decided to go around all the windows and flash our light into the-bank for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not anybody was inside, this being a 1 j U..? ! common procedure wiuu an uaun. uur| glars. We had just got around to the last window when we heard somebody coming down the street. We thought it was some negro on his way home, so we discontinued our. li'ght-flashing and waited. The walker stopped at the bank, tried the bank door, and then started around the bank trying the windows. We knew it was the night watchman, and crouched down in the rear of the bank and waited his coming. He tried the windows one after another as he came, a'nd we realized that he had seen the flashlight illuminations in the bank. We wondered' as we waited for him to round the cornel the bank where we were crouched what he would do if he knew that possible death was waiting for him! Finally he arrived, and quick as a flash of lightning four guns were shoved in his face and simultaneously the command, "hands up!" was uttered by all four of us. His breath came and-went heavily, like the exhaust of a locomotive going up a grade. He did not put his hands up, and we told him if he didn't get them \ up, and get them up damn quick, there would be something doing. It was perfectly obvious that he was scared. Suddenly he dropped to the ground in a aeaa rami, overcome with fright, and then we all laughed. A nearby pump probably suggested this thought and we all probably started for the pump at the same time. At least our intention was momentairly distracted from the sixfoot watchman on the ground. Here indeed was an unusual sight, a unique experience, a brave (?) guardian of the law on the ground, collapsed with fear. Suddenly he was up on his feet and gone, dashing down the main street, yelling like a mad man! My pals and I dashed after him, barely a step behind him all the way. At the end of the street was a hotel, a frame affair of three stories, with about fifteen or twenty steps leading up to the poroh. The watchman let out another terrific yell and dashed up to the steps just ahead of me. A negro porter saw him coming, heard the yells, became alarmed himself, and joined the big six-footer in terrorized refrain. We quit the town immediately, knowing well that the night was lost, and further, that it was only a matter of time until that j cop would arouse the entire town and! have a posse on our trail. A few days later we read in the I Charleston papers the officer's version of his encounter with desperate bank burglars. The bank voted him a reward for his courage in driving, the bandits out of town. So goes the world! The incident delayed for a day or two our first attack on the timelocker safe. We were compelled to i find another job at Brunson, South Carolina. The First National Bank was the chosen victim and it had a very beautiful time-lock safe. It would not be long before we knew h'Ow well "old nitro" would perform on the safe-makers' masterpiece. We^ determined not to permit any fainting, hysterical cops to interfere with this operation; so before we went near-the bank we hunted the town over for Mister Chief of Police, and found him industriously trying the /*orkT>o nf ail the stores. In resDonse to our command to ut up his hands he inquired if we new who he was. We took his gun off him and walked him down to the hank, telling him on the way that we were there to rob the bank, but would treat him with courtesy and consideration if he be'haved himself like a gentleman and didn't give us any trouble. He trembled and shook like.a shimmy dance, but was as docile as a lamb. We tied him up, feet together and hands behind. and then forced our entrance through the front door of the bank. The vault door was easy, thoughthe explosion was quite loud, and the chief let out a. yell. One of the boys took an apple out of his pocket an4 fed it to the chief to calm and subdue him. The much vaunted and widely advertised automatic timelocker was a tough proposition. It required twenty-one explosions be** Z 4- />T%Ari Kllf TT?Z* finollv lore Ave sou jll oyc?, uu<- ??iw>u>v wrecked it after two hours of blasting, and once more the ingenuity of the cracksman prevailed over the i skill of the safe maker. \ Brother cracksmen of the Underworld quickly sought us out and anxiously sfelicited information as to how we did it. We told them, and it was not long before every bank burglar in the country was a user of the destructive "nitro," and the automatic time lockers were being knocked over like pins in a bowling alley. The safe makers had to go to work again. The bankers no longer went home at nights and slept the sleep of the unworried. I haven't any idea of the amount of money that the bank burglars got the first year we mastered the time-lock safe, but an approximate conception can be got by figuring the loot of my gang. We robbed eight banKs in Virginia, and North and South Carolina, for a total of $250,000. I know of at least ten other gangs that operated that year, so a conservative estimate would be $2,000,000?and not a robber caught! For ten years the life of the cracksman was simply one robbery after another. The safe maker was eliminated as a competitive factor. The | Underworld felt and believed that { the time-lock safe was the last word in safe building. By no stretch of the imagination could they picture the safe maker designing anything that could resist the force of the '"old soup" (nitro-glycerine is called "soup" because it looks like vegetable soup). Well, we had that beautiful dream for ten years. We had ten years of! continued success, no worries, no j troubles, ten years of nothing but j sunshine and ease with never a pes-j simistic thought of the future. We thought we had beaten the safe builder for all time. And then we woke up one morning to find the screw-door safe staring us plumb in the face! This is the greatest piece of mechanical safe-making ingenuity ever devised, a great, stolid, Gibraltarlike hunk of steel, the door being screwed in like one puts a screw in a piece of wood. A masterpiece! I doff my lid and bow humbly to the benius of the American safe builder. He is a great fellow, and I'm sure that my brothers of the craft that was will eciio my senumenis. Burglars soon found out they were up against a problem. This screwdoor safe was so compactly built that a tablespoonful' of nitro-glycerine would consume an hour finding space, and since the cracksmen cannot work over three hours, and requires at least three hours before daylight for his getaway, he threw away the "soup" and said, "Daylight hold-ups for me, from now on!" Every bank burglar in the country is now a daylight stick-up man! That is the result of the competitive battle of fifty years between the cracksman and the safe builder. Genius has predominated, and by I predominating 'has created a new form of criminality. Or, we might say. it is evolution, the evolution of brain power. i Three years azo when the cracksman first started to work as a daylight hold-up man, he had absolutely no Underworld competition. The hold-up of a bank in broad daylight had become a rare thing since the day of the Western outlaws. It was called a new thing in the crime world, and elaborately featured by the press of the country. It was great news, rare meat for the city editor, and . how they did play it up! Nothing buf the front page, column after column right across the sheet. Little did the press realize that it was unconsciously assisting in the creating of a new type of bank holdup man?a type that is far more dangerous than the cracksman. I am speaking of the yellow, unstable, drug-crazed gangster, the murdering cowardly thug that dares not go out unless his system is charged with dope, and who shoots to kill at the least provocation. He reads of the success of the cracksman as a hold-up man, day in and day out. He reads of few arrests; and it is a natural consequence for him to create in his mind a mental n f JiAnr flOCllf t Vl O V) ol <^_11 n i<B pik/tui t V/4. liV'TT V^UkJi J.J VUV UVAVI. AM done. He reasons: "Others are doing it successfully, why not I?" And he is out on the highroad holding up hanks, sticking up bank messengers, j payroll messengers, and jewelry stores, and murdering his victims in | cold blood at the least indication of I resistance. I | The cracksman uses a gun only as i a last resort. It is is a sort of un| written law among clever crooks that a gun should be pulled only in selfdefense. I know many high-class prowlers (house burglars) that never carried a gun. I read in the paper an account of a hold-up, and nine times out of ten, I can tell you what caliber crook pulled the job. Let me illustrate with some episodes but of my own career. I have probably participated in at least seventy-five bank burglaries. I dare say that I never fired over twenty shots in all my career. I've I stuck up fifty night policemen. Hundreds of persons have passed banks Willie 1 was worh., ana yet ue?ci a Shot from my gun or the guns of my j pals has ever penetrated the skin of man, woman or child. The only :black mark on my record is that of an experience with a ' colored gentleman who refused to [obey my command-to put up his hands one night while we were robbing a bank at Mullins, South Carolina. Instead of obeying, he turned and ran, yelling at the top of his voice. I followed, shooting in the air to scare him, and thinking he would stop.. He ran into a stable, got into a stall with a mule, and was kicked almost to death! I picked him up unconscious, laid him on the steps of a doctor's house, and went on my way. Bank hold-ups have been easy for two years. Organized gangs have been looting steamship piers and railroad yard^ . In 1919-20, transportation companies lost over $50,000,000 worth of goods. In some cases trucks were driven into the yards, loaded with goods, and driven away again, the looters acting right under the nose of the authorities. In 1 several instances a barge was run up alongside of piers and the entire x -L - ~ ?V?f no rc AVQ/1 f A contents <Jt HClgUi. Lai o iuuilu tu the barge. The success of these thefts is evidence that the mentality of the Un. derworld has improved. Contr&rily, that of the officials who are paid to protect the lives and property of lawabiding citizens from criminals, has stood still?if it has not deteriorated. I am perfectly astounded at the stupidity of our detectives, bankers, and society in general. Everybody seems to be groping helplessly in the dark, shaking their heads, and talking* about how this problem of the "crime wave" may i be solved. Personally, 1 can see no problem. The stupid, asinine methods that societv has employed to com bat the crime wave only makes it appear to be a problem. Nobody seems! to realize that the old Underworld has passed away since the advent of prohibition. Nobody seems to realize that there is a new Underworld, and that the old police methods are no longer of use in dealing with the new Underworld with its new methods of crime. Freshly Made. Mike called for a pint of beer and tossed a bright new half crown on bar counter. The barman looked suspiciously at the coin, weighed it in his hand, then tested it several times on the counter. "Look here old sport," said the barman. "Where did you get this thing from? It's not a good one." "What do you mean?" returned Moke. "Be sure it is a good one. Why I only made the blithering thing this morning." , SS&/H W ? We cordially invite yo headquarters for busines we can be of service. Our loyalty to the co whether or not you are a I We are here to be "b< any time will be a pleasu | RESOURCES OVi PW WTEflEST wYW RAID OM SAVIH6S ACCOOWTS H |H MKjB B W H Jgy iKa WHEN "Just D readers thougl story of a chi appeared "Pollyanna" and it took the count has given us "Mary J than either. 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