TRAIN ROBBERIES.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1734, 9 February 1921, Page 7

TRAIN ROBBERIES.

BLSINESS NOW NOT A PROFESSION. A THREE MILLION DOLLAR HAUL. (New York "Herald," November 21.) Those students and statisticians of life in the. raited States who Lave asserted within recent year's that the. profession of train robbing - was of the vanishing' ones had to revise some of their pronouncements last Monday, when a railway mail clerk arrested in connection with a train robbery near Council Bluffs, lowa, confessed a share in the crime, and stated that he believed 11)" value of the loot taken to be 3,000,000 .lobars*. The confession, in forceful contradiction of the critics who have thought they could see tiie profession falling into desuetude, had in three respects the quality of exceptional interest The first was the booty to the value of three cool millions had been taken; the second that a mail clerk had had a hand in the crime. The third was that the confession, sent to the newspapers in full, was cut to the limitations of a half-column almost all across the United Slates. Thus were the critics left abashed before their believers. For 3,00,000 dollars represents the high water mark in the history of trains held up, and although it has been suspected in a few instances that mail clerics ana express' messengers have possessed guilty knowledge, they have as a class resisted train bandits valiantly and many of them have died gun In hand. To foreigners it has been explained many times that trains will be looted in the United States as long- as so much of the country remains unpeopled and the trains must pass thiyugh miles of lonely forest and plain. But t]ie robbery of last Monday took place at a point half-way between a goodsized city and a railway junction less than a mile outside of it, and was all first robber appeared alongside the engine cab. NO BLOODHOUNDS NOW.

The robbers, or whom there were two visible in that character, escapee, in a touring car. The picturesque side of train robbery has lost something in one respect, for now that robbers ride by motor-car, it is not longer necessary to rout out the blood-hounds to scour the hills for them. Train robbery, its critics will probably say, is less decadent than detcriorant. With all the romance gone out of it it is a business now and not a profession at all. The mail clerk who came across in Council Bluffs was an efiiciency field. He admitted that he had mapped the course and planned the strategy ancT had figured to a matter of small change the value of the nine valuable pouches which in due time the robbers took away. Ho even stated that he expected to pay his share of the hire of the automobile. At this point gloom claimed him utterly and he owned up that, business man as he was, his co-partners had doublecrossed him by taking his share of the unearned increment when they faded away. ■ ~ , In sharp contrast to his recital is the roll of honour and bravery in the storv of stopping and looting trains as it has been told for forty years. In the last decade the next highest value to that taken in lowa six days ago was that drawn down by the outfit

which held up a Baltimore and Ohio express at a place willed Central in West Virginia. The robbery occurred in October, I'.H"). The bandits got away with registered mail and currency to the tune of 300,000 dollars, but they overlooked, or, lather, the train guard concealed from them, the sum of 2,000,000 dollars in the express car, all in gold coin of the realm. DRAWBACKS IN CANADA. The robbery was one of those which are worked by masked men mounting the engine and forcing itt crew to uncouple engine from cars and withdraw it a mile or so down the line of track. While the robbers were in argument with the engineer and fireman the mail clerks and express mcssengcifs covered the gold they had with empty mail sacks in the corner of the car, The robbers, coming' in presently, kicked the bags about a bit, but did not penetrate to the nucleus of the pile, and as soon as they came upon the registered mail and other currency tossed it to confederates outside and made all haste away. While the looting- of trains may still be clascd as a reasonably safe enterprise in the United States, it would seem to have its drawbacks in Canada, particularly in the province of Alberta, where two train robbers were killed and a third hemmed in and captured within an hour following the robbery of a Canadian Pacific train at a place called Sentinel last August. It was the North west Mounted Police who accounted for the. trio. They killed the two in the course of a running- fight on horseback through a mining town, and having cornered the third man in the hills, left him to starve to death. Ho possessed the philosophic mind, as it fell out. Within an hour of the time he had been run to earth he emerged into gun range with his hands in the air, and received with stoic calm the information that the one of his band who had carried the money had been shot dead at the first fire after him. WILLIAM. MINER, ENPEHT.

William A. Pinkerton, of the detective firm of that name, making an address before a convention of police chiefs in 1907, gave one William Miner, a train robber of the old school, the credit for being the highest expresion of his trade and class who ever operated on American soil. Miner never belonged to a band, or posed as a bad man, or committed murder. Ho was a methodical and thorough person, and one of the pioneers of his calling, which he followed on the Pacific Slope. As early as 3569 he served a term at St. Qucnlin for stage robbery, and upon his release in 1597 held up another stage in Colorado and made away with 3SOO dollars.

! In this enterprise he had the assistance of one Lcroy, who was caught land hanged by the Vigilance Committee, but Miner got clean away, and for a while lived opulently in Chicago, explaining himself to the world as one who had struck it rich in the goldfields. When his money gave out ho returned to California and robbed another stage, but was captured, and again sent to prison, this time for a stretch of 20 years. Good behaviour set him free far within that time. Reverting straight to type, he resumed a predatory life, but turned his attention to trains. His first train robbery was at Corbatt, Ore., and he got away with it, although both his assistants were captured. The next year he robbed a Canadian Pacific, train at Mission

Junction, 8.C., and took 10,000 dollars in sold dust and currency. A rowan! of that sum was posted tor his arrest, and he replied by robbing another train on the same railroad. He had the engineer of it unhook the mail ear and take it two miles' from the rest of the train. The car was found to be empty of anything valuable, and Miner, in entire good humour, apologised to the engineer and made off. But the railjoad kept after him without let up, and in May of 100 G lie was captured and sent up for life.