Here’s a fun telling of the tale of how St. Clair County, Missouri resisted collecting taxes to pay off investors in fraudulently-issued railroad bonds, from the issue of The Century Magazine:
Being the Story of a Rural Community in Missouri wherein a Public Office Is a Private Calamity
by Frank Wickizer
When a candidate for a county judgeship in
St. Clair County, Missouri,
makes the race for office, he does so with the understanding that, unless he
would spend the time in jail, he must put in his term of office skulking in
the brush, a fugitive from justice. This is because he will be in contempt of
the United States court. For
the Federal tribunal has been trying to compel
St. Clair County to pay
interest on bonds issued in to assist in
the building of a railroad. The road was never built, and the county declines
to obey the court’s mandate, not believing in paying for goods which were not
delivered. For
the county has been in open and successful rebellion against the Federal
authorities.
Meanwhile the people, through their officers, are paying the penalty of their
rashness. The county is virtually bankrupt. Here public office is a species
of martyrdom. Still, there is no lack of competent candidates, and even the
county bench, upon which falls the brunt of the burden, has never been
without its full quota of three judges. Without inquiring deeply into the
ethics of the situation, there is a refreshing quality about the
unselfishness with which they obey the will of their constituents; right or
wrong, they display something which is not far removed from heroism.
The position in which St. Clair
County finds itself is the sequel of a State law passed just before the war,
the purpose of which was to encourage the building of railroads. Under this
law a county court was privileged to bond its county, in order to subsidize a
railroad project, without submitting the proposition to a vote of the people.
During the first decade after the close of the war the courts of one hundred
and seven counties in Missouri availed themselves of this new prerogative. Of
these counties all save three — Knox, Dallas, and
St. Clair — long since canceled
their obligations. Many of them were swindled by the promoters, but, the
bonds being in the hands of “innocent purchasers,” they paid because the
Federal court compelled them to pay. Knox County, it is understood, is
willing to compromise with the bondholders as soon as certain pending
litigation is closed. As to Dallas, the debt it owes the bondholders exceeds
by several hundred thousand dollars the total valuation of all property,
personal and real, in the county, and the creditors long ago dropped all
negotiations looking to a settlement.
There was a time when St. Clair
County was by way of being a mining community. Silver was discovered, and it
was known that the hills contained deposits of some of the baser ores; but,
as a step preliminary to the development of these resources, it was necessary
to secure railroads.
Railroad-building throughout the State was then almost a craze — the reaction
from the stagnation of war times. Besides, river traffic was on the wane.
Osceola, the county-seat, once at the head of navigation on the Osage River,
with fleets of steamers from St.
Louis and Kansas City at its ports, and with a great tributary region in
Arkansas and the Indian Territory for which it was the natural trading-point,
felt that its commercial importance was declining, and a master-stroke was
required to reëstablish its connection with the outside world. The time was
ripe for the leading citizens to listen to the voice of the tempter, and his
visit was not long deferred. He came in
, and his scheme was to
build a railroad from Clinton, a short distance northwest of Osceola, to
Memphis, Tennessee, which would put Osceola on a direct line of road between
Kansas City and Memphis.
It sounds almost like travesty to say that the court selected
, as the date for
entering its memorable order directing the county treasurer to take stock in
the venture; but it is the solemn truth. By the court’s ruling the county was
bonded in the sum of $250,000, and the treasurer was instructed to deliver
the bonds to the projectors of the the Tebo & Neosha Railroad Company
“when the contract is let.”
The contract was let a few months later, and the promoters received their
bonds. There were some preliminary surveys, and a gang of laborers went to
work in the northern part of the county, piling up earth for a “fill.” The
bonds were sold to “innocent purchasers.” Taxes were levied to pay the first
year’s interest; then one day the construction train pulled out with a gang
of laborers, and was never seen there again. A mile or so of fill, with some
rotten ties and rusted rails, now remains as a monument to the
short-sightedness of the county judges who wrote, “to be delivered when the
contract is let,” instead of “when the work is done.”
During the years following the transaction the feeling against the railroad
swindlers grew daily more bitter, and the determination to resist payment
became more deeply rooted. But the “innocent purchasers” were clamoring for
their dues, and , they
secured a judgment in the Federal court.
The succeeding steps followed in quick succession. The county court was
ordered to make a levy to pay the claim; it declined to comply. The Federal
court issued a mandamus; it was ignored. The county court was cited for
contempt; it disregarded the summons, and United States marshals were sent to
arrest the recalcitrants.
This procedure has been observed many times since, but then it was new: the
limitations of the higher court were not so well known then as now. The
citizens of St. Clair began to
have misgivings as to the outcome, and to feel the necessity of doing
something to appease the powers. A conference of the wise ones was called,
and immediately afterward it was announced that a plan had been devised to
meet the bond interest without taxation. Each property-owner was to be
requested to contribute of his personal effects according to his means, one
giving a horse, one a cow, and another a hog or two — all to be put up at
public auction at the county-seat on a certain day. A formal notice of this
sale, with a statement as to its purpose, was sent to each of the “innocent
purchasers” and to the Federal judge at Kansas City.
But it seemed to take a long while to collect the personal property, and the
date of the sale was postponed from time to time until nearly two years had
elapsed. Then, the vengeance of the court being imminent, the auction was
advertised for the last time. The day arriving, cattle, horses, hogs, and
sheep were received in most gratifying numbers. The scene on court-house
square suggested a live-stock exhibit at a county fair. The auctioneer rang
his bell and shouted himself hoarse, and the assembled farmers and the few
non-residents took a most active interest in the proceedings; but yet the
sale was not a success, as success at auctions is usually computed. No one
seemed to want to buy. The auctioneer’s clerk stood ready, with pencil poised
above his book, but not a single bid did he record.
There are those who have the hardihood to hint that this was the exact
situation contemplated by the conferees when they planned the “sale.” The
non-residents, of course, were not in the secret, but it is explained that
they were easily won over to the native way of thinking.
This fiasco was a great shock to both bondholders and Federal judges. It
served to make the marshals more zealous, and to send the value of the bonds
down at a phenomenal rate. Within the next six months they dropped to
twenty-two cents.
One side-issue of the “sale” is worthy of mention here. After the live stock
had been corralled in the square, it was checked off to determine if all
freeholders had contributed their share, and it was found that, among others,
one Sam Peden of Doyle township was delinquent. The sheriff forthwith rode
out to Peden’s farm to demand his tithe, and there found assembled half a
dozen of the most rabid partizans of repudiation.
“You’ll have to dig up a critter er two, Sam,” he announced.
By way of answer, Peden threw his rifle to his shoulder and ordered the
sheriff off the place.
This act of rebellion not only served to foist Peden upon the county bench at
the next election, but to keep him either there or in some other county
office for nearly twenty-five years. He has been arrested several times, and
has spent much of his time in jail, but it is said that his experience has
served only to strengthen his faith in the rifle as an arbiter of- vexed
questions.
Not long after the bogus stock sale, — to be exact, on
. — a gang of masked
night-riders called at County Treasurer Wonacott’s residence at midnight, and
forced him to go to the courthouse and turn over to them the taxbooks. These
books contained the delinquent tax-lists for railroad bonds and other
purposes, covering a period of ten years. The next morning the charred
remains of the books were found among the hills south of Osceola.
It would seem to one not in sympathy with the prevailing spirit that the
county judgeships would go begging at election time; yet the opposite is
true. They are the most eagerly sought of all the offices within the gift of
the county. The people say to the aspirant: “Your duty will be to refuse to
make a tax levy to pay the bonds; if chased, to hide in the brush; if caught,
to lie in jail. As to your salary, it will be one hundred dollars a year in
discounted treasury warrants and such glory as falls to the lot of martyrs.”
This seems to satisfy them.
As well talk surrender to a Patrick Henry as compromise in
St. Clair County. The story of
this stubbornness can be read everywhere between the lines of its history,
retarding education, reducing wheat and corn acreage, frightening away
foreign capital, depressing property values, paralyzing business, and keeping
its treasury in a perpetual state of deficit. No county in the State,
perhaps, is so blessed with natural wealth. Its hills are rich in lead and
zinc ores, oil has been found in paying quantities, and there are virgin
deposits of mineral paints; yet all these resources are undeveloped, or
virtually so. The people themselves are too poor to develop them, and foreign
capital, having been bitten once, will not venture again. So the population
contents itself with stock-breeding, a desultory kind of agriculture,
and — defying the Federal court.
To evade the United States deputy marshals, the county judges have had to
place themselves in some extraordinary predicaments, not all of them
consonant with judicial dignity. “Hiding out” was the regular order of
business. Judge Thomas Scott, shorn of his long white beard, remained under
cover for a year, thereby winning the sobriquet of the “Swamp Fox.” Every
stranger was a suspected sleuth, and every loyal citizen a “stool-pigeon,”
his duty to inform the fugitives of the stranger’s movements. So the judges
spent most of their time in the brush.
Belated farmer lads, groping through the woods at night in quest of strayed
cattle, have chanced upon the court in session on a fallen tree. With an
arsenal of small arms as their square and compass, without light save such as
was reflected from the masked lantern by which the clerk wrote his minutes,
the judges here performed the humble rites of their office, being always
alert to adjourn and scuttle into the brush should a twig break or the
foliage of a bush stir suspiciously.
Again, when the wind caused trouble with the clerk’s papers and lantern, or
when it was feared that deputies prowling in the neighborhood might be
attracted by the light, these farmer lads have seen four shadowy
figures — three judges and a clerk — struggle through a tangle of shrubbery
and disappear in the mouth of a cave. In such cases the approaches were
invariably guarded by volunteer sentinels.
Nevertheless, the marshals were quite as resourceful in the expedient as were
the judges, and showed themselves willing to take extraordinary pains. Take
for example the case of Joseph H. Graham, a deputy marshal of
St. Joseph, and his co-worker,
Henry W. Pyatt of Joplin. Being newly appointed officers, and unknown in the
region, they were assigned to work on the
St. Clair County case. This was
in . They met in Kansas City and
agreed upon a plan of campaign.
Pyatt’s case was made easy by the fact that he had a married sister living in
Osceola. Through the influence of his brother-in-law, he secured a position
as helper at the ’Frisco depot, and at once took up his residence at the home
of his sister. Graham had to work out a more elaborate plan. Deciding finally
to palm himself off as a commercial traveler, he secured the necessary trunks
and cases, and laid in a line of grocery samples. Unfortunately, he knew
nothing about the grocery business, and realizing that his ignorance would be
detected by the first retail dealer that he approached, he set out resolutely
to take a primary course in the theory, practice, and technic of commerce. He
haunted the wholesale houses of Kansas City to acquire the language and
manner of the trade; he fraternized with drummers, studied pricelists,
schooled himself in the late novelties of the grocery market, and finally
took a graduate course of one week on the road with a veteran drummer as
master, all at his own expense.
Pyatt in the interim had kept him posted as to conditions in Osceola. “On the
,” he had written, “the judges
will hold court openly in the court-house, relying for safety on the fact
that they are known to no one save the natives. This will be our chance.”
Graham arrived , put up at
the Commercial Hotel, and began canvassing the local grocery-stores. It must
be that the schooling stood him in good stead, for it is not of record that
his inexperience was detected. During
he had an
opportunity to consult with Pyatt. The latter had gathered some information
as to the personal appearance of the two judges in contempt, Sam C. Peden and
James M. Nevitt (David Walker, the third judge, not having fallen under the
ban of the Federal court), and the details of the attack were arranged.
By
farmwagons began to arrive from every point of the compass, and by
court-house square was hedged
about with a compact rank of them. Farmers, stockmen, county officials, and
townspeople stood about in knots, engaged in conversation; and in one of
these groups, the deputies knew, were the men they sought, but to pick them
out by applying the loose verbal description Pyatt had received was no easy
task. Peden had been designated as “tall, lank, and swivel-jointed, with a
drooping blond mustache”; but half the men in the yard seemed to answer to
this. And the description of Nevitt as a man “not quite so tall as Peden, but
heavier and with a stoop to his shoulders,” was not less indefinite.
Graham and Pyatt stood in the entrance of a dry-goods store, selected as a
point of reconnoiter because the clerks were too busy waiting on a crowd of
women to notice them. It was agreed that they should stay there until court
opened, when the judges, they thought, would disclose their official identity
by taking their positions on the bench. They would then swoop down, each
entering by a different door, and arrest all three. Later they could
ascertain which was Walker, and release him.
At the sheriff’s “Hear ye! Hear ye!” the groups converged upon the picturesque
ruin used as a court-house. Graham, meanwhile, acting on a happy impulse, had
caused a report to be circulated among the women in the store that a marriage
was about to be solemnized. He had seen the bride, and she was beautifully
dressed. In the next five minutes not less than twenty women, remembering that
they had occasion to speak with their husbands or fathers, sauntered with
studied leisure across the street, all their faculties alert to catch a
glimpse of white organdie and nun’s veiling.
Carefully gauging their speed, to give the women exactly time to reach the
court-room and no more, the deputies followed. It was as they had expected:
St. Clair County being
essentially Southern in sympathies and gallantry, there was a mighty moving of
chairs and shuffling of feet as the masculine wing of the assembly hastened to
find seats for the late arrivals, and the confusion served to mask their own
appearance.
At the end of the room farthest from the doors thirty or forty men stood
closely massed about a table. Idealizing that now was the time and this the
place to strike, the deputies charged for the crowd. Instantly a clarion voice
hushed the whispers of chivalry and the drone of business, and a pair of
brawny arms seized Pyatt about the waist from behind, pinioning his arms to
his sides. Some one else essayed the same form of attack upon Graham, but he
broke away. “The deputies! The deputies!” screamed the voice. Pistols flashed
into sight, and there was a rustle of skirts as the women whisked out into the
corridor.
Meanwhile Graham had succeeded in drawing his own weapons, and, with a
revolver in each hand, he plunged into the crowd about the table. Behind that
human rampart, he believed, sat the judges, and it was his business to arrest
them before they had time to mix with the rabble.
He was surprised at the ease with which he accomplished it. The crowd
separated before him like the Red Sea under the rod of Moses; the clock on
the wall had ticked less than five times since the alarm was given, and
there, serenely occupying the chairs which stand for the “county bench,” sat
his quarry.
“Gentlemen, you are my prisoners!” he cried. “Throw up your hands!” And then
to the crowd: “Men, move back and give us room! Stand back!”
But there was no occasion for the latter part of the command, for through the
entrances into the corridor and through the windows opening upon the veranda
the crowd was melting as if by magic. There was something ominous about the
facility with which the program had been carried out: it was not exactly in
keeping with the community’s reputation, this display of the white feather
without even a show of resistance, and when Graham looked into the faces of
his prisoners it was with a sinking sensation that he recognized he had been
duped. Two were farmer lads, mere striplings scarcely out of their teens, and
the third was a mulatto.
A few of the late audience looked back over their shoulders in departing to
mock him with derisive laughter and sallies of bucolic wit. Only two
remained; these stood at a window looking out upon the street. Pyatt had
disappeared. Graham glared at the nondescript trio before him, weighing the
question as to whether he should take them into custody for aiding Federal
prisoners to escape; but an instant later the sound of pistol-shots in the
yard below helped him to decide. There was, perhaps, bigger game afoot. The
pair at the window became suddenly perturbed at what they saw, and bolted for
the stairs. Graham followed.
Having reached the lawn, he saw, just outside of the inclosure, a crowd of
excited farmers and stockmen about a lumber-wagon. On the spring-seat in front
sat two men and a boy; standing in the rear of the wagon, his pistols trained
upon the other occupants, was Pyatt. The crowd about was sullenly
demonstrative and rapidly growing. Graham, his weapons still in hand, charged
them, firing a wild shot or two as he ran, by way of moral effect.
The incidents of the next few seconds followed each other so swiftly that no
two accounts agree. Some blows were struck with clubbed weapons; one or two
knives were flashed; a revolver was discharged; there was a chorus of shouts,
a tangle of legs and arms, and then two things happened: Graham, having
fought his way to the front wheel of the wagon, popped his pistol into the
face of the nearest occupant. In the same breath the other adult occupant
leaped to the ground and ran, Pyatt after him, while the boy, too terrified
to move, sat dumbly holding the reins.
Again Graham repeated the standard formula of the arresting officer: “Judge
Nevitt, you are my prisoner!”
This was the critical moment of the scene. A shrewd tug from behind must have
tilted Graham off the wheel and given the prisoner at least a chance for his
liberty, but the rabble let it pass unimproved, and the next instant suffered
the humiliation of seeing the bracelets clicked upon the wrists of the
presiding judge. A groan, a hiss, some smothered imprecations and muttered
threats, and the incident was closed.
“I was sitting on the piazza, of the Commercial Hotel about five minutes
later, Judge Nevitt by my side,” said Graham, in telling the story, “when
Pyatt came sauntering up from the field with Judge Sam Peden in tow. Both
were splashed with mud, and had about them other evidences of a hot burst of
speed. The judge’s ‘swivel-joints’ had not disqualified him for the sprinter
class. It seems that one of the features of the chase had been the leaping of
a six-rail snake-fence, an obstacle which both had cleared at a bound. As
they approached the piazza I overheard their conversation: they were talking
about other hurdle-races they had known.”
“How did you get on to their judgeships?” I asked Pyatt, aside.
“Why,” said he, “when that fellow grabbed me in the court-room, I dallied
with him a while until I had him where I wanted him, and then sprang a
wrestling trick on him. It worked, and I wriggled loose. About this time
every one was bolting for the doors. I tried to get back where you were, but
three or four husky chaps got me in front of ’em, and hustled me out. When I
reached the foot of the stairs, I saw quite a crowd around a lumber-wagon.
They were boosting two men and a boy up into the spring-seat, and while one
man untied the team, two or three others were hooking the tugs. They were all
laughing — seemed to be tickled half to death about something.
“Of course I supposed all this time that you had nabbed the judges in the
court-room, as I saw you had the drop on the three fellows in the chairs; but
when I saw those two men on the spring-seat reach down to shake hands with
some one in the crowd, I got a hunch that you had barked up the wrong tree,
so I fired a few shots in the air and swooped down on ’em. Well, you know the
rest. Gee! but that fellow Peden is a sprinter!”
After the first six months, Peden attempted to secure his freedom by
resigning his office as county judge, but the ruse was only partly
successful. He was kept in jail until within a few weeks of the expiration of
his term. Judge Nevitt served out his time without a murmur, and upon his
return to Osceola was given an ovation.
Deputy marshals came into the county in all manner of disguises. They came as
insurance, book, lightning-rod, and patent-medicine agents, as mining
engineers, as government surveyors; and one, who had some gift of locution,
turned temperance lecturer and stumped the county in the interest of total
abstinence. Spurious buyers of live stock would haunt the principal towns for
weeks, talking nothing but cattle, and bogus land speculators took long
drives, encouraging meanwhile the conversational talents of their guides. But
all such invariably tipped their hands before leaving, usually by making a
bold attempt to arrest some one supposed to be a county judge. The result was
that every visitor, for at least the first six months of his stay, was under
suspicion.
The wealthier and more substantial citizens profess to believe that, in
electing the present judges, the county took a step which is the beginning of
the end. They maintain that the present incumbents of the county bench
represent a higher order of intelligence and business sagacity than their
predecessors; that there will be no more skulking in the brush, no more
citations for contempt, and no further clashing of authority; but that the
court with becoming meekness will submit to the people a proposition to
compromise with the bondholders on a basis of $231,000, the face of the
original bonds minus $19,000 which has been paid, the interest to be
eliminated. The county judges admit that they have some such plan in view.
However, it is thought in some circles that this project is “loaded”; that in
its essence it is like the stock “sale” of ; and that as no one would bid then, no one will vote now. But of
course that would not be the fault of the judges.
Weight is given to this theory by the fact that the bondholders have
inadvertently admitted the weakness of their position. About two years ago
several of the heaviest holders issued circulars to their comrades in
misfortune, the purpose being to call a meeting to discuss the
St. Clair County case and to
arrange for the passage of a bill by Congress enabling Federal courts to
enforce collection of claims against towns, counties, and other
unincorporated communities.
“Experience with the St. Clair
County case,” the circular added, “shows how helpless are the United States
courts in this respect.”
One of these circulars, by hook or by crook, found its way to Osceola, and
within a week news of its contents was in the mouth of every taxpayer.
Naturally they exulted in this admission of their strength, and its effect
will not be to hasten compromise.
