Another Vista of United States Graft
Assailed from below, Heney was attacked from above, too. From the moment he started after Mitchell, Senator Fulton led a big grafters' intrigue at Washington to undermine Heney with the President. Knox had resigned the Attorney-Generalship and Attorney-General Moody, a very politic man, did not support Heney. He didn't want to remove "Jack" Matthews from the United States Marshalship and Heney had to force that. When Judge Bellinger died. Moody had W. W. Cotton, chief counsel at Portland for the Harriman system, appointed to the Federal bench. Heney's charges and his success in convicting Congressman Williamson beat that move, which would have defeated his whole prosecution. And finally, when, later, Heney proposed the appointment of W. C. Bristol for United States District Attorney in Hall's place, Heney had to go to Washington and at a meeting of the lawyers in the cabinet, with the help of Secretaries Hitchcock, Taft and Root, Bonaparte and Metcalf, force Moody's hand. But that is Bristol's story, which is not over yet and not ready to tell.
Desperate as Heney's position was, however, it was enlightening. All this opposition, front and rear, above, below and all around, showed him the System. When good men and women protested, he saw that they were corrupted by their associations; when the State Legislature passed unanimously resolutions of confidence in Senator Mitchell, he looked over his list of state legislators, indicted, confessed or under suspicion, and he understood that that legislature was in the System. And when Mitchell, indicted, rose and wept in the United States Senate, and the senators left their seats to go up to him and before all the world take his hand and show their sympathy, Francis J. Heney realized that United States Senator John H. Mitchell, the man he was proving a felon, was a symbol of the condition of a government, state and national, and a personification of the moral disgrace of a people.
"And when I saw that so vividly, Mitchell, the man, became as nothing to me. I wanted then to convict that System and show to my people, all over this land, what I was seeing."
How Mitchell was "Got"
Well, Heney convicted the System. "Steve" Puter told how when he laid twelve claims on the top of a mountain, he got into a muss with a Dr. Davis, the Mayor of Albany and chairman of the Republican Central Committee, who also was "in on" that same land. Davis had a pull and Puter paid bribes all along the line to surveyors, special agents, forest superintendents, registers and receivers, etc., and to some forty-five citizens. One of these officials, the man Loomis heretofore mentioned, wrote a private letter to Land Commissioner Binger Herrman. Davis wrote another, as Chairman, and had it attested by the Secretary of the Central Committee. These intimate letters are part of the evidence on Herrman. But there was a clerk in the Land Office at Washington and he was reporting adversely on the claims, so Puter took Enmia Watson to Washington. She was made up as a handsome, helpless widow. They saw Mitchell. Puter gave the United States Senator two $1000 bills. Puter kept a memorandum book of such transactions and he noted this payment. And for this small sum United States Senator Mitchell introduced Puter to Assistant, afterwards Land Commissioner, Richards, who passed these fraudulent claims to patent.
This, however, was not the case on which Heney tried Mitchell. He used it, but it was Kribs, the business man, not Puter, the thief, that made the Mitchell case. Kribs said, when he was talking about the fight with the Northern Pacific over Puter's claims, that the terms of the compromise included the promise of Pierce Mays to use his influence with Herrman and Mitchell to "expedite" their business. Mays went to work, but while he was still at it Mitchell arrived in Portland. Kribs saw Mitchell. Now Mays said it would cost $50 a claim to get Mitchell. Mitchell said his firm, Mitchell & Tanner, would do the work direct for $25 a claim. And they did it for that and Kribs paid with checks The Grand Jury reflected the Oregon reverence for Mitchell, and, to break down this feeling, Heney examined the Senator on the facts established in corroboration of Puter's story. Senator Mitchell proved himself a witless liar, arrogant with power, and yet, when Heney flamed up with facts, weak. Having thus discredited him with
