He is a millionaire two or three times over now, but it is related that to someone who advised him to quit in time he replied that it wasn’t a matter of money alone with him; he liked the business, and would rather make fifty dollars out of a switch than $500 in stocks. He enjoyed buying franchises cheap and selling them dear. In the lighting deal of 1899 Butler received $150,000, and paid out only $85,000—$47,500 to the House, $37,500 to the Council—and the haggling with the House combine caused those weeks of total darkness in the city. He had Gutke tell this combine that he could divide only $20,000 among them. They voted the measure, but, suspecting Butler of “holding out on them,” moved to reconsider.

The citizens were furious, and a crowd went with ropes to the City Hall the night the motion to reconsider came up; but the combine was determined. Butler was there in person. He was more frightened than the delegates, and the sweat rolled down his face as he bargained with them. With the whole crowd looking on, and reporters so near that a delegate told me he expected to see the conversation in the papers the next morning, Butler threatened and pleaded, but finally promised to divide $47,500. That was an occasion for a burst of eloquence. The orators, indicating the citizens with ropes, declared that since it was plain the people wanted light, they would vote them light. And no doubt the people thought they had won, for it was not known till much later that the votes were bought by Butler, and that the citizens only hastened a corrupt bargain.

The next big boodle measure that Butler missed was the Suburban Traction, the same that led long after to disaster. This is the story Turner and Stock have been telling over and over in the boodle trials. Turner and his friends in the St. Louis Suburban Railway Company sought a franchise, for which they were willing to pay large bribes. Turner spoke about it to Butler, who said it would cost $145,000. This seemed too much, and Turner asked Stock to lobby the measure through. Stock managed it, but it cost him $144,000—$135,000 for the combine, $9,000 extra for Meysenburg—and then, before the money was paid over and the company in possession of its privilege, an injunction put a stop to all proceedings. The money was in safe-deposit vaults—$75,000 for the House combine in one, $60,000 for the Council combine in the other—and when the legislature adjourned, a long fight for the money ensued. Butler chuckled over the bungling. He is said to have drawn from it the lesson that “when you want a franchise, don’t go to a novice for it; pay an expert, and he’ll deliver the goods.”

But the combine drew their own conclusions from it, and their moral was, that though boodling was a business by itself, it was a good business, and so easy that anybody could learn it by study. And study it they did. Two of them told me repeatedly that they traveled about the country looking up the business, and that a fellowship had grown up among boodling alderman of the leading cities in the United States. Committees from Chicago would come to St. Louis to find out what “new games” the St. Louis boodlers had, and they gave the St. Louisans hints as to how they “did the business” in Chicago. So the Chicago and St. Louis boodlers used to visit Cleveland and Pittsburg and all the other cities, or, if the distance was too great, they got their ideas by those mysterious channels which run all through the “World of Graft.” The meeting place in St. Louis was Decker’s stable, and ideas unfolded there were developed into plans which, the boodlers say to-day, are only in abeyance. In Decker’s stable the idea was born to sell the Union Market; and though the deal did not go through, the boodlers, when they saw it failing, made the market men pay $10,000 for killing it. This scheme is laid aside for the future. Another that failed was to sell the court-house, and this was well under way when it was discovered that the ground on which this public building stands was given to the city on condition that it was to be used for a court-house and nothing else.

But the grandest idea of all came from Philadelphia. In that city the gas-works were sold out to a private concern, and the water-works were to be sold next. The St. Louis fellows have been trying ever since to find a purchaser for their water-works. The plant is worth at least $40,000,000. But the boodlers thought they could let it go at $15,000,000, and get $1,000,000 or so themselves for the bargain. “The scheme was to do it and skip,” said one of the boodlers who told me about it, “and if you could mix it all up with some filtering scheme it could be done; only some of us thought we could make more than $1,000,000 out of it—a fortune apiece. It will be done some day.”

Such, then, is the boodling system as we see it in St. Louis. Everything the city owned was for sale by the officers elected by the people. The purchasers might be willing or unwilling takers; they might be citizens or outsiders; it was all one to the city government. So long as the members of the combines got the proceeds they would sell out the town. Would? They did and they will. If a city treasurer runs away with $50,000 there is a great halloo about it. In St. Louis the regularly organized thieves who rule have sold $50,000,000 worth of franchises and other valuable municipal assets. This is the estimate made for me by a banker, who said that the boodlers got not one-tenth of the value of the things they sold, but were content because they got it all themselves. And as to the future, my boodling informants said that all the possessions of the city were listed for future sale, that the list was in existence, and that the sale of these properties was only postponed on account of accident—the occurrence of Mr. Folk.

Preposterous? It certainly would seem so; but watch the people of St. Louis as I have, and as the boodlers have—then judge.

And remember, first, that Mr. Folk really was an accident. St. Louis knew in a general way, as other cities to-day know, what was going on, but there was no popular movement. Politicians named and elected him, and they expected no trouble from him. The moment he took office, on January 1, 1901, Butler called on him to appoint an organization man first assistant. When Folk refused, Butler could not understand it. Going away angry, he was back in three days to have his man appointed second assistant. The refusal of this also had some effect. The boodlers say Butler came out and bade them “look out; I can’t do anything with Folk, and I wouldn’t wonder if he got after you.” They took the warning; Butler did not. It seems never to have occurred to him that Mr. Folk would “get after” him.

What Butler felt, the public felt. When Mr. Folk took up, as he did immediately, election fraud cases, Butler called on him again, and told him which men he might not prosecute in earnest. The town laughed. When Butler was sent about his business, and Folk proceeded in earnest against the repeaters of both parties, even those who “had helped elect him,” there was a sensation. But the stir was due to the novelty and the incomprehensibility of such non-partisan conduct in public office. Incredulous of honesty, St. Louis manifested the first signs of that faith in evil which is so characteristic of it. “Why didn’t Mr. Folk take up boodling?” was the cynical challenge. “What do a few miserable repeaters amount to?”

Mr. Folk is a man of remarkable equanimity. When he has laid a course, he steers by it truly, and nothing can excite or divert him. He had said he would “do his duty,” not that he would expose corruption or reform St. Louis; and beyond watching developments, he did nothing for a year to answer the public challenge. But he was making preparations. A civil lawyer, he was studying criminal law; and when, on January 23, 1902, he saw in the St. Louis Star a paragraph about the Suburban bribe fund in bank, he was ready. He sent out summonses by the wholesale for bankers, Suburban Railway officials and directors, legislators and politicians, and before the grand jury he examined them by the hour for days and days. Nobody knew anything; and though Mr. Folk was known to be “after the boodlers,” those fellows and their friends were not alarmed and the public was not satisfied.

“Get indictments,” was the challenge now. It was a “bluff”; but Mr. Folk took it up, and by a “bluff” he “got an indictment.” And this is the way of it: the old row between the Suburban people and the boodle combine was going on in secret, but in a very bitter spirit. The money, lying in the safe-deposit vaults, in cash, was claimed by both parties. The boodlers said it was theirs because they had done their part by voting the franchise; the Suburban people said it was theirs because they had not obtained the franchise. The boodlers answered that the injunction against the franchise was not theirs, and they threatened to take the dispute before the grand jury. It was they who gave to a reporter a paragraph about the “boodle fund,” and they meant to have it scare Turner and Stock. Stock really was “scared.” When Mr. Folk’s summons was served on him, he believed the boodlers had “squealed,” and he fainted. The deputy who saw the effect of the summons told Mr. Folk, who, seeing in it only evidence of weakness and guilt, sent for the lawyer who represented Stock and Turner, and boldly gave him the choice for his clients of being witnesses or defendants. The lawyer was firm, but Folk advised him to consult his clients, and their choice was to be witnesses. Their confession and the seizure of the bribe fund in escrow gave Folk the whole inside story of the Suburban deal, and evidence in plenty for indictments. He took seven, and the reputation and standing of the first culprits showed right away not only the fearlessness of the prosecution, but the variety and power and wealth of the St. Louis species of boodler. There was Charles Kratz, agent of the Council combine; John K. Murrell, agent of the House combine; Emil A. Meysenburg, councilman and “good citizen”—all for taking bribes; Ellis Wainwright and Henry Nicolaus, millionaire brewers, and directors of the Suburban Railway Company for bribery; and Julius Lehmann and Henry A. Faulkner, of the House combine, for perjury. This news caused consternation; but the ring rallied, held together, and the cynics said, “They never will be tried.”

The outlook was stormy. Mr. Folk felt now in full force the powerful interests that opposed him. The standing of some of the prisoners was one thing; another was the character of the men who went on their bail bond—Butler for the bribe takers, other millionaires for the bribers. But most serious was the flow of persons who went to Mr. Folk privately and besought or bade him desist; they were not alone politicians, but solid, innocent business men, eminent lawyers, and good friends. Hardly a man he knew but came to him at one time or another, in one way or another, to plead for some rascal or other. Threats of assassination and political ruin, offers of political promotion and of remunerative and legitimate partnerships, veiled bribes—everything he might fear was held up on one side, everything he might want on the other. “When you are doing a thing like this,” he says now, “you cannot listen to anybody; you have to think for yourself and rely on yourself alone. I knew I simply had to succeed; and, success or failure, I felt that a political future was not to be considered, so I shut out all idea of it.”

So he went on silently but surely; how surely may be inferred from the fact that in all his dealings with witnesses who turned State’s evidence he has not made one misstep; there have been no misunderstandings, and no charges against him of foul play. While the pressure from behind never ceased, and the defiance before him was bold, “Go higher up” was the challenge. He was going higher up. With confessions of Turner and Stock, and the indictments for perjury for examples, he re-examined witnesses; and though the big men were furnishing the little boodlers with legal advice and drilling them in their stories, there were breaks here and there. The story of the Central Traction deal began to develop, and that went higher up, straight into the group of millionaires led by Butler.

But there was an impassable barrier in the law on bribery. American legislators do not legislate harshly against their chief vice. The State of Missouri limits the liability of a briber to three years, and the Traction deal was outlawed for most of the principals in it. But the law excepted non-residents, and Mr. Folk found that in moments of vanity Robert M. Snyder had described himself as “of New York,” so he had Snyder indicted for bribery, and George J. Kobusch, president of the St. Louis Car Company, for perjury, Kobusch having sworn that he knew of no bribery for the Central Traction franchise, when he himself had paid out money. Kobusch turned State’s witness against Snyder.

High as these indictments were, the cry for Butler persisted, and the skeptical tone of it made it plain that to break up the ring Mr. Folk had to catch the boss. And he did catch him. Saved by missing the Suburban business, saved by the law in the Central Traction affair, Butler lost by his temerity; he went on boodling after Mr. Folk was in office. He offered “presents” of $2,500 each to the two medical members of the Health Board for their approval of a garbage contract which was to net him $232,500. So the “Old Man,” the head of the boodlers, and the legislative agent of the financial district, was indicted.

But the ring did not part, and the public faith in evil remained steadfast. No one had been tried. The trials were approaching, and the understanding was that the first of them was to be made a test. A defeat might stop Mr. Folk, and he realized the moral effect such a result would have. But he was sure of his cases against Murrell and Kratz, and if he convicted them the way was open to both combines and to the big men behind them. To all appearances these men also were confident, and with the lawyers engaged for them they might well have been. Suddenly it was decided that Murrell was weak, and might “cave.” He ran away. The shock of this to the community is hard to realize now. It was the first public proof of guilt, and the first break in the ring of little boodlers. To Mr. Folk it was the first serious check, for he could not now indict the House combine. Then, too, Kratz was in Florida, and the Circuit Attorney saw himself going into court with the weakest of his early cases, that of Meysenburg. In genuine alarm he moved heavy increases in the bail bonds. All the lawyers in all the cases combined to defeat this move, and the fight lasted for days; but Mr. Folk won. Kratz returned in a rage to find bail. With his connections and his property he could give any amount, he boasted, and he offered $100,000. In spite of the protest of the counsel engaged for him, he insisted upon furnishing $20,000, and he denounced the effort to discredit him with the insinuation that such as he would avoid trial. He even asked to be tried first, but wiser heads on his side chose the Meysenburg case.

The weakness of this case lay in the indirection of the bribe. Meysenburg, a business man of repute, took for his vote on the Suburban franchise, not money; he sold for $9,000 some two hundred shares of worthless stock. This might be made to look like a regular business transaction, and half a dozen of the best lawyers in the State appeared to press that view. Mr. Folk, however, met these lawyers point by point, and point by point he beat them all, displaying a knowledge of law which astounded them, and an attitude toward the prisoner which won the jury, and might well reform the methods of haranguing prosecutors all over this country. Naturally without malice, he is impersonal; he did not attack the prisoner. He was not there for that purpose. He was defending the State, not prosecuting the individual. “The defendant is a mere atom,” he tells his juries; “if we could enforce the law without punishing individuals, we should not be here; but we cannot. Only by making an example of the criminal can we prevent crime. And as to the prisoner, he cannot complain, because his own deeds are his doomsmen.” At one stage of the Faulkner trial, when ex-Governor Johnson was talking about the rights of the prisoner, Mr. Folk remarked that the State had rights also. “Oh, d—— the rights of the State!” was the retort, and the jury heard it. Many juries have heard this view. One of the permanent services Mr. Folk has rendered is to impress upon the minds, not only of juries, but of the people generally, and in particular upon the Courts of Appeal (which often forget it), that while the criminal law has been developed into a great machine to preserve the rights, and much more, of the criminal, the rights of the State also should be guarded.

Meysenburg was found guilty and sentenced to three years. The man was shocked limp, and the ring broke. Kratz ran away. He was advised to go, and, like Murrell, he had promises of plenty of money; unlike Murrell, however, Kratz stood on the order of his going. He made the big fellows give him a large sum of cash, and for the fulfillment of their promise of more he waited menacingly in New Orleans. Supplied there with all he demanded, this Council leader stepped across into Mexico, and has gone into business there on a large scale. With Kratz safely away, the ring was nerved up again, and Meysenburg appeared in court with five well-known millionaires to give an appeal bond of $25,000. “I could have got more,” he told the reporters, “but I guess that’s enough.”

With the way to both boodle combines closed thus by the flight of their go-betweens, Mr. Folk might well have been stayed; but he wasn’t. He proceeded with his examination of witnesses, and to loosen their tongues he brought on the trials of Lehmann and Faulkner for perjury. They were well defended, but against them appeared, as against Meysenburg, President Turner, of the Suburban Railway, and Philip Stock, the brewery secretary. The perjurers were found guilty. Meanwhile Mr. Folk was trying through both Washington and Jefferson City to have Murrell and Kratz brought back. These regular channels failing, he applied to his sources of information in Murrell’s (the House) combine, and he soon learned that the fugitive was ill, without money, and unable to communicate with his wife or friends. Money that had been raised for him to flee with had been taken by others, and another fund sent to him by a fellow-boodler did not reach him. The fellow-boodler did, but he failed to deliver the money. Murrell wanted to come home, and Mr. Folk, glad to welcome him, let him come as far as a small town just outside of St. Louis. There he was held till Mr. Folk could arrange a coup and make sure of a witness to corroborate what Murrell should say; for, secure in the absence of Murrell, the whole House combine was denying everything. One day (in September, 1902) Mr. Folk called one of them, George F. Robertson, into his office.

They had a long talk together, and Mr. Folk asked him, as he had time and again, to tell what he knew about the Suburban deal.

“I have told you many times, Mr. Folk,” said Robertson, “that I know nothing about that.”

“What would you say if you should see Murrell here?” Mr. Folk asked.

“Murrell!” exclaimed Robertson. “That’s good, that is. Why, yes, I’d like to see Murrell.”

He was laughing as Mr. Folk went to the door and called, “Murrell.” Murrell walked in. Robertson’s smile passed. He gripped his seat, and arose like a man lifted by an electric shock. Once on his feet, he stood there staring as at a ghost.

“Murrell,” said Mr. Folk quietly, “the jig is up, isn’t it?”