The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 4, 1906, Page 11

“THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. 10 K morn- & 1 see an 1an, carefully & 3, fresh-c D friend ce p . proug ¢ s g was decent and honest t is fortune in the mines, not H many times, always coming w with more than he carried in - - . s took a turn ng at “an ounce £, ed a by the lesson of his own e Athe and' never begrudged the 2 for he set up first his ggeme then his own line of 3 » side rs to and from 2 = trade with the Pinkerton - C as a little s in New York, worked in the same 2 shop with Patrick Crowley, learning the g while rowley was b his ventures to makes ow low the water : , and with the astuteness e ng stor: making his own way in s ssed that freighting on the 1ght steamers would cults So he took all his 2ded a friend to go in with it a light-dranght boat for it came as he expected s soon at th £ $100 a ton for freight and $20 for passage the two o s, were clearing profits at %) a month - rtune favored him. or as ¢ he so puts it himself, God was T good to him, and he drew out what money he had in bank in order to make visit home. Immediately after he drew g is savings the bank, to the surprise of ev one, went to the wall 4 Instead of going East he took a con- g f Ltering with his elong & er aptain Charlie Mayo, and shared profits of several thou- month, and often pu his pockets and sha . i those profits with other young men who had landed as he did with no cap- t t elastic one of hope thers now? d ve event of his spring is it th elected Town Constable, ser among mer r for the protection of hips San Francisco was m the ranks? SAPARRIBY o He was one of the many young men CaR baw. s d landed here so much alike in circumstances that there was no plck- > ing between them on that score; he s the same boy, plus his experience, th nded here at the age of 18 with the $2.50 is pocket, but from . among the Jl he was his « eligibility had been recog: that . mysterious something that makes a man a leader among men had been rec- s . ogni :nd he was started on the first step in the life work that was to be his, 2 *rom 1854 to 1866 he was regularly 8 re-elected and remained Constable, col- ting sometimes as much as $1500 a ontia in fees and receiving in those bonanza days $12 for serving a writ In 1566 he was, elected Chief of Police, : 1d was the only man on his ticket to b be elected. I tais election began the real - K work of his life . Belng Chief of Police then, in the was turbulent days of that transition pe- v riod, was a very different thing from being Chief now. when the whole de- partment is as perfectly organi: as a yw the last roll,” Piece of clockwork, and the ( sits ¥ { met & man in his oflice, like a big, powerful spider - & sailbr e from the center of kis web o« and when | the of power that stretches was n Albany he took over the city—and far beyond—moving whine 1o me, for he was an Albauy 1his 700 men to do his will as easily as I told him I wanted to go the typist does the keys of her type- so he took me down and writer. 80 aboard his vessel. My A wonderful thing is that great was Captain Lattimer of the mechanism—the police department of & . Em He took me to Bacra- modern city, that safeguurds the thou- d gave me $3%0 when we landed sands 1 thousands of a city's dwell- ers, and tha: knows so ma oung Patrick Crowley made his that has a re -blooded knowl- stake in California, in the wake of edge of so many skeletons in closéts; v many more and such large oncs that marks and reports the comings s and goings of the unsuspecting. real courage and manliness It was not that sort of a perfect Lhet balked at nothing however strenuous, mechanism, however, when Pafrick \ HEN~ XE RETIRED ';‘bfiom THE POLICE- DEPARTMENT, AT 65, HONORED STILL A POOR MAN & IN THE FIRST POLICE: UNTFORM | Crowley became Chief, nor was being Chief_then what it is now. He was Chizf of less than a hundred men in a community where the inter- BY ALL, HE WA ested citizen did not sit dewn and ex: press his indignation in a letter to his favorite morning paper--as he does now—but where he got out and took an active, and often a vielent part, in righting the wrongs—or wronging the rights—of his time. Chiet Crowiey, if we should classify % AV MAN o~ v CHIET" . @ WHEN HE LANDED Iy SAN TRANCI A BOY QF &, HE HAD $2, I1s POCIGE the Chicfs, should go into history as the riot Chief; his part was an active part, an actual physical participation in the very real dangers of his time. It was not Qjs custom to sit in his of- fice and plan campaigns, to order this thing and that done, and call his sub- ordinates to account. . It was his to do. Those were wild times, full of wild projects, when he became Chief, and he had not only individual offenders to deal with, but such gangs as the aver- &ge law-abiding and protected citizen of to-day believes have existence only in dime novels. There were the Sons of Freedom, the Revolutionary committee, the Potrero toughs, the Sandlotters to be reckoned with. The Sons of Freedom met in an empty barn on the southwest corner of Ninth and Market streets at midnight, mufiled in black dominoes, using no lights, rallying around & skull on a pedestal, bound together by a fearful oath, planning ghoulish and medieval crimes, The mere description of them has an operatic flavor, but they made real and menacing groups of outlaws, and Chief Crowley broke it up by Introducing several members of his force into their circle and learning all their secrets. The Revoiutionary committee had a den at Lombard and Montgemery streets and busied itself making most ingenious bombs for the removing of a half-dozen prominent citizens whose names are household words, and just as the bombs were ready and the members of the committee were being detailed to apply them Chief Crowley put his hand out and gathered them in, bombs, committee and all. In the Potrero troubles, when rioting sprang out of the anti-Chinese sentiment, the Chief made a sort of military expe- ditfon of 1it. The Potrero was a long way out over the sand dumes and creeks then, and the Chief at the head of his men went out on horseback to subdue the rioters. When this sort of thing is being done for a community's weifare we are apt to forget what it means in the home, what the domestic feafs and anxieties are. The old Chief, white haired and feeble now, tells me about it in his own peace- ful drawing-room, of haw he armed him- self with a revolver and knife in his beit, a special club called a riot club, and a short shotgun filled with buck shot, and set out fur the Potrero. His daughter tells me how her mother, full of tender, wifely fears, watched him ride away and then so sure that he would be brought back to her wounded or dead, prepared his bed for him and beside it all the necessaries for a surgical emergenc: But he came back safe and sound, hav- ing mastered and dispersed the lawless rufflans, and his anxious wife contiscated the big ciub and kept it as a souvenir of her day of terror. On the cccasion of the Sutter-street car strike the dynamiters came to the top again and the Chief gathered the evi- dence of corviction himself. He was one of the detall that surrounded the sus- pected dyramiter's house, that pursued him, that picked up the bomb, wrapped In dress lining, and that fitted the wrap- ping to the piece of new cloth it had been cut from. When the Sandlotters were making the city government a byword, it was Chiet Crowley who not only threatened to ar- rest the Mayor himself, but who captured the agitators, Denis Kearney and Gan- non, so neatly that their followers had no chance to make a disturbance. “That put a stop to that trouble and to Denis. Kearney's power, and now when I met Kearney,” says the Chief, *he is as friendly to me as can be and Tharbors no il will.” v How much the man himsell matters is clear in_ the story of Chief Crowley's handling of the Sandlotters and their trouble-inspiring orators. ~ A mob of 100 gathered oF- the saad - lots where the C were, to rai They the work t new City H. “Tha Mayor s Chiez, “to cous ble and to h to say. As soon a ‘was the leader short. ‘Pat you and you k “just ready piof them m amencing on the s the ex~ the trou= Now, loaking for work. me tel! you one trouble comes out of this we w respon- sible for it, and the first g my men do will be to hupt you out and kill That was quite enough for Patsy and his crowd e very tle trou- ble after that. ““When I fi wed on arresting the Mayor —Mayor Kalloch—thers were 20,000 people on the sand lot, and I did not belieye in precipitating trouble by arresting Kearney and Gannon there while they were speak- ng. I detailed men in hacks to nab each man as he was going into his home, and when the news arrest spread there was a ho ob around the City Hall, but they ured on nothing and that ended the more than hi sand lot riots but he deserved it 't arrest the Mayor, In the anti-C troubles he led a posse armed wi muzzle-loading rifles down to t Mail docks and guarded the plac thirty days with such unceasing vigil that when strain was over he fainted from ex tlon—the first tim ted in his 1 All the riots that his share were not from public troubles One of the first was when the mob gath= ered and demanded urderer of Mzggie Ryan, a little child that had been most shockingly dealt with and killed by a depraved creature named Quinn. The otional comm ty ‘was incensed not, as we do new, write its ind to the papers and feed its curiosity ocking scens of the crime. Instead men and women gathered a vengefu mob when th fl —as ly fily—through t was caugl in the th prisoner into D nape of the neck Again, in-the Goldenson angry people ran wild upon the s destroy the youth who had wantonly mur- dered his young sweetheart, the Chief's men broke sixty-four clubs on the heads of indignant citizens, and the Chief him- self says: “The only way I finally got Goldenson into jail was by giving a fellow who was coming toward me—one of the dynamiters had known—a clip on the jaw that sent him spinning and gave me the one mo- ment I needed to get inside with the prisoner.” The ex-Chief's head is silvery and his eyes are dim, but there’s a gusto in his memory of that lip on the jdw' that tells of a tingle in his nghting blood yet. Ancther time when he felt to the full the zest of the game was in the arrest of the Brothertons, forgers, who had es- caped from prison, and after whom he was out in full cry, leading the pack. He had them ambushed and in his eagerness to get them leaped a fence, catching his coat on the pickets and roiling to their feet. It was a ecritical moment and the escaped men were e. Without almost superhumanly x action he was at their mercy, but the Chief was acth as well as resourceful. He turned a som- ersault that brought him to his feet, and brought his gun and a challenge to bear on them at the same time—and the Broth- ertons went back to jail with him. The Chief of Police can no more keep office hours than can the devoted mother of a family, and Chief Crowley was Chief of Pclice on Sundays as well as week days, by night as well as by day. ‘Many a night,” he tells me, “I° walked home from the hall, over the Sacramento-street hill, at midnight and after, and always was back in my offl at pine the next morning. Never but once in all the years that “hief did he take a vacation, and s near the end of his time and he went for two months to Honolulu “for the only vacation I had in my life. Twenty-five years of living at such high pressure leave their mark upon a man, and ten years ago, when the heavy hand of grief fell upon him in the loss of his last som, he retired. Then his reward came. In a press that is notoriously at dif- rence there was for once unanimit With one voice it poured out admira- tion and regret, and he went out ‘of office, this man whe came here as a boy of 18 with empty pockets, henored as an honest man. He had been Chief for years, but not continuously. There was an interruption of a few years when he tried being a stock broker, and this interruption interfered with the awarding of a pension. He went out of office a poor man, and an act was passed, without one fainstest grumble of dissent, making it possible to give him his pension. Through the friendly offices of Judge Tobin, who was Justice of the Peace when Patrick Crowley was Constable, in those distant days, he was made 2 director of the Hibernia Bank. And now in his “age of snow, after a youth aglow,” he goes on three days of every week to the directors’ meet- ings, and in his leisure walks with his friends of fifty years or gathers his grandchildren about him to hear their prattle. I asked film what & man needs to make a good Chief of Police, and he tells me, out of the fullness of his own experience. “He must have independence—he must be subject to the influence of no man or clique. “He must have courage. “He must have discretion. “If he has these qualities he cam do his duty.” ’ It never enters his head that a man undertaking ch a trust would care to do other than Lis duty. It never enters his head to prescribe honesty as a qualification. These things he takes for granted, just as one takes it for granted that a man has eyes, or teeth. or fingers. Perhaps in this simple attitude to- ward life lies the secret of why that 18-vear-old boy of half a century age was singled out from the many fer the honors that have come t9 him. twenty-five