Black Bart had none of the stuff of which heroes are made. In
fact, he was an early date Charlie Brown, bumbling through life like
most of us and doing everything wrong. He got shot in the Civil War,
tangled in a marriage he could not live with, and wandered over the
Western landscape finding one fruitless business venture after
another. Even as a stagecoach bandit he was not much of financial
success. He worked at it for eight long years, the earning only
$18,000 which hardly covered his expenses in those bonanza days, and
he wound up spending four years in prison for his efforts. His
singular accomplishment was that he managed to hold up 29 Wells Fargo
stages before he was caught.
Perhaps it was his very ineffectiveness in a world where people and
the land alike were being ripped off by powerful monopolies which
makes him an appropriate symbol for today. For the problem was then
as it is now, with many of today's corporate giants getting their
infant start in grabbing resources through every kind of maneuver,
legal and illegal, and stepping on and over anyone who stood in their
path. A goodly number of Western outlaws got their start simply by
standing up for their own rights.
Black Bart was more a case of striking out in angry frustration at
something just too big and powerful for him to live with. After 45
years of futility during which his good breeding and careful manners
made no headway at all in a world of money and power, he just blew
his cool. He took a shotgun into the California hills and began
hauling down stagecoaches. Even there his timing was bad, for by the
mid 70's stage holdups were passe; train robbery was more in vogue
and more profitable.
But looking at Black Bart's record, one gets the impression that he
wasn't too concerned at that point with profit. More than once he
refused to relieve passengers of their wallets and purses - he was
only interested in the express box and the mails . And it's an
unusual and never explained circumstance that he only chose Wells
Fargo as his target, ignoring the many minor and less powerful stage
operations of the day . He thereby increased the risk of getting
caught, for Wells Fargo's private police force had an enviable
reputation, so one has to conclude that there was something more than
money which was driving him.
And so there was. He left his declaration of anger at the scene of
his third hold up, along the road from Fort Bragg to Russian River in
Mendocino county. It was a hastily planned quatrain which read:
I've labored long and hard for bread,
For honor and for riches,
But on my corn's too long you've tred,
You fine haired sons of bitches!
That was all that was needed to earn him a heroes rating in the
ranks of those who would fight the system. There were other poems,
but none with the biting beauty of that first.
In time, after an embarrassingly long search, Wells Fargo's ace
detective, J . B. Hume, finally tracked him down through a laundry
marking. Then the many other fascinating facets of the man came to
light. He had never once used a loaded gun, even though he'd been
shot at twice. He had never used a horse, but out walked his pursuit,
that rugged man in his fifties, once as far as miles! And he lived
the life of a gentleman in San Francisco between his forays, drinking
ale with the city's own detective force, who knew him as an erudite
mine owner who didn't smoker or drink hard liquor. He had the cool
nerve and wit to play a skillful game of injured innocence with Hume,
and they could only convict him of the last robbery where his
telltale laundry mark was found.
His part was played, and he left history as quietly as he had entered
it. After four years in San Quentin with time off for excellent
behavior, he dropped from sight and to this day his ultimate
whereabouts are unknown.
But not before one last and disputed swipe at the system which stuck
in his craw.
An Examiner reporter claimed to have interviewed Black Bart in a
hillside hideaway less than a year after his release. Richard Dillon,
who wrote Hume's biography with the considerable assistance of Wells
Fargo, claims it was a put-on by Hearst, who was at that time
fighting the very system his papers now so staunchly defend. But it
matters little whether it is Black Bart or his legend which is
speaking in this third person quote:
"... Black Bart never gained a man's confidence to betray it, never swindled a person in trade, and never plundered working people by taking what they produced, sheltering himself behind laws made to legalized theft. He robbed Wells, Fargo and Co. without pretending that stage robbery was a perfectly legal and commendable occupation. He took the chancesand it's right of being shot and at least was frank in his method of obtaining other people's property ... the biggest robbers are not on the road with shotguns, but they make every man who works stand and deliver. "
The final irony of Black Bart's story is that Wells Fargo, who
lost $18,000 to the old man, and in turn cost him four precious years
of his life, has been reaping many times that value over the years
from the entire historical episode in advertising and
public-relations.
Thus, even the glory of his resistance has been co-opted.
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