Part 23

In the legislature of 1889, our friends endeavored to have the parole system extended to life prisoners, and secured the introduction in the legislature of a bill to provide that life prisoners might be paroled when they had served such a period as would have entitled them to their release had they been sentenced to imprisonment for 35 years. The bill was drawn by George M. Bennett of Minneapolis, who had taken a great deal of interest in our case, and was introduced in the senate by Senator George P. Wilson, of Minneapolis. As the good time allowances on a 35-year sentence would cut it to between 23 and 24 years, we could have been paroled in a few months had this bill passed. Although there was one other inmate of the prison who might have come under its provisions, it was generally known as the “Youngers’ parole bill” and the feeling against it was largely identified with the feeling against us. I am told, however, since my release, that it would have passed at that session had it not been for the cry of “money” that was used. There never was a dollar used in Minnesota to secure our pardon, and before our release we had some of the best men and women in the state working in our behalf, without money and without price. But this outcry defeated the bill of 1899.

Still it did not discourage our friends on the outside.

At the next session of the legislature, 1901, there was finally passed the bill which permitted our conditional parole, the pardon board not being ready to grant us our full freedom. This bill provided for the parole of any life convict who had been confined for twenty years, on the unanimous consent of the board of pardons.

The bill was introduced in the house by Representative P. C. Deming of Minneapolis, and among those who worked for its passage was Representative Jay W. Phillips, who, as a boy, had been driven from the streets the day we entered Northfield. Senator Wilson, who had introduced the bill which failed in 1899, was again a staunch supporter and led the fight for us in the senate.

The board of prison managers promptly granted the parole the principal conditions of which were as follows:

“He shall not exhibit himself in any dime museum, circus theater, opera house, or any other place of public amusement or assembly where a charge is made for admission.”

“He shall on the twentieth day of each month write the warden of the state prison a report of himself, stating whether he had been constantly at work during the last month, and if not, why not; how much he has earned, and how much he has expended, together with a general statement as to his surroundings and prospects, which must be indorsed by his employer.”

“He shall in all respects conduct himself honestly, avoid evil associations, obey the law, and abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors.”

“He shall not go outside the state of Minnesota.”

The parole was unanimously concurred in by Messrs. B. F. Nelson, F. W. Temple, A. C. Weiss, E. W. Wing, and R. H. Bronson, of the prison board and urged by Warden Henry Wolfer.

The board of pardons, in indorsing our parole, said:

“We are satisfied that the petitioners in this case have by exceptionally good conduct in prison for a quarter of a century, and the evidence they have given of sincere reformation, earned the right to a parole, if any life prisoner can do so.”

And July 14, 1901, Jim and I went out into the world for the first time in within a few months of twenty-five years.

Rip Van Winkle himself was not so long away. St. Paul and Minneapolis which, when we were there in 1876, had less than 75,000 people all told, had grown to cities within whose limits were over 350,000. A dozen railroads ended in one or the other of these centers of business that we had known as little better than frontier towns.

34. ON PAROLE

Our first positions after our release from prison were in the employ of the P. N. Peterson Granite company, of St. Paul and Stillwater, Mr. Peterson having known us since early in our prison life.

We were to receive $60 a month each and expenses. Jim was to take care of some office work, and take orders in the immediate vicinity of Stillwater. He worked mostly through Washington county, and with a horse and buggy, but had not been at work more than two months when the sudden starting of the horse as he was getting out of the buggy started anew his intermittent trouble with the bullet that lodged under his spine, and he was compelled to find other employment.

He then went into the cigar department of the Andrew Schoch grocery company in St. Paul, and after several months there was employed by Maj. Elwin, of the Elwin cigar company in Minneapolis, where he remained until a few days before his death.

I traveled for the Peterson company until Nov., 1901, covering nearly all of Minnesota. But the change from the regularity of prison hours to the irregular hours, meals and various changes to which the drummer is subject was too much for me, and I returned to St. Paul to enter the employ of Edward J. and Hubert C. Schurmeier, who had been strenuous workers for my pardon, and James Nugent at the Interstate institute for the cure of the liquor and morphine habits, on Rosabel street in St. Paul.

There I remained several months, and then was employed by John J. O’Connor, chief of police at St. Paul, in connection with private interests to which he could not give his personal attention.

35. JIM GIVES IT UP

The bullet wound which Jim received in our last fight near Madelia, shattering his upper jaw, and remaining imbedded near his brain, until it was removed by Dr. T. G. Clark after we were in the prison at Stillwater, affected Jim at intervals during all his prison life, and he would have periodical spells of depression, during which he would give up all hope, and his gloomy spirits would repel the sympathy of those who were disposed to cheer him up.

I remember that at the time of the fire in 1884, he was in one of these fits of depression, but the excitement of that time buoyed him up, and he was himself again for a considerable period.

After our release from prison, Jim’s precarious health and his inability to rejoin his family in Missouri combined to make these fits of depression more frequent. While he was working for Maj. Elwin, instead of putting in his afternoons, which were free, among men, or enjoying the sunshine and air which had so long been out of our reach, he would go to his room and revel in socialistic literature, which only tended to overload a mind already surcharged with troubles. For my part, I tried to get into the world again, to live down the past, and I could and did enjoy the theaters, although Jim declared he would never set foot in one until he could go a free man. In July, he and some of his friends petitioned the board of pardons for a full pardon, but the board was of the opinion that it was too early to consider that, believing that we should be kept on our good behavior for a time.

That resulted in another fit of depression for Jim. He took it to heart, and never regained his cheerful mood, for when he was up, he was away up, and when down, away down. There was no half way place with Jim.

In October, 1902, he left Maj. Elwin expecting to go to St. Paul to work for Yerxa Bros.

But Sunday afternoon, Oct. 19, his dead body was found in a room at the hotel Reardon, Seventh and Minnesota streets, St. Paul, where he had been staying since leaving Minneapolis. His trunk had been sent to friends, and there was every indication that he had carefully planned his death by his own hand. A bullet hole above his right ear and a pistol clutched in his hand, told the story of suicide. Dr. J. M. Finnell, who as acting coroner, was summoned, decided that he must have shot himself early in the forenoon, although neighbors in the block had not been disturbed by the shot.

I was sick in bed at the time and my physician, Dr. J. J. Platt, forbade my attempting to do anything in the premises, but Jim’s body was taken in charge in my behalf by Chief of Police O’Connor, and borne to Lee’s Summit, Mo., our old Jackson county home, where it was laid to rest.