Office, and studied the procedure there; like Burns, Hyde had seen that Barnes must be corrupt if business was to be done; and so, like the detective again, the business man had had to "get" Barnes.
Hitchcock's Practical Mind
The confession of Barnes astonished the Secretary, but it did not convince him that his Land Office was "corrupt to the core." Only Barnes was bad. Mr. Hitchcock was just as amazed at each subsequent confession. Once when a certain fine old clerk had expressed a willingness to tell the Secretary something, Burns was called in to hear the story. The old man related how when he, as a special agent in the field, was making an investigation into some suspicious land operations by United States Senator Warren of Wyoming, Richards had transferred him. The Secretary listened till Richards' name was mentioned, then he refused to hear any more. "Richards? Impossible!" And he turned the old man out of his office. But Burns did not think there was anything impossible for Richards. He followed the clerk out and he took from him the rest of the story. The time came when the Secretary had to let Richards resign, but that was years later. He couldn't believe then any evil of the Commissioner who had exposed Binger Hermann, and it was always hard for him to change his mind about a man he once had trusted. But this fixity of mind was a comfort as well as an exasperation to Burns and afterward to Heney. For Mr. Hitchcock was as stanch with honest men as he was with "crooks." After he had given his investigators his confidence, nothing could move, him; neither whispered lies nor open charges, neither political pull nor pleas for business. When the fight was on, and Heney and Burns needed blind support, they put their backs to Secretary Hitchcock and, like a stone wall, he stood immovable behind them.
Burns Goes West
It was the confession of Barnes apparently that first won for Burns the splendid faith of the Secretary. Having it, he went west. Burns headed straight for San Francisco, and there he began his field work as he did his investigation in the Department at Washington, by studying out the system. At the bottom of the Land Office corruption were the big business men, Hyde and Benson; and they were, indeed, big. If Burns had been a novice he admits that he would have been staggered by the position, wealth and influence of these men. But the detective had detected business back of crime before. The counterfeiters of Philadelphia had brought out against him the influence of men prominent in business, law and in politics; and in another case, that of a robbery of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco, some of the criminals had developed a pull which reached up into the offices of the Federal prosecutors. Burns had no astonishment to waste on the millionaires, Benson and Hyde, therefore, nor on the political and business relations they sustained with the leading citizens of California.
Now, Burns found in California what I have found in every state that I have studied, that a railroad rules. The Southern Pacific Railroad, having corrupted the state, furnished about all the government it had and that government represented, naturally, not the people, but first, the railroad, and second, any other (non-competing) business that would help pay the cost of keeping the state corrupt. And, having thus the state, these corrupt businesses corrupted also so much of California's share in the United States Senate, the House of Representatives and the Executive Departments as they "had to" control.
We have seen how Burns followed the stream of corruption from Washington down through the Land Office of the Interior Department to the State of California. Since the frauds he was after were operated in part through the land office in California, the state's land office had to be similarly corrupt. Schneider said it was. Burns proved it. Schneider had implicated two surveyors-general of California; the third was in office now, but it was common knowledge in land business circles that the office still was corrupt. "Of course it was," says Burns. The railroad, having been granted land by the government, had had to go into the land business and, since the surveyor-general's office would represent and protect the people of California if it was honest, it had to be made dishonest. Herrin, the chief of counsel for the Southern Pacific, was the boss of the state and he named himself the candidate for that office.
