rich in precise, well-ordered, documentary information and his experience by in the field of land-graft, railroading and politics. He had been a land attorney for the Southern Pacific. Heney had need of Bristol's knowledge of the land laws and the facts, and he consulted frequently with him.
And Bristol—a corporation attorney (of the Heney type)—gave the best that was in him. He was professionally scrupulous; he volunteered nothing; and he didn't help Francis J. Heney. He responded as a citizen to the demands which the Assistant Attorney-General made upon him in the name of the government. It was Bristol who gave Heney his first definite grasp of the whole corrupt system of graft in Oregon.
And Burns, coming up from below, had the same system. He also encountered opposition, but he also had an opening wedge. When Emma Watson disappeared, Burns assigned "Dug" Doyle, a "shadow," to "rope" (locate and fetch, without arresting) the woman. "Dug" hadn't found Mrs. Watson, but he had worked in with the under-world and he introduced Burns, who soon was deep in the muck. The under-world sees the upper-world of graft very clearly; it knows men and the relations of men and it has the "straight" of many a crooked deal. Burns heard what the criminals had to tell; he saw what they saw and, at night, when he and Heney met at their hotel to compare notes, it was amazing how the gossip of the clubs dovetailed in with
Mrs. Emma A. Watson, one of the co-conspiritors with Puter and others in the land frauds
Emma Watson's "Strawberry Patch "—above the snow level!
leaders who developed the resources of the country. They ran steamships, built roads and railroads. They made the government grant them immense tracts of land for their roads, but they built the roads till the grants of land made land grafters of them. The map of Oregon to-day is streaked up and down and all around by zigzags of "military road grants," which show no roads but which do show fortunes in timber. And so with the railroads. They also got lands from the government to help them finance their schemes for the development of the state. They also turned grafters. And this, the inevitable result of grants and grafts, was a pity, for it turned good, great, enterprising men into grafters. But that is not all. As we have noticed before: To get their grafts, and keep them and get more, the grafters have to go into politics
