The Genesis of Train Robbery
Submitted by: Mollie Stehno

The first train robbery to attract general attention occurred less than 20 years ago, at Gad's Hill, a small station on the Iron Mountain Railroad. The public mind was stunned by the audacity of the enterprise, and it has not yet completely recovered from the shock. The murderer with a mask on his face, who stalks through a train and bullies braver men than he, has been from the first invested with a heroic personality that is not his due. He is, generally speaking, a coward, who never shoots unless he has the drop, and who would not think of risking his precious carcass by pursuing the comparatively creditable but more hazardous occupation of stealing horses.

Because his lay was unique the train robber was accepted from the first as a king among outlaws, and though it has been demonstrated again and again that a train, with its sleepy passengers, its unprotected express messenger, its engineer, in whom the instinct of self preservation is strong, and its conductor, who is more or less human, is easier held up than a hen roost sentineled by a faithful house dog, the train robber will have imitators as long as no morbid fools read yellow-backed literature. Every year since the Gad's Hill affair a new crop has been produced. True, the Sheriff has usually been in at the harvest as chief reaper, occasionally adding the duties of a hangman to those of gaol keeper. The lack of adequate returns, which is peculiarly characteristic of the industry, does not deter the ambitious neophyte, who has intoxicated his so-called brain with "Sixteen-String Jack."

The "James Boys" and "Younger Brothers," who were pioneers in the business, are mostly dead or in the penitentiary; Sam Bass, their earliest and ablest imitator, was, with his entire following, wiped off the face of the earth during the first year of his career; Gove Johnson and his three lieutenants were hanged at Clarksville, Ark., on one scaffold, three months after they quit holding up plow handles and went in for holding up trains as a means of livelihood; Rube Burrows, who was for a time thought to be invincible, drew on his boots one morning and died before he had a chance to take them off. It was learned that his strength was in the main geographical. He knew the country. His neighbors also knew it, and when they finally went out after the reward that had been offered for their quondam friend they got it and him. The fate of the Dalton's is too recent to require comment. Dozens of the smaller fry of the "profession" are in the penitentiary, or like "Dink" Wilson, on the way there. Every mother's son of them has been or will be the subject of a certain book, the title of which is changed from time to time for obvious reasons. This book is in the genealogical tree of the train robber. It propagates the species.

Remedies innumerable for the train robbing habit, which just now seems to be epidemic, have been suggested. The most rational and thoroughly practical is to make it a dangerous undertaking. If it were a capital offense in Missouri to attempt to rob a train, the statute might result in driving the bandits across the State line, but it would not reduce the number of robberies the half of 1 per cent.

Viewed from any standpoint, the train robber promises to be with us as long as the printing press and the free school. This is not an argument against either of these agencies of civilization. The naturally vicious will be bad in any event, and they run their course sooner, perhaps, in this line than they would in any other. Dead train robbers are absolutely harmless, and the most rational way to treat any member of the build is to shoot him whenever and wherever he is found plying his vocation. Let the railroads put guards on their trains whose business it will be to kill any train robber who shows himself. Such men are easily found, and when the railroads begin to haul in dead bandits as well as dynamite scattered express cars the business of train robbing will soon cease to thrive.

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