| The following dispatch from Los Angeles, Calif. Under the date of
February 18, appeared in last Sunday's Tulsa World: "Two thousand red-headed Texas
Rangers is the only force needed to clean up Chicago with its racketeers and gangsters, in
the opinion of Emmett Dalton, youngest and only surviving member of the notorious 'Dalton
boys,' who roamed and ravaged the old Indian Territory. "Yes
sir,' Dalton says, ' we'd sure tame that town. Fist thing I'd do would be to throw all the
ward heelers in mail and then with their backbones broken the gangsters and mob men would
have to shift for themselves. The minute you take the official protection from those
racketeers they're through. They lose their ammunition.' "So you don't thin the
present day crop of outlaws is a credit to the profession?" he was asked.
"Outlaws, thunder!" he indignantly corrected. "Those fellows gunning around
here now aren't outlaws. We outlaws in the old days had some principle. We held up trains
and banks that's true, but we never shot anyone-unless, he qualified, and it was
absolutely necessary. But these gangsters today," he chuckled in derision. "They
even have bodyguards. Can you beat that? Imagine Jesse James or one of the Dalton boys
with a bodyguard.
"Despite his 60 years, 14 of which were spent in Lansing, Kan., prison for
his part in the historic Coffeyville, Kan., robbery when eight people were killed, Dalton
today is a splendid figure of a man. He is in the real estate and building business and
has written two books on outlaw life." |
