THE DAILY IOWA CAPITAL

   Des Moines, Iowa
  Thursday, July 9, 1891

            A LEADING DEMOCRAT

 

         He Takes Up His Pen to defend Frank Pierce, The Murderer.
             Mayor Campbell Accused of

Fostering a Monopoly Driving Pierce to Madness.
                Leonard Brown Marks Out Pierce's Line of Defense,
                  When the Trial Comes.

    EDITOR CAPITAL:  I sincerely lament the sad death of
Comrade Wishart, nor do I wish or intend to shield any
guilty man from punishment;  no, not even the mayor of the
city of Des Moines--if he was in any way responsible for
the awful tragedy.  No man has done more than I to commemorate

Iowa soldiers.  I am poor;  but I impoverished
myself, when I had a good start in the world, to build a
monument to the memory of Des Moines and Polk county
soldiers.  My "American patriotism," is a better monument
to commemorate their valor than a pile of marble would be
though it cost a million dollars.  I will do all in my power to
fittingly honor the memory of Comrade Wishart--a veteran
member of the Second Iowa infantry.  My only brother
served four years and five months in Co. D of the same regiment.
    Let the whole truth be spoken.  Let all the facts that
led up to that bloody affair be told.  Comrade Wishart would
be living today if Mayor Campbell had done his duty.  I
have been a friend to Mayor Campbell.  When he hired a
hack at the expense of the city, and started out to find a
dumping ground in which the Des Moines scavengers
might bury the filth of the city, and failed to find it, but was
accused of getting so drunk that he had to be brought
home in an ambulance, I took pains to tell the mayor that
I thought he was falsely accused by the press, and persecuted.
    The mayor will have to explain to the public way he permitted

Becker to fence up Ninth street;  he will have to explain

to the public why he tried to give Graham the monopoly

of the scavenger business for a city of 60,000 people,
when that business is by law free and open to all men who
delight to follow the sweet-scented occupation.  Did not
Wesley Redhead deed the land at the foot of Ninth street
to the public three years ago, and was it not unlawful to
fence it up?  Had not the board of health ordered the
scavengers to deposit the offal of the city cesspools, at
the foot of Ninth street and upon the public grounds? 
Was it not the right of any man to be a scavenger and to
dump upon that ground without molestation?  Would not
any citizen have the right to clean his own vaults or to
hire whomsoever he pleased to clean them, and at as
cheap a price as he could, and to haul the filth to the foot
of Ninth street, as the board of health had directed, digging
holes in the ground and burying it?  Yes, he would, and the
mayor knows he would have that right.
    Where did Mayor Campbell get the authority to make a
monopoly of that useful and necessary occupation, and to
give that monopoly into the hands of one man, allowing
him to tax the people one-third higher price for the work
than others were glad to do it for?  There is something
rotten in the Des Moines city hall, higher up than the bottom

of her cesspools.  The scavenger Pierce had paid
into the city treasury fifty dollars for a license, because
the mayor had falsely claimed that a license was required
of a scavenger.  After the payment of the money the mayor
refused him license.  The mayor arrested him for working
without a license.  But the mayor was ???????????????
and it was clear that a scavenger had the right to work
without a license, then the mayor refused to allow the
scavenger a dumping place for the filth of the city.  He
would, it seems, have the city swept with the pestilence
rather than do his sovereign duty as mayor of a great
city.  The scavenger paid Becker ten dollars a month for
the privilege of going through the gate, he has unlawfully
placed across the street leading to the public dumping
grounds, until Becker informed him that "the mayor's
brother had forbidden him in the name of the mayor to
allow any other scavenger than Graham to cross
through the gate to dump on the public grounds."
    The scavenger demands of the authorities a place
for the deposit of the filth of the city.  No place is open
to him.  He finds by the records that Ninth street is un-
lawfully shut up against him.  He tears down the fence.
He removes the obstruction.  He is arrested for malicious

 trespass by Becker.  He, after having been con-
fined in jail, arrests Becker for obstructing the public
highway.  Becker replaces obstruction in the street and
guards the barricade with a Winchester repeating rifle.
This looks like war.  This is anarchy.  Thirty-five of forty
policemen, standing around with their eyes shut.  They
mayor and all his posse inciting it on!  This is mean.
This is damnable.  Children are dying by the hundreds
in the city because of the stinking cesspools.  It is the
heat of summer.  It is the last of June.
    The marshal ordered the scavenger to dump at the
foot of Fourth street.  Two days later he countermanded
the order.  This was Saturday, June 27th.  On Tuesday
morning, June 30th, the scavenger, Frank Pierce, went
to the marshal's office with revolvers strapped to his
waist because of the state of war and anarchy inaugurated

by Becker and the mayor of Des Moines, and he
told the marshal that he had no place to dump but at the
foot of Ninth street, and that that street was obstructed
with an unlawful fence, and he demanded police protection

to tear it down.  The marshal sent two policemen,
who stood by the Scavenger Pierce, while he tore
down the fence and those policemen so guarded him
from the beligerant Becker, who had erected the barricade. 

The wagons loaded with filth got through unmolested

by Becker during the forenoon.  At noon while
others were at dinner, Becker rebuilt the fortification

re-established his barricade of the street.  Pierce returned

with his teams and barrels of filth and could go
no further without peril to his own life and the lives of
his men, the police having withdrawn their protection
who had protected him in the forenoon.
    Comrade Wishart was there with a revolver in his
pocket and a star on his breast.  He forbade the
scavenger to go farther at his peril.  The scavenger
then being as near "the foot of Ninth street" as he
could get, ordered holes to be dug in the street as
close up to the obstruction erected by Becker as
possible, and he had taken up a spade himself to
help his men by the holes, when Comrade Wishart
thought it his duty to arrest the scavenger without
a warrant, which he had no legal right to do, except
for a felony.  Comrade Wishart drew his revolver
out of his pocket.
    But I prefer to let eye witnesses tell the rest to
court and jury whose verdict I trust will be just.
                                               LEONARD BROWN.

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