Soapy Smith in, The Confessions of a Con Man: As Told to Will Irwin, 1909

The unnamed con man runs a three-shell and pea game
From The Confessions of a Con Man: As Told to Will Irwin

(Click image to enlarge)

N ALLIANCE WITH SOAPY SMITH

In 1909 Will Irwin published a book, The Confessions of a Con Man: As Told to Will Irwin, based on the memoirs of an unnamed confidence man in the 1880s-90s. My interest in this book is that the unnamed bunco artist apparently met up, and worked with "Soapy" Smith in Skagway, Alaska (The book uses the original spelling of Skaguay).
     Because of the information given it is wondered if the bunco man had actually worked with Soapy. He does give information that very few would have known at the time, but also gives false information, which may have been intentionally misleading, designed to keep accomplices in the Soap Gang safe from further prosecution. However, it is the con man's description of Soapy that is not accurate, giving the impression that he did not know Soapy. Then again, throughout the book, it is evident that this man had an ego, wanting to appear to his audience that he was more intelligent and in control, than his peers and associates that he worked with. As he is anonymous in the book he had the capacity and room to tell the history his way, without fear of peer reprisal. His pride and self-admiration gave him the room to make himself out to be the boss, making Soapy out to be under his employment rather than the other way around.
     Following is the full text regarding Soapy Smith.

     You remember, probably, how the rush to the Klondike started. On Saturday, no one had ever heard of Dawson City. On Sunday morning the papers were full of it, and the overland trains were jammed with mushers hurrying to Alaska. At the time, Jeff Steers and I were working about Chicago, playing mainly for the truck-farmers. We hadn’t been doing very well, and we decided that a mining country with a strike was just about the place for us.
     Steers was a friend of Soapy Smith. He figured that you couldn’t keep Soapy away with a twenty-mule team. We got him on the wire. He answered: "Meet me in Seattle."

     At the time we were just about broke, but we hooked a German truck-farmer, beat him out of six hundred dollars, left two hundred of it behind with our families, and started. Soapy met us at the train. He had just money enough to get himself to Skaguay. The police of Seattle were pretty strict, and we couldn’t find anything to do. However, Steers and I proceeded to a lumber town near-by, caught a sucker, and, by playing the card game which we call "giving him the best of it," we raised three hundred dollars enough, with what we had, to take us into Skaguay.
     A lot of foolishness has been written about Soapy Smith. As a grafter, he was nothing more than a poor fool. He couldn’t manipulate, he couldn’t steer, he couldn’t do anything. But he had a lot of nerve and fight, and he was just conceited enough to pose as a bad man.

The latter paragraphs makes me question whether the unnamed confidence man ever knew Soapy Smith. He places Soapy pretty far down the ladder of importance, likely to make himself out to be the more important person in the telling of his story

     That made him valuable wherever the grafters needed a head and protector. When we reached Skaguay we found a job for Soapy at once.

I love that last sentence. The "king of the frontier con men" needed to obtain a job from a likely unknown.

The town was only a transportation point, a stopping place for the mushers who were going on into Dawson. They all had money; and most of them were reckless with it. There was hardly any city government, and the permanent citizens, who were living off the mushers themselves, didn’t particularly object to our game.
     I played three-card monte myself, picking up my steerers from two or three excellent ones who had come up independently. Even as early as that I was acting the innocent Texan; and though I hadn’t worked my spiel up to perfection yet, it was pretty entertaining. Well, I’ve had a gang of twenty or thirty Skaguay business men stand around and watch me work, just for the fun of the thing!
     Still, there was always a Purity Brigade which wanted to stop us.
     Soapy's job was to act as protector for the whole gang, bribing officials who would take money, and intimidating those who wouldn’t. For that he charged a sixth of our profits, after the nut was taken out. Many kicked at the price. A gang of shell-workers struck out on the train toward Dawson and worked independently. I’ve heard that they made twenty thousand dollars while the graft lasted. I started once to try Dawson on my own hook. I was half-way up the pass when some Northwest Mounted Police told me that a man couldn’t get out of Dawson all winter. No town for me where I couldn’t make a quick getaway! I doubled back to Skaguay.
     I found trouble in the air. The official who was most troublesome to us was the surveyor-general. He warned Soapy to quit, and Soapy warned him to look out for bullets. Business men who had been my friends began to cut me on the streets. Every day you heard rumors of a vigilance committee.
     I stopped one morning for breakfast at the restaurant of a Jap who stood in with us. As he laid down my ham and eggs he made a circle around his neck with his finger and pointed heaven ward.
     "The deuce you say," said I. "When?"
     "Yesterday," said the Jap.
     "How many?" said I. He counted on four fingers.
     "What for?" said I.
     He imitated the motion of a man manipulating the shells. And the grin of the simple-minded Oriental showed that he thought I was in bad.

The part referring to "a Jap," is one of the hints that indicates that the unnamed con man just may have been in Skagway. The "Jap" may refer to Thomas Rauschman, alias "Jap Tommy" who owned the Comique Concert Hall. Later, Elmer J. “Stroller” White wrote that Rauschman had nothing to do with Jeff’s activities, but rather, he did own the Comique Concert Hall, and the Committee wanted possession of it because of its stage and large seating capacity for their meetings. However, I found nothing indicating that "Jap Tommy" owned a restaurant, though the Concert Hall may have had one. attached.

     I went out on the street. The people looked at me crosswise. Every one had heard that the four shell-workers who worked on the Dawson trail had been lynched. As a matter of fact, they had only been run off the trail; but Skaguay didn’t know any different as long as I lingered.
     I hunted up Soapy, and told him that we were overdue in Seattle.
     "You ain’t got no nerve," said Soapy.
     "No," said I, "maybe not. But neither do I want to secrete a parcel of bullets in my inside from somebody’s shooting-pistol." I took passage on a steamer which left that afternoon.
     Two days later Soapy got his. The vigilantes were meeting on a wharf. Soapy walked straight up to them with his gun he surely had nerve, that fellow. The surveyor-general was the man he wanted. They drew simultaneously. The surveyor-general dropped, but he shot Soapy from the ground. Both died that day.

This telling of the standard version of the shootout on Juneau Wharf may have actually come from our unnamed con man, for if he had fled Skagway and never ran into any of Soapy's friends, then the standard story of the gunfight would be the only version he would know, having come from the local newspapers.
     It is possible this con man never knew Soapy but if he indeed spoke the truth and had actually traveled to Skagway with Soapy then I believe he was not on the best of terms with Soapy to begin with and certainly not a friend or regular member of the Soap Gang. The first time Soapy went to Skagway he went with two other men. They stayed for one month and brought home around $30,000. If this con man had actually gone to Skagway with Soapy then it was most likely not on Soapy's first trip. The man's comments about Soapy's abilities teeter towards the ludicrous. If he knew Soapy he did not like him. I believe he may have been one of the many independent bunco men who flooded Alaska in the hopes of finding easy money and work in general. He may have worked for Soapy or he may not have, there is no way to know for certain. He admits at one point ("... and though I hadn't worked my spiel up to perfection yet, it was pretty entertaining.") that he is new in the field and because of this I believe he was rejected by Soapy, who was already over-loaded with men wanting to work for him, and this is where the loathsome comments stem from. Further into the story the con man mentions that Soapy "charged a sixth of our profits" leaving me leaning more towards the idea that this man was an independent operator. Another comment that got me to thinking was when he said that a "gang of shell-workers struck out on the train toward Dawson and worked independently." This is odd as the first passenger carrying train left Skagway on July 21, 1898, which is after Soapy was killed and the train only went four miles outside of the city. According to the con man he had left two days before Soapy had been killed.

     Alaska people have talked like a dime novel about the Soapy Smith gang in Skaguay. Only lately, a paper said that our "coffee and doughnut men" used to rob and kill people, and drop their bodies into the bay. That is rank foolishness. Grafters don't work that way. Soapy wouldn’t have protected any man who did.
     The straight money from three-card monte and the shells came so easy that we would have been crazy to take such risks, even if we had been thugs and murderers. A man who knows anything about graft realizes the rattle-headedness of such talk. And I know better than anyone else, because I was on the inside. 

This last section made the pages of my book, Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel. It's generally true of the average bunco gangs, but there are plenty of sourced instances where the Soap Gang and others outright robbed their victims. It was the robbery of John Stewart's gold poke that directly led to Soapy's demise. 

Will Irwin, The Confessions of a Con Man: pages 531, 599.

"The earliest surviving account of a poker game, written in 1829, describes a rigged one."

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JUNE 15

1607: Colonists in North America complete James Fort in Jamestown.

1775: George Washington is appointed head of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.

1836: Arkansas is admitted into the Union as the 25th state.

1844: Charles Goodyear is granted a patent for the process that strengthens rubber.

1846: Great Britain and the U.S. agree on joint occupation of the Oregon Territory.

1864: An order to establish a military burial ground becomes Arlington National Cemetery.

1867: Indians and the 3rd Infantry battle at Big Timbers, Kansas.

1877: Four civilians are killed by Nez Perce Indians at John Day's Creek, Idaho Territory.

1877: Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the Military Academy at West Point.

1878: A military escort takes Jesse Evans from Lincoln to Mesilla, New Mexico Territory to stand trial for the murder of John Tunstall.

1881: The James-Younger gang robs the Chicago and Rock Island train of $1,000 in Winston, Missouri.

1883: The first eastbound Northern Pacific train arrives in Helena, Montana Territory.

1898: The House of Representatives approves annexation of Hawaii.

1898: The White Pass and Yukon Railway begins laying track rail in Skagway, Alaska.