FROM THE 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 No 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/fightingmanOOindirich 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
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 •t •• • • 
 
c < » c r < I 
 
 William A. Brady 
 
THE 
 FIGHTING MAN 
 
 By 
 WILLIAM A. BRADY 
 
 With Many Photographs 
 
 » > . » » > » 
 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
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Copyright 1916 
 Thk Bobbs-Me&aill Compant 
 
 
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 • • •. • 
 
 
 pKisa or 
 
 ■ NAUNWCHTH A CO. 
 
 FRINTIRS ANO BOOKBINOCIIS 
 
 •ROOKLVN. N. y. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
THE 
 FIGHTING MAN 
 
 I TAKE it for granted that the public is not 
 much interested in my career except where it 
 touches the careers of famous men. Therefore 
 I shall dwell but lightly on my very eaxly 
 years. 
 
 I make no pretense at greatness unless that 
 quality lie in the developing of greatness in 
 others. If I were to claim that I discovered 
 other men through sheer accident, or, so to 
 speak, had their greatness thrust upon me, I 
 would be guilty of cheap affectation. As a 
 matter of fact, I have the rare quality of dis- 
 cerning quality in others. Developing a valu- 
 able quality when discovered, exploiting it, 
 
 ivil46393 
 
2"'-'' THE IFIGHTING MAN 
 
 making it available along profitable lines, are 
 matters of executive ability. 
 
 I see no reason to apologize for the very fre- 
 quent reference to myself that I shall have to 
 make in this work. In order to avoid doing 
 so I would have to use awkward and tedious 
 circumlocution. I shall therefore talk of my- 
 self as I see fit, but, as the reader will see, I 
 shall try to be fair. 
 
 To those who have never heard about me I 
 might state as an excuse for my presumption 
 in writing about myself and also as authority 
 for the statements that I shall make and the 
 views I may advance, that I practically began 
 my career as a "peanut butcher" on the South- 
 ern Pacific Railroad, and that I am to-day pay- 
 ing the railroads of the United States some- 
 thing like four hundred thousand dollars a 
 year for the transporting of my companies of 
 players and properties. 
 
 I have been successful in many things, and 
 I have almost always undertaken big things. 
 I have demonstrated to myself that it is easier 
 to do big things than to do little things. There 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 3 
 
 is an inspiration in it and the acquiring of 
 the superior strength that inspiration always 
 gives, the touching of the spring of unknown 
 sources of strength in us. Doing big things 
 makes us energetic to the highest pitch. That's 
 why we say a man who is doing great things 
 is drunk with power — ^that it has turned his 
 head I The fact is it has lifted him into a higher 
 stratum of activity. 
 
 As I have always tackled big jobs, my fail- 
 ures have been quite as gigantic and even more 
 spectacular than my successes. But there's a 
 mighty stimulation in a tremendous failure — 
 something like being pushed under Niagara. 
 It is a shock, a blow in the face — ^it has in it 
 none of the soul-destroying action of a series 
 of petty failures and disappointments. But, 
 best of all, it's a great advertisement. 
 
 I don't know how I got the notion, but I 
 got it somehow when I was very yoimg, and 
 it was that a man should be known as a fight- 
 ing man. It may have come to me from my 
 experience in school where I held my own with 
 my fists rather than with my head. This gave 
 
4 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 me a reputation that — although most of it was 
 bluff — stood me in good stead and kept many 
 of the bigger boys from infringing on my 
 rights. On the other hand, it may have been 
 the Irish in me. 
 
 Another policy that I adopted was one that 
 makes for success in the business world. It 
 was: "Never tackle anything but champions. 
 Nothing else is worth while." Experience con- 
 vinces me that this applies to all fields of en- 
 deavor. It is just as easy to engage the in- 
 terest of a millionaire as it is to engage the 
 interest of a shoe clerk. You must make your 
 scheme big enough to be worth his while, that's 
 aU. 
 
 Just a bit of family history. My father 
 was the founder of the San Francisco Monitor. 
 He was a pioneer of what might be called the 
 English-speaking Roman Catholic Church in 
 California, and was considered the best general 
 authority on Roman Catholic matters in the 
 United States. He was a passionate advocate 
 of secession and during the Civil War con- 
 stantly used both tongue and pen to promote 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 ^ 
 
 the cause of the Confederacy. At that time 
 mobs of lawless partisans infested San Fran- 
 cisco and riots were constantly breaking out in 
 all parts of the city. And my father was one 
 of the principal inciters of them. Every issue 
 of his paper bore flaring articles in support 
 of the South and to most of the people these 
 articles were like red flags to a bull. That's 
 the way my father got the name, "Fighting 
 Brady." 
 
 On the night of the assassination of Lincoln 
 my father committed an act of supreme fanat- 
 ical folly. He got up on a stand on Mont- 
 gomery Street and made a speech declaring 
 that it served Lincoln right because he had 
 gone to the theater on Good Friday night, 
 and in so doing had insulted at least one-third 
 of the population of the United States — ^the 
 Catholics. The time for such a speech was, 
 to say the least, not quite propitious. A mob 
 sprang at my father, dragged him down from 
 the stand, and would have hanged him, but 
 he was rescued by General Macdowell, who 
 Wfusjn! co.mmand of the federal troops in San 
 
6 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Francisco and who chanced to be coming down 
 the street at the head of his forces at the time. 
 Failing to hang my father, the mob proceeded 
 down Clay Street, broke into the offices of the 
 Monitor^ wrecked the plant and tried to fire 
 the building, but were prevented. Then they 
 rushed on to the offices of the Alt a Cola, an- 
 other pro-southern paper, and demolished the 
 building. 
 
 My father was made prisoner and sent to 
 Alcatraz, an island in San Francisco Bay, 
 where he was kept for six months until the 
 thing had quieted down. On being freed from 
 prison he started a suit against the city of San 
 Francisco for its failure to protect the prop- 
 erty of the Monitor^ and after three or four 
 years of expensive litigation was awarded a 
 verdict of something like thirty thousand dol- 
 lars. 
 
 My father's treatment so disgusted him with 
 San Francisco that one day, when I was a boy 
 of three, he literally snatched me from my 
 mother's arms and brought me to New York. 
 Here, through the influence of United States 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 7 
 
 Senator Casserley, of California, he secured a 
 position as head of one of the departments of 
 immigration at Ellis Island. But he was a 
 man of irregular habits and would not stick 
 to any position, so he soon threw up his Ellis 
 Island job and took to space writing on the 
 New York papers. 
 
 Things went from bad to worse with us. 
 What money my father could earn between his 
 periodical irregularities was barely enough to 
 keep body and soul together. Many times I 
 used to sit, cold and hungry, in the threadbare 
 room we occupied „down on the East Side wait- 
 ing for him to come home, and then cry myself 
 to sleep. Then I took to selling newspapers 
 and eked out just enough to keep me from 
 starving. I don't remember ever having had 
 a new suit of clothes in all that time. Dur- 
 ing the day I used to go to school and sit, 
 pinched with hunger and anxiety, through the 
 tedious hours. But at least I was warm, even 
 if the room was stuffy at times. 
 
 Even then there seemed to be in me a spirit 
 of domination. I used to boss the small boys 
 
8 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 at play. I made them do my bidding. But 
 I used to champion their cause, and many a 
 time licked a bully twice my size in defense 
 of some of my youthful toadies. As I said 
 before, it must have been this experience that 
 made me realize the importance of being 
 known as a fighter. The big boys not only 
 let me alone, but avoided picking trouble with 
 anybody that had put himself imder the pro- 
 tection of my wing. 
 
 But one night I went to bed shivering with 
 an imknown terror. I felt that something had 
 happened to my father. It was not that the 
 hour was late, for he was accustomed to stay- 
 ing out until the small hours. It was just 
 something I can't describe took possession of 
 me. And thus I lay, shivering until daylight. 
 In the morning I saw a paragraph in one of 
 the papers to the effect that an unknown man 
 had dropped dead in the street and had been 
 taken to the morgue. The description fitted my 
 father so closely that I experienced a shock. 
 I made straight as an arrow for the morgue 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 9 
 
 — for I knew that I should find him there. 
 And there I did find him! 
 
 My father had died and left me without a 
 nickel in the world. In a way this was not a 
 disadvantage, since it threw me definitely upon 
 my own resources. Before, I had half waited 
 for him, half depended on him. Now I must 
 hustle for myself. 
 
 The Press Club, of which my father was a 
 member, buried him in Cypress Hill Cemetery, 
 and then, as I was quite a lad, gave me a job 
 as day steward of the club. But, as I had ac- 
 quired the restless habits of the street nomad, 
 life at the club was too restricted for me. I 
 didn't want to be working for anybody, keep- 
 ing regular hours ; I wanted to be out hustling 
 for myself. 
 
 I don't remember how I chanced to turn my 
 attention to the sporting life of the city. It 
 must have been intuitive. There was nothing 
 much in the air to suggest it. At that time 
 the newspapers regarded sporting news as 
 negligible. There was no such thing as a page 
 
10 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 devoted to this field in any of the papers. Base- 
 ball was practically nothing — dismissed with 
 a few paragraphs. In fact, there was no club 
 playing in the city of New York at all. The 
 Giants were unheard of, the Polo Grounds did 
 not exist. The New York club was then 
 known as the Mutuals, but they played in 
 Brooklyn. We had to cross the ferry and then 
 take an almost endless jaunt on a street-car out 
 to East New York to see a baseball game. 
 But we used to take the jaunt, all right, for 
 that was the time of Bobby Matthews, the 
 great underhand pitcher, and he was begin- 
 ning to make the world sit up and take notice. 
 Neither did horse-racing amount to much 
 at that time. In fact, the biggest sport known 
 was the six-day walking matches at the Madi- 
 son Square Garden, once or twice a year. This 
 was the day of Dan OXeary, who was called 
 *'the heel and toe man," and of Weston and 
 Charles Howell. O'Leary walked with a 
 stride, chin up, and made a record of Hve hun- 
 dred miles in six days. He had beaten Weston 
 and was away up in the air about it, when sud- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 11 
 
 denly from London came news of a new won- 
 der — Charles Howell. Howell was the man 
 who introduced the dog trot in New York for 
 the first time. 
 
 A match was arranged between O'Leary, 
 Rowell, John Ennis and a man named Har- 
 riman, who was also a fine heel and toe walker. 
 On the opening night there was probably the 
 biggest crowd of people ever got together at 
 the Madison Square Garden for a sporting 
 event. It was the time of the Orange upris- 
 ings; the Hibernians and other Irish societies 
 were in full blast; anti-English feeling ran 
 high, and so all the Irishmen of the town 
 turned out to see Dan walk rings around the 
 little Cockney from the hated isle. 
 
 At twelve o'clock the match started. 
 O'Leary pulled out with his head in the air 
 and chin up. And in behind him fell Rowell 
 with his dog trot. The Irishman discovered 
 what the Cockney was about and put on more 
 speed. But the faster he walked, the faster 
 Rowell trotted. In about twenty-four hours 
 O'Leary walked himself silly, but Rowell kept 
 
12 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 right on till the end and won, making some- 
 thing like five hundred and eighteen miles. 
 
 At that time there were no telephones, and 
 as telegraphing was too expensive, I estab- 
 lished a messenger service between the Garden 
 and the newspapers on Park Row. I got a 
 number of boys from my neighborhood to do 
 the running and paid them in free passes to 
 the show. At the end of each hour I sent a 
 batch of scores to the papers by these fleet- 
 footed messengers and received twenty cents 
 per score from each paper. Thus I cleaned up 
 about two hundred dollars a week every time 
 there was a big event. 
 
 Although young and comparatively inexpe- 
 rienced, I was much impressed with the crude- 
 ness of the methods then in vogue of reporting 
 sporting events. At that time amateur ath- 
 letes used to draw a lot of money. Sprinters, 
 jumpers and five-mile runners were in great 
 vogue. It is too bad the American love of 
 sport does not include these things to-day. If 
 it did, it would serve to encourage and build up 
 more great athletes. We go to see baseball. 
 
THE fighting: man 18 
 
 prize-fighting and horse-racing, but not to 
 those vastly superior sports. I would rather 
 go to see a five-mile run with fifty starters than 
 any other sport in the world. 
 
 Somehow I felt intuitively that the day 
 would come when love for sport would broaden, 
 that the newspapers would realize this and take 
 it up and push it along, and my business in- 
 stinct suggested that there would be a consid- 
 erable demand for expert information. TJie 
 Press Club used to get exchanges from all over 
 the country, and I started in compiling from 
 these a scrap-book of sporting records of all 
 kinds. I continued this work during my stay 
 in the club, about two years. 
 
 As I had predicted, the sporting spirit of 
 the public began to broaden. The newspapers 
 showed signs of sitting up and taking notice, 
 and the records I had compiled came more and 
 more into service. I got to be known on Park 
 Row as an authority on all sports, and made 
 much extra money reporting events in this 
 field. 
 
 But presently I was seized with a kind of 
 
14. THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 craving to get back to California. It must 
 have been just the nomadic spirit of the boy 
 that swept over me and carried me off my feet, 
 for I was giving up a sure thing in New York 
 and saw no definite opportunities on the coast. 
 I was without means, for, although I had made 
 considerable money, I had saved none. But 
 to the boy who had seen life in the streets of 
 New York as I had seen it, the prospect of 
 beating my way on the railroads by blind bag- 
 gage or brake beam had no terrors. I traveled 
 as far as Omaha on an empty stomach. This 
 was literally true, as I had ridden face down 
 imder a car about all the way. At Omaha, 
 through some local influence, I got a job as 
 a peanut butcher on an emigrant train. By 
 "emigrants" I don't mean foreigners exactly, 
 but the poorer class of people who were going 
 west that way. 
 
 The emigrant cars were usually hauled at 
 the rear end of freight trains and made mighty 
 slow progress. In those days a "peanut butch- 
 er" on such a train was literally a hotel on 
 wheels — a kind of general outfitter. I used to 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 15 
 
 carry as part of my stock canned beef, canned 
 vegetables, jellies and mattresses. I was run- 
 ning between Omaha and Red Wing, Ne- 
 braska — a rather lonesome trip — and as I had 
 always loved cards and was more or less clever 
 with them, as many New York boys of the 
 street are wont to be, I was always on the look- 
 out for a little game. This I did more for the 
 pastime of it than for the purpose of enrich- 
 ing myself at the expense of my humble fel- 
 low traveler. About the third trip out, I got 
 into a game of poker with one of those "unso- 
 phisticated" emigrants and lost my entire stock 
 — mattresses, canned vegetables, jellies and 
 all! When I got back to Omaha minus my 
 "hotel" I was summarily fired. 
 
 Next I carried newspapers for the Omaha 
 Republican for fifty cents a week. I used to 
 get up at five o'clock in the morning and work 
 a couple of hours each day. I had learned 
 among other things in New York to play bil- 
 liards, and I now applied my art in this direc- 
 tion to supplementing my income as a news- 
 paper carrier. Three months of that sort of 
 
16 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 thing was enough for me. I wrote to the Press 
 Club of New York, and they sent me a pass to 
 San Francisco. 
 
 Then I got a job as news agent on trains 
 between San Francisco and such points as Sac- 
 ramento, Ogden, Deming, Los Angeles and 
 Santa Cruz. I worked at this for about two 
 years and a half. But the theater was in my 
 blood; I was stage-struck all the time; every 
 purpose, every thought pointed to the theater. 
 San Francisco at that time was filled with 
 amateur dramatic societies. One of these used 
 to give monthly performances at Piatt's Hall 
 on Montgomery Street, and was headed by A. 
 M. Lawrence as principal actor, who up to a 
 short time ago, was William R. Hearst's right- 
 hand man, and the managing editor of the 
 Hearst newspapers in Chicago. Lawrence's 
 brother, Fred, and Thomas A. Wise, who re- 
 cently made a wonderful hit as Falstaff in 
 New York City, were also in the company. 
 I gave my first performance with this com- 
 pany, playing the signal man in Under the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 17 
 
 Gas Lights and the Indian in The Octoroon — 
 and if I do say it myself, I was very good. 
 
 About that time Bartley Campbell came on 
 from New York to produce The White Slave 
 and other plays. He brought with him 
 Georgia Cavyan, Augustus Levick, George 
 Wessels, Max Freeman and Louis Sylvester, 
 all of whom were high-priced eastern stage 
 folk. Campbell's plan was to fill the small 
 parts during this engagement with what was 
 known as "Pacific Coast Actors." 
 
 That period was notable for its talent in em- 
 bryo that lurked undiscovered in San Fran- 
 cisco. David Belasco was a poorly paid stage 
 manager at the Baldwin Theater imder 
 Thomas Maguire; Joseph R. Grismer was 
 leading man at the Baldwin, and Henry Mil- 
 ler was playing in stock. Al Hayman, cre- 
 ator of the theatrical syndicate, was working 
 in the box ofiice of the Bush Street Theater. 
 The real theatrical magnate of California was 
 Frederick W. Burt. Practically unknown 
 men from the East drifted into town occa- 
 
18 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 sionally. Dan Frohman came out there as 
 manager of Callendar's minstrels — all negroes 
 — and his brother Charles Frohman was agent 
 for the company and doubled in brass. 
 
 An eastern company playing San Francisco 
 was a novelty I Occasionally the Union Square 
 Stock of New York or some other specially 
 organized company would come there and play 
 for six or eight weeks, presenting a series of 
 eastern successes. But such companies did not 
 tour the coast. Unless they were willing to 
 "barnstorm" there was no place for them to 
 go. Los Angeles was a village; San Diego 
 was a little bit of a town, and Seattle had one 
 main street and no theater. We used to play 
 in the school hall there and in Portland we 
 used the first floor of a market building. 
 There were no railroad connections between 
 California and Oregon, and when the travel- 
 ing companies did not take the coast steamer 
 they used to go over the mountains by wagon. 
 
 I saw Campbell, reminded him that I had 
 met him in the Press Club of New York, of 
 which he was a member, told him that I was a 
 
COPYRIGHT, BROWN BROS. 
 
 Georgia Cavyan and Henry Miller 
 
David Belasco 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 19 
 
 full-fledged actor and asked him for a job. 
 He took an immediate interest in me and cast 
 me for one of the best parts that were to be 
 distributed among the California actors in The 
 White Slave. At rehearsal, when my cue 
 came, I walked on the stage and spoke my 
 lines with the nerve of an old-timer. There 
 was a commotion in the wings and I flattered 
 myself that the stage folk had been greatly 
 impressed with my work. But it was not that 
 that caused the excitement. The California 
 actors had recognized in me the peanut butcher 
 whom they had met on the trains, and there 
 was great professional agitation and murmur- 
 ing. The thing was preposterous. Mr. Camp- 
 bell was called to the side of the stage and 
 after a few moments walked up to me, took 
 the part out of my hand, and said, "My dear 
 boy, you are not an actor. I am sorry, but I 
 must have somebody of experience to do this. 
 If you will wait until rehearsal is over, I will 
 see what I can do for you." 
 
 I spent the rest of the afternoon crying in 
 the wings. 
 
20 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 When rehearsal was over I tackled Mr. 
 CampbeU at the stage door. "Come to Mr. 
 Burt's office," said he, "and I'll see what I can 
 do for you." 
 
 This cheered me greatly, since I felt that 
 an all-powerful man like Biu-t could do big 
 things for me. The magnate was very good- 
 natured. "Mr. Campbell has told me your 
 story, young man," said he. "I'm going to 
 make you call boy of the company at ten dol- 
 lars a week." 
 
 I never forgot Burt's kindness. Later on, 
 when the tide turned against him on the coast, 
 he became my right-hand man in New York, 
 handling all my finances. He remained with 
 me up until a few years ago, when he fell sud- 
 denly on the street one day and died in my 
 arms. 
 
 I was nominally call boy, but was in reality 
 assistant stage manager, since Mr. Freeman 
 almost immediately relegated all his duties to 
 me. I even prompted and rang the curtain 
 up and down — and all within ten days. The 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 21 
 
 piece had been running about two weeks when 
 Max Freeman was taken sick. Mr. Freeman 
 was playing the gambler, "Natchez Jim." 
 There was nobody to take his place, and as 
 the company was doing an enormous business, 
 the news of his illness caused great consterna- 
 tion back on the stage. It was a quarter to 
 eight and all the available men around had 
 been tried and found wanting. In spite of 
 the shock I had felt at having the part taken 
 from me so summarily before, I still had nerve 
 enough left to try for "Natchez Jim." I 
 waited until the whole bunch of aspirants had 
 been disposed of and then plucked Mr. Camp- 
 bell by the sleeve and said, "Give me a chance 
 at it, will you?" 
 
 He looked at me for a moment, puzzled at 
 what he must have thought my supreme ef- 
 frontery, but he was desperate. "For God's 
 sake, let him try it !" he exclaimed. 
 
 I knew every line of the piece and so, with 
 author, director and actors looking on to see 
 what I could do, I strode on the stage and 
 
22 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 spoke the first line of the part with so much 
 ginger that my voice aknost shook the build- 
 ing. 
 
 "Go down and make up," was Campbell's 
 verdict. 
 
 I rushed down-stairs to the room of William 
 *H. Thompson, who, by the way, is the best 
 character actor in America and always has 
 been, and he made me up. I wore a long black 
 wig, a black mustache and goatee and heavy 
 black eyebrows. Freeman's coat did not fit 
 me, so they had to reef it in behind with safety 
 pins, which they did very skilfully ; and I went 
 on, made up as the desperate Mississippi gam- 
 bler who ran the whole act. I was then less 
 than nineteen years old. The first word of 
 encouragement I received when the curtain fell 
 on the act was from Georgia Cavyan, who 
 slapped me on the back and told me I was fine. 
 I never forgot it. 
 
 And now Mr. Freeman, who was rehearsing 
 Siberia for its first production on any stage, 
 claimed that he had too much work to do and 
 that I was good enough to continue in The 
 
William H, Thompson 
 
i 
 
 H 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 23 
 
 White Slave, so they let me play the part 
 through the rest of the engagement. 
 
 Years afterward I had a chance to repay 
 Freeman for his kindness to me. He played 
 with my wife in London and he played with 
 her in New York, and whenever he was out 
 of a job I tried to help him. I met him on 
 Broadway only about twenty-four hours be- 
 fore he committed suicide. He was too proud 
 to tell me he was in such a bad way. I slipped 
 him a Sve-doUar bill, and I am afraid with 
 that he got the rest of the liquor that gave 
 him the nerve to do what he did. It is 
 one of the great regrets of my life that I did 
 not know then how desperate his condition was. 
 I might have saved him I 
 
 I remained at the California theater through 
 the Campbell engagement, during which we 
 produced several plays. These Burt had ar- 
 ranged to have reproduced on tour on the coast 
 by the Burt Dramatic Company, which was 
 headed by Joseph R. Grismer and Phoebe Da- 
 vis. I was sent on to Sacramento to stage 
 the plays for the touring company, and there 
 
24 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 for the first time met Grismer, who afterward 
 became my partner, and who, in fact, is inter- 
 ested with me to this day in several plays, the 
 principal of which. Way Down East, made us 
 over one million dollars in nineteen years. 
 Phoebe Davis, now dead, played "Anna" in 
 this piece for most of that time. So great has 
 been the drawing power of Way Down East, 
 so midiminished, that I am constantly refusing 
 offers amounting to thousands of dollars a 
 month for the privilege of putting this piece 
 on in stock. 
 
 As Grismer was on the point of leaving 
 Burt and starting the Grismer-Davis Com- 
 pany, he took me over at twenty dollars a week 
 to be his stage manager and play the comedy 
 parts. I toured with this company about three 
 years, during which time I received the most 
 valuable experience of my life. We played 
 about everything. One night I would be the 
 newsboy in Under the Gas Light, and the 
 next the king or the first grave-digger in 
 Hamlet. Then I would play "Puffy" in The 
 Streets of New York, and again, "Danglers" 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 25 
 
 in Monte Crista, And so it went — constant 
 change, constant study, new experiences. Our 
 repertoire was at least a hundred plays long. 
 Each of us used to carry his costumes and 
 make-up for ten or fifteen plays in one little 
 trunk. We played mining camps, discovered 
 new territory, and in fact were one of the first 
 dramatic companies to play Montana. The 
 great boom of the Northwest had not begun. 
 Butte was only a little bit of a place, and Spo- 
 kane was nothing at all. There was not a 
 decent hotel in the whole section. Salt Lake 
 City was a veritable metropolis. This town 
 was as far east as any of the Pacific Coast 
 companies had ever dared go. I felt as if I 
 were in London when I trod the boards of the 
 Salt Lake theater. 
 
 The Mormon Church owned the playhouse 
 and we had to pay a tithing for the privilege 
 of performing there. Brigham Young was a 
 great lover of the theater. He used to bring 
 all of his numerous families with him to the 
 play and take all the boxes he wanted. Some- 
 times there would be four boxes filled with his 
 
26 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 oiFspring. Also, he used to love to go back 
 stage and talk to the actors, and we came to re- 
 gard him as a broad-minded man of great abil- 
 ity. 
 
 For that matter, all of the Mormons are 
 crazy about the theater. They seem to be pe- 
 culiarly gifted in a dramatic way. I have 
 never seen so large a percentage of really tal- 
 ented amateur players in any other community. 
 They had a dramatic company which used to 
 give three or four performances a year in the 
 Salt Lake theater and did splendid work — •■ 
 work worthy of any professional company. 
 These performances were social events and got 
 the support of the Mormon Church. A young 
 man named Wells, who afterward became gov- 
 ernor of Utah, was one of the best leading ama- 
 teur actors I've ever seen. 
 
 Annie Adams, who came from the Mormon 
 coimtry, was a member of our company one 
 year, playing in The Shadows of a Great City. 
 She used to have her little girl along with her. 
 This little girl used to sing pretty songs and 
 pick the banjo, and played the part of "Pea- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 27 
 
 nuts" in Under the Gas Light For her serv- 
 ices while traveling around with our Pacific 
 Coast Company I paid her eight dollars a 
 week. Afterward, when I produced She at the 
 Alcazar Theater in San Francisco, she was one 
 of my ballet of six that danced in the cave 
 scene. To be brief, this selfsame little girl 
 is known now as Maude Adams, probably the 
 greatest of American favorites. 
 
 During "off time" when the Grismer Com- 
 pany was not playing, I got a lot of experi- 
 ence with one of the greatest actors I ever 
 knew, Mr. William E. Sheridan. Sheridan 
 was little known in the East, but was a great 
 favorite on the Pacific Coast. His perform- 
 ance of "Louis XI," "Shylock," "RicheKeu," 
 "King Lear" and "King John" compared fa- 
 vorably with those of Irving, Booth or any 
 other of the great actors of my time. Later 
 I played small Shakespearean parts with 
 Booth, Rossi, Salvini and Madame EUemerich, 
 a great German actress who came to San Fran- 
 cisco and played in English for the first time, 
 but later, disappointed with her reception there. 
 
28 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 returned to Germany. These artists all played 
 with California stock companies. 
 
 I had the low comedy instinct, and when I 
 played with the great stars I have mentioned 
 my experience was largely confined to such 
 parts as the first grave digger in Hamlet , 
 "Roderigues" in Othello, "Gobbo" in The 
 Merchant of Venice, the fool in King Lear, 
 "Touchstone" in As You Like It, the Lord 
 Mayor in Richard III and "Peter" in Romeo 
 and Juliet, That was my line and I was con- 
 sidered one of the best in the field. 
 
 What I learned about Shakespeare from this 
 experience has stood me in good stead. For 
 one thing, it has enabled me to advance and 
 assist Robert Mantell in his Shakespearean 
 productions, from which I receive from twen- 
 ty-five thousand dollars to thirty thousand dol- 
 lars a year as my share of the profits. 
 
 With the phenomenal rise of motion pic- 
 lures, most of the cities throughout the United 
 States, barring New York, Chicago, Philadel- 
 phia and Boston, became very unprofitable for 
 traveling attractions, and Mantell, after suf- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 29 
 
 fering one very bad season, was tempted by a 
 very big offer to enter this new field of enter- 
 tainment. He made the temporary change on 
 my advice, as I felt that the amount of money 
 offered him by the motion-picture company 
 was not to be sneezed at, and that he should 
 avail himself of the opportunity to lay aside a 
 nest egg for his later years. Fortunately, the 
 producers of Mr. MantelFs motion pictures did 
 not call upon him to play Shakespeare. So he 
 devoted himself to thrilling melodrama and did 
 not appear in any of his great characters on the 
 screen. 
 
 Mr. E. S. Sothern, after playing his fare- 
 well performances in If I Were King, at the 
 Shubert Theater, and having devoted some- 
 thing like forty thousand dollars to diJBFerent 
 charities, including the Actors' Fund, also 
 went into motion pictures and really made his 
 farewell performances before the public on the 
 screen. 
 
 The retirement of Sothern and Marlowe 
 from the theater was a great loss. They both 
 left the stage in the heyday of their success. 
 
80 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 In fact, I understand that Mr. Sothem's rea- 
 son for retiring at so early a period in his 
 career was that he wanted to be remembered 
 at his best. Sothern was never a great 
 Shakespearean actor; probably his finest per- 
 formance was Hamlet, He was a fine light 
 comedian, but not robust enough to play 
 Shakespeare. Marlowe was unquestionably the 
 finest actress of legitimate roles of her time, 
 and, as I said before, her retirement was a dis- 
 tinct loss to the theater. 
 
 I don't agree with the popular notion that 
 Shakespeare spells ruin. Edwin Booth died 
 rich and so did Lawrence Barrett and Salvini. 
 Mansfield would have died rich if it had not 
 been for his artistic tastes which prompted an 
 extravagant outlay for scenery and costumes. 
 Booth and Barrett in their famous tour to- 
 gether cleaned up over six hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars in one season of about forty 
 weeks, and Mansfield in the later years of his 
 life made easily two hundred thousand dollars 
 a year. 
 
 As long as the American stage exists Shake- 
 
Maude Adams 
 
Annie Adams 
 (Mother of Maude) 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 31 
 
 speare is bound to be played profitably by at 
 least one or two persons, a man and a woman. 
 Sothern and Marlowe are now clearing up one 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars a season 
 from these classic plays. In the course of time 
 some one will be called on to take the place 
 of Sothern and Marlowe and Mantell, and I 
 know of no one who is being prepared to 
 do it. You ask the average actor to play 
 Shakespeare and he looks at you contemptu- 
 ously and says, "What do I want to play that 
 old stuff for?" 
 
 Not long ago I offered a prominent actor 
 * — an old man — who commands about one hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars a week, two hundred 
 dollars a week to go out with Mantell and 
 play such old men's parts as "Polonius," "An- 
 tonio" and "Kent" in King Lear. He replied 
 that he would rather play modern parts at fifty 
 dollars a week than Shakespeare at two hun- 
 dred dollars. This attitude of the American 
 actor I can not understand. 
 
 Let the young actor take this tip from one 
 who has studied Shakespeare, played it and 
 
82 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 for many years observed it both from an ar- 
 tistic and a business standpoint: study Shake- 
 speare, get an apprenticeship in a Shakespear- 
 ean company, go at it seriously and play it as 
 often as you can. 
 
 Finally I broke away from Grismer and ac- 
 cepted an engagement with M. B. Curtis, who 
 years later shot a policeman in San Francisco 
 and got into serious trouble. We went east 
 playing Samuel of Posen for part of a season, 
 then I left Curtis and went with Louis Mor- 
 rison and a woman named Celia Alsberg, who 
 were touring the East in Cymbeline and 
 Measure for Measure, 
 
 But Shakespeare wrote his failures as well 
 as his successes and Cymbeline and Measure 
 for Measure may be classed as two of the for- 
 mer, as far as the box office is concerned. The 
 result was that the Morrison Company got into 
 financial straits and came near going to pieces. 
 Then I proposed to Morrison that he make a 
 production of Faust, which Henry Irving had 
 just done successfully in England. I had got 
 hold of one of Irving's souvenir books and had 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 33 
 
 also a printed copy of Faust j written by Bailey 
 Bernard. This play had never been presented 
 in America with the Brocken scene — a moun- 
 tain scene full of witches, devils and the like. 
 I persuaded Morrison that it would be a great 
 scheme for him to do "Mephistopheles" and 
 have this Brocken feature in the play. 
 
 Morrison secured booking for Faust at the 
 Columbia Theater, Chicago — ^we were then 
 somewhere in West Virginia — and I was sent 
 on there a month in advance to produce the 
 play. I think I had about four hundred dol- 
 lars saved up at that time, and I was given 
 full swing. When I got to Chicago I started 
 in to prepare the thing on what was then a 
 big scale. Morrison failed to send me money 
 as he had promised, but such was my con- 
 fidence in the piece that I did not hesitate 
 to spend the entire four hundred dollars of 
 my own money to push the production along. 
 I finally succeeded in getting Faust on with 
 the [Brocken scene in it. But the piece failed 
 and we again found ourselves facing dis- 
 solution. At an opportune moment, however, 
 
84 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 we got a guarantee to go over and play a 
 few weeks at a North Side theater which was 
 in bad shape, and in doing this made enough 
 money to buy tickets for part of the journey 
 to California. 
 
 In due time we started for the coast with 
 Faust The way was rough and the road was 
 hard and it was a case of "bust at any min- 
 ute." We got no farther than Denver at the 
 first jump. But I persuaded Morrison to pro- 
 duce Under the Gas Light in that city Christ- 
 mas night and we got one thousand seven hun- 
 dred dollars in the house, which saved our lives 
 and paid the balance of our fares to San Fran- 
 cisco. In San Francisco Morrison raised some 
 money and we produced Faust at the Baldwin 
 Theater on a really elaborate scale, with Henry 
 Miller in the title part. The piece was an enor- 
 mous success. 
 
 I fancy this change of fortune swelled Mor- 
 rison's head, for I began to observe that he 
 was inclined to take more credit for the piece 
 than I thought he was entitled to, particularly 
 as he had not paid me back my four hundred 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 35 
 
 dollars, and I had a line on the program stat- 
 ing that the piece was produced under my per- 
 sonal supervision. I shall never forget that 
 line on the program: "Produced under the 
 personal supervision, etc." I had never en- 
 joyed anything of the kind before. . I used to 
 keep a program in my pocket and take it out 
 surreptitiously and read those fascinating 
 words over and over again. I confess that it 
 swelled my head a little, too ! 
 
 But the line on the program presently ceased 
 to satisfy my ambition. I began to think 1 
 was entitled to something more. Always at 
 the end of the Brocken scene there had been an 
 ovation wherever we played it, and Morrison 
 had always taken the curtain calls alone. I 
 anticipated that he would continue to do this, 
 and when we opened in San Francisco I had 
 packed the gallery with my friends. I had 
 many friends in that city, and they were all 
 tough, too. So every time Morrison came in 
 front of the curtain there were shouts and calls 
 for "Brady!"— "Brady!"— and he was forced 
 to bring me out or the gang would never have 
 
86 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 allowed the play to proceed. I was getting 
 forty dollars a week when this demonstration 
 in my behalf occurred, and the next day I told 
 Mr. Morrison I'd have to have seventy-five dol- 
 lars or I'd quit. He said, "Quit!" which was 
 something of a shock to my vanity. But I 
 -guess he was anxious to get rid of me, and if 
 so I played right into his hand. Instead of 
 getting promotion I had, by getting the boys 
 to shout for me, brought about my own defeat. 
 At any rate, Morrison and I parted company. 
 He went on playing Faust up to the day 
 of his death ten years later and made many, 
 many fortunes out of it! 
 
II 
 
 Having got a name by this time, I imme- 
 diately went off on my own hook and signed 
 a contract to play a starring engagement at 
 a ten-cent theater on Mission Street, which is 
 now known as Morosco's. It was a place where 
 they starred Pacific Coast favorites. I was to 
 supply the piece and play the leading part 
 and to receive ten per cent, of the gross re- 
 ceipts. The engagement was for two weeks. 
 I opened in The Lights of London, playing 
 "Seth Prene." I never shall forget how I felt 
 when I saw my name in big blue letters over 
 the door: "William A. Brady in Lights of 
 London." I used to stand on the opposite 
 side of the street for hours and regard it with 
 vast admiration and content. Really, I had 
 arrived ! 
 
 I was an enormous success there and my en- 
 37 
 
88 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 gagement was extended from two weeks to 
 twelve. When I quit I was two thousand seven 
 hundred dollars ahead of the game. As I had 
 no faith in banks, I used to carry this money 
 with me in a little black bag slung over my 
 shoulder like a bookmaker at the derby. I 
 was a rolling stone. I slept wherever night 
 overtook me. For eighteen months I carried 
 this money in the little black bag through Ari- 
 zona, Texas, Arkansas, Montana, Wyoming, 
 down dark streets, in dangerous places like 
 Tucson, Arizona — always with a six-shooter in 
 my back pocket. But after a while my money 
 got to be so bulky that I used to go and buy 
 cashier's checks from different banks, payable 
 to myself. It was wonderful the assortment 
 of paper I acquired in this way. When I fin- 
 ally reached New York and was about to pro- 
 duce After Darkj I went to the Bank of the 
 Metropolis and brought out this bunch of 
 checks and certificates of deposit from almost 
 every section of the United States. The re- 
 ceiving teller looked at me in amazement. 
 "Anything the matter with them?" I asked. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 39 
 
 "They're as good as gold — every one," said 
 he. 
 
 Thus I started my first bank account with 
 something like thirteen thousand five hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 At the end of the Morosco engagement I 
 joined a young actor named Webster and we 
 formed the Webster-Brady Company and 
 toured the Pacific Coast in the same manner 
 as Grismer had done with his company. By 
 this time Grismer had extended his trips to 
 Denver and Texas, leaving his valuable Pa- 
 cific Coast routes open, and I jumped in and 
 got his business. I started out with a reper- 
 toire consisting of Lights of London^ The 
 Pavements of PariSj Lynwood, Monte Cristo^ 
 Hazel Kirke, After Dark and one or two other 
 pieces. We were successful right from the 
 jump. 
 
 At that time Rider Haggard's novel, Shej 
 had got tremendous vogue throughout the 
 country and was for sale in all the big stores 
 and railroad stations. Everybody was reading 
 it. So it occurred to me to dramatize this 
 
40 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 novel, and I did so one afternoon in Reno with 
 the aid of a bottle of mucilage and four or 
 five copies of the book. We produced She at 
 Hazard's Pavilion in Los Angeles, which I 
 had rented for the month's engagement. It 
 was an enormous success. I think we did one 
 thousand two hundred dollars the first night 
 as against the two hundred dollars or three 
 hundred dollars to which we usually played. 
 In fact, three hundred dollars was a pretty big 
 house. But when the people massed around 
 trying to buy tickets for She I knew I had 
 reached my turning point. 
 
 I was playing "Job," the servant who shakes 
 with terror at the end of the play when he sees 
 She burn up, and it was part of my business 
 to fall shrieking on the stage as the curtain de- 
 scended. But some stage mechanism failed at 
 the critical moment in this scene on the open- 
 ing night; the panoramic effect was spoiled, 
 and the scene was received with derision in- 
 stead of horror. Sensing disaster, I lay on the 
 stage crying — crying that I had lost every- 
 thing, I had invested every dollar I had in the 
 
THE FIGHTING! MAN 41 
 
 world in the enterprise. "It's a failure," I 
 blubbered. "I would not let good enough 
 alone." 
 
 But instead of that the novelty and the grip 
 of the play proved so strong that the next 
 morning there was a long line at the box of- 
 fice window. We played to eight thousand 
 dollars a week, which meant enormous profits 
 to us, as the company expenses were consid- 
 erably less than a thousand. Money began to 
 roll in and I said to my Pacific Coast actors, 
 "We are going to New York with this piece." 
 
 I immediately invested part of my profits 
 in tickets from Los Angeles to the Missouri 
 River by way of the northern route and we 
 started away to conquer the East — to show 
 them that we were not the histrionic rubes they 
 had so generously esteemed us to be. 
 
 It so happened that Charles Frohman and 
 William Gillette had also conceived the no- 
 tion of dramatizing She about the same time 
 that the notion struck me. Frohman produced 
 the piece at Niblo's Garden, New York, with 
 great success, and about the time I was ready 
 
42 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 to start east with my version of the play, he 
 and Gillette were ready to start west with 
 theirs. And so we came into conflict at Min- 
 neapolis. 
 
 Frohman had an enormous production, fine 
 scenery, and carried from seventy-five to a 
 hundred people. I carried a small production 
 and only eight people. I advertised one hun- 
 dred people on the stage, for I used to pick 
 up local supernumeraries in the different towns 
 that we played. As Minneapolis was the big- 
 gest town we'd played up to that time, I got 
 there a fortnight ahead of the company. We 
 were to play one week ahead of the enemy. 
 
 Thinking that he had a mere boy to deal with 
 whose wings it would be easy to clip, Mr. Froh- 
 man had sent a man named Charles McGeachy 
 out to JNIinneapolis to squelch me with adver- 
 tising matter and expose me as a faker. This 
 movement on Mr. Frohman's part led to a little 
 misunderstanding between us that lasted sev- 
 eral years, carried across the ocean and was 
 eventually settled in London. 
 . Frohman's man put large advertisements in 
 
"When I was poor but happy" 
 Charles Frohman 
 
COPVmOMT, INOWN BROS. 
 
 Daniel Krohman and Isaac Marcosson 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 43 
 
 the newspapers declaring that the Brady Com- 
 pany was nothing but a barnstorming or- 
 ganization composed of about eight persons, 
 that we were reinforced by local "supers," that 
 I was a cheat and a faker, that I had no right 
 to produce the piece, the sole right to which 
 had been conveyed to Mr. Frohman by Rider 
 Haggard. This was not the case, since Mr. 
 Haggard had failed properly to copyright the 
 book in the United States and in consequence 
 had no "American rights" to convey to any- 
 body. I told this story to Rider Haggard in 
 London a few years ago at a dinner and he 
 and Mrs. Haggard and myself had a hearty 
 laugh over it, 
 
 McGeachy published all these statements in 
 the St. Paul Globe and the Minneapolis Trib- 
 une and from what I heard he was in high 
 feather over the crushing blow he had thus 
 dealt the presumptuous youngster from the 
 coast. But there was one factor in the case 
 which the astute Mr. McGeachy in his enthu- 
 siastic eagerness to make a hit with Mr. Froh- 
 man had overlooked — the libel laws of the State 
 
44 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 of Minnesota. No sooner was his advertise- 
 ment published than I called on the most 
 famous criminal lawyer in Minneapolis, Will- 
 iam W. Irwin, and showed him the paper, and 
 he immediately declared the thing was crim- 
 inal libel. Said he, "For five hundred dollars, 
 I will have this man arrested and for fifteen 
 hundred dollars, I will guarantee you that I 
 will have him indicted." 
 
 I peeled fifteen hundred dollars off my roll 
 and laid the same on his desk. "I'll take that 
 much worth," said I. 
 
 A few hours later Mr. McGeachy was 
 snatched out of his bed in the hotel and haled 
 to the "cooler" by three or four able-bodied 
 Minneapolis cops. Nor did we keep the fact 
 a secret. The papers were full of it next day 
 and it was a tremendous advertisement for my 
 show. In fact, we captured Minneapolis by 
 our performance of She while the enterprising 
 McGeachy was cooling his heels in a cell. 
 
 That experience at ^linneapolis did me more 
 good in a business way than anything I had 
 ever done before. The news of it was scat- 
 
THE FIGHTING; MAN 45 
 
 tered abroad in the land; it was remembered; 
 and it established me as a fighting man. In 
 brief, it contained this warning — "Hands off I 
 Let Brady alone !" 
 
 I was only twenty-three, and a man of such 
 tender years, however tough his experience, 
 would naturally be regarded by the managers 
 as an easy mark, a callow youth, one not to be 
 taken seriously as a competitor in the field — 
 one who could be effectively flattered or bul- 
 lied. But by putting McGeachy in jail I had 
 forestalled this. Any man, they would reckon, 
 who had the nerve bodily to march up with a 
 handful of actors and scenery that you could 
 almost load on a wheelbarrow, and challenge 
 to combat the splendidly organized cohorts of 
 Frohman was, if a fool, at least not a coward. 
 
 I could sense the standing my row with 
 Frohman had given me the instant I set foot 
 in the Rialto as a manager. The Rialto was 
 then in the neighborhood of Union Square and 
 meant something then. It was an unorganized 
 manager's exchange. To-day it is only a 
 lounging ground for actors and lies in the 
 
46 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 neighborhood of Forty-second Street. There 
 we used to meet managers from all parts of the 
 United States and book our shows. We booked 
 in three ways: first, by personal contact; sec- 
 ond, by correspondence; third, by traveling 
 with the company and booking time with the 
 local theater man for the following season. 
 In those days, if a company fell down, failed 
 to please, the manager of the theater was 
 thrown on his own resources to keep his house 
 from going empty. In such a case, he would 
 hurry to New York, go to a variety agent, and 
 get a company together to play the open time 
 at his theater. He could get a bill of eight 
 turns for six hundred dollars — the same thing 
 would cost him four thousand dollars to-day. 
 But all that has been remedied. It is the busi- 
 ness of the great booking agencies now to sup- 
 ply the manager with attractions, and their 
 policy is never to let a house go dark. 
 
 About this time I married my first wife, 
 which, instead of making me more conservative, 
 curiously made me more daring. I suppose it 
 was because I was only twenty-three and 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 47 
 
 wanted to make a good showing in her eyes. 
 Many of my old acquaintances had prospered 
 in the East. New York was the theatrical cen- 
 ter of the Western Hemisphere. There's where 
 the people were, and there's where the money 
 was. I was something of a prophet — I saw a 
 vast future for the theater of New York. There 
 was no theatrical syndicate at the time. Charles 
 Frohman was just an individual operator and 
 Klaw and Erlanger had a little booking office 
 on Fourteenth Street, near Broadway. As to 
 the coast men, Al Hayman, who had got to be 
 the manager of the Columbia Theater in Chi- 
 cago, now controlled all the theaters of that 
 city. David Belasco had come east as stage 
 manager with James A. Hearn with whom he 
 faked up an old play under the title of Hearts 
 of Oak. Subsequently he had connected him- 
 self with the Mallory Brothers, had made two 
 or three successful productions with them, and 
 then renewed the sentimental alliance which he 
 had formed with Charles and Daniel Frohman 
 at the time the Callendar Minstrels were in San 
 Francisco, 
 
48 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 While I was having the row with Frohman 
 in Minneapolis, Dion Boucicault advertised an 
 auction sale of his plays at the Madison Square 
 Theater, New York. I came on to attend that 
 sale, determined, if possible, to buy the play. 
 After Dark J which I'd been playing on lease in 
 the West. I jumped in, began bidding and 
 landed the play for eighteen hundred dollars. 
 But with the play I also landed a lawsuit with 
 Augustin Daly which cost us fifty thousand 
 dollars apiece in legal fees before we got 
 through with it, lasted thirteen years, went 
 from the lowest to the highest federal court and 
 twice reached the Supreme Court of the United 
 States. 
 
 The story of this case would fill a volume. 
 Daly finally got judgment for thirty-seven 
 thousand six hundred dollars, of which he 
 could only collect thirteen thousand dollars, 
 for, during the course of litigation, part of 
 the claim had become outlawed. In a word, 
 the case was as follows: In 1865 Daly pro- 
 duced a play called Under the Gas Light, 
 in which was a sensational railroad scene 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 49 
 
 that had never before been done in New 
 York. Two years later, Dion Boucicault 
 put on a play called After Dark, which 
 contained a colorable imitation of Daly's rail- 
 road scene. Daly got after Boucicault on the 
 ground of the similarity of the two railroad 
 scenes and Judge Blatchford rendered a de- 
 cision in favor of the plaintiff. That was in 
 1867. So, when I produced After Dark at the 
 People's Theater on the Bowery about 1890, 
 Mr. Daly served me with a temporary injunc- 
 tion. I had little faith in lawyers and having 
 a theory that the papers had been illegally 
 served on me when the hearing for the per- 
 manent injunction was called, I had the ef- 
 frontery to walk into court with the papers 
 and start to argue my own case. But the judge 
 cut me very short. 
 
 "Where's your lawyer?" he demanded, 
 frowning down upon me. 
 
 "I don't want any," said I with supreme 
 effrontery — I was only twenty-three, remem- 
 ber. 
 
 "You must get one," said the judge. 
 
50 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 I turned round and saw standing right back 
 of me ex-Judge Dittenhoefer, who had been 
 pointed out to me as a famous theatrical law- 
 yer. 
 
 "Are you Judge Dittenhoefer?'" 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 I shoved the papers into his hand. "Will 
 you take this case?" 
 
 "I will represent you at this hearing.*" 
 
 "How much?" said I. 
 
 "Two hundred and fifty dollars," said he. 
 
 I handed him a check and he went to the 
 front, got an adjournment, and one week later 
 sprung a technicality on the court — Judge 
 Wallace — which upset Judge Blatchford's de- 
 cision and led to thirteen years' litigation. It 
 was the simplest thing on earth. On the title 
 page of Under the Gas Light was printed, 
 "Under the Gas Light, a Story of Love and 
 Life in New York." That was the published 
 book. But in the printed copy that had been 
 filed for copyright the title page read, "Under 
 the Gas Light, a Panorama of Lives and 
 Homes in New York." The difference in the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 51 
 
 sub-title on the books which were being sold to 
 the public and the sub-title registered in Wash- 
 ington furnished Judge Wallace with grounds 
 for holding the copyright to be invalid. As I 
 said, this cost me a lot of money and kept me 
 in the papers almost continuously for thirteen 
 years, but it established me in New York as a 
 man who was not to be monkeyed with. 
 
 When I left Minneapolis to come to New 
 York for the Boucicault sale, McGeachy was 
 still in a cell, pondering the libel laws of Min- 
 nesota. But in a few days the court let him 
 out on ten thousand dollars bail to await the 
 action of the Grand Jury for criminal libel. 
 Charles Frohman put up the amount in cash. 
 Then McGeachy, on being released, went to 
 New York, but had a row with Frohman and 
 refused to go back and stand trial, which put 
 the manager in the way of losing his ten thou- 
 sand dollars. I had not been in town more 
 than two days when I received a polite letter 
 from Mr. Frohman asking me to call on him. 
 He had no theater, was occupying a little office 
 at Broadway and Thirtieth Street, and ten 
 
52 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 thousand dollars looked pretty big to him just 
 then. 
 
 While I was turning Frohman's letter over 
 in my mind I met McGeachy on the street and 
 told him about it. 
 
 "Don't you go up there,'* said he. "I had a 
 row with him and I won't go back to ^Minne- 
 apolis. I'm going to make him forfeit the ten 
 thousand." Then, after pondering a moment, 
 "Why don't you make him give you five thou- 
 sand?" 
 
 I turned on my heel and quit McGeachy, 
 and went up to see Frohman. It was the first 
 time in my life I'd ever met that gentleman. 
 He didn't waste any time in coming to the 
 point. 
 
 "ISIr. Brady," said he, "you've got me in a 
 box. McGeachy refuses to go back and stand 
 trial. If he doesn't, I shall lose my ten thou- 
 sand dollars, which I can't afford to do. I 
 want you to compromise with me. Wire your 
 attorney in St. Paul to cease his activity and 
 with some local influence that I can bring to 
 bear I can get the thing quashed." 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 53 
 
 "And what then?" said I, waiting for the 
 most interesting part of the proposition. 
 
 "If you will do it, you may rest assured that 
 if I can do anything for you in the future I 
 will do it!" 
 
 "All right, Mr. Frohman," said I, "that 
 goes I" We shook hands and I walked out of 
 his office. 
 
 It was not that I was overawed by Mr, Froh- 
 man's personality or won by his cordiality that 
 I so quickly acquiesced in his proposal. Nor 
 was it sheer good nature. I was still pretty 
 sore about what he'd sent McG^achy on to do 
 to me in Minneapolis. But as I said, I was 
 something of a prophet. I had watched Mr. 
 Frohman and felt that he was destined to do 
 big things in the theater world and I now 
 thought it the part of wisdom to make a friend 
 of him. I confess I felt pretty big, having 
 Charles Frohman under such a debt to me, as 
 I had no end of confidence in his word of honor 
 as well as in his gratitude. 
 
 Three years later I had a production called 
 The New Souths which was booked with Mr. 
 
64 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Frohman at the Colonial Theater in Boston. 
 The play was so successful in New York that 
 I wanted to keep it there a while longer and I 
 asked him to release me from the Boston en- 
 gagement. But he claimed that he was power- 
 less to do so as the theater was under the man- 
 agement of William Harris. I can almost 
 imagine that he put his tongue in his cheek as 
 he said this I I reminded him of the promise 
 he made to me when I saved him the ten thou- 
 sand dollars, but he simply reiterated that his 
 hands were tied and he could do nothing. And 
 so I walked out of his office, a very much disil- 
 lusioned and disgusted man! 
 
 Not a great while later Mr. Frohman pro- 
 duced in New York a Chinese play called The 
 First BorUj which had been highly successful 
 in San Francisco. At the same time Holbrook 
 Blinn put on at Hammerstein's Olympic a 
 play called The Cat and the Cherub. This 
 piece was by Chester Femald and was like the 
 Frohman play in the respect that all the char- 
 acters were Chinese. 
 
 Frohman made arrangements to send The 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 55 
 
 First Born to London, and as soon as I learned 
 of this movement on his part I secured the 
 English rights to The Cat and the Cherub. 
 Then I got in touch with Mr. Blinn, sent him 
 to England, and he secured a booking at The 
 Prince of Wales Theater on a guarantee of 
 two hundred and fifty pounds a week, which 
 meant a profit to us of eighty pounds. And 
 this I did without a soul on this side knowing 
 anything about it. Then I quietly sneaked 
 The Cat and the Cherub Company on board a 
 boat, five days before Frohman proposed sail- 
 ing with his company, and when my people 
 were about half-way across the ocean an- 
 nounced that I was going to produce the 
 piece in London. The news fell like a bomb 
 in the Frohman camp. Mr. Frohman im- 
 mediately closed his company here and raced 
 across the ocean in order to beat me over there. 
 But with the five days' start I had, I reached 
 London, opened on a Saturday night, and 
 made a big hit. The Cat and the Cherub con- 
 tinued on there for a year at a weekly profit 
 of eighty pounds. 
 
56 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Mr. Frohman opened the following Mon- 
 day. He had no guarantee. He had both the 
 theater end of it and the play end of it and 
 The First Born^ although it was a far better 
 play than The Cat and the Cherub, was a 
 ghastly fizzle in London and closed at the end 
 of seven days, with a loss of more than thirty 
 thousand dollars expenses. The Cat and the 
 Cherub was played by six people, whereas The 
 First Born required sixty. Neither of the 
 plays was attractive. But I got a guarantee 
 and my fares were paid by the English people, 
 while my rival had to take all the risk himself. 
 
 At any rate, that was the way I got even 
 with Mr. Frohman for not keeping his word, 
 and I assure you it did me no harm in the 
 business world 1 
 
 In a story like this it is necessary sometimes 
 to digress apparently in order to follow a 
 branch to its end, as I did in the matter of the 
 lawsuit with Daly and the "misunderstanding" 
 with Frohman, and then return to the trunk 
 line of the narrative. Obviously, it would not 
 be possible to thread or weave a branch like the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 57 
 
 story of the Daly lawsuit through the fabric of 
 this work. 
 
 To revert then to the main line of the story. 
 After acquiring the play After Dark at the 
 Boucicault sale, I traveled with it in the East 
 and made a success of it. And After Dark 
 brought out James J. Corbett, the pugilist, as 
 I shall point out later on. 
 
 I had made money in the theater business 
 and was very ambitious. But the advent of 
 Corbett deflected me for the time being into 
 the field of pugilism. And while I did not 
 abandon my theatrical enterprises — on the con- 
 trary, I was producing plays right along while 
 I was managing Corbett — I can now see that 
 if I had never touched pugilism but had con- 
 centrated on my theater work, I would prob- 
 ably have been much farther along in that line 
 than I am to-day. Unfortunately, I went in 
 for pugilism at a formative period of my ca- 
 reer. Before I had had time to lay a solid 
 foundation for my reputat^n as a producer of 
 plays, I became identified with the prize ring, 
 and this fact was reflected in the box ofiices at 
 
58 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 the theaters I managed. Please remember, it 
 is not the sporting public, but the general pub- 
 lic which consists largely of women and chil- 
 dren who are patrons of the playhouse. Sport- 
 ing people would go to any event that Brady 
 might manage and the money would flow in. 
 But there was always danger of the name 
 Brady keeping the women and children away 
 from the theater. And the theater was a much 
 bigger proposition than the prize ring! Un- 
 discriminating persons, either having no 
 knowledge of my past as a manager or not 
 stopping to consider it, didn't see how it was 
 possible for a man who was interested in sports 
 to know anything about the drama or the stage, 
 and a good many of them, forgetting that I 
 had trained under some of the best masters of 
 the drama that the world has produced, thought 
 I could be nothing but coarse in my tastes and 
 pernicious in my influence. 
 
 About the time that I started out with After 
 Dark, Corbett had electrified the sporting 
 world. An amateur, known only in San Fran- 
 cisco, he did some brilliant work that brought 
 
Weston, the walker 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 59 
 
 him into national prominence. He had been 
 of the Olympic Club of San Francisco of which 
 he finally became boxing instructor. He had 
 met many obscure boxers, local celebrities and 
 the like, and his experience with these had 
 opened his eyes. Corbett was an observing, a 
 progressive man. He saw the weak spots of 
 the old-fashioned methods which the world, be- 
 cause of their antiquity, had accepted without 
 question. He realized that pugilists are not in- 
 ventive, that they are kangaroo-headed and 
 sheeplike, that a bit of so-called "ring wisdom" 
 might be handed down for generations with- 
 out change. Any question of accepted ring 
 tactics was regarded as the rankest heresy. But 
 Corbett was an iconoclast. Whenever he saw 
 an error he went about correcting it in his own 
 way. Fiui:hermore, he realized that a man 
 trained in the old school would be more or less 
 confused by any departure on the part of his 
 opponent. So Corbett not only mastered the 
 old methods, learned the old ring secrets, but 
 invented methods of his own which the other 
 fellow didn't know anything about. Further- 
 
60 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 more, he was capable of changing his play, so 
 to speak, with every new event. 
 
 When Corbett had attained some local no- 
 toriety, an Irish pugilist named Jack Burke 
 came to San Francisco and boxed six rounds 
 with him. Corbett did more than hold his own 
 with Burke which compelled the leaders of the 
 San Francisco sporting world to begin to take 
 him seriously, and they presently conceived the 
 idea of matching him against Peter Jackson, 
 a black man, who had beaten everybody on the 
 Pacific Coast. Jackson was born in the West 
 Indies, but he had now come to the Pacific 
 Coast from Australia. 
 
 The match was arranged — an international 
 event, since Jackson was a British subject. It 
 was fought for sixty-one rounds, but the club 
 declared it no contest and refused to pay the 
 purse. The reason for this was that after the 
 thirtieth round both men stopped fighting and 
 did nothing but circle around the ring, striking 
 no blows. Corbett claimed that as Jackson was 
 a famous boxer he should have done the lead- 
 ing, forced the fight; and refused to carry the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 61 
 
 fight to him. Corbett urged the negro to make 
 the pace, but Jackson refused to do so, and the 
 match was declared a farce. This contest added 
 greatly to Corbett's reputation, owing to the 
 fact that John L. Sullivan had drawn the color 
 line against Jackson and flatly refused to meet 
 him, although the negro had repeatedly chal- 
 lenged the big fellow. Sullivan boasted that 
 he had never met a black man in the ring and 
 never would, which was simply a pretense ad- 
 vanced to avoid a contest with Jackson. To 
 my certain knowledge Sullivan had boxed with 
 a negro at San Bernardino, California, during 
 one of his exhibition tours. He had also thrown 
 off his coat and jumped into the ring in Boston 
 at one time to meet George Godfrey, who had 
 taunted him with being afraid of him. Sul- 
 livan had offered to fight Godfrey for nothing, 
 but the thing was stopped 
 
 The match with Jackson caused great ex- 
 citement throughout the country, put Corbett 
 in the lime-light, and he started out from Cal- 
 ifornia exhibiting with a minstrel show. At 
 this time I was playing the leading part, "Old 
 
62 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Tom,"' in After Dark. I was making a great 
 feature of the music-hall scene in the play and 
 I wired Corbett, offering him an engagement 
 to appear in that scene. After some negotia- 
 tion, I got him to join my company, paying 
 him one hundred seventy-five dollars a week. 
 
 No sooner had he become one of the com- 
 pany than he and I got to be pals and he told 
 me all about all his ambitions and hopes. He 
 wanted to become champion and was sure he 
 could do it. This was some ambition, I re- 
 minded him, since to realize it he'd have to 
 beat the great John L., the idol and ideal of 
 the sporting fraternity, the champion of the 
 world, the most famous if not the greatest prize- 
 fighter of all times. I did not know then, but 
 I know now, that Sullivan's record was all a 
 foolish one. He never really earned the place 
 he occupied in public esteem. lie had won the 
 championship by beating a man of fifty named 
 Paddy Ryan, while he, Sullivan, was twenty- 
 three or twenty-four. And he had fought an- 
 other long bout with Jake Kilrain in Missis- 
 sippi in which he violated all the rules of the 
 
PERMISSION OF ROBERT COSTER 
 
 Jake Kilrain 
 
John L. Sullivan 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 68 
 
 game — ^jumping on his opponent, using his 
 knees, etc. — and should have been declared 
 loser by a foul. Again, he had failed to defeat 
 Mitchell in France. In fact, he had actually 
 to bribe the Englishman in order to secure a 
 draw. Sullivan had sat in his corner of the 
 ring on that malodorous occasion and shouted 
 to Mitchell, "How much will you take to make 
 it a draw?" 
 
 "Twelve hundred dollars," said Mitchell. 
 
 "Done," said Sullivan, and he paid it. 
 
 I admired Corbett's work and saw great pos- 
 sibilities in him, but I frankly urged him to 
 keep out of the way of John L. But he wasn't 
 a bit discouraged by what I said. As usual, 
 he had some inside information of his own. A 
 year or so before he had met Sullivan at a bene- 
 fit given at the Grand Opera House in San 
 Francisco, he told me. They had boxed three 
 friendly rounds, both wearing dress suits, since 
 the church or other highly respectable institu- 
 tion for whose benefit they were sparring, 
 would not stand for the regular garb of the 
 ring. It was a light, trifling little match, ap- 
 
64 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 parently. They wore gloves that looked like 
 pillows and each simply tapped the other in 
 a playful way. But this little match was of 
 immense benefit to Corbett. In it he had dis- 
 covered that Sullivan had no free use of his left 
 hand at all^ that he had to depend entirely on 
 his right, and that he, Corbett, could hit him 
 when, where and how he pleased. 
 
 When he had imparted this precious bit of 
 information, Corbett sat and looked at me quiz- 
 zically for a few moments and I realized that 
 I had not only found a great boxer but a ring 
 general and a psychologist as well. I also dis- 
 covered another thing that applies in every 
 walk of life where one man comes into conflict 
 with another: that our strength lies largely in 
 the knowledge of the weakness of the other 
 fellow ! 
 
 Corbett continued with After Dark almost 
 a full season. About this time, artother won- 
 derful pugilist had flashed across the horizon 
 and had won some wonderful battles in Lon- 
 don. His name was Frank P. Slavin and he 
 also hailed from Australia. Slavin had beaten 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 65 
 
 two or three Englishmen at the National 
 Sporting Club in London, and all England, 
 anxious that somebody should beat Sullivan, 
 now hailed Slavin as the man to do it. Charles 
 Mitchell, who styled himself England's boxing 
 champion and who had kept himself in the lime- 
 light for years by the fact that he had fought 
 a "draw" with John L. Sullivan in Chantilly, 
 in France, secured the management of Slavin 
 and immediately brought him to the United 
 States. Slavin met two or three inferior men 
 around New York City in short bouts and 
 proved himself to be a wonderfully hard hitter, 
 and Mitchell began taunting Sullivan through 
 the newspapers. A great verbal war began be- 
 tween Mitchell and Sullivan which filled the 
 sporting pages of the papers and kept the pub- 
 lic interested and eager for Sullivan to get 
 into the ring and again demonstrate that he was 
 the champion. Corbett was now dragged in 
 as a possibility, which made a great general 
 furor. The campaign of vilification grew more 
 and more bitter, Mitchell, the Cockney, throw- 
 ing mud at the big fellow one day, Sullivan 
 
66 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 answering the next, and Corbett and Slavin 
 joining in the melee of words. In a short time 
 this row got the public boxing mad. New Or- 
 leans sporting men had successfully started and 
 incorporated an athletic club down there and 
 big purses were being given and great fights 
 were being held between light and middle 
 weights. The old prize-ring rules had gone 
 out of vogue and there was a tremendous 
 amount of interest in the new style of boxing 
 under the Marquis of Queensbury rules. By 
 the old rules, the moment a man was knocked 
 down, the round was over and he was given a 
 half minute's rest, but the Marquis of Queens- 
 biuy rules compelled a man to fight for three 
 minutes each round, and if he were knocked 
 down, he had to get up within ten seconds or 
 lose. Sullivan had won all of his contests under 
 the old rules. He had never been tried out 
 imder the Queensbury rules in a championship 
 contest, and the public was anxious that he 
 should be, as they thought he could make any 
 one of "those fighters" jump through a key- 
 hole, as he put it. The big fellow's close ad- 
 
COPYRIGHT, BROWN BROS. 
 
 The Marquis of Queensberry 
 
co^moHT, •nowN 
 
 Charlie Mitchell 
 (Ex-champion of the world) 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 67 
 
 herents had an idea that all that he had to do 
 was to scowl at his opponents and frighten 
 them to death. In fact, he had succeeded time 
 and time again by these brow-beating tactics 
 in the four-round bouts that were being given 
 wdth enormous success at Madison Square Gar- 
 den. On other occasions, when traveling from 
 one end of the country to the other, and going 
 into small towns, Sullivan had been in the 
 habit of offering a hundred dollars to any local 
 man who would stand before him for four 
 rounds. If anybody had the hardihood to at- 
 tempt this, the Boston gladiator would stand 
 in his corner and glower and scowl at the 
 stranger and frighten him so that he would go 
 down and out the first time he was hit. 
 
 Sullivan did not have much money and the 
 purses that were being offered down in New 
 Orleans were very large and interesting to 
 him. Up to that time he had never been able 
 to engage in a championship battle for gate 
 receipts. He used, in order to avoid the police, 
 to go off to some lonely spot where there would 
 be only one or two hundred persons to witness 
 
68 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 the bout, and fight for purses of ten thousand 
 dollars a side. 
 
 John L. was known as a spendthrift. We 
 used to read special stories in the papers of his 
 making hundreds and hundreds of thousands 
 of dollars and scattering it away broadcast. 
 This was all nonsense. During all of his career, 
 Sullivan never made any great amount of 
 money. He was beaten by Corbett just at the 
 time that money-making in pugilism began. 
 Up to that time no such purses as twenty-five 
 thousand dollars had ever been offered. That 
 was what Corbett and Sullivan fought for and 
 Sullivan, thinking that he had a soft snap in 
 Corbett, insisted that the winner should take 
 all. And the winner did take it all! 
 
 All of a sudden one morning Sullivan came 
 out in the newspapers with a grand "defi" to 
 the world, stating in his letter that he was ready 
 to enter the ring again providing his opponent 
 would bet ten thousand dollars on the side and 
 the winner to take the whole purse. He stipu- 
 lated that the ten thousand dollars should be 
 put up in four payments, and stated his choice 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 69 
 
 as first, Charles Mitchell, second, Frank Slavin, 
 and third, James J. Corbett. 
 
 Corbett and I were playing After Dark in 
 Philadelphia when Sullivan's challenge ap- 
 peared. The Boston man had announced in 
 his letter that his financial representative would 
 be at The World office the next morning at 
 ten o'clock. So I took twenty-five hundred 
 dollars of my own money, caught an early train 
 to New York and was on hand at the ap- 
 pointed time. 
 
 I met the sporting editor of The Worlds 
 Mr. Joe Eakins, and before either Mitchell or 
 Slavin had got out of bed had covered Sulli- 
 van's money for Corbett, who by this means 
 obtained first call. Mitchell, furious that he 
 had overlooked the opportunity for Slavin — ^he 
 had no idea of fighting Sullivan himself, as he 
 firmly believed that his man could have 
 whipped the big fellow in a couple of rounds — 
 tried to bamboozle us out of the match, using 
 the silly arguments that Corbett was nobody 
 at all, an upstart, while Slavin had fought his 
 way up through the world, had defeated men 
 
70 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 in wonderfully short time, and was therefore 
 entitled to the contest with Sullivan. SuUiVan, 
 evidently thinking Cdrbett was the easier of the 
 two, was mightily pleased the way it came out. 
 
 The next thing was to get the seven thousand 
 five hundred dollars that we had to put up to 
 cover Sullivan's money. But Phil Dwyer, Ed- 
 ward Kearney, Jr., Colonel Fred MacLouie 
 and Mattie Lewee Corbett chipped in and 
 made up ilie amount. 
 
 When the news of the match became known, 
 the whole country went wild with pugilistic ex- 
 citement. The event was to be pulled off in 
 New Orleans, September 9, 1892. In fact, so 
 great was the interest in the coming fight that 
 up to the middle of September even the presi- 
 dential election was swamped by the stuff that 
 was published in the papers about it. Page 
 after page was devoted to the contest, and later 
 every prominent newspaper in the land kept a 
 special man at the training quarters of each 
 pugilist. 
 
Ill 
 
 As I said before, I was paying Corbett one 
 hundred seventy-five dollars a week to box in 
 the vaudeville scene in After Dark, Within 
 twenty-four hours after the Corbett- Sullivan 
 articles had been signed, we were flooded with 
 telegrams from all parts of the United States, 
 offering us fabulous terms for his appearance. 
 
 The first contract we signed, as I remember, 
 was for fifteen hundred dollars a week at the 
 Lyceum Theater, Philadelphia. The highest 
 price of admission to this house was fifty cents. 
 This contract provided that Corbett was to 
 meet a new man every night and attempt to 
 stop him or put him out in four rounds. Such 
 a pastime was permitted at that time in Phila- 
 delphia, which was then known as the home of 
 many athletic aspirants. The term "athletic 
 aspirant" was applied to the fellows who had 
 a punch and who probably could go one or two 
 rounds with a champion and make a showing. 
 
 71 
 
72 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 We went to Philadelphia to play the en- 
 gagement, but in a very few nights found 
 that this kind of game was not for Corbett. 
 Now, if you're going to put a man out in a four- 
 round bout, you can't do it by dancing about 
 and sparring with him. You've got to do some 
 very hard hitting. Corbett's hands we're deli- 
 cately framed and when he used them with full 
 force in such a match, if he wanted to whip a 
 man, he would have to take a chance of hitting 
 him on the jaw, knocking him senseless with 
 one blow. But by doing this there was always 
 danger of his breaking his knuckles. After 
 tackling two of these "all comers," as we used 
 to call them, we found if we continued that 
 course of making money our man would have 
 no hands with which to fight Sullivan. 
 
 One of the toughest of the "all comers'* aii 
 that time in Philadelphia was a man who 
 worked in the gas house. His name was Mike 
 Monahan, and he had succeeded in standing up 
 for four rounds before every champion that had 
 come to the City of Brotherly Love for years. 
 On the first night of Corbett's engagement, 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 73 
 
 who should appear at the stage door but Mike 
 Monahan, demanding a chance to go on with 
 the man who thought he could beat Sullivan. 
 Corbett looked Monahan over and made up his 
 mind to keep him at a safe distance. That 
 night Corbett boxed with another man who 
 afterward played quite an important part in 
 his history. This was Connie McVey, who up 
 to this day is a well-known character along the 
 Rialto in New York. Connie went on the first 
 night, took Corbett's punching for a couple of 
 rounds and then sought a safe spot on the stage, 
 lay down and was counted out. He got twen- 
 ty-five dollars for doing this, and at the same 
 time the Corbett management came to realize 
 that he was a very valuable man, and we put 
 him on the salary list. Connie's great value 
 lay in knowing how to be knocked out better 
 than any man I had ever seen — as I shall show 
 you later. 
 
 Every night INIonahan reported at the stage 
 door and every night Corbett side-stepped the 
 issue. Monahan looked as if he had an iron 
 jaw. It was as wide as his forehead and his. 
 
74. THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 face was covered with scars. He was a tough 
 proposition. We had some hope of escaping 
 an encounter with this fellow. But toward the 
 middle of the week the sporting editors of 
 Philadelphia took up the matter and said that 
 the challenger of John L. Sullivan was afraid 
 to meet Mike Monahan, the terror of the gas 
 house. These sneering comments hecame 
 stronger and stronger and presently the As- 
 sociated Press got busy and scattered it broad- 
 cast throughout the country. When Friday 
 night came I said to Corbett, "Jim, it's no use! 
 You've got to meet Monahan to-morrow night 
 or go out of the town in disgrace!" 
 
 We told Mike that he was to have his chance 
 Saturday night and he said, "If I do, that will 
 be the end of Corbett r 
 
 Nothing was left but that we should do 
 something to put fear into the heart of Mona- 
 han. At last we hit on a scheme. We arranged 
 that he was to put on his tights in the same 
 room with Corbett and his sparring partner, 
 Jim Daly, of Philadelphia. It was to be a 
 third-degree process. We put him in a chair 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 75 
 
 between Corbett and Daly. After a time, Daly 
 said to Cbfbett,'"Say, Jim, you knbw* that man 
 whose jaW ydti bi'oke in Hartford last week?" 
 
 Corbett nodded. 
 
 ''He's no better." 
 
 "Isn't he out of the hospital yet?" said Cor- 
 bett. 
 
 Monahan went on dressing. 
 
 Then Daily said, "Anybody that goes intb 
 the ting with ybti^ Jim, dught to haVe his life 
 insured." 
 
 Still not a word from Monahan. 
 
 Story after story they told about the men 
 Corbett had sent to the hospital, but Monahan 
 would simply say, "Is tliat so? That sounds 
 good!" Nothing Wmild feeze him. 
 
 At the end of the third-degree business wfe 
 fdund that we wtmld hare to take a final long 
 chance with him. It must be understood that 
 Corbett was not in condition at this time. He 
 was not in training and that is very essential 
 to boxing. Ten-thirty was reached. I was the 
 referee and the time keeper. The theater was 
 simply jammed. The sporting community had 
 
76 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 paid all kinds of prices to get in. Seats were 
 sold on the sidewalk for ten dollars apiece. 
 Philadelphia felt that at last Corbett was going 
 to get a real test from the invincible gas-house 
 giant. • 
 
 Just before we went into the ring Corbett 
 came to me and said, "Now, Bill, I will take 
 one chance with this fellow and if I fail you 
 will have to call time and make the rounds 
 very short." 
 
 I believe that Corbett at this particular point 
 feared Monahan more than he feared John L. 
 Sullivan when he got into the ring with him 
 later on. 
 
 Monahan came into the ring with the confi- 
 dence of a. Napoleon. The bell sounded, they 
 went to the center. He made a speedy rush at 
 Corbett and hit him a quick blow in the stom- 
 ach, then grabbed him and tried to throw him 
 off the stage. Instantly there was pandemo- 
 nium in the house. Monahan rushed Corbett 
 all over the place. But Corbett took no chances. 
 He stood back and gritted his teeth. Monahan 
 rushed for him. It looked bad for Corbett, 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 77 
 
 but he winked to me not to ring the bell. An- 
 other lunge from Monahan, another lunge, and 
 then Corbett shot his right hand across on Mon- 
 ahan's jaw and knocked him stiif. It took a 
 minute to bring him to. 
 
 We went back to the dressing-room and then 
 discovered what it had cost us to knock out the 
 gas-house giant and rescue Corbett's reputa- 
 tion. Two of his knuckles were knocked back 
 into the middle of his hand. That was the end 
 of Corbett's attempting to meet the "all 
 comers," with one or two exceptions, up to the 
 time he entered the ring with Sullivan. 
 
 We then planned a tour throughout the 
 United States, making a single appearance in 
 each city, carrying only about eight people, 
 and recruiting in each place we visited with 
 local boxers. We would go into a town with 
 Corbett, his sparring partner, and one or two 
 others. We would get all the ambitious boys 
 in the town who wanted to fight, interested, 
 and in that way provide the entertainment nec- 
 essary before Corbett went on. We paid the 
 boys from ten dollars to twenty dollars a bout. 
 
78 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 The same thing is done now at Madison Square 
 Garden. Of course, the moment the thing got 
 brutal in any way we stopped it. That was 
 the plan for our tour which was to include the 
 whole country and we hoped to clean up not 
 only enough to defray Corbett's training ex- 
 penses, for his battle with Sullivan, but a tidy 
 sum besides. 
 
 After we'd been doing this about a week, we 
 discovered that it would be necessary, in order 
 to engage great local interest, and secure fine 
 receipts, to get somebody to stand before Cor- 
 bett other than his sparring partner — ^because 
 the public is apt to regard such things as cut- 
 and-dried affairs. And as Corbett's hands 
 were in bad condition, we did not propose again 
 to take any chances with strangers or "all 
 comers." So we hit upon the idea of sending 
 Connie McVey ahead of the show a couple of 
 weeks. McVey was the man we had discovered 
 in Philadelphia — ^the man who "knew how to 
 be knocked out." He was to go to the different 
 places we were to play, "discover" that Corbett 
 was to appear there, and immediately issue a 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 79 
 
 challenge to fight him on his arrival. In this 
 way Connie fought Corbett all over the United 
 States and under different titles. In Hartford 
 he was known as Joe Nelson, the Maine terror ; 
 in Rochester he was Alex Conelli, the Cana- 
 dian giant ; in Columbus, Ohio, he fought Cor- 
 bett as Jim Durand, the mountain terror from 
 Kentucky. His aliases were always made ap- 
 propriate to the section of the country in which 
 he was operating. For instance, in Milwaukee 
 he was John Olsen, the terror of the lumber 
 camps; in Butte City he gave a battle that 
 created intense enthusiasm under the title of 
 the Walla Walla giant. In Los Angeles Mc- 
 Vey took on a Mexican alias that appealed 
 strongly to that portion of the population that 
 had Spanish blood in its veins, and wanted to 
 see one of their kind defeat the upstart from 
 the North. In Tucson Corbett knocked Mc- 
 Vey out in one round as the terror of Arizona, 
 while in El Paso the many-titled man put up 
 a very pretty match as the Texas Pet. In all 
 these places Connie was received as a world- 
 beater. 
 
80 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 We would arrive in town and find him rid- 
 ing around in an open barouche with the mayor. 
 The man who had the nerve to meet Corbett 
 became the hero of every community he visited. 
 For two weeks prior to the coming of our show 
 Connie, under his different aliases, lived like 
 a king, grew fat and prospered. He was wined 
 and dined by the best men in town. He had 
 presents made him. Needless to say, after 
 Corbett appeared, Connie made tracks for the 
 next place and with a brand-new alias. 
 
 McVey's personality lent itself beautifully 
 to our scheme. He was a very big man, weigh- 
 ing about two hundred and forty pounds. 
 That he looked like a real champion was dem- 
 onstrated when Corbett visited Dublin years 
 later, after defeating Charley JNIitchell. There 
 were twenty thousand Irishmen at the depot 
 and in the streets to meet us on that occasion. 
 Some of them found Corbett, carried him on 
 their shoulders to his carriage, took the horses 
 out of the rig and hauled it by hand to the 
 Queen's Hotel on O'Connell Street. Others 
 in the mob found Connie McVey and in spite 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 81 
 
 of his protests carried him on their shoulders 
 to his carriage, unliitched the horses and pulled 
 him up another street to the same hotel. So 
 there were two Corbetts dragged through the 
 streets of Dublin that day! 
 
 In the declining days of Corbett's reputa- 
 tion he was matched to box twenty rounds with 
 Tom Sharkey at the Lexington Athletic Club 
 in New York. Connie McVey was in the cor- 
 ner and when in the eighth round Sharkey had 
 Corbett practically beaten and on the verge of 
 a knock-out, McVey jumped into the ring and 
 rushed between them and so lost the fight for 
 Corbett by a foul. But he saved his beloved 
 friend from the knock-out. McVey was one of 
 the most faithful creatures I ever knew. 
 
 This trip through the country realized for 
 us about thirty-five thousand dollars. The 
 way we went at our training for the Sullivan 
 event must have cost us ten thousand dollars. 
 The rest of it went in different ways. As Cor- 
 bett was quite certain that he was going to beat 
 John L. money did not count. That kind of 
 money never sticks to your fingers; there are 
 
B2 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 so many ways to spend it. You hare to keep 
 up your end, live at the best hotels — ^buy every- 
 thing! None of the hangers-on must be al- 
 lowed to spend a cent. Sullivan had set a so- 
 called scale of liberality that the other fellow 
 had to live up to. 
 
 The Olympic Athletic Club of New Orleans 
 had been the highest bidder for the fight — 
 twenty-five thousand dollars — and the match 
 had been arranged to take place in that city on 
 September ninth — the twenty-five thousand 
 dollars to go to the winner. At the same time 
 they had arranged a pugilistic carnival for 
 three days. On the first night George Dickson 
 was to fight Jack Skelly for the bantam cham- 
 pionship and on the second night Jack McAu- 
 liff was to fight Billy Meyer, who was known 
 as the Streator (Illinois) Cyclone, for the light- 
 weight championship. On the final night of 
 the contest Corbett was to fight Sullivan. The 
 largest purse offered up to that time was for 
 the third bout. McAuliff, who had never been 
 beaten by any lightweight, was almost as pop- 
 ular in his way as Sullivan. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 88 
 
 We started to train about the middle of May 
 at Lock Arbor, New Jersey, just on the edge 
 of Asbury Park. Corbett had new ideas about 
 training, as well as about other things pertain- 
 ing to pugilism. The usual custom had been 
 for the pugilist to go out somewhere to a road- 
 house with a convenient bar and innumerable 
 spongers and hangers-on. But our man took 
 a cottage and associated with none but decent 
 people. William Delaney was principal 
 trainer. Also there were sparring partners, 
 wrestling partners — ^men with specialties — for 
 Corbett had determined to learn every trick of 
 the trade. He wanted these specialists by their 
 unusual work to bring out everything that was 
 in him, prepare him for every emergency. You 
 see, you never can tell exactly how your op- 
 ponent is training. He may have something 
 up his sleeve with which to surprise you.- The 
 training quarters of the pugilist are managed 
 diplomatically — managed so as to throw the 
 other fellow off his guard, if possible. Every- 
 thing is done to give him the idea that you are 
 training along simple, accepted lines. When 
 
84 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 a big event is to be pulled off, each camp has 
 trusted scouts hanging around the headquar- 
 ters of the enemy, frequenting the bars of the 
 neighborhood, picking up bits of gossip that 
 may prove available. The lightest word 
 dropped by a half -drunken trainer is carefully 
 reported and weighed in the councils of the 
 camp for what it is worth. Needless to say, 
 money is freely paid for reliable information, 
 but this practise is apt to prove a boomerang 
 in instigating hangers-on to add to or change 
 what they hear before reporting it. All this 
 comes under what might be called the diplo- 
 macy of the ring and is quite as ethical as the 
 methods used in Wall Street or in the cabinets 
 of nations. 
 
 We did things decently in our camp. We 
 discouraged the presence of thugs who usually 
 infest the training quarters of prize-fighters on 
 Sunday — ^the "Jimmies" and the "Mickies" 
 and the "Billies" — the blatant hot-air boys. 
 This is the same class of men that infests the 
 racing stables. They are always looking for 
 points and never getting the real thing in in- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 85 
 
 side information, since only the pugilist's most 
 loyal adherents are permitted to know what is 
 going on. The hanger-on is the foolish Johnny. 
 He may be very rich or very poor, but he's al- 
 ways a nuisance. The pathetic thing about him 
 is that he doesn't aspire to be known as the 
 friend of Corbett or of Sullivan, but is amply 
 satisfied with being pointed out as a friend of 
 Jeffries' trainer and the like. The very poor 
 hanger-on is not so much of a nuisance as the 
 very rich one. You can make use of him, pos- 
 sibly as a messenger or a helper or dismiss him 
 with a few drinks. But the other feUow always 
 wants to treat you or do you favors. We were 
 guyed for our swell way of doing things, but 
 we didn't mind. We were determined to treat 
 the whole thing as a business proposition, and 
 we did it. 
 
 Corbett was a true progressive. He intro- 
 duced numerous things that had never been 
 heard of before. Shadow boxing — or boxing 
 with your shadow — ^was his invention, and he 
 used it now. All the old fighters used to do 
 was to punch the bag and walk. Corbett in- 
 
B6 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 trbduce'd pulley weights, the medidne ball, and 
 all the things we are having now. lie was 
 not a stiiong man. Ih f afct, his strtength was all 
 manufactured. Nor was he a hard hitter. But 
 he was scientific, and as qtiick as a cfat. He 
 always trippiied about on his toes — ^i-eady to get 
 away. The other fellow used to fight with all 
 the strength he could get, but Corbett intro- 
 duced jabbing. He used his left htod. Up 
 to thai; time, no ptigilisft evcl* had the free use 
 of his left arm that Cbi'bett had. This of itself 
 was of immenste Value. 
 
 Corbett's backers frequently visited his 
 training quarters. Phil I>wyer, the famous 
 horseman, was otie Of these and he seemed to 
 be worried that the fighter was reducing his 
 weight too much. As a matter of fact, he was, 
 tut we had to reassure Dwyer. So we put 
 some bits of railroad iron in Corbett's pockets 
 Just before he was weighed which brought his 
 avoirdupois up to the required mark. A few 
 pofunds one way or the other really didn't mat- 
 ter, but we had to keep up Dwyer's courage. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 87i 
 
 The better class of people took a great in- 
 terest in Corbett because he brought a certain 
 spirit, a cleanness into the whole game that they 
 had never seen before. They say he was like 
 John C. Heenan in this respect. He even 
 carried his new methods into the transportation 
 end of it. Instead of the usual trainload of 
 brawling rowdies and cringing sycophants, we 
 had a train of our own with a special baggage 
 car for the whole distance from Asbury Park 
 to New Orleans. Corbett refused to make the 
 trip at one continuous run. He claimed that 
 besides practising in his car, it was necessary 
 to get out once in a while and stretch his legs 
 and limber up. So we stopped two or three 
 times en route and he indulged in a cross-coun- 
 try run. 
 
 When we reached New Orleans they were 
 betting five to one against Corbett. In fact, 
 some persons were wagering that Sullivan 
 would make our man jump out of the ring. 
 I had three thousand dollars which I had 
 brought down to bet on Sullivan. You see, if 
 
88 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Corbett won we would have everything. But 
 there was always the gambler's chance of his 
 not winning, which was why I sought to hedge 
 on SuUivan. I hung around the town for 
 twenty-four hours, trying to land a bet at more 
 favorable odds. I didn't feel like putting up 
 three thousand dollars in order to win six hun- 
 dred or seven hundred dollars. But Corbett's 
 confidence inspired me. I never saw a man 
 who was so sure of himself. He knew his man, 
 morally, mentally, physically and psychologic- 
 ally. He literally astounded me with his talk 
 about Sullivan, and I found out afterward 
 that he was correct in every detail. In fact, I 
 was so braced up by this that I walked into 
 the St. Charles Hotel and placed my money 
 at four to one on Corbett. That was about 
 two hours before the fight. 
 
 There never was such an audience assembled. 
 New Orleans was packed with famous poli- 
 ticians, actors and business men. Priests and 
 other clergymen were there, disguised as lay- 
 men, to see the match. Corbett spent the day 
 before the fight in the gymnasium of the 
 
COPYRIGHT, BROWN BROS. 
 
 Tom Sharkey 
 
rtRMIMlON OF NOtlMT COITkN 
 
 Tolin C. Heenan 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 89 
 
 Young" Men's Christian Association while Sul- 
 livan went to the Athletic Club. 
 
 iThe fight was to take place in an outhouse 
 back of the club building. Sullivan's room 
 was on the second floor of this building and 
 ours on the third. Not long before the fight, 
 Johnson, Sullivan's manager, came into our 
 room and suggested that we toss for the cor- 
 ner. Now, in this ring at that time there was 
 what was known in New Orleans as the "lucky 
 comer." Every pugilist who had sat in this 
 corner, with very rare exceptions, had won the 
 fight. Bo I went down with Johnson into 
 Sullivan^s room to toss for choice and I got 
 a glimpse of the gladiator, who was stretched 
 out on a table being rubbed down. I saw fear 
 in his face. I knew he was not so confident 
 as he pretended to be. I was only a kid at 
 the time ; I don't think I weighed over a hun- 
 dred and twenty-six pounds. But I went in 
 and we tossed the penny. 
 
 "Heads!" I cried. 
 
 It came heads. And here is where I put 
 fear into Mr. Sullivan. 
 
90 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 "What corner do you take?" said Johnson. 
 
 "Take, damn you I" I shouted, "I take the 
 lucky corner!" 
 
 Then I tiu-ned and rushed up-stairs, shriek- 
 ing at the top of my voice, "We've got the 
 lucky corner 1 We've got the lucky corner 1" 
 
 They thought I was mad with excitement, 
 but there was a method in it. I did it purely 
 for psychological purposes. 
 
 Now Sullivan knew Corbett's superstition 
 about not wanting to go into the ring first, 
 and they put up a job on him. Remember 
 that most pugilists are superstitious, and in 
 their extremely nervous and sensitive condi- 
 tion just before a match are apt to give undue 
 weight to the merest trifle that might augur 
 against them. I could tell many stories of 
 men being unnerved in this way and losing 
 fights, but all this is involved in what might 
 be called "ring psychology" or "ring fear." 
 They brought word to us that Sullivan was 
 in the ring, so we started to walk down-stairs. 
 To get to the outhouse we had to pass through 
 a lane of people. When we had got where I 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN ^1 
 
 could see the ring I said, "They've lied to us 
 — Sullivan's fooling us I" then I grabbed Cor- 
 bett and forced him back into the mob,*and 
 turning to Sullivan, who was following close 
 on our heels, cried, "You're the champion! 
 It's your place to enter the ring first!" — and 
 we made the big fellow do it. 
 
 Everybody expected to see Corbett trem- 
 bling in his corner, for Sullivan was trying 
 his glower trick again. But instead of seeing 
 a man already half licked with fright by his 
 hypnotic scowl, he saw one as cheery and bright 
 as a grasshopper in an August wheat-field. 
 
 I had seen only one other fight in my life 
 and I was sick with nervousness over this one. 
 I had a habit of crumpling up my handker- 
 chief and passing it from one palm to the other, 
 but this time I actually ate it up. Primrose, 
 the great minstrel, was in a box back of me. 
 He had a palmleaf fan in his hand and such 
 was my agitation that I took it from him, 
 chewed it up and swallowed it. Cold sweat 
 stood out all over me, and so dry was my mouth 
 that I could not speak except after two or 
 
92 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 three efforts. Nor was this condition due in 
 the smallest degree to the money I'd staked 
 on the fight. I had won and lost a greater 
 amount many times on a single turn of a card. 
 But Corbett's reputation was at stake. Our 
 fortunes were identical, so to speak — ^we would 
 rise or fall together by this event. But be- 
 yond it all was the wonderful pride of having 
 discovered a champion. I hung suspended as 
 it were between two great emotions — the joy 
 of a mighty triumph and the grief of a great 
 despair. 
 
 In preparation for this fight I had availed 
 of every device of ring generalship. But I 
 went the old-timers one better. I worked the 
 psychological end of it in a way and to an 
 extent they'd never dreamed of. I knew that 
 Sullivan's most vulnerable point was the psy- 
 chological — the superstitious side of him. In 
 a play called Honest Hearts and Willing 
 Hands y by Duncan B. Harrison, Sullivan had 
 shown that a pugilist could make money by 
 acting as well as by fighting. Now, long be- 
 fore the present fight was arranged for, I had 
 
THE FIGHTING MAX 93 
 
 discovered that Corbett was not only a first- 
 class pugilist, but a fairly good actor. So I 
 had Charles T. Vincent write a play for him 
 and we called it Gentleman Jack. During our 
 tour in the summer with After Dark, and even 
 when he had reached his training quarters, 
 Corbett devoted hi^ spare moments to rehears- 
 ing this play. We had it all ready to clap 
 on the boards the minute the gong sounded in 
 New Orleans in favor of the Calif ornian. 
 
 So far, so good. And now, here is where 
 the psychological part of it comes in! Three 
 days before the fight was to take place, I billed 
 Corbett all over New York City as "The 
 Champion of the World 1" I even booked 
 him and billed him in flaring lithographs at 
 Birmingham and Atlanta, "James J. Cor- 
 bett, Champion of the World, to Appear, 
 IN 'Gentleman Jack'!" This was extremely 
 nervy, but I did it for the effect I knew it 
 would have on Sullivan when he saw these 
 posters. 
 
 To return to the match. Sullivan started in 
 with a right-hand punch and Corbett ducked 
 
94 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 and side-stepped. Then the crowd began to 
 yell at the Calif ornian, *'Don't run away! 
 Stand up and fight!" And Corbett did the 
 coolest thing I have ever seen done anywhere. 
 He paused in the center of the ring, held up 
 his hands to that enormous audience and said 
 almost patronizingly, "Wait a minute — wait 
 a minute!" 
 
 Sullivan looked at him, paralyzed by the ef- 
 frontery of the act. And then, with a non- 
 chalance that was nothing short of pure impu- 
 dence, Corbett repeated, "Wait a minute — it 
 will be all right!" 
 
 Corbett then began to dance around the 
 ring, using tactics the crowd had never seen 
 before. At the end of the second round Cor- 
 bett came to his corner and said to Delaney, 
 "There's no use staying away from this fellow. 
 I can finish him in another round !" 
 
 I said, "For God's sake, Jim, don't! — don't! 
 — don't take any chances! Remember Gentle^ 
 man Jack!" 
 
 At the very beginning of the third round 
 Corbett cut loose in earnest and in less time 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 95 
 
 than it takes to tell it made Sullivan look as 
 if he'd been through a sausage mill. From 
 then on to the end of the match there was noth- 
 ing to it but the shouting, and that was not so 
 uproarious as it might have been, seeing that 
 most of the money had been bet on Sullivan I 
 That was the end of the professional career 
 of the so-called invincible John L. It had 
 taken Corbett twenty-one rounds to do the job. 
 He could have done it in three. But he fought 
 scientifically, played a safe game from start 
 to finish, and followed the advice from his cor- 
 ner and took no chances! 
 
 When Corbett had gone to his room after 
 the fight, a red head appeared over the transom 
 and a shrieky voice cried, "Here's a telegram 
 for you." 
 
 Jim hated that particular head and face, and 
 he shouted with some profanity, "You get 
 away from there!" which it did instanter. It 
 was the head of Robert Fitzsimmons, who aft- 
 erward beat Corbett for. the championship — ^ 
 the very first one to appear after the Sullivan 
 fight. 
 
m THEi FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Corbett became a popular idol at once. He 
 was Irish and a Catholic, and the Irish-Ameri- 
 cans followed pugilism more closely at that 
 time than any other race in the United States. 
 Most of the fighters came from Ireland or 
 England, and the better class of Irish people 
 who had been shocked by many of the esca- 
 pades of John L. welcomed the coming of a 
 good-looking young type of Irishman. These 
 people hoped that for the sake of the Green 
 Isle, now that he had won the championship 
 from Sullivan, Corbett could act decently and 
 be a gentleman so far as it was possible for a 
 pugilist to be. 
 
 Corbett had been known to -Calif omians as 
 "Gentleman Jim," a nickname which now 
 spread all over the country. He was also 
 called "Pompadour Jim," because he wore his 
 hair brushed back like an Indian. 
 
 The Sullivan period had always appealed 
 to saloon and dive keepers and the lower class 
 of humanity generally. The decent element 
 in the country, who believed that boxing should 
 be taught to young boys and that it should 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 97 
 
 be classed as legitimate along with rowing, 
 baseball and the like, welcomed the coming of 
 Corbett. Even before the match he had been 
 popular with decent people. He was clean, 
 good-looking, bright, he did not drink or 
 smoke much, was fairly well educated, and 
 could hold his own in conversation on any or- 
 dinary topic. He was lovable. Women liked 
 him. Everybody from a minister to a boot- 
 black wanted to meet him. He had the glad 
 hand, the "con," better than anybody I knew. 
 As we traveled thousands of people used to 
 meet Corbett wherever we went. They sur- 
 rounded the hotels at which he stopped. Busi- 
 ness in any public house that entertained him 
 would jump from three hundred to a thousand 
 per cent. If we happened to lay over at a 
 railroad junction for an hour or so in order 
 to make connections, the news would spread 
 like the wind and first thing you knew there 
 would be a thousand people standing around, 
 dead still, looking at the champion. Politicians 
 were always eager to meet Corbett. Once 
 when William McKinley was governor of 
 
98 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Ohio he and Corbett had a long chat in a par- 
 lor of the principal hotel in Columbus. As 
 they walked down the steps into the office, a 
 drummer standing near said, "There goes Cor- 
 bett!" .Instantly there was a furor, and an- 
 other drummer standing near asked, "Who is 
 the little man with Sim?" 
 
 If Corbett had availed of his chances at this 
 time he would have become a very rich man. 
 Money came to us from all directions. Apart 
 from the profits of the show, newspapers and 
 magazines paid him for signed articles. 
 Shortly after the fight we happened to be in 
 Toledo and one of the leading glass factories 
 there figured out that it would be a great 
 scheme to have a paper-weight made of Cor- 
 bett's right hand and advertise it as the "hand 
 that knocked Sullivan out." One of the con- 
 cern's drummers interviewed Corbett and 
 swelled him up a bit with hot air, and he agreed 
 to let them make the plaster cast of his hand 
 — for nothing. But I came into the room, 
 found the plaster on his arm, asked him what 
 he was doing and when he told me I broke 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 99 
 
 the thing oiF. Then we renewed negotiations 
 and the glass people paid one thousand dollars 
 for the privilege. Clothes, cigars and other 
 articles were named after him. He would um- 
 pire a haseball game and get a thousand dol- 
 lars. Later he made a tour of the country, 
 playing first base with professional teams in 
 regular minor league championship games, 
 and got from five hundred dollars to one thou- 
 sand dollars for each appearance. And it is 
 a certain fact that throughout his entire tour 
 as first baseman, with different teams, Corbett 
 did not make more than three errors. He could 
 not bat, but every time he played he would 
 manage to get on the right side of the oppos- 
 ing pitcher and persuade him to let him make 
 a couple of hits. 
 
 I should judge that during the twelvemonth 
 following the event at New Orleans Corbett 
 and I cleaned up at least three hundred thou- 
 sand dollars. We got one thousand dollars to 
 appear in New Orleans the night after the 
 fight. Our share in Birmingham was one thou- 
 sand two hundred dollars, and in Atlanta, one 
 
100 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 thousand five hundred dollars. Madison 
 Square Garden on Saturday night yielded us 
 six thousand six hundred dollars, and in Bos- 
 ton we got five thousand dollars for a Monday 
 night. We took one thousand five hundred 
 dollars from Providence and three thousand 
 two hundred dollars from Philadelphia for 
 one-night appearances. These instances only 
 go to show the way money flowed in on us. 
 After the fight Corbett appeared gratis at the 
 benefit given to Sullivan at Madison Square 
 Garden, from which the ex-champion received 
 thirteen thousand five hundred dollars. 
 
IV 
 
 The defeat of Sullivan, even more than the 
 victory of Corbett, gave a new interest to pu- 
 gilism the world over. The hypnotic spell 
 which the Boston giant had cast over the peo- 
 ple had been broken. The Goliath in him had 
 been slain and, as usual, the David who did 
 the job was little more than a stripling from 
 California. And the mourners went about the 
 streets; Sullivan was not invincible, after all. 
 The man who could scare his opponents to 
 death by scowling at them was not a god, but 
 a creature of flesh and blood, subject to the 
 things that flesh and blood are heir to. And 
 now that the big dog had been licked, the other 
 dogs began to come out of their holes and 
 growl at him. If Corbett had remained cham- 
 pion as long as Sullivan did, there would prob- 
 ably have grown up in him the same hypnotic 
 power over the aspirants of the pugilistic world 
 
 101 
 
102 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 that John L. had so effectively exerted. We 
 are too apt to think that these men come only 
 "one in a box" — ^that they never had and never 
 tvill have an equal. But those on the inside 
 know that no man deteriorates more rapidly 
 than the prize-fighter. He has many things 
 to drag him down and small moral stamina 
 with which to resist. The man who was in- 
 vincible a few months ago might not to-day 
 defeat a third-rate fighter. That's why the 
 public loses so much money on its old favorites ; 
 it doesn't know conditions. 
 
 The New Orleans event, like all others, 
 brought in its wake the usual line of dissen- 
 sion and rows. Few persons gave Corbett un- 
 qualified credit for his work. The Sullivan 
 public claimed that the big fellow had been 
 beaten because he was too old to fight; that 
 he had "gone to the well" once too often. 
 Sporting writers argued that anybody could 
 have done the job twice as quickly as Corbett 
 did it — Fitzsimmons, Slavin, Jim Hall, Peter 
 Jackson — anybody, in fact I 
 
 Just then a man came from Ireland who had 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 103 
 
 a terrible punch. His name was Peter Maher, 
 and he became troublesome to Corbett at once. 
 Fitzsimmons, too, was coming to the front. 
 Even at this early period, Corbett felt a fear 
 of Fitzsimmons. He never had any use for 
 a battle with him. He even went out of his 
 way to avoid him. In fact, Corbett did not 
 want to meet anybody with a punch. A clever 
 boxer takes a chance when he goes into the 
 ring with any man who has the power to de- 
 liver a knock-out blow, for cleverness in box- 
 ing has its limits. The scientific man always 
 has a fear of going into the ring with a wild 
 boxer, because there's no telling when such a 
 fellow may, with his tremendous strength, 
 break through his opponent's guard — no mat- 
 ter how skilful the latter may be — and land 
 a punch that will put him out of business. 
 Even Mike Monahan, the gas-house giant 
 whom Corbett boxed in Philadelphia, was dan- 
 gerous, because he might just close his eyes 
 and go in, bing, bang, and hit you on the jaw. 
 Now, Robert Fitzsimmons was that kind of 
 a man. Jle would take one wild chance to 
 
104 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 knock the other fellow out. He always had 
 sense enough to get to his feet and fool around 
 and finally come across, even in a haphazard 
 way, with what later became famous as his 
 "solar plexus" blow, 
 
 Robert Fitzsimmons was the most remark- 
 able man of my time. He was ungainly in 
 the last degree, resembling more than any 
 other man I know the animal that has made 
 Australia famous. He had pipe-stem legs, the 
 waist and shoulders of a Hercules, and the 
 neck and head of a kangaroo. He was the 
 most remarkable boxer — the most remarkable 
 fighter — of our time. He had strength, fight- 
 ing sense and terrific power in his left arm as 
 well as in his right. Corbett, being a careful 
 observer of all things pertaining to pugilism, 
 was well aware of Fitzsimmons' quality, and 
 was careful to side-step the issue of a contest 
 with him whenever it was raised. 
 
 Just then Charley Mitchell, who by this time 
 had lost control of Slavin, came to America 
 with Jun Hall, of Australia, and Squire 
 Abingdon Baird. Baird was a typical Eng- 
 
Bob Armstrong and Bob Fitzsimmons 
 
Kid McCoy 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 105 
 
 lish sporting squire. He had all kinds of 
 money and came to New York for the pur- 
 pose of bringing about a match between Jim 
 Hall and Fitzsimmons. This match was made. 
 At the same time Mitchell was anxious to fight 
 Corbett and he got his man Baird to go down 
 to the World office and put fifty one-thousand- 
 dollar bills on the table for a match with the 
 new champion. I found out that he was go- 
 ing to do this, and with the assistance of Le- 
 ander Richardson, I scoured the city and raised 
 an equal amount. When QBaird put his money 
 down on the table, which was only intended 
 as a bluff, I slammed fifty thousand dollars 
 down on top of it and said, "The match is 
 made !" 
 
 Mitchell, seeing Baird's money covered, but 
 not wanting it to go that way, made so many 
 impossible conditions that finally the side bet 
 was cut down to five thousand dollars. 
 
 Just a word about Baird in passing. It 
 was said that that gentleman had on his per- 
 son when he came to America fifty thousand 
 pounds. He went to New Orleans with 
 
106 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Mitchell and Hall. Hall fought Fitzsimmons. 
 Fitzsimmons knocked Hall out in four rounds, 
 and a week later Squire Baird was found dead 
 in a back room of the St. Charles Hotel with- 
 out a cent in his pocket ! 
 
 After the Hall-Fitzsimmons event we ar- 
 ranged a match between Corbett and Mitchell 
 which was to take place in Jacksonville, Flor- 
 ida. The purse was twenty-five thousand dol- 
 lars, and was offered by the leading citizens 
 of Jacksonville as an inducement for us to go 
 to that city. Corbett went to !Mayport to train 
 and Mitchell to St. Augustine. There was no 
 law on the statute books of Florida that pro- 
 hibited a boxing contest, but Governor Mitch- 
 ell decided that there should be no bout in that 
 state. We fought the governor's decree in the 
 Supreme Court, which decided that we were 
 right and that the chief executive could not 
 stop us. Meantime a rumor was started that 
 we were going to hold the match just over the 
 state line in Georgia. Then the governor of 
 Georgia got busy and ordered out a thousand 
 militiamen to patrol the border and not let 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 107 
 
 us in under any circumstances. Next, Gover- 
 nor Mitchell ordered his "mountain crackers" 
 from all parts of Florida to Jacksonville to 
 suppress the small bunch of terrible pugilists 
 that had come on from New York. 
 
 The evening before the fight the Supreme 
 Court granted an injunction restraining the 
 governor from interfering with us. And 
 strange to say, the first people who paid for 
 their tickets to see the fight were the mem- 
 bers of the militia who had been ordered to 
 stop it. There was no law, no police to pro- 
 tect us in the arena, so we had to protect our- 
 selves. Right back of Mitchell's corner, armed 
 to the teeth and prepared for any action that 
 might come up, were Bat Masterson and a 
 man named Converse, who had been brought 
 from Colorado to protect the interests of the 
 Cockney. Back of our corner was a similar 
 number of men who had been imported from 
 New York City with the idea that Mitchell 
 and Corbett were going to shoot up the place. 
 Each man's second carried a six-shooter, but 
 there was no more occasion for all this arma- 
 
108 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 ment than there is for a policeman in a kinder- 
 garten. 
 
 The fight was very short; in fact, the audi- 
 ence did not have time to get seated. Mitchell 
 never had any right to go into the ring. I 
 doubt if he weighed over one hundred and sixty 
 pounds, while Corbett weighed about one hun- 
 dred and eighty-five. Apart from the purse 
 of twenty-five thousand dollars, there was a 
 side bet of ten thousand dollars — half of which 
 had been put up by poor Baird, who was now 
 dead. Mitchell could easily have demanded 
 that the entire thing be split. In fact, we be- 
 lieved that he would. Thousands of dollars 
 were bet that he would never go into the ring, 
 and one of the greatest surprises of my life 
 was when I saw this natty little Englishman, 
 with his head stuck up in the air, wending his 
 way to his comer. 
 
 The referee was honest John Kelley, and in 
 our comer was Delaney, who had always sec- 
 onded Corbett, a man named John Donald- 
 son, and Jack Dempsey, the famous light- 
 weight, who at that time was half mad and who 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 109 
 
 had been taken into Corbett's training camp 
 more out of charity than anything else. But 
 Dempsey happened to play a very important 
 part before the event was finished. 
 
 The battle started. Mitchell, as certain as 
 a little game cock, walked up to Corbett and 
 struck the first blow. Corbett returned vi- 
 ciously. He took no chance, as it was always 
 his rule to do nothing in the first round but 
 size up the enemy's tactics and get rid of his 
 ring fear. The second round Corbett went at 
 Mitchell viciously and knocked him down. 
 But no sooner was the Englishman on the 
 ground than he began uttering disgusting and 
 awful things about Corbett, with the idea of 
 making "Pompadour Jim" lose his head. Cor- 
 bett grew white with rage. On the count of 
 nine, Mitchell was on his feet. Corbett landed 
 on him and Mitchell promptly went down with 
 a blow which practically lost him the fight. 
 Corbett, stung to the point of madness by his 
 opponent's vile epithets, lost his head, and it 
 was evident to all that unless something were 
 done he would strike or kick the prostrate man 
 
110 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 and lose by a foul. At this moment, to the 
 amazement of us all, crazy Jack Dempsey 
 leaped over the ropes and ran over to Corbett 
 and actually slapped him in the face. This 
 brought the "Pompadour" to his senses. 
 
 If the referee had performed his duty prop- 
 erly, the mere fact of Dempsey having jumped 
 into the ring would have lost us the battle, but 
 he overlooked it. We received thirty-five thou- 
 sand dollars for this bout. 
 
 Not long after this fight we headed for Eng- 
 land. I went over about four weeks in ad- 
 vance and arranged with Sir Augustus Harris 
 for Corbett's appearance at the Drury Lane 
 Theater in Gentleman Jack, Punch had a big 
 story about Harris taking Garrick's bust off 
 the pedestal at the venerable playhouse and 
 putting Corbett's in its place. The claim of 
 a pugilist being an actor was a joke, but the 
 idea of his appearing at Drury Lane was pre- 
 posterous. Sir Augustus Harris began to 
 weaken under the attacks by the press, but I 
 had paid him a thousand pounds in advance 
 as an evidence of good faith, and it was im- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 111 
 
 possible for him to break his contract. How- 
 ever, the day before the opening, he ran away 
 to Belgium, afraid to face the consequences 
 on the first night. 
 
 As I had had a lot of experience in stage 
 direction and was myself playing Gentleman 
 Jack's father in the piece, I planned a little 
 surprise for the first-night audience. I ar- 
 ranged to give the English public a view of 
 an American athletic club on the night of a 
 sparring contest. Over there they have noth- 
 ing but the National Sporting Club, where 
 they pull off their matches — a little building 
 just across from Co vent Garden with a seat- 
 ing capacity of about four hundred, and it is 
 quite a task to get a seat or to be one of the 
 four hundred. This club was fathered by the 
 Earl of Lonsdale. It had been the habit of 
 the National Sporting Club up to that time 
 to treat pugilists like dogs. Fighting gentle- 
 men had to go in and out the back way, while 
 the gentlemen who promoted and bet on the 
 fight went in the front way. They naturally 
 expected to treat Corbett in the same manner. 
 
112 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 but I took a stand against this attitude at once. 
 When Corbett arrived they invited him in the 
 usual way to come for a bout, and he replied 
 that he vras not in the habit of going to clubs 
 unless he went there as a guest. The English- 
 men treated this ultimatum in a very upstage 
 manner, and Corbett practically told them all 
 to go to the devil. 
 
 As I said before, Corbett had worked in the 
 Bank of Nevada, which was practically con- 
 trolled by John W. Mackay. Mackay's son, 
 Clarence, was very proud of him, and when 
 the champion arrived he and Lord Hay took 
 him away from the sporting club and made a 
 lion of him. 
 
 When I began to prepare the stage at Drury 
 Lane for the production of Gentleman Jack 
 I brought in a lot of carpenters and had cir- 
 cus seats built on the enormous stage for about 
 one thousand people. Then I engaged sixty 
 regular "supers," placed them around on these 
 seats and started in to rehearse them. Arthur 
 Collins, who was then stage manager and who 
 is now producer and general director of all the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN US 
 
 Dniry Lane plays, came in during rehearsal, 
 and seeing but sixty "supers" sparsely scat- 
 tered about on the seats, said, "What are you 
 going to do for the rest of your people?" 
 
 "Leave that to me," said L 
 
 "Good," said he, and put on his hat and went 
 home. 
 
 Then I circulated all over town a ticket bear- 
 ing this inscription: "This Will Admit You 
 Feee to the Drury Lane Theater, at the 
 Stage Door, at Ten Minutes After Ten 
 Each Evening, in Time to See the Spar- 
 ring Contest Between J. J. Corbett and 
 Professor J. J. Donaldson." 
 
 I sent out about ten thousand of these for 
 the first night, and when the time came they 
 had to order out Scotland Yard to keep the 
 people away from the stage door. Collins 
 came rushing to me and exclaimed, "What are 
 you going to do with the mob out there?" 
 
 "Just you wait and see," said I. 
 
 "All right," said he, and went about his 
 business. 
 
 Then with Connie McVey and two other of 
 
114 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 our heavy men I went to the stage door and 
 we passed in about one thousand people and 
 told them to occupy seats on the stage. Then 
 I jumped into the center of the ring behind the 
 great curtain, told all the people what was 
 going to happen and what they were expected 
 to do. Every time my hand went up — I was 
 to be referee of the fight, remember — they were 
 to yell. When it came down, they were to 
 stop. They quickly "caught on" and it was 
 a wonderful success, so wonderful that Cle- 
 ment Scott the next day in the Daily Tele- 
 graph devoted a whole column to a description 
 of this particular scene, claiming that not even 
 the big mob scene in the performance of Julius 
 Caesar, which had just been given in London, 
 had equaled it. 
 
 But almost immediately the critics, having 
 found out how simply the "great scene" was 
 accomplished, came out and gave Scott the 
 laugh. 
 
 Corbett awakened me at five o'clock the next 
 morning with the newspaper criticisms and we- 
 ell thought we would nm a year. But it hap- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 115 
 
 pened to us as it has happened to many other 
 Americans who have gone to London and ap- 
 parently made a great hit. The public gave 
 us a wide berth; we did no business; and at 
 the end of six weeks closed at the Drury Lane 
 about fifteen hundred pounds to the bad. I 
 was anxious to see the country, however, and 
 persuaded Corbett that it would be a bad 
 scheme to go back to America without making 
 our proposed tour. So we played all of the 
 large cities of Great Britain, with the follow- 
 ing results: In Edinburgh we took in eight 
 hundred pounds in eight performances; in 
 Glasgow, four hundred pounds in eight per- 
 formances; in Newcastle, about three hundred 
 pounds ; and in Leeds, two hundred ; in Liver- 
 pool, eight hundred pounds, the best on our 
 trip; Islington, four hundred pounds; Man- 
 chester, four hundred pounds — and so on. In 
 Birmingham, which was supposed to be the 
 home of all fighters, we played to about eight 
 hundred pounds for eight performances. 
 
 The falling off of receipts in Birmingham 
 was due to the fact that on the first day of 
 
116 THE FIGHTING MxlN 
 
 our visit there, which happened to be the 
 Fourth of July, Corbett was going down the 
 main street with one of the ladies of the com- 
 pany who wore an American flag in her coat. 
 A fellow insulted the woman and Corbett hit 
 him on the jaw, which created a lot of talk. 
 Another thing was, they wanted to entertain 
 Corbett,. and their idea was to take him to a 
 rat pit and have a champion bulldog kill a 
 thousand rats in a thousand seconds. Corbett 
 was disgusted and horrified at the idea and 
 would not go, and that settled him in Birming- 
 ham! 
 
 In England, Ireland and Scotland Corbett 
 was regarded exactly as he was in the United 
 States. He was looked upon as a curiosity. 
 The people would stop and stare at him, but 
 they would not pay any money to go into the 
 theater and see him act. We lost on the Brit- 
 ish tour five thousand pounds, but we went 
 right through with it — the tour, not the money. 
 Beyond giving up their money to see a pu- 
 gilist act, which they did not believe in, the 
 English people were very kind to Corbett. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 1191 
 
 This was due no less perhaps to a certain hos- 
 tility they felt toward their own defeated war- 
 rior than to the exceeding wholesomeness of 
 the American champion. They didn't resent 
 Mitchell so much because he had been beaten 
 at Jacksonville, but because of certain per- 
 formances of his which were deemed outre, 
 even in a prize-fighter. He had beaten a po- 
 liceman in Piccadilly once and served time for 
 doing it. In fact, the decent people over there 
 regarded Corbett as a great relief after men 
 like John L. and their own "Charley." 
 
 After we got through with England, we 
 went to Paris, where Corbett appeared at the 
 Folies Bergere for ten days. We cleaned up 
 ten thousand dollars in the gay city, which 
 made up part of the losses we had accumulated 
 on the other side of the Channel. 
 
 In Ireland Corbett's uncle, the Beverend 
 John Corbett, had been one of the fighting men 
 of the Land League. I met him in London 
 — a plain, modest Irish priest. His parish was 
 in Tuam, County Galway, on the west coast 
 of Ireland, and Corbett, before returning to 
 
118 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 America, wanted to go there and give a benefit 
 for a new church which his uncle was build- 
 ing in that town. And Tuam, Galway, you 
 should have seen it! We and all our company 
 paid our fares across to Ireland and to a place 
 that American tourists rarely go through. I 
 dare say they don't get one stranger a year. 
 Seventy-five per cent, of the natives could not 
 speak English. They spoke in Irish. They 
 had no telephones, no electricity and the like. 
 To show you how unsophisticated these peo- 
 ple were, the week before we appeared in 
 Tuam, Dion Boucicault's CoUj the Shaugh- 
 raunij sl play depicting Ireland and its peas- 
 antry, had been performed there by a company 
 headed by Dan Lewis, an American .negro, 
 who played "Con"! — and they stood for it! 
 This, by the way, was the first time the 
 Shaughraun had been played in Tuam. One 
 would, therefore, not be surprised that in vis- 
 iting this little town in the west of Ireland 
 we created more of a sensation that we would 
 have created in a little town in America or 
 Canada. There were great crowds to welcome 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 119 
 
 us, and our man Corbett, the prize-fighter, 
 nephew of the priest, raised enough money in 
 one performance to build a church in Tuam. 
 
 John Redmond, speaking in the British Par- 
 liament a short time after, said that the action 
 of this "low-down pugilist" was one of the fin- 
 est things he'd ever heard of. 
 
 I went back to America on the Majestic, 
 a week ahead of the others, and to show you 
 how the interest in pugilism had grown, when 
 we cast anchor in the bay, the steamer was 
 surrounded by reporters from all the New 
 York papers, trying to get an interview. They 
 shouted for Brady and I was interviewed from 
 the side of the boat, we shouting questions back 
 and forth across the strip of water that sep- 
 arated their tiny craft from the liner. The 
 one particular thing they wanted to know was 
 whether Corbett would fight Fitzsimmons, 
 Maher or somebody else. It is almost impos- 
 sible to describe the interest that was taken by 
 the public in pugilism at that time. 
 
 It was a stormy time when Corbett got back 
 to America. Pugilism had gone forward by 
 
120 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 leaps and bounds. There were twenty men 
 eager for an opportunity to meet the cham- 
 pion. 
 
 While we'd been in Europe the Fitzsimmons 
 prestige had developed wonderfully in this 
 country. He was now the acknowledged mid- 
 dleweight champion. Besides this, he had 
 boxed with heavyweights and had won several 
 remarkable matches by clean-cut knock-outs, 
 and he stood ready and willing to meet Cor- 
 bett for the heavyweight championship, not- 
 withstanding the fact that he claimed to tip 
 the scales at about one hundred and sixty-five 
 pounds. To be sure, Corbett weighed very 
 little more than this — not more than one hun- 
 dred and eighty-five pounds at his best. But, 
 although Fitzsimmons was light in the legs, 
 he was a heavyweight above the waist. 
 
 Furthermore, Corbett about this time had 
 got ring fear. Naturally, every man hates to 
 risk the crown he has won. It is a one-sided 
 affair at best. He has everything to lose and 
 nothing to gain. Corbett was earning any- 
 where from seventy-five thousand dollars to 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 121 
 
 one hundred thousand dollars a year, he was 
 living on the fat of the land, it all looked 
 mighty good to him, and he hated to take a 
 chance of losing it. We were all in clover, 
 for that matter; everything was going swim- 
 mingly. But victory has its worries no less 
 than defeat. Every triumph brings its appre- 
 hensions. And we began to realize that if the 
 public once got it into their heads that Cor- 
 bett was afraid of Fitzsimmons, this revenue 
 would immediately disappear. 
 
 And that which we feared came upon us. 
 On our arrival in New York from Europe, 
 and on Corbett exhibiting a reluctance to ac- 
 cept the challenges that Fitzsimmons had re- 
 peatedly hurled at him, our audiences began 
 to melt away. Something had to be done! 
 
 About this time an Irish sailor loomed above 
 the pugilistic horizon on the Pacific Coast. 
 The name of this newcomer was Tom Sharkey. 
 Also Peter Maher, on accoimt of his wonderful 
 knock-out punch — although he knew little or 
 nothing about boxing — was rapidly becoming 
 an idoL Charles ("Kid") McCoy, another 
 
122 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 great boxer, had come to the front "during our 
 tour in Europe. McCoy weighed about one 
 hundred and sixty pounds and had a remark- 
 able blow — a short snappy blow, like the snap 
 of a whip. He hit Sharkey at the Lenox Ath- 
 letic Club with this blow and knocked him at 
 least six or eight feet. In fact, Sharkey went 
 into the air, described a short curve and hit 
 the floor with the back of his head. 
 
 With all these aspirants after his crown, 
 Corbett lived a very unhappy life just about 
 this time. Each of the would-be champions 
 had friends who bragged about their idol and 
 who sneered at Corbett's reticence. It was im- 
 possible to treat their taunting with dignified 
 silence, since the sporting writers in the news- 
 papers first began to hint at a curious reluc- 
 tance on Corbett's part and then came out 
 openly and charged him with cowardice. And 
 so we realized that something must be done, 
 and done quickly. 
 
 Understand, Corbett was not physically 
 afraid of anybody. It was ring fear that pos- 
 sessed him. There was more than the danger 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 123 
 
 of a mere drubbing in the ring; there was the 
 danger of losing prestige. So we cast about 
 for a means to avoid this. We sought a way 
 by which to interest the public mind with any 
 kind of a match. This was only a way of tem- 
 porizing, I admit, but it was better than noth- 
 ing. Peter Jackson had remained in the game 
 and was constantly after Corbett, and the lat- 
 ter was perfectly willing to meet him because 
 he knew that he "had him safe." But some- 
 how or other they could not agree on terms 
 and all attempts to arrange a match were 
 fruitless. In the midst of oiu* plight a strap- 
 ping fellow from Australia named Steve 
 O'Donnell loomed up. O'Donnell was a won- 
 derfully clever boxer, but lacked stamina and 
 ring wisdom. 
 
 So Corbett and myself hit upon a scheme of 
 staving off the aspirants by shoving O'Don- 
 nell into the champion's place, as it were. We 
 tried to force Fitzsimmons to make a match 
 with the newcomer from Australia, and to 
 bring this about went so far as to put up ten 
 thousand dollars with the New York Herald, 
 
124 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 But Fitzsimmons was too wary. He wanted 
 Corbett or nothing! You see, all this time 
 Fitzsimmons was gaining more and more rep- 
 utation by meeting everybody and defeating 
 them. We felt that he was contemptuous of 
 O'Donnell's prowess, that he considered that 
 that worthy had not made good sufficiently in 
 the ring to entitle him to such a match as we 
 were trying to force on Fitzsimmons, and that, 
 in consequence, lanky Bob would gain nothing 
 in reputation from a contest with O'Donnell. 
 
 So, to bolster up O'Donnell's prestige and in 
 a way to bring him within the challenge zone, 
 we very foolishly arranged for him to meet 
 Jake Kilrain in Boston in an eight-round con- 
 test. 
 
 O'Donnell made a miserable exhibition and 
 failed to beat Kilrain, who was an old man, and 
 that settled O'Donnell then and there. I never 
 saw a more remarkable example of the opera- 
 tion of ring psychology than during this 
 match. It will be remembered that Kilrain 
 had fought Sullivan a marvelously long- 
 drawn-out battle awav back in '89. After 
 
PERMISSON OF ROBERT COSTER 
 
 Jem Mace 
 
 Prize-fighter and sporting man 
 
ptMMictiON or Noccnr costcn 
 
 John Morrissey 
 A champion prize-fighter 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 125 
 
 that he had lain dormant, so far as we know, 
 and had but now been resurrected for this con- 
 test with O'Donnell. It was like bringing back 
 a race-horse that had passed the period of his 
 usefulness and had been relegated to the ped- 
 lar's cart, to race a two-year-old. O'Don- 
 nell was only twenty-two years old and was a 
 perfect specimen of an athlete. It was almost 
 an insult to put him up against such a man as 
 Kilrain. But even men who possess ring wis- 
 dom and coolness in the last degree are apt to 
 have their heads turned by taunting as did 
 "Pompadour Jim" in his fight with Charley 
 Mitchell at Jacksonville. I imagine the Aus- 
 tralian youngster was not used to the cruel 
 guying that is part of ring tactics. 
 
 Be that as it may, John L. Sullivan squatted 
 himself back of Kilrain's corner and Corbett 
 occupied the same position in O'Donnell's cor- 
 ner. Sullivan raved and roasted O'Donnell 
 all through the bout and threw taunting and 
 tantalizing remarks across the ring to Corbett, 
 the new champion. All the retorts that Cor- 
 bett or any one else made had no more effect 
 
12G THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 on the stolid Kilrain than a corn-stalk gad 
 would have on a plow horse. But there is no 
 douht that Sullivan's behavior and remarks 
 were the means of causing O'DonnelFs piti- 
 able exhibition more than any other thing. 
 
 After the bout Sullivan was in Reynolds' 
 Hotel in Boston as O'Donnell, Delaney and 
 myself passed through to catch the midnight 
 train. No sooner did he catch sight of us than 
 he rushed over, grabbed O'Donnell by the arm 
 and started to repeat some of the insulting bal- 
 ly-ragging language he had used during the 
 match. Notwithstanding the fact that Sulli- 
 van was an old man, O'Donnell stood like a 
 chump and took it all, but when, as I thought, 
 the Bostonian had gone far enough, I pushed 
 O'Donnell aside, faced Sullivan and handed 
 him the same kind of abuse he'd given to 
 O'Donnell. This was all a case of bluff on my 
 part, since Sullivan could have crushed me 
 with a blow. But it goes to show that when 
 those fellows got up against anybody with a 
 little nerve they were no good. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 127 
 
 The only prize-fighter who had great pluck 
 outside the ring as well as in it was Charles 
 Mitchell. Mitchell was game and was a 
 fighter in the full sense of the word. He was 
 cruel, but he was the nerviest one I ever knew. 
 As an instance of his pluck, when he was in 
 New York, trying to get Corbett to meet 
 Slavin, the former was playing at Miner's 
 Theater on the Bowery. One night he was 
 in the bar room next door to the theater, sur- 
 rounded with the cream of East Side fighting 
 men, who were his friends, when in came 
 Mitchell and Sullivan. After a little, Mitchell 
 went over to Corbett, had a few words with 
 him and invited him to go down into the cellar 
 and fight him then and there, and this in spite 
 of the fact that Corbett was surrounded by his 
 adherents. 
 
 The farce between O'Donnell and Kilrain, 
 instead of helping us out of our dilemma by 
 appeasing the public clamor for a match, only 
 served to stir up new rancor. The press went 
 at us with renewed energy and vigor. We 
 
128 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 stood the lambasting that they gave us as long 
 as we could, and at last realized that it was ab- 
 solutely necessary that Corbett meet Fitzsim- 
 mons. 
 
iThe general demand for a match between 
 Corbett and Fitzsimmons became at last a pub- 
 lic clamor, and notwithstanding Corbett's aver- 
 sion to meeting "lanky Bob," we found it im- 
 possible to avoid the issue* And right here we 
 were confronted with a paradoxical situation. 
 Although we had made the match because of 
 public insistence and for no other reason, there 
 wasn't a state in the Union that would let us 
 pull off the contest in its territory. No sooner 
 were the articles signed than we received won- 
 derful offers from all parts of the world. Daw- 
 son, in the Klondike, ojBfered us one hundred 
 thousand dollars to go up there and fight. flSut 
 that was out of the question. Presently came 
 Dan Stewart, from Dallas, Texas, a very per- 
 suasive gentleman with a good front and 
 plenty of money. He convinced us that it 
 was possible to have the fight in his state and 
 
 18a 
 
180 THE [FIGHTINGS MAN 
 
 offered us forty thousand dollars to go down 
 there and pull it off. To allay our doubts, he 
 deposited five thousand dollars to cover train- 
 ing expenses. So we went to Texas and 
 started in on a race track at San Antonio to 
 get ready for the contest. Fitzsimmons estab- 
 lished training quarters at some place near 
 Dallas, I think. 
 
 Almost as soon as we got there Kiovernor 
 Culbertson warned us not to fight. We re- 
 torted that there was nothing on the statute 
 books of Texas to prevent the contest. The 
 governor replied that even so, he would not 
 allow it to take place in the state, and he asked 
 us in a very nice way to refrain and leave. 
 Stewart, who was a political power in Texas 
 at that time, assured us that the governor 
 would not interfere, that he — Stewart — ^had 
 the advice of high-priced lawyers to that ef- 
 fect. The governor and Stewart engaged in 
 a battle of words in the newspapers and finally 
 the governor called a special session of the leg- 
 islature, which cost the state about twenty- 
 Eve thousand dollars. The law-makers were 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 131 
 
 summoned from all parts of that vast state to 
 meet in Austin on a week's notice. They met, 
 the governor sent in a message demanding the 
 enactment of a law prohibiting pugilism or 
 boxing of any kind in the state. The law was 
 promptly passed and all our hopes of contest- 
 ing in Texas were overl 
 
 Let me say right here that when this match 
 was made moving pictures were just coming 
 into vogue. There were no moving-picture 
 theaters. But I foresaw the value of such a 
 thing and when the match was made demanded 
 that as a bonus to me for bringing it about I 
 should have the picture privilege. OBut very 
 soon Fitzsimmons lound out that I had this 
 and Stewart realized what a plum he had given 
 away. The picture privilege for the Corbett- 
 Fitzsimmons contest eventually realized for its 
 owners more than seven hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Disgusted with the treatment he had re- 
 ceived in Texas, Stewart jumped to Arkansas, 
 where, also, there was no law on the statute 
 books to prevent a boxing contest. At his re- 
 
182 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 quest, the Corbett party went on to Hot 
 Springs in that state and installed themselves 
 in training quarters in the suburbs of the town. 
 Fitzsimmons refused to leave Texas. I firmly 
 believe that at this point Fitzsimmons was 
 afraid of Corbett and did not want to meet 
 him, or that he wanted to break oif the present 
 match and make an entirely new one and by 
 so doing deprive me of the moving-picture 
 rights. 
 
 Upon our advent Governor Clark rose up on 
 his hind haunches and declared there should 
 be no pugilism in Arkansas if he could help it. 
 The citizens of Hot Springs replied that there 
 would be a fight in Hot Springs even if they 
 had to surround the town with volunteer militia 
 and prevent the invasion by the governor if he 
 attempted to interfere. 
 
 The sheriff of Hot Springs at that time was 
 a man named Reb Houpt, and he stood in with 
 the citizens of the town. The governor knew 
 this and so summoned Houpt to Little Rock 
 and told him that if he did not produce Corbett 
 within a week he would remove him. This left 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 133 
 
 us in a very dubious position. The citizens of 
 Hot Springs urged us to pay no attention to 
 the governor's talk. And then, as things were 
 getting very warm indeed, to the amazement 
 of everybody, Mr. Lanky Bob Fitzsimmons 
 crossed the Arkansas state line at Texarkana 
 and deliberately gave himself up to two officers 
 who had been sent by Governor Clark to meet 
 him. Right there it looked as if Fitzsimmons 
 did not want to fight! 
 
 Corbett by this time had got himself into 
 magnificent condition. We were all very san- 
 guine that he would win and I honestly believe 
 to this day that if we had not been stopped in 
 Arkansas, Corbett would have beaten the Cor- 
 nishman easily. 
 
 After the arrest of Fitzsimmons, who was 
 promptly taken to Little Rock, we realized 
 that Corbett could not fight the battle by him- 
 self, and so accepted a very polite invitation 
 from the governor to visit him at the capital. 
 When we got there we found that the governor 
 had put Fitzsimmons in charge of a sheriff 
 called Jesse Hurd, who was the most villain- 
 
X84i THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Dus-looking man I had ever seen and who had 
 the proud distinction of having killed seven- 
 teen men. Hurd and Houpt were exceedingly- 
 jealous of each other as man-killers. Hurd 
 felt keenly that his rival was after the laurels 
 which patience no less than enterprise had 
 placed on his hrow and that he would avail 
 of any provocation, however slight, that did 
 not put him heyond the pale of the law, to 
 bring his own line of achievements up to that 
 of his enemy. The margin was a small one. 
 Houpt had killed sixteen men. The influx of 
 boxers and their adherents not only gave 
 Houpt a chance to cut another notch in his 
 gun stock, but made it incumbent for Hurd 
 to maintain his superiority. So, you see, we 
 Svere in the position of being compelled to "pay 
 the freight'* should the ambition or caprice of 
 (either of these gentlemen prompt him to act 
 on any so-called "provocation." In conse- 
 guence it behooved us to walk very "thin" 
 indeed. 
 
 It was unfortunate, under the circumstances. 
 
THE FIGHTINGS MAN 135 
 
 that the night before we were to meet the gov- 
 ernor one of our party named O'Farrell had 
 run into Jesse Hurd somewhere in the town 
 and had made some injudicious remarks about 
 the attitude of the state toward this contest. 
 Hurd promptly grabbed O'Farrell by the 
 back of the neck and took him to the town jail. 
 I learned of the affair about midnight and 
 called the governor up on the telephone — ^we 
 were then in Little Rock. I told him what 
 Hm-d had done and reminded him of the fact 
 that he'd guaranteed us protection if we would 
 come to the capital, and demanded the release 
 of Q'Farrell. At the same time I made some 
 pretty strong remarks about Hurd to the gov- 
 ernor. While I was at breakfast next morn- 
 ing I saw Hurd enter the room. From his 
 looks, I judged that the governor had told hira 
 what I said about him and had reprimanded 
 him for what he had done. He walked over to 
 where Fitzsimmons was sitting and I kne\^ 
 from the way he looked around the room as 
 he spoke to that gentleman that he was asking 
 
136 THEI FIGHTING MAN 
 
 where that man Brady was. Fitzsimmons 
 pointed to me and Hurd promptly rose and 
 walked over to my table. 
 
 "Is this Brady ?'^ he demanded. 
 
 "Yes," said I. 
 
 ]My two hands were on the table and I was 
 shivering in my shoes. It was lucky I had the 
 presence of mind to put my hands where he 
 could see them. If I had not done so, there 
 is no question, he would have killed me then 
 and there and then reported that he did it in 
 self-defense. He saw that I had outwitted 
 him and stood looking me through and 
 through for a few moments, then snarled 
 something and turned on his heel and walked 
 back to Fitzsimmons. That was the narrowest 
 escape I ever had in my pugilis*tic experience. 
 I've often thought that if I had been less con- 
 spicuous at the time, that if I'd been some in- 
 offensive citizen who had been rash enough to 
 comment on any act of this arrogant gentle- 
 man, he would have assassinated me, even if 
 I'd held my hands high in the air as a token 
 of my utter defenselessness. But feeling was 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 187 
 
 running so high that Hurd knew that any act 
 of his would have subjected him to a rigid in- 
 vestigation, so he chose the part of wisdom over 
 that of "valor"! 
 
 We met the governor in the state house on 
 noon of that day. At one side of the table was 
 Fitzsimmons in charge of Hurd and at the 
 other sat Corbett in charge of Houpt. The 
 room was filled with newspaper men and fol- 
 lowers of pugilism. The governor sat back, 
 chewed a cigar deliberately for some moments, 
 which added impressiveness to the pronuncia- 
 mento of which he was about to deliver himself, 
 and said: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I have a few words to say to 
 you. I do not propose to do as my brother 
 governor of Texas has done. I shall not put 
 this state to an expense of twenty or thirty 
 thousand dollars by convening the legislature 
 just to pass a law to keep you gentlemen from 
 boxing within our borders* I've a simpler 
 way." 
 
 He turned to the pugilists. 
 
 **I want to tell you this. You, Mr. Fitz- 
 
138 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 simmons, are in charge of our estimable citi- 
 zen, Mr. Jesse Hurd, who has the reputation 
 of having killed seventeen men, and you, ]Mr. 
 Corbett, are in charge of our equally estimable 
 citizen, jVIr. Reb Houpt, who has only killed 
 sixteen men. Remember, there is a keen riv- 
 alry between these gentlemen. It is ]Mr. 
 Houpt's ambition to catch up with ]\Ir. Hurd 
 — and it is Mr. Hurd's ambition to keep ahead 
 of Jlr. Houpt. Now, I instruct both of these 
 officers that if you, Corbett and Fitzsimmons, 
 as much as bat an eye at each other in this state 
 while I am governor of it, you will go back 
 home in a box !" 
 
 Turning to Hurd, His Excellency said, 
 "You understand?" 
 
 "Yep," said Hurd. 
 
 Then the governor looked significantly at 
 Houpt. 
 
 "Yep," said Houpt. 
 
 And then we were politely ushered out of the 
 governor's room, and I never saw a crowd 
 make dust to get out of any state as we did 
 to get out of Arkansas. In fact, we slunk 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 139 
 
 down a side street to find the train to take us 
 to the Tennessee line! Governor Clark had 
 found a way to stop prize-fighting in Arkansas 
 without the help of the legislature. 
 
 This practically settled that contract he- 
 tween Fitzsimmons and Corbett. In fact, we 
 declared the match off ourselves. But it did 
 not discourage Stewart. For a time things 
 remained in statu quo, Corbett went back to 
 showing in the theater and Fitzsimmons went 
 about his own business. The report of our ex- 
 perience in Texas and Arkansas, instead of 
 serving to quiet the public, seemed only to whet 
 its impatience, and it clamored all the more 
 loudly for a battle. 
 
 There was no law on the statute books of 
 Nevada against boxing, but experience had 
 laught us that this meant nothing. However, 
 Stewart, no whit discouraged, w^ent to Carson 
 and in some clever way got next to the gov- 
 ernor — who was a big fat Dutchman — and 
 persuaded him to ask us to come to that state 
 for the contest. This was about eight months 
 after the Hot Springs fiasco. We entered into 
 
140 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 another agreement, but this time I did not get 
 the moving-picture rights. Stewart, by the 
 new contract, was to build an arena at Carson 
 with a seating capacity of twenty thousand 
 and to arrange for the pictures. He was to 
 get fifty per cent, of the profits on all privi- 
 leges and contests and the remainder was to 
 go to Corbett and Fitzsimmons — share and 
 share alike. 
 
 Corbett, his trainer Delaney and the rest of 
 his retinue started for Carson about a month 
 before the event and began to train at a little 
 hotel three miles out of town. Suddenly I be- 
 gan to notice a change in Corbett. He who 
 had always been so intelligently receptive of 
 the suggestion and wisdom of those in whose 
 skill he had confidence became intractable. He 
 became impatient of suggestion or opposition. 
 He wanted to run things his own way. He 
 refused to follow the advice of Delaney, who 
 knew him so well, but instead acted on the ad- 
 vice of Judge Lawler, an old California; 
 friend, who had come to the training quarters 
 and who knew about as much about boxing as 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 141 
 
 a child. During his training he shifted from 
 the methods that he had found so serviceable 
 but which to this genius of progress had be- 
 come old. I honestly believe Corbett lost his 
 chances by the way he prepared himself for 
 battle. 
 
 If I were a superstitious man I might give 
 undue weight to the following incident as a 
 bad omen. Just before Corbett had met Sul- 
 livan and while he was in training, he bought 
 a collie for ten dollars — a wonderfully pugna- 
 cious dog which would tackle anything. There 
 was one thing on earth that Ned loved, 
 and only one, and that was Corbett. And 
 Jim loved the dog for his bravery. Ned 
 always slept at the end of his master's 
 bed and if anybody approached the room 
 he would give a terrible growl. In a word, 
 he was Corbett's protector. Ned was Cor- 
 bett's constant companion during training 
 for the Sullivan fight and went with him to 
 New Orleans. Then he traveled everywhere 
 with his victorious master and made his ap- 
 pearance on the stage with him in the training 
 
142 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 scene in Gentleman Jack. It was Ned's 
 growls that aroused the camp one night when 
 Corbett was training for the Mitchell fight to 
 the fact that some persons had climbed up next 
 to Corbett's room. It looked as if they were 
 there to maim or hurt Corbett. In fact, when 
 they were discovered and shot at, they shot 
 back. Of course, Ned was the hero of the 
 affair. 
 
 When we went to Europe, Jim loaned Ned 
 to John W. Norton and he remained with that 
 gentleman until Norton died. 
 
 When Corbett went to Carson he forgot all 
 about Ned, partly from the fact, I suppose, 
 that his brother Harry had brought from San 
 Francisco a beautiful full-blooded collie for 
 whom Jim had now conceived a deep affec- 
 tion. Not knowing this, I thought it would 
 be a good idea to take Ned with me when I 
 should join Corbett at Carson. I paid Ned's 
 expenses across the continent in the baggage 
 car, took good care of him and anticipated 
 great pleasure in introducing him to Corl^ett 
 again. I found Jim sitting with the beautiful 
 
Jim Jeffries 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 148 
 
 collie dog in his lap. Ned, furiously jealous, 
 sprang at the throat of the dog who had sup- 
 planted him in his old master's affections, and 
 they had a terrible row until Corbett savagely 
 pulled them apart and kicked Ned out of the 
 door into the deep snow. That night Corbett, 
 who slept in a cottage opposite the little hotel 
 where we were training, took the collie and 
 went to bed, and the next morning, outside of 
 Corbett's door, with his nose on the sill, was 
 Ned — frozen stiff I And Corbett lost the 
 fight! 
 
 It became necessary while we were at Car- 
 son to get some young fellow who could 
 "rough" Corbett about. The men we had 
 were stale and knew Corbett's tricks, and De- 
 laney thought it advisable to get somebody to 
 come up there and be a sort of punching bag 
 for the champion — a man who could stand his 
 punches. The trainer said he knew of a young 
 man in San Francisco who would exactly suit 
 the purpose. So he telegraphed on and two 
 days later James J. Jeffries got off the train 
 and became part of the camp. Jeffries and 
 
144 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Corbett used to fight viciously every day and 
 the new arrival could take all that "Pompa- 
 doiu- Jim" could give him, which did not suit 
 the older man at all. Yarns were published 
 in the newspapers about Corbett knocking out 
 Jeffries in practise, but no such thing ever 
 occurred. There was something about this 
 punching bag, Jeffries, that made me and 
 Delaney observe him carefully. We saw that 
 he was a "comer" and I at once made a propo- 
 sition to take him east with me, but he did not 
 want to go. 
 
 The preparation for the taking of moving 
 pictures of this fight was next on the program. 
 A great big rough house was built and four 
 cameras installed, so that if one broke down 
 the others could operate. This was the first 
 time that machines were called in to take pic- 
 tures of any great event — the beginning of it 
 all — ^just an experiment — and nobody knew 
 whether the cameras would work. In fact, in 
 the last round the camera did break down at 
 the most unfortunate moment and failed to get 
 a picture of the blow with which Corbett was 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 145 
 
 finished — the one which Fitzsimmons made fa- 
 mous as the "solar plexus blow." 
 
 At the time of the event the place was full 
 of notables. Senator John J. Ingalls, of Kan- 
 sas, was there as a special writer and it was 
 very amusing to see this very distinguished 
 man as he sat in a box with Mrs. Fitzsimmons, 
 who was constantly loudly coaching her hus- 
 band in terms of the ring. 
 
 At the sound of the bell Corbett began 
 punching and jabbing with his left, which wftS 
 very effective, and for six rounds made a fool 
 of his opponent. In the sixth, Corbett landed 
 on Fitzsimmons and knocked him down. Fitz- 
 simmons took the count. After the fight was 
 over we claimed that he was down longer 
 than ten seconds and that William Mul- 
 doon, who was the referee, favored him at this 
 point. But we did that for effect. The truth 
 of the matter is, Fitzsimmons was not badly 
 hurt in this round and simply did what all ex- 
 perienced boxers do: took the benefit of nine 
 full seconds before getting up. Then Corbett 
 in his endeavor to knock lanky Bob out fought 
 
146 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 himself out and the men returned to their cor- 
 ners. Fitzsimmons recuperated very quickly 
 and was himself again at the beginning of the 
 seventh round. But Corbett never "came 
 back." He grew weaker and weaker, while 
 the enemy grew stronger and stronger until 
 the thirteenth round, when the Cornishman de- 
 livered his famous solar plexus, and that was 
 ^e end of Corbett as champion. 
 
 Corbett got up and tried to Bght Bob after 
 the bell had rung. I jumped into the ring 
 and made a speech and claimed it was all a mis- 
 take and that he was not out — that he had a 
 right to go on. But the verdict was against 
 us; Corbett was taken to his room, broken- 
 hearted, and I believe that he contemplated 
 suicide. 
 
 After the battle Corbett seemed to lose heart 
 in everything. He prepared to go back to San 
 Francisco, declaring that he would never re- 
 turn to the East again. Not long after he 
 Had reached the co^st a mutual friend in San 
 Francisco wired me of "Pompadour Jim's" 
 resolve and I promptly wired back that as 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 147 
 
 I had settled with Stewart I was going to San 
 Francisco to hring Corbett east with me. 
 
 The receipts of this affair — forty-four thou- 
 sand dollars — were very disappointing, but 
 from other sources we got about twenty thou- 
 sand dollars, which went to defray expenses. 
 The pictures made between six hundred 
 thousand and seven hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. They were exhibited everywhere, the 
 world over. Phenomenal prices were paid for 
 state rights — this was the first time moving 
 pictures were shown in high-class theaters. 
 They played The Academy of Music, New 
 York; the Grand Opera House, Chicago, and 
 the Boston Theater to enormous receipts. One 
 machine was sent around the world, operating 
 in Australia, China, Japan, India, South Af- 
 rica and Cairo. I believe that these pictures 
 made more money than any others up to the 
 present time and that it was they which proved 
 the value of moving pictures for great events 
 and for show purposes. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that we were to 
 have fifty per cent, of the picture receipts, Mr, 
 
148 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Stewart took the films to New York, formed a 
 corporation with himself as president and his 
 brother as treasurer, took the entire manage- 
 ment of the thing out of our hands, and left 
 us helpless — thankful for what we could get. 
 I think each man received about eighty thou- 
 sand dollars. 
 
 After the settlement with Stewart, I jumped 
 hack to 'Frisco to find Corbett. He had no 
 more ambition and was reluctant to go east. 
 I told him that already a very strange thing 
 had developed. It was this. Fitzsimmons, al- 
 though having fought a wonderful fight, was 
 distinctly unpopular with the public. I laid 
 before Corbett a little scheme that I had con- 
 ceived and worked out on my way west. We 
 would take advantage of Fitzsimmons' unpop- 
 ularity and by a little engineering and schem- 
 ing persuade the public that "lanky Bob" had 
 actually been knocked out in the sixth round 
 at Carson City and that Corbett had been 
 robbed of the match. The scheme was imme- 
 diately to start east, oppose the new champion 
 at every point, play against him, give him a 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 149 
 
 dose of his own medicine, nag and bait him in 
 the way he used to nag and bait Corbett, turn 
 the tables on him, make him the pursued in- 
 stead of the pursuer — as he used to be — put 
 Corbett in the position of the man clamoring 
 for justice and Fitzsimmons in the hateful po- 
 sition of the man denying justice, and all this 
 time we were frequently to keep demanding 
 another fight and prove or try to prove to the 
 public that Fitzsimmons was afraid to meet 
 Corbett again. 
 
 Following out this project we played 
 against Fitzsimmons in Denver and again in 
 Kansas City. Remember, Fitzsimmons had 
 had a play written for himself in which he was 
 trying to act. We had so brought the ca- 
 pricious public around to our way of thinEng 
 that the Cornishman played to empty benches 
 while Corbett packed the theaters. 
 
 In creating this sentiment I had hit on one 
 idea: to use the moving pictures. These were 
 to be shown in New York at The Academy of 
 Music. The people at that time knew very 
 little about this new form of entertainment. 
 
150 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 The mechanical method of producing it had 
 not been exploited in the Sunday supplements 
 as yet. And this was what made it possible for 
 me to use the pictures for my purpose. The 
 people did not know that one could run the 
 pictures fast or slow. When the pictures were 
 presented in New York I insisted on being 
 allowed to do the explanatory talking before 
 the curtain. In the dark I described the fight. 
 I had posted the operator that when he got to 
 the sixth round of the contest, when Fitzsim- 
 mons was knocked down, he was to run his 
 machine very slowly. Before the round started 
 I called the attention of the audience to what 
 was coming and suggested that when they 
 came to that particular part they watch the 
 referee's hand, hold a watch on him, and see 
 how many seconds he counted. At the proper 
 time I said, "Now, watch!" and then counted, 
 "One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — 
 eight — nine — ^ten — eleven — ^twelve — ^thirteen." 
 
 ^'He was down thirteen seconds, ladies and 
 gentlemen I" 
 
 But just then one man in the audience stood 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 151 
 
 up and shouted, "You're a liarl" and I recog- 
 nized the voice of William Muldoon. Mul- 
 doon, you M^ill remember, was the referee at 
 the Corbett-Filzsimmons fighL 
 
 But it was no use! We could neither taunt 
 nor lure Fitzsimmons into a battle. From the 
 very moment he became champion, he seemed 
 to be struck with ring fever. He was fearful 
 of his laurels. He wanted to live on the show 
 business and so he tried to avoid a battle with 
 anybody. It became harder to get him into 
 the ring than anybody else I'd ever known. 
 He refused challenges from everywhere. But 
 Corbett pursued him. He even pulled his nose 
 in Green's Hotel in Philadelphia and told him 
 that if he got him in the ring again he would 
 '^get his 1" But Bob absolutely refused to meet 
 him again. 
 
 Presently I began to realize that public in-* 
 terest in pugilism was on the wane, that there 
 was very little left in it for me. Corbett was 
 my friend and I had made plenty of money 
 for him and for myself. I had swelled up 
 when he was victorious and when he was 
 
152 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 whipped I still stuck to him. But he could 
 not draw money as he had done before. The 
 game was getting poorer and poorer, and I 
 realized that the parting of the ways had come. 
 
 I had kept active in theatricals during all 
 of the period I have been telling you about, 
 producing such plays as Trilby^ The New 
 South, The Veteran, Nero, After Dark, The 
 'Bottom of the Sea, The Cotton King, Human- 
 ity and numerous revivals of Shakespeare 
 which were becoming popular in New York 
 City at that time. But it was my connection 
 with the prize ring that made me a famous 
 character. Nor was this notoriety distasteful 
 to me. On the contrary, the glamour of it all 
 appealed to me. I dare say my name was men- 
 tioned in the newspapers at one time as often aS 
 Mr. Roosevelt's. 
 
 Hut this reputation did me no good as a 
 theater man. It was too much Brady, the 
 pugilist, Brady, the fight manager. And, 
 mind you, only a very small part of my life 
 Ha3 been spent in the field of pugilism as com- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAX 158 
 
 pared with the time I had devoted to the the- 
 ater. 
 
 And now that I had determined to cut out 
 pugilism, I became more ambitious theatri- 
 cally. But the ghost of my "ring" reputation 
 followed me. I made a proposition to a very 
 famous actress, Mrs. Pat Campbell, and to 
 Forbes-Robertson. She had accepted my terms 
 and an American run had been arranged for 
 her when she sent for me and said, "There has 
 been a little misunderstanding, Mr. Brady. I 
 could not possibly go to America with you." 
 
 "Why not?" said I, astounded, 
 
 "Why, there is one thing you failed to tell 
 me," she said. "You manage prize-fighters!" 
 
 About this time Corbett was crazy to start a 
 saloon in the city of New York, and I had dis- 
 covered Way Down East. Corbett had an in- 
 terest in this play and I was to have an interest 
 in his saloon. But we could not agree over 
 certain matters and so decided to quit each 
 other for good and all. I gave over all my in- 
 terests in Corbett's plays and other projects 
 
154 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 and he gave over all his interest in mine, which 
 included a twenty-five per cent, share of Way 
 Hown Eastj a play that afterward netted a 
 million dollars. 
 
 I now devoted myself to first-class theatri- 
 cals and publicly announced that I had got 
 through with pugilism. I refused to talk 
 about prize-fighters. I would not be inter- 
 viewed about great events, past, present or 
 future. I asked the newspapers to keep my 
 name out of pugilism. In short, I married 
 Grace George and she made me promise to 
 give up that particular department of enter- 
 prise. 
 
#^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, BROWN BROS. 
 
 Grace George 
 
J. R. Grismer 
 
VI 
 
 Now that I was out of pugilism, I devoted 
 all my time and energy to the business of the 
 theater. I was producing plays on an increas- 
 ing scale and realized that I must have a New 
 York house of my own through which to ex- 
 ploit them. Not long after I had made up my 
 mind to do this, I met J. M. Hill, who was 
 anxious to get rid of his theater — ^the Manhat- 
 tan. 
 
 "Will you take the lease of my theater?" 
 said he. 
 
 "Yes, at my price," said I. 
 
 He wanted something like thirty thousand 
 dollars a year. I offered twenty thousand dol- 
 lars and got it. At that time I was doing 
 Business with Florenz Zeigfield, managing the 
 Hrst tour of Anna Held through the country. 
 
 155 
 
156 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Zeigfield was present at the negotiations witli 
 Hill and declared himself in for a one-half 
 interest in the theater. 
 
 Having at last got a theater of my own, I 
 Setermined to try out Way Down East — a 
 play in which I had supreme confidence. This 
 play was written hy Lotti^ Blair Parker at a 
 time when her husband, Harry Doel Parker, 
 was working in my oflSce as booking agent. 
 Hrs. Parker had submitted to me two or three 
 bad plays before, and I had turned them down. 
 Parker, who considered his wife an infallible 
 dramatic genius, conceived the idea that some- 
 how I had become prejudiced against her 
 work, and they decided to submit her next ef- 
 fort anonymously. So one summer day Mrs. 
 Fernandez, the agent — now dead — ^handed me 
 iKree manuscripts. 
 
 ^Who wrote them?'* saiS I. 
 
 ^ever mind," said she. 
 
 Dne of them was called Anriie Laurie. I 
 started to read it. At the end of the first act 
 I knew it was a great thing; at the end of the 
 fourth, I knew it would make a fortune. Next 
 
THE FIGHTINGS MAN 157 
 
 day I senll for Parker and said, "Find ouli who 
 sent these plays here I'' 
 
 He looked them over and replied, "My wife 
 did." 
 
 "It will need a lot of fixing," said I. "Now, 
 I'll give your wife a per cent, of the gross re- 
 ceipts until it reaches ten thousand dollars and 
 you must let me do what I please with the 
 
 play." 
 
 This ParEer and his wife agreed to 3o. I 
 got Joseph Grismer to fix up the play and 
 gave him a third interest in it for his work. 
 The play was afterward named Way Down 
 East and made over a million dollars, of which 
 Grismer's share was three hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars. Curiously, Mrs. Parker has 
 never written a successful play since. 
 
 Way Down East is one of the great shining 
 lights as a money maker. At first the puhlig 
 refused to take it very seriously. I kept it at 
 the Manhattan Theater for seven months and 
 during that whole time I did not have a win- 
 ning week. But my confidence in the play 
 Had not waned one whit and I kept it going 
 
158 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 just to make a Metropolitan reputation for it 
 for road purposes. And results justified 
 my confidence I The first time Way Down 
 East went to St. Louis it played to one 
 thousand nine hundred dollars in nine per- 
 formances, then for a year it went on ac- 
 cumulating fame, and when it returned to St, 
 Louis the following year did thirteen thou- 
 sand dollars' worth of business in one week. 
 On its return to New York this remarkable 
 drama held the boards at The Academy of 
 Music for nine months at average receipts of 
 more than ten thousand dollars a week. Way 
 Down East has played in the city of Chicago 
 In the last fourteen or fifteen years an average 
 of four weeks per year and has never taken in 
 less than ten thousand dollars a week. In 
 short, it cleaned up one hundred and twenty 
 Ihousand dollars in Chicago alone. Boston has 
 netted this play one hundred thousand dollars 
 in fifteen years. To go back, its gross receipts 
 in Chicago were about six hundred thousand 
 dollars. It is the best-paying piece of theatrl- 
 $?al property, with the exception of Ben-Hur 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 159. 
 
 and The Old Homestead, that I know of. And 
 think of it! Corbett sold his one-quarter in- 
 terest in this great money maker for practically 
 a mess of pottage ! 
 
 Although I had abandoned pugilism, I did 
 not wish to sever my connection with the sport- 
 ing world wholly. So I went into the six-day 
 bicycle racing business on the side. The race 
 was held the first week in December of each 
 year, and we took in something like one hun- 
 dred thousand dollars gross. We had to pay 
 the Garden people forty per cent, of the net 
 profits for the use of the building. 
 
 Presently there arose a great hullabaloo 
 against the individual six-day riding contest, 
 claiming that it was brutal. A bill was intro- 
 duced in Albany against any man riding 
 longer than twelve hours a day in any kind of 
 a game. Theodore Roosevelt signed the bill, 
 much to my surprise, since there was no cruelty 
 in the one-man effort at all. However, to cir- 
 cumvent the new law, I invented the idea of 
 riding in teams. Two men would ride instead 
 of one. One would relieve the other, and they 
 
160 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 would count the combined scores. If one of 
 the teammates was not holding his own, the 
 other fellow was dragged out and put in liis 
 place. As a matter of fact, it was not a race 
 at all — nothing more than a farce! These 
 farces are pulled off on the New York public 
 right along and it pays one hundred thousand 
 dollars a week to see them, "Why is it farci- 
 cal?'' you ask. Just go to the Garden during 
 the contest and carefully observe conditions. 
 You will see that it is absolutely impossible as 
 the match is conducted, especially when there 
 are seven, eight or nine teams of expert riders, 
 for one man to gain a lap. How, then, can it 
 be a race? Think it overl It is actually a race 
 for one mile stalled through a week. 
 
 The bicycle races in the Garden at that time 
 created such excitement that they led to a 
 boom in cycling. One of the greatest expo- 
 nents of this sport was Jimmy Michael, a 
 young Welchman, who had come over to the 
 States. Michael was not Bve feet high, yet 
 he could ride behind motor pace thirty-one 
 miles an hour. There were many of these 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 161 
 
 riders, the principal ones besides Michael be- 
 ing Fred Titus, Edward JSIcDufFee, Major 
 Taylor and a number of Frenchmen. It was 
 a dangerous pastime, and most of the men who 
 followed it are now dead. But while the craze 
 lasted it was so great that the organization 
 which I conducted played to twenty-seven 
 thousand dollars gate money at Coney Island 
 in one day, fourteen thousand dollars In 
 Boston and ten thousand dollars in PJiila- 
 delphia. 
 
 With the decline of pugilism in New YorE, 
 sport lovers looked around for another game 
 to thrill them. Wrestling came into vogue 
 and a gigantic Turk named Yousouf came 
 here in charge of an old wrestler, one Anton 
 Peiri. Peiri brought the Turk, who could not 
 speak a word of English, around to see me, 
 and after a good deal of discussion I signed a 
 six-months' contract agreeing to pay Yousouf 
 one thousand five hundred dollars a month and 
 expenses, and he was to wrestle at any time and 
 any place I directed. First I matched him 
 against Roeber, the match to take place in Mad- 
 
162 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 ison Square Garden. I made the mistake of 
 not having any railing or rope around the ring, 
 for after the wrestlers had been on the plat- 
 form about ten minutes the Turk rushed 
 If oeber, shoved him over into the audience and 
 so lost the match. There were about nine thou- 
 sand dollars in the house. 
 
 We next planned a tour of the country. St 
 tHat time, Evan Lewis, who was known as the 
 *^strangler," was the terror of all the wrestlers. 
 I made a match for the Turk to go to Chicago 
 and meet the strangler. Now Yousouf was a 
 verj'- remarkable athlete. He never trained at 
 all. After each match, he would eat two or 
 three big steaks. He never took a bath, be- 
 lieving that in his dirt was his strength. One 
 of the American trainers spilled some alcohol 
 on him one day and started to rub him, but 
 Yousouf sprang away from him in supersti- 
 tious terror. The Turk relied on his great 
 weight to wear his opponent out and he was 
 tlie wonder of every American athlete who 
 came into contact with him. Like many men 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 168 
 
 of his calling and caliber, he was cunningly 
 distrustful. He would not j^ut any money in 
 the bank and insisted on being paid in French 
 louis, which he carried in a belt around his 
 waist. 
 
 On one trip that he made through the West 
 with me he wrestled in Rochester on ]Monday 
 night with a very hard opponent and won 
 easily; he repeated his success the following 
 night in Buffalo tmder similar conditions ; and 
 on Wednesday went to Cleveland and met 
 Tom Jenkins, who was considered the best 
 catch-as-catch-can wrestler in the United 
 States, and defeated him after a vicious and 
 awful battle. The first fall took nearly an 
 Hour and three-quarters, but the Turk threw 
 Jenkins the second time in about thirty min- 
 utes, and then went to a restaurant and ate 
 three steaks. I mention these facts to show 
 the wonderful recuperative power of the man. 
 From Cleveland, we took a train to Chicago, 
 arriving there Thursday morning, and Friday 
 night Yousouf met Evan Lewis, the famous 
 
164 THE FIGHTINa MAN 
 
 strangler, in the ring before about twenty 
 thousand people. The receipts were over fif- 
 teen thousand dollars. 
 
 The Turk had never shown in any way that 
 he knew anything about the strangle hold and 
 we feared that Lewis would defeat him by that. 
 The Lewis people got us to accept some man 
 from the stock-yards as referee and thousands 
 of dollars were bet that the strangler would 
 defeat the Turk, but the Turk just walked 
 over to Lewis and got a strangle hold on him 
 standing up — and inside of three minutes had 
 his opponent screaming for help. The referee, 
 who was crooked, and who was in the ring for 
 no other purpose than to help the Lewis peo- 
 ple, declared the Turk disqualified for fouling 
 and denounced it as a put-up game. Instantly 
 the audience was in a riot. But I put up my 
 hand and when quiet was restored I shouted, 
 "All right 1 We will give them that match! 
 Now we will wrestle to satisfy the public and 
 allow them to get something for their money T* 
 After a long harangue, we got the Lewis 
 people to agree to another referee and the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 165 
 
 Turk threw the famous strangler twice inside 
 of six minutes. 
 
 Within twenty-four hours we defeated 
 Charles Whitman, another famous wrestler, 
 in Cincinnati, and then went hack to New 
 York for a return match with Roeber. I suc- 
 ceeded in getting Frank Sanger to rent me 
 the Metropolitan Opera House for the match. 
 The place was packed. All the beautiful boxes 
 and seats were occupied by the sports of the 
 town. The match started and the Turk was 
 rapidly wearing Roeber out, when the latter, 
 who was something of a boxer, quit wrestling 
 and smashed the Turk in the face with his 
 clenched fist. Instantly pandemonium reigned ; 
 seats were broken; and the beautiful opera- 
 house looked like the center of a cyclone* 
 Everything was swirling and raging and 
 roaring; a mass of humanity struggled and 
 shrieked and anathematized. I jumped into 
 the ring and Bob Fitzsimmons, who was act- 
 ing as Roeber 's second and adviser, jumped in 
 after me. Fitzsimmons grabbed hold of me 
 and I hit him in the jaw. Then He recovered 
 
166 THE FIGHTING MAN* 
 
 — from his surprise more than anything else, 
 I Imagine — and made a rush at me and I ex- 
 pected to be killed the next minute. But just 
 then a big Irish policeman jumped into the 
 melee and shouted, "Bob, if you lay a hand 
 on that boy, I'll kill you!" 
 
 Fitzsimmons did not lay a hand on me. 
 
 By this time the Turk had about four thou- 
 sand dollars in French louis saved up and 
 sailed on La Borgoyne for France. There was 
 a collision at sea and the ship foundered. 
 Yousouf's body was recovered about a month 
 afterward. The fish had eaten away the belt 
 and all his gold was gone! That was the end 
 of the "Terrible Turk." 
 
 By this time Klaw and Erlanger, Alf Hay- 
 man, Charles Frohman, Nixon and Zimmer- 
 man, and Rich and Harris got together to cor- 
 ral all the theaters in the United States and 
 form what was known as the "theatrical syn- 
 dicate." I fought them for about two years, 
 but as one after another of their opponents 
 gave in, I presently surrendered and joined 
 them. Then there was a great slump in the 
 
<xt%,\. ih. 
 
 Marc Klaw 
 
ROCKWOOO 
 
 Abraham L. Erlanger 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 16?; 
 
 theatrical business — just before the beginning 
 of the great boom which culminated in 1907. 
 Everybody felt the depression. I was lucky, 
 however, because I had a good money maker 
 in Way Down East, 
 
 During the depression in the theater busi- 
 ness the Horton law, legalizing bouts, was 
 passed at Albany, and pugilism again began 
 to occupy the attention of the New York pub- 
 lic. This law legalized twenty-round bouts 
 and almost every night thousands of persons 
 attended the various athletic clubs, and again 
 the pugilist and his manager v/ere rolling in 
 money. 
 
 And now it was announced that James J. 
 Jeffries, who had acted as punching bag for 
 Corbett at Carson City, had won a number of 
 contests in San Francisco and was looked on 
 as a coming man out there. Jeffries was put 
 under the tutorship of William Delaney, who 
 had always been Corbett's trainer, and was 
 brought to New York to spar at the Lenox 
 Athletic Club. He undertook to stop two men 
 in ten rounds in one night. One of these was 
 
168 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Bob Armstrong, the colored man, and the 
 other was Steve O'Donnell. In the first bout 
 — with Armstrong — Jeffries broke his hand 
 and was unable to go on with the second match. 
 It was so announced, but as Jeffries left the 
 ring he was hooted by the audience, because 
 they thought he was a "quitter." I noticed, 
 however, In this bout that the California boy 
 had strength, youth, a wonderful left hand, 
 and that he had Improved remarkably since the 
 affair at Carson. I followed him to his dress- 
 ing-room and said, "Let me look at your 
 hand." 
 
 They had cut the glove off and I found that 
 the man had broken his hand very badly. 
 
 "What are you going to do?'* said I, after a 
 moment. 
 
 "I'm going back to California," said he ; "to 
 hell with New York!" 
 
 You see, his heart was broken. 
 
 But I saw that he had the makings of a 
 champion in him and urged him to stay east. 
 But he was pig-headed and went back to the 
 coast. 
 
THE FIGHTINGS MAN 169 
 
 The boxing game went along beautifully in 
 New York and I had so many inducements to 
 go back into it that one day I said to my wife. 
 "I know where there is a man that can be made 
 champion of the world and I think I can get 
 Fitzsimmons to Bght him. I can make a lot 
 of money. Will you let me go back into the 
 business?'* 
 
 You see, the theatrical business was not very 
 good, and she thought a while, and then she 
 said, "All rightl" 
 
 So I pulled some wires and got control of 
 an enormous building down at Coney Island 
 — Bauer's Pavilion — which was afterward 
 known as the Coney Island Athletic Club. I 
 interested some local people, two of whom were 
 friends of Fitzsimmons, gave them some stock, 
 incorporated the club,. had myself made presi- 
 dent of it and started in to operate. 
 
 Immediately the crowds who were running 
 the clubs in New York found it impossible to 
 compete with us and started in to use their 
 influence with the police commission — a four- 
 headed anomaly at that time — to have us put 
 
170 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 out of business. You see, these clubs were con- 
 trolled by Tammany Hall politicians and tHey 
 realized that if I succeeded in opening a build- 
 ing that could hold between ten and twelve 
 thousand people Coney Island would get all 
 the star contests. Besides myself, the princi- 
 pal stockholder in the Coney Island Athletic 
 Club was a Brooklyn politician named Alex- 
 ander Brown, which was important — as you 
 shall see. The police board had a meeting and 
 failed to grant us a license. They didn't refuse 
 in so many words — they simply didn't act on 
 our application. It looked like a "starving 
 out" process. Another meeting of the board 
 — and still no license ! It looked as if we were 
 to be tied up with this big building and fifteen 
 thousand dollars rent to pay. After the third 
 meeting of the police board, during which no 
 action was taken, I was "tipped off" that cer- 
 tain New York politicians stood ready to take 
 over our lease and rid us of all risk. 
 
 By this time Brown's fighting blood was up 
 and so was mine! He took me over to see 
 Hugh McLoughlin, the Brooklyn "boss." We 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 171 
 
 met him in the back room of a cafe where he 
 made his headquarters, and Brown explained 
 to the boss that he would never have gone into 
 the scheme at all if it had not been on Mc- 
 Loughlin's assurance that the license would be 
 granted. After a very short conversation the 
 old man exclaimed, "The license will be 
 granted at the next meeting of the police 
 board or there will be a split in the Democratic 
 party in the state of New York!'^ 
 
 At the next meeting of the board we got our 
 license all right! 
 
 Jeffries had gone away into the mountains 
 hunting bear, but I located him at Tachapaha, 
 California, and wired him : "If you will come 
 east under contract to me, I will agree to make 
 you champion inside of one year. Am quite 
 certain Fitzsimmons will agree to meet you!" 
 
 I also wired him money to pay his fare to 
 New York, and he and Delaney consented to 
 come. 
 
 I then began to work on Fitzsimmons. I 
 had his friends at the club tell him that I was 
 bringing a man named Jeffries on for him to 
 
172 THE FIGHTING! MAN 
 
 knock out, that the California boy was a big 
 dub, and that Fitzsimmons would take no 
 chances in going into the ring with him. By 
 this time Fitzsimmons had got short of cash 
 and, like myself, had noted the fact that a lot 
 of money was being made at the boxing con- 
 tests in and around New York, I dealt with 
 Fitzsimmons through his brother-in-law, Mar- 
 tin Julian, who was a very obstinate and pig- 
 headed customer. Finally, after weeks and 
 weeks of conniving, scheming, consultations 
 and meetings, I got lanky Bob to agree to 
 meet Jeffries at the Coney Island Athletic 
 Club for the championship of the world, pro- 
 vided I gave him sixty-five per cent, of the 
 boxers' share of the receipts — win or lose. 
 "After all," said he rather indulgently, "that 
 fellow is only coming on here to get licked and 
 get a little money, and will be satisfied with a 
 few thousand dollars T* 
 
 Take notice of the fact that Fitzsimmons 
 had never seen Jeffries I 
 
 They started in to train, but even then I was 
 not sure Fitzsimmons would go into the ring. 
 
THE FIGHTING] MAN 173 
 
 because every once in a while we had reports 
 about him playing with a baby lion and were 
 afraid the beast might bite his hand off before 
 the match was due. Again, he was constantly 
 making new demands, but we satisfied them all 
 and finally it came to the time for the contest. 
 
 This had been the first real championship 
 match that had ever been held in New York 
 City. In consequence there was an enormous 
 amount of interest in the event and the sale 
 of seats was somewhere in the neighborhood 
 of seventy thousand dollars. It was a ter- 
 ribly rainy night and the trains were stopped 
 or we would have taken in over one hundred 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 As the date for the fight drew near, I be- 
 gan to get a line on Jeffries. He came from 
 Pennsylvania Dutch stock, was very cautious, 
 very suspicious, and in my opinion lacked tho 
 gameness of the other men of the same type 
 with whom I had come in contact. Notwith- 
 standing the fact that he had beaten quite a 
 number of good men before he came east, 
 he was still very young and inexperienced. I 
 
174 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 was afraid that when he got in the ring, the 
 coolness and experience of Fitzsimmons would 
 count; that before Jeffries got through with 
 his fright Bob would have him down and out. 
 So I tried a little trick that Corbett had taught 
 me. 
 
 At about five o'clock on the evenings of the 
 fight Delaney and myself had Jeffries dress 
 up in a little hotel he was stopping at on Surf 
 Avenue and we took him out on the Coney 
 Island Boulevard and walked him up toward 
 Brooklyn. He was as nervous as a cat, very 
 surly and lacked all the assurance that I had 
 been accustomed to seeing in Corbett. Never- 
 theless, he was a good pupil, and so I ar- 
 ranged this little scheme. 
 
 "Now," said I, "when you go to the club- 
 house to-night you'll find that your dressing- 
 room is in a little outhouse right across the 
 hallway from the room that Fitzsimmons will 
 dress in. When you get there, you are to 
 strip and lie out on the table to be rubbed 
 down. Then I will cross over into Fitzsim- 
 mons' room and will call Julian out into the 
 
THE fighting; man 175 
 
 hallway and will start to argue loudly with 
 him about the rules to be followed in the con- 
 test, principally as to whether you are to break 
 clean or whether each man is to take care of 
 himself in the breakaways." 
 
 There are two ways of doing this. When the 
 men clinched, the referee would say, "Break!'* 
 and the men would step back themselves. The 
 other way was that they would clinch and each 
 man had to take care of himself. If a man 
 could strike a quick blow in the clinch, it was 
 all right. There was much dispute as to the 
 Marquis of Queensbury rules in this respect. 
 In the Corbett and Sullivan fight, the referee 
 said, "Break!" and walked between them. As 
 it is now, the men were compelled to care for 
 themselves in breaking away, which was good 
 for the man that was not clever, since he could 
 hit here, there and everywhere while he was 
 clinched. 
 
 I continued my instructions to Jeffries. "I 
 will call Julian out in the hallway and loudly 
 ask about these points. Fitzsimmons will hear 
 me, the sound of my voice will set him on 
 
 ) 
 
176 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 edge and he will probably come out into the 
 hallway and engage in the discussion. Then 
 I will say to Fitzsimmons, '\Vhat is the use of 
 you and me arguing this; come in and talk 
 it over with Jeffries.' And then I will usher 
 him into your room. He will see you for the 
 first time and your appearance will be a shock 
 to him." 
 
 In fact, stripped and in his fighting costume, 
 Jeffries was a dangerous-looking brute. He 
 had long shaggy hair on his breast, big thick 
 jaws and all the other attributes of the ideal 
 prize-fighter. 
 
 "When I get Fitzsimmons into the room," 
 I went on, "I will start to argue with him 
 about the rules, and after I have got along 
 a way, you jump off the table, grab him by 
 the back of the neck, and show him the way 
 you understand the fight will be conducted. 
 Don't let him get a word in edgewise. Just 
 shove him over against the wall — and that will 
 be all that's necessary!'* 
 
 Jeffries had been listening like a bulldog. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 177 
 
 and when I finished speaking he said, "Do 
 you think this can be done?" 
 
 "We'll try it," said I. "It wiU put fear 
 into his heart and instead of your going into 
 the ring scared, he will go in scared." 
 
 The whole thing worked out perfectly. 
 Night came, and at the clubhouse Fitzsim- 
 mons came to his room just as I had expected. 
 I called Julian out into the hallway and started 
 to argue the rules with him, and, as I had pre- 
 dicted, Fitzsimmons came rushing out and 
 butted in. I called him into Jeffries' room 
 to argue the matter with my principal, and 
 Jeffries did just as I had instructed hun to 
 do. He jumped off his perch, rushed over 
 to Fitzsimmons, started In to show him how 
 he understood the rules, grabbed him and lit- 
 erally tossed him over into a corner. And the 
 Cornishman walked out a few minutes later, 
 cowed, demoralized, whipped in the dressing- 
 room before he entered the ring! 
 
 When the two men faced each other in the 
 ring, Fitzsimmons was by far the more nerv- 
 
178 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 ous man of the two. The episode of the dress- 
 ing-room had not only scared him, but had put 
 confidence Into Jeffries. The battle was really 
 held in the dressing-room. 
 
 The fight began, but not much was done in 
 the first round. Jeffries sparred most of the 
 time. At the beginning of the second, he did 
 something that I had never seen done before 
 — ^he hit Fitzsimmons with a straight left and 
 knocked him out. It was all over then. Fitz- 
 simmons got up with difficulty, realizing that 
 he was up against a wonderful opponent. At 
 the end of the sixth round Fitzsimmons landed 
 what he'd been trying for all these rounds to 
 land — ^hls famous solar plexus punch. He hit 
 Jeffries right in the proper spot, but it never 
 feezed him a bit. Fitzsimmons was greatly 
 surprised at this, but quite astounded when he 
 saw Jeffries, apparently undisturbed, walk 
 back to his corner at the end of the sixth round. 
 His great blow had not worked. Fitzsimmons 
 walked back to his comer greatly dejected. 
 Much depended on him. At all of these con- 
 tests there was a tremendous amount of money 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 179 
 
 bet, and now they were laying three or four 
 to one on Fitzsimmons. 
 
 As I was passing through the audience 
 earlier in the night, Jesse Lewisohn stopped 
 me and told me that he had bet twenty thou- 
 sand dollars on Fitzsimmons, and asked me 
 what I thought of it. I told him that Fitz- 
 simmons would be beaten that night, and Lew- 
 isohn hedged out twenty thousand dollars be- 
 tween that time and the time the men entered 
 the ring! 
 
 Fitzsimmons was beaten, Jeffries was cham- 
 pion, and the same old story happened again. 
 Jeffries, the victor, became unpopular, and 
 Fitzsimmons, for the first time in his life, knew 
 what popularity was. We put Jeffries in a 
 play called The Man from the West^ and, al- 
 though he was a fairly good actor, the public 
 would not go to see him. Presently we took 
 him to England, but it was impossible to over- 
 come the British prejudice against what they 
 considered an anomaly, if not a paradox — a 
 prize-fighter playing legitimate drama ! They 
 would have none of Jeffries. But he got re- 
 
180 THE fighting: MAN 
 
 venge on the public over there by knocking 
 out an EngHshman every night. He knocked 
 out thirty Englishmen in thirty nights. 
 
 Jeffries would say, "How much in the house 
 to-night. Bill?" and I would say, "About five 
 pounds." 
 
 Then he would say, "See if you can't get two 
 or three more of these bluffers." 
 
 They were mixed-ale fighters and Jeffries 
 , certainly made short work of them. 
 
 On another occasion I saw Jeffries make 
 short work of a man. It was in Detroit, and 
 they had put a dangerous fellow up against 
 him. We were getting one thousand two hun- 
 dred dollars for the night. It was the only 
 time I ever saw him do the knock-out business. 
 The bell rang and he walked over to his man 
 — ^just one shot, and it was over in a minute! 
 
 "V^Tiile the English people would not have 
 Jeffries at all, the Parisians went wild over 
 him. He appeared there and they paid him 
 seven thousand five hundred francs for the 
 week. 
 
 To switch back to the main line of the story. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 181 
 
 Tom Sharkey, who had fought a draw with 
 Jeffries in San Francisco, was now matched 
 to fight him again. But Jeffries, like his jpre- 
 decessors, developed ring fear. In fact, so 
 eager was he to avoid the fight that a week 
 before it was to take place he claimed to have 
 broken something in his elbow, and the thing 
 had to be postponed. But it was no use ; fight- 
 ing was the only way he could make any 
 money, and notwithstanding his efforts to side- 
 step the fight, we got him into the ring. 
 
 In this contest moving pictures were taken 
 for the first time at night. The American Bio- 
 graph Company undertook the job. Enor- 
 mous lights were hung right down over the 
 ring and the temperature while the match was 
 going on — for twenty-five rounds — was a hun- 
 dred and ten. No other two men in the world 
 could have stood it. But these fighters were 
 wonderful specimens of brawn and muscle. 
 Sharkey was small and stocky and Jeffries was 
 built just like a big Newfoundland dog. 
 
 We had attempted to take pictures of the 
 Fitzsimmons-Jeffries contest at Coney Island. 
 
1821 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 We had paid a man five thousand dollars to 
 make the experiment with the lights. But at 
 the last moment the machine failed and we lost 
 our money. 
 
 The Biograph Company, however, succeed- 
 ed, but at a terrible cost to the men who 
 had to fight under such conditions. It was 
 the first time a motion picture had ever been 
 taken by artificial light. Since then the use 
 of such a light for this purpose has become 
 very great. The invention of the Cooper- 
 Hewitt light and the Kliegel light has made 
 it possible to obtain perfect daylight in the 
 darkest room. In fact sometimes better effects 
 can be got by the use of this lighting than 
 from sunlight. It is very hard on the actor to 
 work under this artificial light. It is the cause 
 of many operations on the eyes. In fact, many 
 motion-picture actors lose their sight because 
 of it. The light we used at the time of the 
 fight contest was more of a white light. You 
 can moderate the Cooper-Hewitt light. It 
 gives a more natural light to the face than our 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 183 
 
 light did. And, strange to say, the camera went 
 wrong at the most important time, during the 
 last round of the contest. Jeffries' glove 
 fell off in this round and he fought two or 
 three minutes with a bare fist, which was 
 claimed to be a violation of the rules. 
 
 It was a wonderful battle! There was no 
 knock-out ; not even a knock-down. The deci- 
 sion was given to Jeffries on points. Nobody 
 could have complained much if the match had 
 been declared a draw, as Sharkey put up a 
 wonderful fight — so wonderful that after he 
 was taken back to his dressing-room that night 
 it was found that two of his ribs were broken. 
 He traveled in a plaster cast for a year after- 
 ward. 
 
 After this match Corbett approached me 
 and begged to be allowed to box Jeflfries. 
 
 "I know I have not got a chance. Bill," said 
 he, "but I'm in trouble and need the money. 
 We will draw a big house, and the loser's end 
 will be good enough for me." 
 
 So, for old times' sake, I made the match. 
 
184 THE FIGHTING MAN, 
 
 Jeffries resented it, however. He knew of mv 
 long friendship for Corbett, and feared some 
 kind of a job. His suspicions were justified, 
 in a way, although I was innocent. For it 
 transpired in a month or so that my old friend 
 Corbett had deceived me. For six months be- 
 fore this he had been working quietly in a 
 gymnasium, restoring himself to condition. 
 You see, through lack of exercise in the sa- 
 loon business, he had become "run down," 
 and everybody thought he was a physical 
 wreck. When the match was made, Corbett 
 promptly left for Lakewood and there he did 
 the marvelous — ^he remade himself! He was 
 thirty-six, I think. 
 
 Jeffries heard the rumors of Corbett's won- 
 derful rejuvenation, and became more and 
 more suspicious. He was training at my house 
 at Allenhurst, and during the last week he 
 refused to eat the food that was put before 
 him until some one else had tasted it. Jeffries' 
 attitude — in this and other matters — caused a 
 decided coolness between us. His suspicion 
 was so groundless, so unreasonable. He owed 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 185 
 
 everything to me and I owed nothing to him. 
 But it was his nature to be suspicious — that's 
 all. 
 
 By this time Jeffries had got an idea that 
 he was a wonderful boxer. He proposed to 
 beat Corbett, who was supposed to be the Sn- 
 est boxer in the ring, at his own game; that is, 
 outbox him at long range. You see, Thomas 
 Ryan, the middleweight champion, who had 
 almost Corbett's renown as a boxer, had taught 
 Jeffries how to spar, and had persuaded the 
 big fellow that he was capable of going into 
 the ring and defeating Corbett on a scientific 
 proposition. 
 
 Strange to say, the receipts for this contest 
 were the smallest of any big battle — of the 
 kind — that had ever been pulled off in New 
 York — some thirty-five thousand dollars. The 
 rumor had got into the air that the whole thing 
 was to be faked, and the public believed it. 
 Furthermore, they could not see how Corbett 
 had a chance. But to show how square the 
 whole thing was, I made bets on the fight at 
 the end of the first, second, fourth and tenth 
 
186 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 rounds, and when the gong sounded finally, I 
 stood to lose seven thousand five hundred dol- 
 lars that I had bet on my man. In fact, 1 
 thought Jeffries would win in one round! 
 
 When the men got into the ring Corbett's 
 condition amazed everybody. He looked as 
 good, if not better, than when he first fought 
 Sullivan. Jeffries, following the instructions 
 of Ryan, started to spar, but Corbett made 
 him look like a novice — made him look a big- 
 ger fool than he'd made Sullivan look some 
 years before. He jabbed and punched him 
 when and where he pleased, and about the end 
 of the tenth round got himself together and 
 hit Jeffries one on the point of the jaw. When 
 he did that, the whole giant frame shook, and 
 I was afraid that he was going down. But 
 that was the end of Corbett's speed. He held 
 his own up to the sixteenth round, and then 
 he began to fail. It was youth against age. 
 Along about the tenth round, when Jeffries 
 had the worst of it, I spoke to him in his cor- 
 ner and told him to stop sparring. Ryan, Cor- 
 bett's second, told me to get out of the corner. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN ISf 
 
 I did so, but quietly sent for a captain of po- 
 lice who was an old friend of mine and who 
 came and sat behind me in the corner. The 
 twentieth round came and Jeffries was still 
 sparring. Then I got a well-grounded hint 
 from the other side of the ring that if the con- 
 test went twenty-five rounds Referee White 
 would declare it a draw. Such a thing would 
 mean absolute ruin to Jeffries, so at the end 
 of the twentieth round I jumped into the cor- 
 ner and said to him, "You will have to fight. 
 Shut your eyes and hit him! You can see that 
 he is stalling you!" 
 
 Ryan interfered again, but I indicated my 
 police captain friend and told the trainer that 
 if he didn't keep his mouth shut I would have 
 him thrown out of the club. 
 
 In one more round it was over. Following 
 my advice, Jeffries bored right in and licked 
 Corbett — knocked him out coldl I was the 
 first one to pick Corbett up! "Sorry, Jim," 
 said I, "but it's business !" 
 
 About this time Governor Roosevelt signed 
 a bill repealing the Horton law. He left it 
 
188 THE FIGHTING MAX 
 
 open for three or four months, however, and 
 during that period there was a great rush for 
 contests. Some politicians got control of Mad- 
 ison Square Garden and for the first time that 
 vast auditorium was used for pugilism. Enor- 
 mous receipts were taken in. Corbett and Mc- 
 Coy fought what was said to be a fake fight, 
 which drew sixty-six thousand dollars. The 
 Fitzsimmons- Sharkey contest had realized 
 something in the neighborhood of fifty thou- 
 sand dollars, while the Fitzsimmons-Ruhlin 
 match drew forty thousand dollars. 
 
 But Jeffries would not take on anybody else. 
 
 Once again professional pugilism went out 
 of business in New York. The men who were 
 promoting the fights, because of their greed, 
 killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The 
 Corbett-]McCoy farce was an awful blow to the 
 sport. The nerve of these two fighters doing 
 nothing but a friendly sparring bout for sixty- 
 six thousand dollars was more than the public 
 would stand for. Night after night fake fights 
 were pulled off all over the city, and would 
 probably be going on now if Governor Roose- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 189 
 
 velt had not signed the bill. I have no doubt 
 that the governor's act was due entirely to the 
 way the sport had degenerated, for he himself 
 was an enthusiastic athlete and boxer. 
 
 Through all my experience with Jeffries I 
 did not travel with him at all. Therefore it 
 did not interfere with my business. I was 
 making six or eight productions a year on 
 Broadway. It was not an uncommon thing 
 for me to manage a championship contest at 
 Coney Island one night and make a first-class 
 production on [Broadway the next. And so 
 my reputation as a theater man was growing, 
 in spite of my connection with sporting events. 
 
 The next man that got after Jeffries was 
 !Gus Ruhlin, who also had fought a draw with 
 the champion in the early days at San Fran- 
 cisco, The new match was brought about in 
 a curious way and served to show how high- 
 brow art is not above letting low-brow art pull 
 it out of a hole — financially. It seems that 
 the public-spirited citizens of Cincinnati had 
 decided to give an immense musical festival, 
 and that they had lost about fifty thousand dol- 
 
190 THE FIGHTING MAX 
 
 lars on the enterprise. The Sangerfest Build- 
 ing, which had been especially put up for this 
 affair, was a large circular structure, admir- 
 ably suited to a boxing contest. So one of 
 the aforesaid public-spirited citizens of Cin- 
 cinnati conceived that it would be a wonderful 
 idea for them to recoup their losses by bring- 
 ing Jeffries and Ruhlin to Cincinnati for a 
 twenty-round battle. Julius Fleischman, the 
 mayor, and prominent among the sangerfest 
 people, gave the leading citizens his word that 
 he would permit just this one boxing contest 
 in order for them to get even. You see, there 
 was a law out there that prohibited a prize- 
 fight, but not a boxing match. 
 
 However, when they came to me about the 
 contest I said, "You will have to give us five 
 thousand dollars in cash to cover lost time and 
 training expenses." 
 
 They agreed to my terms, deposited the 
 money and we went there. But no sooner did 
 the thing get out than there was a great hulla- 
 baloo. The aforesaid public-spirited men had 
 reckoned without the governor. Nash was 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 191 
 
 chief executive at the time and he declared 
 that the contest should not take place in the 
 state of Ohio. The sangerfest people insisted 
 that it should, and engaged the finest counsel 
 in town. We were arrested and tried for aid- 
 ing, abetting or promoting a boxing bout in 
 violation of the state law. Governor Harmon 
 appeared for the prosecution. We had a per- 
 fectly good-natured trial, the whole thing hing- 
 ing on what was the difference between a box- 
 ing contest and a prize-fight. Jeffries and 
 Ruhlin stood up and gave the learned gentle- 
 men of the law all kinds of exhibitions of passes 
 and blows and counters and breakaways. I was 
 the last witness, and it seems that the question 
 had resolved itself down to this — ^that in a 
 prize-fight, the men hit hard and with mali- 
 cious intent, willing to disable, and even tak- 
 ing the chance of killing their opponent, while 
 a boxing contest was a scientific exhibition, 
 with no intent on either side to maim or hurt. 
 Madden, who was representing Ruhlin, had 
 claimed that the men were to go into the ring 
 good-naturedly, and he told, in a perfectly ri- 
 
192 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 diculous and suave way, that it was a friendly 
 affair. But when I got on the stand the judge 
 turned to me and said, "I want you to answer 
 me as man to man. If Jeffries goes into the 
 ring to meet Ruhlin, will his blows be friendly 
 or will he hit as hard as he can?" 
 
 I said, "He is going into the ring to 3o 
 just as much damage as he can, and be is go- 
 ing to try to hurt Mr. Ruhlin just as much as 
 he can!" 
 
 On that the judge decided that it was a 
 prize-fight and not a boxing contest; the 
 sangerfest committee handed us five thousand 
 dollars; we shook the dust of Cincinnati from 
 our feet ; a few months later I dropped out of 
 the game! 
 
 After the stopping of boxing in New York 
 City by the passage of the Horton Law, Jef- 
 fries went back to San Francisco, where ring 
 contests had become immensely popular. There 
 he came under the management of a young 
 Calif ornian named James Cofforth. 
 
 Jeffries met Fitzsimmons for a second time 
 at San Francisco, July 25, 1902. For the first 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 193 
 
 six rounds it looked as if Jeif ries had met his 
 Waterloo, for instead of being outboxed by the 
 big Californian, Fitzsimmons showed remark- 
 able power and simply pounded Jeffries into a 
 jelly in the early part of the contest. But at 
 the end of eight rounds Jeffries knocked the 
 old man out. Fitzsimmons at this time was 
 about forty-three years old. 
 
 Then Corbett asked for another chance at 
 Jeffries and the match was arranged to take 
 place in San Francisco, August 14, 1903. In 
 this match Jeffries really outboxed the "Pom- 
 padour" and won in ten rounds. 
 
 Tired of the ring, Jeffries announced his re- 
 tirement and settled in Los Angeles. But 
 about this time a Canadian named Thomas 
 Burns challenged him and Jeffries waived the 
 championship to him. 
 
 Burns then went to England and defeated 
 everybody there, but he was afraid to meet a 
 black man named Jack Johnson who had fol- 
 lowed him to England. So Burns immediately 
 jumped to Australia. Then Johnson accepted 
 five thousand dollars and expenses to go to 
 
194 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 Australia and meet Burns. The contract was 
 made with an Australian named Hugh ^Icln- 
 tosh. The bout took place in Australia. John- 
 son defeated Burns in thirteen rounds. Then 
 Johnson returned to America and commenced 
 to taunt Jeffries,, who was living in affluence 
 and peace in Los Angeles. He challenged 
 him. The big Californian by this time had 
 grown very stout ; he weighed over three hun- 
 dred pounds. But he could not stand for a 
 black man's taunts. 
 
 Johnson was misbehaving himself and mak- 
 ing a lot of enemies and the public wanted him 
 to be beaten. They felt that Jeffries was the 
 only one who could do it. I met Jeffries at the 
 American Theater in New York where he was 
 giving training exhibitions. I looked at him 
 in astonishment. I said, "Do you really intend 
 to meet Johnson ?" 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 '*If you do, you'll regret it as long as you 
 live, for Johnson will surely beat you," said I. 
 
 Jeffries never spoke to me after that. 
 
 Then came the battle between Jeffries and 
 Johnson at Carson, July 4, 1910. It drew two 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 195 
 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, the 
 largest gate receipts ever drawn by a pugilis- 
 tic contest. Jeffries should never have entered 
 the ring. He was in no condition to do so. It 
 Is more than likely that Johnson promised to 
 stand for defeat. If so, he broke his word ; he 
 double-crossed Jeffries. Johnson was as afraid 
 as a snake in the first round, but when he found 
 he was facing only a shadow of Jeffries' former 
 self he played with him like a kitten for thir- 
 teen rounds. 
 
 Everybody remembers the bitter race feel- 
 ing that followed the Johnson victory at 
 Carson. The white people of the country 
 were bitterly disappointed, the blacks were un- 
 wisely exultant. This feeling manifested it- 
 self throughout the whole country the night 
 following the fight in innumerable individual 
 encounters and smallrsized riots. 
 
 As a result, many states passed laws prohib- 
 iting the meeting of a white man and a black 
 man in the ring. And subsequently a national 
 law was passed prohibiting even a motion-pic- 
 ture reproduction of any such a mixed-color 
 contest in the United .States. That explains 
 
196 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 why the pictures of the Willard-Johnson fight 
 at Havana were never shown in the United 
 States. 
 
 Every one knows how Johnson's victory 
 turned his head; how he married a white 
 woman; how that unfortunate creature com- 
 mitted suicide; how he married another white 
 woman ; how he violated the white slave laws in 
 Chicago and was arrested and held under 
 thirty thousand dollars bail. Every one knows 
 how the black champion jumped his bond and 
 went to Europe. All of which brought upon 
 his foolish head a storm of public abuse. 
 
 In both Paris and London Johnson carried 
 on the same kind of wild orgies that had made 
 him so disreputable here. He finally reached 
 the end of his finances and in a vain attempt to 
 recoup himself made the match with Frank 
 Moran, who he thought would prove an easy 
 mark. I was in Paris at the time and cabled 
 the following account of the fight to the New 
 York American: 
 
 "Paris, June 27, 1914. — It was a second-rate 
 
COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD A UNDERWOOD 
 
 Jess Willard (on right) and his manager 
 
UNOINWOOO A UMDIMWOOO 
 
 Jack Johnson 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 197 
 
 exhibition between two mixed-ale fighters. 
 That's my opinion. 
 
 "Johnson and Moran were misnamed fight- 
 ers to-night. 
 
 "Had the affair been held in New York the 
 spectators would have stopped the disgraceful 
 bout in ten rounds. Not one effective blow 
 was struck by either man during the entire 
 contest. 
 
 "There was never the suspicion of a jar, 
 much less a knock-down. 
 
 "The spectacle of a world's champion, supe- 
 rior in weight, science, experience and strength, 
 clinging to a smaller antagonist, expressing in 
 every move and appealing glance his yearning 
 for the final tap of the gong — this was Johnson 
 in the last three rounds. 
 
 "Moran did his best in the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth rounds to gain at least a draw, but 
 his very exertions so tired him as to make his 
 appearance in the twentieth round pitiful. 
 
 "Moran was gone, staggering about the ring 
 like a drunken man swinging blindly at thin 
 air. 
 
198 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 "Johnson was in even worse condition, his 
 sole efforts were to lean on the groping white 
 man. Had either of them been even good sec- 
 ond-raters, a knock-out would have been inevi- 
 table. 
 
 "Johnson was so tired that he completely 
 forgot even his ideas of defense, and it was 
 only Moran's exhaustion that saved the negro 
 from being knocked out. 
 
 "Johnson has literally defended the title suc- 
 cessfully — a feat never before accomplished by 
 a man of his age in the history of the ring. iBut 
 this is all he accomplished. 
 
 "Never once did he inflict punishment on 
 Moran to make that worthy in the least dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 "A straight left and the old-time right up- 
 percut in clinches were all Johnson had to offer 
 and the results of these blows were merely 
 abrasions on the left eye and the bridge of the 
 nose. 
 
 ^Johnson entered Tod Sloan's saloon this 
 afternoon and announced he had $10,000 to bet 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 199 
 
 at even money that he would knock out Moran 
 in ten rounds. 
 
 "When I announced my willingness to take 
 the bet, Johnson said he didn't have the money 
 with him but would go get it. He went, but 
 he didn't come back. 
 
 "^ly opinion is, the reason Johnson was able 
 to break every tradition of the prize ring by 
 staying twenty rounds to-night is that Johnson 
 is the greatest defensive fighter the world has 
 ever seen. . Naturally it takes less out of a man 
 to stand still and let the other man do the work 
 than actually to fight. Even so, there are half 
 a dozen white men and at least one black man 
 who could have put this waiting champion to 
 the floor for the count to-night. 
 
 "It must be remembered Moran inflicted not 
 one telling blow, yet the negro could hardly 
 stand up after the last round. 
 
 "Carpentier proved a very fair referee, but 
 in my opinion could have called the bout a 
 draw without doing Johnson the slightest in- 
 justice. Not so much that Johnson earned a 
 
200 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 draw, but that Johnson most certainly earned 
 nothing. 
 
 "This is what I base my opinion on for a *dis- 
 honorable draw.' 
 
 "This suits the fight better than any other 
 term I can think of. 
 
 "Even Paris, fight mad as it is, has had its 
 fill of Johnson as a result of to-night's dis- 
 graceful showing. 
 
 "I want to go on record now as saying that 
 the next man who meets the negro will either 
 knock him out or suffer ignominy of the most 
 humiliating kind. Johnson was in as good 
 condition as a man of his age could hope to be, 
 but ten rounds is as far as he can go well. 
 
 "Moran's condition was all that I expected, 
 but the poor boy doesn't know what hands are 
 for. 
 
 "The pictures will prove this the most dis- 
 graceful contest for a world's championship 
 ever held." 
 
 Johnson owed so much money in Paris that 
 the receipts that were taken in for the Johnson- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 201 
 
 Moran fight were seized upon by the various 
 French creditors and neither he nor Moran 
 ever received a cent. That left him still in need 
 of money and rendered it necessary for him to 
 meet some other man. Numerous promoters in 
 the United States commenced to figure on the 
 possibility of bringing him back to this country, 
 but the government would not allow it. 
 
 The promoters finally picked a big cowboy 
 named Jesse Willard to meet Johnson. Wil- 
 lard was the biggest man who ever appeared in 
 the prize ring. He was six feet five inches and 
 weighed about two hundred and forty pounds. 
 He was a dean liver, temperate, raised in the 
 open air. 
 
 In arranging for the battle, Johnson insisted 
 he was to receive thirty thousand dollars. Wil- 
 lard was willing to take whatever he could get. 
 An attempt was made to bring the bout off at 
 Juarez, Mexico. But the United States gov- 
 ernment threatened that if Johnson came to 
 Juarez he would be seized and brought back 
 here for trial, as the president of Mexico had 
 agreed to give him up. Finally it was ar- 
 
E02 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 ranged that the contest was to take place in 
 Havana. 
 
 We all know what happened. 
 
 I was at French Lick at the time of this 
 event and sent the following wire to The Amer- 
 ican: 
 
 ^Trench Lick, Ind., April 5, 1915.— *Jack' 
 Johnson made the finest fight of his career at 
 Havana to-day, when at the age of thirty-eight 
 he met a giant ten years his junior, possessed 
 of more strength and a sort of rugged science 
 that was bound to tell in a long battle. 
 
 "Johnson, in forcing the jSghting throughout 
 and succeeding in staying twenty-six rounds at 
 his age with a man of Willard's size, proved 
 his gameness and boxing ability and the right 
 to have held the championship title, which he so 
 loved. All talk of 'fake' is ridiculous and only 
 lessens the credit of a fine victory by a clean, 
 decent and honest athlete. 
 
 "I so surely predicted Johnson's defeat: 
 First, because youth must win over age in a 
 contest where strength applies; second, T knew 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 208 
 
 that Willard was just the type of man to do 
 the job. 
 
 "We had nothing but the bare result here at 
 French Lick. I venture to state, however, that 
 to-day's narrative shows that the uppercut 
 served of little purpose against Willard. 
 Frank ISIoran blocked it last summer in Paris. 
 I saw that match, and !Moran would have won 
 if the contest had gone forty-five rounds. 
 
 "Willard at his best. 
 
 "Johnson in his whole career never met as 
 good a man as Willard was to-day. Jeffries 
 never should have met him, and would not have 
 done so but for the great financial inducements 
 offered. In his best days Jeffries would have 
 made mincemeat of Johnson. 
 
 "Boxers at their best, like Fitzsimmons, Cor- 
 bett, Slavin, Maher, Jim Hall and others, 
 would have beaten him. Johnson was the 
 greatest master of defense that the ring has 
 known in my time, but he lacked attack. 
 
 "Johnson picked them carefully, and built 
 up his record with fine ability, but this time he 
 picked.wrong. He was sadly in need of money. 
 
204. THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 driven from one country to another, constantly 
 in fear of arrest. Never having seen Willard, 
 and knowing that 'Gunboat' Smith, whom Car- 
 pentier had defeated in London, had obtained 
 a decision over Willard, he marked him easy, 
 and so went to his Waterloo. 
 
 "If Johnson had ever seen Willard perform 
 in the ring, the championship title would still 
 be in his hands, for he was proud of it, and I 
 think he would die to keep it. 
 
 "Victory boost to game, 
 
 "I think Willard's victory a great art of self- 
 defense. I have known him to be an honest, 
 kindly, sincere fellow, and I can safely predict 
 that while he holds his title he will be a credit to 
 the game. 
 
 "Johnson was the peer of his race, and in de- 
 feating him Willard has ended a dangerous 
 chapter in heavyweight pugilistic history that 
 should never be rewritten. 
 
 "The fight to-day was the longest Heavy 
 championship fight under Marquis of Queens- 
 bury rules on record/' 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 205 
 
 Bo passed Jack Johnson, a black man who 
 might have done his race more good than 
 [Booker T, Washington or anybody else. If 
 Johnson had had the executive ability, the 
 mental caliber, the nature or the disposition of 
 Corbett, he would have gone down in history 
 as one of the greatest men the negro race has 
 ever produced. A negro never could hope to 
 be president, governor, or even mayor. But 
 next to that, to be the best fighter in the world, 
 the supreme physical organ of the world, was 
 a great heritage to be handed to a black man. 
 Johnson unquestionably had a good brain. If 
 he had pursued the same course as Corbett and 
 stuck to his own race, if he had not flown into 
 the face of justice and made himself an out- 
 cast from his own coimtry, he might have had 
 anything in the world from the whites and 
 the blacks 1 But no! He failed to grasp his 
 opportunity, and his race has been compelled 
 to bear with him the burden of the obloquy 
 he has incurred. 
 
 After the fight at Havana, JViUard returned 
 
806 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 to the United States. He was met with open 
 arms. He traveled with a circus for a whole 
 summer, earning from one to two thousand 
 dollars a day, and finally arranged a contest 
 with Frank Moran, who had fought Johnson 
 in Paris, to take place at Madison Square Gar- 
 den in ten rounds, this heing the limit allowed 
 by the laws of New York State. 
 
 I saw the contest. If it had been fought 
 to a finish, Moran would have won. It was the 
 tamest battle between two heavyweights that 
 I have ever seen. JMoran did all the fighting. 
 Right after the event I prophesied that should 
 iWillard ever come into the ring again with a 
 man anywhere near his class, he would surely 
 be defeated. I argued that because of his enor- 
 mous weight and the fact that he will probably 
 lake on more fat, which would bring him up to 
 over three hundred pounds, it would be impos- 
 sible for him to reduce himself to efficient B[ght- 
 ing weight again. 
 
 Verily, it seems the way of the prize-fighter 
 is not always a happy one. In few cases has its 
 end justified the promise of its beginning. 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 207 
 
 Boxing men rarely die; rich. On the con- 
 trary, most of them die paupers. The trouble 
 is, most of them come of poor j^arents and, un- 
 educated in the use of money, when prosperity; 
 comes it knocks them off their pins. 
 
 Sullivan made considerable money, although 
 he went broke many times. Long after his 
 pugilistic career was over he married a woman 
 who has a frugal turn of mind. She keeps 
 the big fellow working and saving. She has 
 stopped his excesses, rejuvenated him, and he 
 is now a good citizen and a fairly prosperous 
 man. For a time he played around in small 
 vaudeville houses, where he managed to make 
 a very good living., He is now preaching tem- 
 perance with great success on the Chautauqua 
 Circuit. 
 
 Corbett is fairly well fixed. His mind 
 turned to real estate, and with one or two ex- 
 ceptions his deals have been successful. Out 
 of the profits of the Sullivan battle, on the ad- 
 vice of some of his influential New York 
 friends, he bought a piece of property on 
 Jerome Avenue and paid twenty-nine thou- 
 
BOS THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 sand dollars for it. [But after a while he got 
 tired of waiting for the to^vn to grow out to 
 the roadhouse that he'd purchased, and sold 
 the place for about seventeen thousand dollars. 
 Since then there was a boom in the B^ronx, 
 and the same property is now valued at abouij 
 one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 Later on he purchased a piece of property aD 
 QBayside, Long Island, for ten thousand dol- 
 lars. This property is now worth forty thou-* 
 sand dollars. Corbett still makes a handsome 
 living in vaudeville. 
 
 Jeffries is the richest of them all. Before 
 and after and in connection with his battle with 
 Johnson he cleaned up at least two hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars. He married a 
 German girl, and she takes good care of every 
 dollar that he lays his hands on. He is one 
 of the town curiosities of Los Angeles, where 
 he lives and runs a saloon. Jeffries* father, 
 who was a strolling hallelujah shouting 
 preacher, and his mother live with the ex- 
 champion, and are well cared for. 
 
 Fitzsimmons is broke — probably always will 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 209; 
 
 he broke. It was easy come, easy go, with 
 him. I saw him the other day in one of the 
 up-town cafes, and it was very evident that 
 he was short of this world's goods. 
 
 One of the saddest sights on Broadway these 
 days is the broken-down, poverty-stricken con- 
 dition of a wonderful boxer who came from 
 Australia, met all comers in this coimtry, and 
 was simply a sensation. I refer to "Young 
 Griif o." Those who remember him will admit 
 that he was probably the most wonderful mas- 
 ler of the art of self-defense that was ever 
 bom. With no strength, no punching ability, 
 he would, week after wieek, meet men twice 
 as strong and a great deal heavier than him- 
 self and get the verdict through his science 
 alone. He is now a broken-down wreck — col- 
 larless and sometimes coatless, he walks up and 
 down the Rialto, a frightful sight indeed! 
 
 Another one — not quite so bad — who is still 
 in evidence along the "White Lights" is 
 Young Corbett — ^no relation to "Jim" — whose 
 sensational victory over Terry JIcGovem 
 made him champion. He, too, has gone 
 
210 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 down the sad road that leads to forgetful- 
 ness. 
 
 Jim Hall has gone away, and nobody knows 
 whether he is alive or dead. He has nothing 
 and is little better than a tramp. Charley 
 Mitchell I saw at OBrighton, ^England, last 
 summer — a wrecK^ I doubt that he will live 
 another year. He has gone through every 
 dollar he ever made. Billy Delaney is dead, 
 and Connie McVey has just now been made 
 stage doorkeeper at one of my Forty-eighth 
 Street theaters. 
 
 Frank Slavin is a rich man off in the Klon- 
 dike. [Billy Muldoon runs a famous health re- 
 sort in Westchester. Charles Kid McCoy will 
 always be able to take care of himself, as he 
 is wise and a good business man. 
 
VII 
 
 After out experience with the sangerfest 
 people in Cincinnati I quit pugilism for good 
 and alL There was nothing in it for me. I 
 verily helieve, if I had never entered this Held, 
 I would have been much farther along in my 
 theatrical career, since devotion to pugilism 
 not only took up a vast deal of my time, but 
 being identified with it impaired my prestige 
 as a producer of high-class plays. As far as 
 the money I made in pugilism is concerned, it 
 was a matter of "quick come, quick go." 
 
 I determined to confine my efforts to' the the- 
 atrical business proper, that is, the production 
 of plays and the management of playhouses, 
 [But two things occurred which gave promise 
 of so great profits as temporarily to divert me 
 from this purpose. 
 
 When the St. Louis World^s Fair was be- 
 ing projected by Governor Francis and other 
 
 211 
 
212 THE fighting; MAN 
 
 prominent citizens, they were approached by 
 Captain A. N. Lewis, a British officer, who 
 suggested to them that a reproduction of the 
 battles of the Boer War, which had just ended, 
 would make a big feature of the Fair. And 
 the captain offered, pro\aded they capitalize 
 him, to go to South Africa, collect the war 
 heroes from both sides — Dutch and English 
 — and bring them to SL Louis and make a 
 show out of them. This sounded good, and 
 a number of St. Louis business men, headed 
 by a Mr. Wall, of the Meyer drug concern, 
 got together and delegated Lewis to go to 
 South Africa and carry out his idea. 
 
 Lewis was a man of wonderful imagination, 
 but little executive ability. He hired a ship 
 at Cape Town, put his four or five hundred 
 heroes on board and then found that, through 
 some misujiderstanding with his principals, he 
 had run short of money. However, the cap- 
 tain of the ship, believing Lewis" story, took 
 pity on him and brought the entire outfit to 
 the United States in pawn. When they ar- 
 rived the St. Louis people paid the pawn 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 218 
 
 money, released them from captivity and 
 brought them on to the Fair Grounds. 
 
 Among the heroes that Lewis succeeded in 
 bringing over here for this show purpose was 
 General Cronje, who was unquestionably the 
 great hero of the Boer War. Also he brought 
 General Viljoen, who is at present figuring 
 in the troubles in Mexico, and who, in fact, 
 was one of the mainstays of the late President 
 Madero. Another was Captain Jack Hendon, 
 who had been charged by Lord Roberts with 
 dynamiting English hospital trains. There 
 were at least two hundred Boers and two hun- 
 dred Englishmen in the outfit, but beyond 
 Captain Lewis and Major Danby the histori- 
 cal celebrities were all furnished by the Dutch. 
 
 As Lewis had predicted, this outfit became 
 at once the great, big, original feature of the 
 Exposition. It even surpassed in interest the 
 Philippine exhibit where hundreds of Amer- 
 ican men and women used to assemble each 
 day to watch the natives burn a dog alive and 
 eat it. Almost immediately, however, the gov- 
 ernment put a stop to this practise. 
 
214 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 So great was the success of the miniature 
 Boer War that it became the talk of the coun- 
 try, and my attention was called to it by Mr. 
 Orlando Harriman, brother of the late E. H. 
 Harriman. Mr. Harriman had an option on 
 all of the then swamp land that lay between 
 the Brighton Beach Hotel and the Manhattan 
 Beach Hotel at Coney Island. He told me 
 that if I would help him get control of the 
 "Boer War" he would buy the land and we 
 would install it there as a summer attraction. 
 I told him that if I went into any scheme like 
 that I would have to have a half interest in 
 the land as well as in the show. To this he 
 agreed. So we did fill in the marsh and we 
 did install the "Boer War." And the way of 
 our doing it was as follows : 
 
 We paid four hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars for the property. On this we left a 
 mortgage of two hundred thousand dollars and 
 borrowed two hundred thousand dollars more 
 on a second mortgage. Harriman's commis- 
 sion for selling the land — he was the agent — 
 was fifty thousand dollars. The difference 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 215 
 
 between the sum of the two mortgages and 
 the amount paid for the land was represented 
 in Harriman's commission. To make the 
 transaction technically correct I borrowed a 
 certified check of fifty thousand dollars from 
 my bank, which made up the amount to be 
 paid. Then we were handed back Harriman's 
 commission — fifty thousand dollars — and I re- 
 deposited it in the bank that had loaned me the 
 certified check. So we came into possession 
 of this land without putting up a nickel! 
 
 Eut when, after putting through the real 
 estate deal, I went to St. Louis to carry out 
 the Boer War end of the transaction, I found 
 that Mr. Wall — the head of the great drug 
 firm — had developed mighty ambitions as a 
 showman. He figured out that if the Boer 
 War was such a great success in St. Louis, 
 he could take it through the South and West 
 — a la Buffalo Bill and the Barnum circus — 
 during the following winter and summer, 
 and reap a rich harvest of shekels. This, of 
 course, put a damper on my scheme. But I 
 reconnoitered a bit and foimd out two very 
 
216 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 important things. First, that Mr. Wall and 
 Captain Lewis were at loggerheads; and sec- 
 ond, that Lewis had made a contract with Gen- 
 eral Cronje that was to begin immediately the 
 Fair was over. Now, Cronje was the star of 
 the whole proposition. He appeared daily in 
 the show, rode around the track and over to 
 a miniature Lord Roberts and surrendered as 
 he did in the real war. Without this great man 
 as a figurehead, it was clear that the show 
 would have no value at all. Lewis was to 
 pay the old gentleman one thousand five hun- 
 dred dollars a month and his wife twenty dol- 
 lars a week. So I made a combination with 
 Lewis and then approached Wall with the 
 scheme that he should bring the Boer War to 
 [Brighton Beach the following summer. But 
 the idea of taking the outfit through the South 
 had become an obsession with this very excel- 
 lent drug man, and I found that I could make 
 no deal with him at all. My experience as a 
 showman told me that such a move on Wall's 
 part meant nothing but ruin and that if I 
 waited imtil he had tried his scheme out I 
 
ooryntOMT, •down •ho». 
 
 General Viljoen 
 
THE FIGHTINa MAN 51? 
 
 could make my own terms — which ultimately 
 came true. 
 
 Meantime Lewis had got hold of Viljoen 
 also, and the whole affair was left in a most 
 chaotic condition. Everything was up in the 
 air. To make matters worse, there was con- 
 stant danger of a row between the Boers and 
 the English. They had to keep the two ex- 
 enemies apart. Any night there was apt to 
 be a real war and ten or fifteen killed. The 
 principal objection the English soldiers had 
 to the whole arrangement under which they 
 were working was that Captain Hendon, who 
 had been brought over without their knowl- 
 edge, was employed around the show in a busi- 
 ness capacity. Hendon, they claimed, had been 
 the means of killing hundreds of Englishmen, 
 and they strenuously kicked about having him 
 around the place at all. 
 
 Finding Wall obdurate, we told him that 
 unless he would make some sort of terms with 
 us, we would organize a new Boer War, headed 
 by Cronje, who was under contract to Lewis. 
 This would have been easy enough, as there 
 
218 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 were plenty of available men in the states who 
 could ride and shoot just as the real Boers and 
 English did in St. Louis. Of course, he could 
 not retaliate by saying that he would have an 
 imitation Cronje. 
 
 When September came business at the Fair 
 dropped off very sharply, and the fixing up 
 for the road tour did not look quite so rosy. 
 I knew this would happen and I anticipated 
 the effect it would have on Wall, so when I 
 approached him to renew negotiations, I found 
 the amateur showman quite amenable to rea- 
 son. In brief, I secured a contract with Wall 
 to bring his entire outfit to Coney Island the 
 next spring on a basis of seventy per cent, of 
 the gross receipts to him and thirty per cent. 
 to us — "us" being the Brighton Beach Devel- 
 opment Company, which, in the meantime, had 
 been incorporated. The drug man was to pay 
 the people, also Cronje, whom we still held 
 under contract as a means of forcing Wall to 
 keep his part of the agreement. 
 
 The Boer War started through the South 
 bs per schedule and met one disaster after an- 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 219 
 
 other. It was a hard, hard winter for them. 
 The show business was not so rosy as it looked 
 and Wall lost money like water. 
 
 Meantime, we had filled in the marsh land at 
 Brighton Beach and had built an enormous 
 arena capable of seating twenty-six thousand 
 five himdred persons. 
 
 Along about the middle of May the Boer 
 and the English warriors arrived at Brighton 
 Beach in a train of freight cars. They had 
 made one jump from a little town somewhere 
 in Tennessee. The cars were fixed up with 
 hammocks stretched across and were occupied 
 by from fifteen to twenty men each. A more 
 disorganized, miserable lot of creatures never 
 traveled anywhere, and when they disembarked 
 Brighton Beach looked like Heaven to them. 
 They had had one-night stands all winter long, 
 without any pay, and when they saw the At- 
 lantic Ocean, where they could bathe, and 
 places where they could get something good 
 to eat, and the prospect of staying in a place 
 more than a day at a time — they were indeed 
 a happy lot of warriors! 
 
220 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 iBut a new danger arose: all had it in for 
 Lewis. Lewis, being a soldier, I had dele- 
 gated him as managing director of the entire 
 outfit while it stayed at Brighton Beach. He 
 had established a regular camp with a cook- 
 house, hospital tent and everything else to 
 make the men comfortable. But somehow, 
 they blamed him for all the misfortunes that 
 had befallen them during the winter, and they 
 were out for his life I 
 
 On their arrival, Boer and Englishman alike 
 made a bee line for the little bar in the Inn at 
 Brighton Beach. Up to that night nothing 
 had opened at the Island. Luna Park, Dream- 
 land and all the rest of the show places were 
 dark. There was only a stray electric light 
 here and there on the Island, and it was a bit 
 stormy at that. So, with four hundred Boers 
 and Englishmen half drunk with bad Coney 
 Island whisky, we all looked forward to a 
 lively night. The cock of the walk in the out- 
 fit was a tall Boer, who had been a wrestler 
 in South Africa, and who had acted as the 
 oiBScial announcer in the show. I realized that 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 221 
 
 if this ringleader could be squelched that night 
 we could bring some order out of the chaos 
 that prevailed. I was in the h'ttle bar, that 
 could hold twenty people if they all stood up, 
 and into which some fifty were now crowded. 
 The wrestling Boer, half-mad with drink, was 
 leaning against Captain Lewis and bragging 
 about what he was going to do to Brady when 
 he met him. In the midst of a most derogatory 
 characterization which he applied to me, I 
 stepped up to him and said, "My name's 
 Brady." 
 
 Without a word he hauled off and hit me 
 on the jaw, and I knew I was in for it. I 
 struck back, then placed my back against the 
 wall, and as he rushed at me I just kicked out 
 and he went in a heap on the floor. From that 
 moment on I was the master of the generals 
 and the colonels and the majors, and they sa- 
 luted every time I passed. 
 
 Our friend Wall, the St. Louis drug man, 
 attempted to recover his winter's losses from 
 his summer receipts, but, while th^se were ex- 
 traordinarily good, they were not good enough 
 
222 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 to pay the back salaries of the men. So things 
 went from bad to worse until about the middle 
 of August, when a general break-up occurred. 
 Wall retired and Captain Lewis ran the thing 
 along on the cooperative plan for a fortnight, 
 and then the whole proposition went to pieces. 
 The horses, cannons and gatling guns were 
 sold and I had to pay old Cronje some two 
 thousand five hundred dollars that was still 
 due on his contract, and out of my own pocket 
 send himself and his wife to Holland, where 
 he afterward died. Most of the Englishmen 
 and Boers connected with the outfit made a 
 bee line for Central America, looking for other 
 wars, as they were all soldiers of fortune, and 
 many of them have taken part in the petty re- 
 bellions that have been going on in that part 
 of the world ever since. 
 
 The cause of my second digression from the 
 theater game referred to at the beginning of 
 this chapter was Mat Henson. 
 
 Doctor Cook was supposed to have discov- 
 ered the North Pole. And there was great 
 excitement, as you all know, at that time. The 
 
Mat Henson 
 (Who accompanied Peary to the North Pole?) 
 
UNOIRWOOD « ONOtRWOOO 
 
 Frank Moran training for a bout 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 228 
 
 doctor made a lecture tour through the United 
 States, "playing" to fabulous receipts. He 
 got four thousand dollars for one lecture in 
 Brooklyn, three thousand eight hundred dol- 
 lars for one in Philadelphia, six thousand two 
 hundred dollars for one in St, Louis, two thou- 
 sand three hundred dollars and two thousand 
 five hundred dollars, respectively, for Cleve- 
 land and Pittsbxu'g. In fact, he must have 
 cleaned up sometliing like one hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand dollars in one month. 
 
 Suddenly one morning the news flashed 
 across the country that Peary had discovered 
 the North Pole and that Cook was a faker. 
 Of course, there was a sensation; the whole 
 world shook with the news! Yet, curious to 
 state, although most everybody had lost con- 
 fidence in Cook, he still remained more popu- 
 lar with the American public than Peary. This 
 was wholly a matter of x>ersonality, since 
 Cook, the faker, was drawing big houses and 
 Peary's appearances were meeting with disas- 
 trous failures. 
 
 Peary brought with him from the North a 
 
224 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 colored man named Mat Henson, who had 
 been the explorer's valet for years and who 
 had made several trips with him to the Arctic 
 regions. Henson was a very intelligent fel- 
 low and no doubt could tell some very inter- 
 esting things about Peary's trip to the Pole 
 that the public does not know of. I hit upon 
 the idea of taking Henson on a lecture tour. 
 I offered him three hundred dollars a week; 
 we signed a contract to that effect, and he 
 started in at Middletown, Connecticut. But, 
 strange as it may seem, nobody up there 
 seemed to have any interest in Henson, Peary 
 or the North Pole either. I had arranged a 
 grand reception for my man and had paid for 
 a brass band, which, together with the mayor 
 of the city, was to meet us at the depot. But 
 when we got there we found nobody but the 
 brass band and the chief executive, and in state 
 Henson and the mayor and the band rode up 
 the main street. But nobody paid any more 
 attention to them than if they had been sau- 
 sages I 
 
 Henson went to the theater and opened that 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 225 
 
 afternoon and took in thirteen dollars and 
 eighty cents. That night there were twenty- 
 three dollars in the house 1 
 
 Henson had secured most of the pictures 
 taken by Peary on his polar expedition, in- 
 cluding one taken at the Pole itself. And 
 Peary's attempt to prevent his ex-valet from 
 using these made Henson a bit angry and he 
 told some things about the explorer and his 
 journey to the Pole that might be of interest 
 if they ever got into print. In short, Henson 
 intimated that Peary did not know whether 
 he got to the Pole or not, and also that he 
 could have gone to the spot he finally attained 
 the very first time he made the attempt. Hen- 
 son asserted that Peary's expeditions were 
 nothing but hunting trips, that he used to 
 bring back valuable skins that he sold for his 
 own profit. He claimed that every time Peary 
 went north he made a little greater progress, 
 just to keep interest alive and encourage some 
 other "backer" to fit out a ship and send him 
 up there again. 
 
 Henson particularly resented Peary's not 
 
226 THE FIGHTING MAN 
 
 taking another white man with him to the Pole, 
 but instead, taking a black man, because he 
 knew the black man could not and would not 
 get anything out of it. And the black man 
 never did get anything out of itl 
 
 Is it not strange when you think of all the 
 glory that England lavished on Scott and his 
 heroes and Denmark poured out on Amund- 
 sen, that the one human being who ever went 
 to the North Pole and never got anything out 
 of it was Mat Henson — a black man ? He re- 
 ceived no reward from his government, no rec- 
 ognition of his services in any way I Nor did 
 he go as a servant, either. Even by Peary's 
 own account, he was the most valuable member 
 of the company. Strange to relate, although 
 a negro, he could stand more cold than any- 
 body else. His knowledge of the handling of 
 dogs and the caring for provisions was inval- 
 uable, and he actually saved Peary's life twice 
 during that one trip to the Pole I 
 
 Two nights after the Middletown failure 
 Henson appeared at the Hippodrome in New 
 York. We paid one thousand dollars for the 
 
THE FIGHTING MAN 227 
 
 building, put seven hundred and fifty dollars 
 into advertising, and took in six hundred dol- 
 lars 
 
 The same thing occurred everywhere. We 
 made appeals to the colored people, but Hen- 
 son's own race would not support him. Within 
 ten days I realized that this remarkable man, 
 notwithstanding the f^lct that he was rapidly 
 becoming a good talker and was giving an 
 interesting show, was a lost hope and a fail- 
 ure. So I compromised with him, the contract 
 was canceled and Henson dropped out of 
 sight 1 
 
 THE END 
 
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