Empty Mansions

job, carried home $2,600 from the legislative session, including $1,100 he said he found in his room and $1,500 he said he won by gambling at faro, a popular card game (and one often rigged in favor of the house).
    H. W. McLaughlin sold his woodlots and sawmills to W.A., who set him up with a job.
    D. G. Warner’s ranch and building lots were sold to an employee of Charlie Clark for $7,500.
    E. C. Day, leader of the Clark forces in the state house, received personally from W.A. $5,000 after the vote “as a testimonial of friendship.”
    And for S. S. Hobson, the chairman of the Republican caucus, who owed $22,000 to the Fergus County Bank, W.A. bought the whole bank and cleared his debt.
    The total paid out was estimated at $431,000, but there was no way to know the exact figure.
    • • •
    When it came his turn to testify, W.A. said that he had not campaigned for the Senate at all, that he had never sought the office, that he had left any electioneering to his son and others, that he couldn’t recall what instructions he might have given in letters because he dictated as many as one hundred letters a day and required the use of two or three stenographers, that he had no knowledge of any money being paid to anyone, and that when the subject of money was raised by anyone fishing for a payout, he would say firmly, “I don’t expect to secure any votes for a financial consideration.” He said that Charlie had the authority to write checks on his account. “I never asked a question of any of them where they spent a dollar.… Of course I did not authorize or expect that they would spend any money unlawfully.”
    As for the canceled checks themselves, they were drawn on the bank W. A. Clark & Brother and were nowhere to be found. “About every six months,” W.A. explained, “I destroy all my checks.”
    The best case that W.A.’s lawyers could make was that he had not been directly tied to any bribery. “A man does not forfeit his seat because he obtained it under suspicious circumstances.” The case against him was based on “hearsay evidence, rumors, the gossip of the street corners and barrooms.” No one had been convicted, or even accused, of a crime. The Daly banks were the ones that had run short of thousand-dollar bills. In sum, the attorneys claimed that the case against Clark assumed a scheme of political corruption more degraded than the world had seen, committed in the open, clumsily, in front of witnesses.
    Yet, in private, W.A. conceded to a friend that “itcannot be overlooked that money has been used improperly.”
    Indeed, the Senate committee vote against him was unanimous. Evenif W.A. didn’t make any payoffs himself, the senators found that “the friends of Senator Clark illegally and improperly used large amounts of money.” The Senate committee found on April 23, 1900, that “the election to the Senate of William A. Clark, of Montana, is null and void on account of briberies, attempted briberies, and corrupt practices by his agents.” This was not the final verdict. The full Senate would have to ratify the committee’s recommendation, but that seemed inevitable.
    The gossipy
New-York Tribune
described W.A.’s reaction: “His face was somewhat flushed, but his voice was calm and his manner collected.”
A SERIES OF SURPRISES

 
    I N M ONTANA , Governor Robert B. Smith, a lawyer by training, didn’t suspect a thing. He was offered a side job, an easy $2,000 for a bit of freelance work examining the title to a valuable mining claim. All he had to do was take the train from Helena to San Francisco, a trip that happened to keep him out of Montana for several days. Thus began a most daring political scheme.
    In Washington, before the full Senate could ratify the committee’s decision to throw him out, W. A. Clark gave a tearful speech to the Senate on May 15, 1900, condemning “the most devilish persecution that any man has ever been subjected to in the history of any civilized country.” He said the men who had paid off their debts during the legislative session must have come by it honestly. He likened his situation to the renowned case of Alfred Dreyfus, the French artillery officer who had been presumed guilty of treason, convicted based on false evidence, and imprisoned before finally being exonerated.
    He closed with a flourish: “I was never in all my life, except by such characters as are now pursuing me, charged with a dishonorable act, and I propose to leave to