consciousness, which act would cause me to be boycotted by the
automobile murderers' union and I would be a marked man.

"As president of a life insurance company I could not vote myself
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year salary, and take it
from fatherless children and widows and retain my self respect.
Out here in the mountains I can occasionally take my boys, when
our funds get low, and ride away to a railroad, and hold up the
choo-choo cars, and take toll, but not of the poor passengers. Who
do we rob? Why the railroads are owned by Standard Oil, and if we
take a few thousand dollars, all Mr. Rockefeller has to do is to
raise the price of kerosene for a day or two and he comes out
even. The express car stuff is all owned by Wall street, and when
we take the contents of a safe, ten thousand or twenty thousand
dollars, the directors of the express company sell stock short in
Wall street and make a million or so to cover the loss by the
bandits of the far west, and pocket the balance. So you see
we are doing them a favor to rob a train, and my conscience
is clear. I am always sorry when an engineer or expressman is
killed, and when such a thing occurs I find out the family and send
money to take care of them, but of late years we never kill anybody,
because the train hands don't resist any more, for they do not
care to die to save Wall street money. Now when I say to an
engineer: 'Charley, turn her off and stop here in the gulch and
take a dynamite stick and go wake up the express fellow by
blowing off the door of his car,' the engineer wipes his hands
on his overalls and says: 'All right, Bill, but don't point that
gun at my head, 'cause it makes me nervous.' He blows up the
express car as a matter of accommodation to me, and the
expressman comes to the door, rubbing his sleepy eyes open and