Yellow Kid" Weil

I had been away from Jessie, my fiance, for several months and was anxious to see her. She and her family welcomed me back, and that winter, I saw her often. She thought I was a traveling salesman for a reputable firm, but I told her that I was tired of the road and intended to set up my own business in Chicago.

In those days, a woman seldom questioned a man’s work. Her place was strictly in the home. Jessie didn’t ask me about the sort of salesmanship I was engaged in. It was many years, long after we were married, before she found out that I was anything but a respectable business man.

She and her mother were devout members of the Sacramento Congregational Church in Chicago. With them I attended services every Sunday. The minister had a forceful delivery, using a clever choice of words to sway his audience.

This set me to thinking. I said to myself, “Joe, you are not capable of hard physical work. You’re too frail. Whatever you accomplish in life must be done through words. You have that ability. You can make words beautiful and scenic. What marble is to sculpture, what canvas is to painting, words can be to you. You can use them to influence others. You can make them earn your living for you.”

As I have said, that minister made a deep impression on me. I wondered would he help me enter a good theological seminary where I could study to be a pulpiteer. I broached the subject to Jessie and her mother. They were overjoyed.

One Sunday evening we waited after services and approached the minister. His advice was realistic.

“First,” he said, “you must give your soul and your whole life to God. Have you done that?”

“You’ve got to make up your mind that you will give yourself to the work,” he urged. “Then you will have to be able to pay your way through school.”

“Yes, that can be done,” declared the minister, “if your heart is in it. Here is what I advise you. First read some religious texts. Study religion for a while in your own way. Then if you are ready to give your life to God, come back to me and I will tell you how and where to enroll.”

That minister must have been psychic. He must have realized that my heart had not been given over to God, but that I was seeking a career to further my own ends. However, he gave me a list of books to read.

First was the Bible. I read through it, then the other volumes he had recommended. I supplemented these with books of my own choice. I studied the lives of Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed. I secured a copy of the Catholic Encyclopedia and read that.

The net result was that I lost all desire to become a pulpiteer. There were so many inconsistencies I could not reconcile that I became an iconoclast. I arrived at these conclusions: Man has all the bestiality of the animal, but is cloaked with a thin veneer of civilization; he is inherently dishonest and selfish; the honest man is a rare specimen indeed.

However, my reading firmly convinced me of the power of words. I felt that its proper use could lead me to fortune. In that I was to be right. The use of words led me to many fortunes.

When I told Jessie that I had decided that I was not cut out to be a preacher she accepted my judgment. She continued, however, as organist at the Sacramento Church and retained her faith. Though I became an iconoclast, I attended the services because of my great love for her. And I still have a high regard for that minister and his power with words.

In those days, the police were not like our police of today. The force was not so large, and the Detective Bureau had not yet been organized. The Municipal Court was not a big organization. Most of the courts were operated by justices of the peace. We called them “Justice Shops.” Each justice had his own constables, who were the detectives of that period.

There was practically no restriction on either gambling or vice. A man could earn money by his wits without any interference from the constables or the police. There was none of this pickup business, where a man is locked up and held indefinitely in a cell without a charge being placed against him.

Both civil and criminal cases were tried in the Justice Shops. I knew one of the magistrates quite well - Judge Aldo. He used to send me out to select jurors. Juries were composed of six men. When I was assigned to get a jury, I was, first of all, told which way the case was to be decided.

Naturally I went into the saloons. I’d tap a man on the shoulder and say: “How would you like to make a couple of easy dollars?”

If he was interested, I explained to him that he would have to vote right - to earn his money. In this way, I picked up half-a-dozen men, led them into Judge Aldo’s court, and saw them sworn in as jurors. The trial of course, was a farce - the verdict had been decided before the jury had even been assembled.

I picked up money in various ways, hanging around the saloons and hotels - always by persuasive words, playing upon the gullibility of some sucker who was anxious to make easy money at someone else’s expense.

But most of my time was spent at the race tracks. There was no pari-mutuel system then. Bets were accepted by bookmakers and betting commissioners who determined their own odds. I pretended to be in the confidence of owners of race horses and sold inside tips to other bettors.

I made no bets myself, because I soon learned that there is no such thing as smart money at a racecourse. I yearned to be an owner of race horses myself, but the time for that was not yet.

I had sold the plug I had acquired from the farmer, but I kept the sulky. I heard of a socially prominent young woman who owned two horses. But they were so high-spirited that she couldn’t control them. I contacted her and bought them for a ridiculously low price. They were named Nicotine and Mutineer.

At this time, sulky racing was still popular. I used to race one or the other of my horses hitched to my sulky, at Billy Gilliam’s racecourse at 35th and Grand Boulevard. When I could afford it, I bought a buggy and used Nicotine and Mutineer as carriage horses.

Driving up Michigan Avenue in my buggy, with these two blooded horses prancing and champing at the bit, I often attracted attention. One day a well-dressed, elderly man hailed me. I stopped.

“Well,” he grumbled, “if you change your mind come to see me at my office. I’m Mr. Loomis, you know.”

Mr. Loomis was the head of a large wholesale grocery firm which was then, and still is, one of the leaders in the Middle West. His proposal inspired me with an idea for a new confidence game. This one was to be an excellent money-maker - and within the law.

“No, I haven’t, Mr. Loomis. But I have come to make you a counterproposal. I want you to lend me $5,000.”

“What!” he exclaimed, when he had recovered from my effrontery. “That’s a lot of money, young man. Do you have any collateral?”

“All I have is my rig,” I replied. “But if you will make me the loan, I will put up the rig as collateral and at the same time tell you how you can make a lot of money.”

“I suppose I ought to throw you out,” frowned Mr. Loomis, “but you interest me. In the first place, I’d like to have that rig. Now what is your proposal?”

“Are we alone?” I asked, looking around his office. “This must be strictly confidential.”

“No one can hear.” To make doubly sure, he got up and closed the door. “Now, what is it?”

“I am going to tell you how to make a lot of money. I happen to know the race is fixed. The man who weighs in the horses is a friend of mine. The winning horse will carry no weight. I also know the judge. In case my horse fails to win, he will declare it no contest. In other words, Mr. Loomis, you can’t lose.”

“Lend me $5,000. When the race is over, I’ll not only pay you back out of my winnings, but I’ll make you a present of my rig. Just to show my good faith, though, I’ll pledge my two fine horses and buggy. If, by some mischance, our horse should fail to win, then you’ll have my rig.”

Mr. Loomis required only a few minutes to think this over. He wrote me a check for $5,000. I gave him a mortgage on my outfit. Then I told him the name of the horse - Mobina.

Actually, Mobina was a selling plater and hadn’t won a race in months. There was so little chance that Mobina would win now that he was listed at 10 to 1.

Of course, the odds appealed to Mr. Loomis greatly. He got ready to make a killing. He was helped along by my enthusiastic reports from the track. Within a few days, he was figuring up the vast sum he was going to add to his already sizable fortune.

But before the race came off, I took Mr. Loomis for more money. I dashed in to say that the judge was afraid and that we needed a couple of hundred dollars to keep him quiet. On another occasion, I told him that the jockey had threatened to expose the whole thing. On one pretext or another, I took him for an additional $1,700.

Then came the day of the race. Mobina didn’t even show. Of course, the race hadn’t been fixed and nothing had been paid to the judge. The only fixing I had done was to give the jockey a couple of hundred dollars to pull the horse, just to make sure it didn’t win.

“I can’t understand it,” I said. “Something went wrong. It has absolutely cleaned me out.”

Mr. Loomis got his rig. And there is a moral to this story: if he had been willing to make an honest deal for it in the first place, he could have bought it. But he wasn’t willing to pay a fair price and in the end, it cost him $6,700, in addition to whatever he lost on the race.

I tried the same deal, with variations, on other wealthy men. Almost without exception, they were eager to get in on the easy money. I didn’t have my rig as bait, but I played on their natural greed. I asked for a loan and told my story of a fixed race. The amounts I got varied with the individuals. But I never found another who was as gullible as Mr. Loomis.

One day, I approached John R. Thompson, who founded the Thompson restaurant chain. I asked him for a loan of $2,500 and told him my fixed race story.

“If you are desperately in need of $2,500,” offered Mr. Thompson, “and if you can prove it to me, I’ll lend you the money. But I will have absolutely nothing to do with a fixed race.”

I didn’t take anything from Mr. Thompson. I probably could have talked him into the loan, but I didn’t. In my long career, I can truthfully say that Mr. Thompson was the only man I ever met who was one hundred per cent honest.

There was, of course, a limit to the number of suckers who would take part in this con game. After my experience with Mr. Thompson, I went back to touting at the racecourses. I met a man named Frank Hogan and worked with him successfully for a number of years. For a time we operated a bucket shop on La Salle Street, and engaged in other enterprises to separate people from their money.

In the saloons and poolrooms of Chicago, we were known as a pair of young fellows with sharp wits. Our favorite hangout was the saloon of “Bathhouse John” Coughlin, located on Madison Street near La Salle. The Bath was then Alderman of the First Ward. He was a swell fellow, as many another will tell you.

One evening the Bath saw me glancing at a newspaper, The New York Journal, to which he subscribed. A comic sheet had caught my eye. It was called “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow Kid.”

He did. And I read the comic regularly. The Yellow Kid depicted was malformed, as far as body structure and facial equipment were concerned. He had large ears, an enormous mouth, and protruding teeth with much space between them.

One night a race-horse tout named Jack Mack entered Coughlin’s saloon. It was after midnight, but the saloon never closed. Downstairs was the bathhouse and above was a hotel. Tommy Chamale, who was later to become a millionaire banker and the owner of the Green Mill, the Riviera, and Tivoli theatres, was night porter and bar boy.

Jack Mack had an egg in his hand and he was attempting to stand it up on the bar. That attracted Chamale, who asked what Mack was trying to do.

“I can make it stand up and I can do it without injuring the shell,” said Mack. “How much have you got in the cash register?”

Mack had some salt in the palm of his hand. He dampened the end of the egg and pretended to cleanse it in his hand. The salt adhered to the end of the egg, giving it a foundation the same as the legs on a table. The egg stood erect.

Mack collected the twenty-eight dollars and left. A few minutes afterward I retired to the bathhouse to spend the night. When Bathhouse John came in Chamale told him about the wager.

“You’ve been tricked, my boy,” said the Bath. “Weil is probably in league with Mack. They worked a con game on you.”

The next morning, when I went upstairs to the saloon, Coughlin said: “Were you here when Chamale made that wager?”

“Maybe,” said the Alderman, shaking his head, “but I don’t believe it. I think you and Hogan got part of that money.” His eye fell upon the comic sheet lying on the bar where I had left it. “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow Kid,” he read aloud. “Hogan and Weil. From now on, you’re the Yellow Kid.”

That was in 1903. And from that time on, I was invariably known as the Yellow Kid. There have been many erroneous stories published about how I acquired this cognomen. It was said that it was due to my having worn yellow chamois gloves, yellow vests, yellow spats, and a yellow beard. All this was untrue. I had never affected such wearing apparel and I had no beard.

Bathhouse John was my friend until his death a few years ago. He began as a rubber in the bathhouse of the old Brevoort Hotel. Later he became the owner of this bathhouse and a protégé of “Hinky Dink” Kenna. He was a politician all his life, though he dabbled in horses and opened an insurance brokerage house on LaSalle Street. He was a big, hearty fellow, loved by all his friends, as well as by the voters who regularly returned him to the city council.

An impressive figure, he had a flair for brocaded vests, which made him even more a person to attract the eye. He gained a reputation as a poet and composer, but it was common knowledge that his stuff was ghost written. Perhaps the most famous of his songs was “Dear Midnight of Love.” This was composed by May de Sousa, the daughter of a detective at the headquarters of Mayor Carter Harrison.

The Bath befriended many underworld characters, but I don’t believe that he ever received a cent from any of their enterprises. He was the sort who would help anybody in need.

Frank Hogan and I dissolved partnership, and he went on to become a prominent investment broker, though the methods he used were shady. When the law was at his heels in 1907 he went to France, where he bought a villa outside of Paris. He never returned to the United States.