THE BRIBED, FAKED AND FORGED NEWS ITEMS—THE PRO-PEARY MONEY POWERS ENCOURAGE PERJURY—MT. M'KINLEY HONESTLY CLIMBED—HOW, FOR PEARY, A SIMILAR PEAK WAS FAKED
XXXIV
How a Man's Soul Was Marketed
After Mr. Peary had done his utmost to try to disprove my Polar attainment; after the chain of newspapers which, for him, in conjunction with the New York Times, had printed the same egregious lies on the same days, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; after they had expended all possible ammunition, the damages inflicted were still insufficient. My narrative, as published in the New York Herald, was still more generally credited than Mr. Peary's. To gain his end, something else had to be done. Something else was done. The darkest page of defamation in the world's history of exploration was now written by the hands of bribers and perjurers.
The public suddenly turned from the newspaper-inculcated idea of "proof" in figures to a more sane examination of personal veracity. To destroy my reputation for truth in the public mind was the next unscrupulous effort decided upon. The selfish and self-evident press campaign, obviously managed by the Peary cabal, to that end had given unsatisfactory results. Some vital blow must be delivered by fair means or otherwise.
The climb of Mt. McKinley was now challenged.
I had made a first ascent of the great mid-Alaskan peak in 1906. The record of that conquest was published during my absence in the North, under the title, "To the Top of the Continent." The book, being printed at a time when I was unable to see the proofs, contained some mistakes; but in it was all the data that could be presented for such an undertaking.
The Board of Aldermen of the City of New York decided to honor me by offering the keys and the freedom of the metropolis on October 15. This was to be an important event. The pro-Peary conspiracy aiming to deliver striking blows through the press, their propaganda was so planned that the bribed, faked and forged news items were issued on days which gave them dramatic and psychologic climaxes. Two days before the New York demonstration in my favor, the pretentious full-page broadside of distorted Eskimo information was issued. This fell flat; for it was instantly seen to be a pretentious rearrangement of old charges. But it was so played up as to fill columns of newspaper space and impress readers by its magnitude. This was followed by the Barrill affidavit, similarly played up so as to fill a full newspaper page, which I shall analyze later. All this was done to draw a black cloud over the day of honor in New York, the 15th day of October.
Since the published affidavit of my old associate, Barrill, was a document which proved him a self-confessed liar; since the affidavit carried with it the earmarks of pro-Peary bribery and perjury, I reasoned again that fair-minded people would in time see through this moneyed campaign of dishonor. In all history it has been shown that he who seeks to besmear others usually leaves the greatest amount of mud on himself. But again I had not counted on the unfairness of the press.
The only reason given that I should have faked the climb of Mt. McKinley is that, in some vague way, I was to profit mightily by a successful report. The expedition was to have been financed by a rich Philadelphia sportsman. He did advance the greater portion of the sum required. We were to prepare a game trail for him. Something interfered, he relinquished his trip, and did not send the balance of money promised.
The result was that many checks I had given out went to protest. Harper & Brothers had agreed, before starting, to pay me $1,500 for an account of the expedition, whether successful or not. On my return this was paid, and went to meet outstanding debts—debts to pay which I embarrassed myself. Instead of "profits" from this alleged "fake," I suffered a loss of several thousand dollars.
As is quite usual in all exploring expeditions, some of the members of my Mt. McKinley expedition, who did not share in the final success, were disgruntled. Chief among these was Herschell Parker. Owing to ill-health and inexperience, Parker had proved himself inefficient in Alaskan work. Climbing a little peak forty miles from the great mountain, when he was with me, he had pronounced Mt. McKinley unclimbable. Climbing a similar hill, four years later, he stooped to the humbug of offering a photograph of it as a parallel to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley. This man was so ill-fitted for such work that two men were required to help him mount a horse. But I insisted that we continue at least to the base of the mountain. At the first large glacier, Parker and his companion, Belmore Brown, balked, halting in front of an insignificant ice-wall. The ascent of Mt. McKinley, still thirty-five miles off, they said, was impossible. Parker returned, and in a trail of four thousand miles to New York told every press representative how impossible was the ascent of Mt. McKinley. By the time Parker reached New York a cable went through that the thing was done. At a point four thousand miles from the scene of action, he again cried, "Impossible!" When I returned to New York, however, a month later, and Parker learned the details, he publicly and privately credited my ascent of Mt. McKinley. Nothing further was said to doubt the climb until two years later, when he lined up with the Peary interests.
Using Parker as a tool, Peary's Arctic Club, through him, first forced the side-issue of Mt. McKinley. With the Barrill affidavit, made later, were printed other affidavits by Barrill's friends, who had not been within fifty miles of the mountain when it was climbed. This act, to me, was a bitter climax of injustice. But I have since learned that Printz got $500 of pro-Peary money; that both Miller and Beecher were promised large amounts, but were cheated at the "showdown." Printz afterwards wrote that he would make an affidavit for me for $300, and at Missoula he made an affidavit in which he attempted to defend me.[26] This he offered to sell to Roscoe Mitchell for $1,000.
While easy pro-Peary money was passing in the West, Parker came forward with his old grudge. His chief contention was that, because he had taken home with him in deserting the object of the expedition a hypsometer, I could not have measured the high altitudes claimed. The altitude had been measured by triangulation by the hydrographer of the expedition, but I had other methods of measuring the ascent.
I had two aneroid barometers, specially marked for very high climbing, thermometers, and all the usual Alpine instruments. The hypsometer was not at that time an important instrument. Parker also showed unfair methods by allowing the press repeatedly to print that he had been the leader and the organizer of the expedition. This he knew to be false. I had organized two expeditions to explore Mt. McKinley, at a cost of $28,000. Of this Parker had furnished $2,500. Parker took no part in the organization of the last expedition, had given no advice to help supply an adequate equipment, and in the field his presence was a daily handicap to the progress of the expedition. Heretofore, this was never indicated. But when he allows himself to be quoted as the leader of an expedition upon which he attempts to throw discredit, then it is right that all the facts be known.
In the press reports, when Parker was first heard from, came the news that on the Pacific coast, at Tacoma, a lawyer by the name of J. M. Ashton was retained by someone. To the press Ashton said he was engaged "to look into the McKinley business," but he did not know by whom—whether by Cook or Peary. He was "engaged" in a business too questionable to tell who furnished the money.
In the final ascent of Mt. McKinley there was with me Edward Barrill, the affidavit-maker. He was a good-natured and hard-working packer, who had proved himself a most able climber. Together we ascended the mountain in September, 1906. To this time (1909) there was not the slightest doubt about the footprints on the top of the great mountain. Barrill had told everybody that he knew, and all who would listen to him, that the mountain was climbed. He went from house to house boastfully, with my book under his arm, telling and retelling the story of the ascent of Mt. McKinley. That anyone should now believe the affidavit, secured and printed for Peary, did not to me seem reasonable.
Parker, filling the position of betrayer and traitor to one who had saved his life many times, had decided, as the Polar controversy opened, to direct the Mt. McKinley side-issue of the pro-Peary effort.
The first news of bribery in the matter came from Darby, Montana. This was Barrill's home town. A Peary man from Chicago was there. He frankly said that he would pay Barrill $1,000 to offer news that would discredit the climb of Mt. McKinley. Other news of the dishonest pro-Peary movement induced me to send Roscoe Mitchell, of the New York Herald, to the working ground of the bribers. Mitchell was working under the direction of my attorneys, H. Wellington Wack, of New York, Colonel Marshal, of Missoula, and General Weed, of Helena, Montana.
Mitchell secured testimony and evidence regarding the buying of Barrill, but was unable to put the conspirators in jail. At Hamilton, Montana, there had appeared a man with $5,000 to pass to Barrill. Barrill's first reply was that he had climbed the mountain; that Dr. Cook had climbed the mountain; that to take that $5,000, in his own words, he "would have to sell his own soul." Barrill's business partner, Bridgeford, was present. He later made an affidavit for Mr. Mitchell covering this part of the pro-Peary perjury effort.
A little later, however, Barrill said to his partner he "might as well see what was in it." Five thousand dollars to Barrill meant more than five million dollars to Mr. Peary or his friends. To Barrill, ignorant, poor, good-natured, but weak, it was an irresistible temptation.
Barrill now went to Seattle. He visited the office of the Seattle Times. In the presence of the editor, Mr. Joe Blethen, he dickered for the sale of an affidavit to discredit me. He knew such an affidavit had news value. Indefinite offers ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 were made. Not getting a lump sum off-hand, Barrill, dissatisfied, then went over to Tacoma, to the mysterious Mr. Ashton. That all this was done, was told me on my trip west shortly afterward, by Mr. Blethen himself.
After visiting Ashton, Barrill was seen in a bank in Tacoma. Barrill had said to his partner that to make an affidavit denying my climb would be "selling his soul." Barrill, ill at ease, reluctant, appeared. It is a terrible thing to lure a weak man to dishonor; it is still more tragic and awful when that man is bought so his lie may hurt another. The time for the parting of his soul had arrived in the bank. With the sadness of a funeral mourner Barrill was pushed along. The talk was in a muffled undertone. But it all happened. In the presence of a witness, whose evidence I am ready to produce, $1,500 was passed to him. This money was paid in large bills, and placed in Barrill's money-belt. There were other considerations, and I know where some of this money was spent. His soul was marketed at last. The infamous affidavit was then prepared.
This affidavit was printed first in the New York Globe. The Globe is partly owned and entirely controlled by General Thomas H. Hubbard, the President of the Peary Club. With General Hubbard, Mr. Peary had consulted at Bar Harbor immediately after his return from Sydney. Together they had outlined their campaign. General Hubbard is a multi-millionaire. A tremendous amount of money was spent in the Peary campaign. In the Mt. McKinley affidavit of Barrill we can trace bribery, a conspiracy, and black dishonor, right up to the door of R. E. Peary.
If Peary is not the most unscrupulous self-seeker in the history of exploration, caught in underhand, surreptitious acts too cowardly to be credited to a thief, caught in the act of bartering for men's souls and honor in as ruthless a way as he high-handedly took others' property in the North; if he, drawing an unearned salary from the American Navy, has not brindled his soul with stripes that fit his body for jail, let him come forward and reply. If Peary is not the most conscienceless of self-exploiters in all history, caught in the act of stealing honor by forcing dishonor, let him come forward and explain the Mt. McKinley perjury.
Now let us examine the others who were lined up in this desperate black hand movement. In New York there is a club, at first organized to bring explorers together and to encourage original research. It bore the name of Explorers' Club; but, as is so often the case with clubs that monopolize a pretentious name, the membership degenerated. It is now merely an association of museum collectors. Among real explorers, this club to-day is jocularly known as the "Worm Diggers' Union." In 1909 Mr. Peary was president. His press agent, Bridgman, was the moving spirit, and one of Colonel Mann's muck-rakers was secretary. Of course, such a society, committed to Peary, had no use for Dr. Cook.
In a spirit of helping along the pro-Peary conspiracy, and after the Barrill affidavit was secured, the Explorers' Club took upon itself the supererogatory duty of appointing a committee to pass on my ascent of Mt. McKinley. There was but one real explorer on this committee. The others were kitchen geographers, whose honor and fairness had been bartered to the Peary interests before the investigation began. Without a line of data before them, they decided, with glee and gusto, that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed. This was what one would expect from such an honor-blind group of meddlers. But Mr. Peary's press worker, Bridgman, who himself had engineered the investigation, used this seeming verdict of experts to Mr. Peary's advantage.[27]
Still all these combined underhanded efforts failed to reach vital spots and to turn the entire public Mr. Peary's way. Something more must still be done, Peary's press agent offered $3,000, and the cowardly Ashton, of Tacoma, offered another $3,000, to send an expedition to Alaska, to further the pro-Peary effort to down a rival. The traitor, Parker, responded. He was joined by the other quitter, Belmore Brown, who has conveniently forgotten to return borrowed money to me. This Peary-Parker-Brown combination went to Alaska in 1910, engaged in mining pursuits and hunting adventures. They returned with the expected and framed report that Mt. McKinley had not been climbed, and that they had climbed a snow-hill, had photographed it, and that the photograph was similar to mine of the topmost peak of Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley has a base twenty-five miles wide; it has upon the various slopes of its giant uplift hundreds of peaks, all glacial, polished, and of a similar contour. No one peak towers gigantically above the others. On the top are many peaks, no particular one of which can with any accuracy of inches be decided arbitrarily as the very highest. The top of a mountain does not converge to a pin-point apex. One looks out, not into immediate space on all sides, but over an area, as I have said, of many peaks. My photograph of the peak, which loomed highest among the others on the top, possesses a profile not unusual among ice-cut rocks. The Peary-Parker-Brown seekers tried hard to duplicate this photograph, so as to show I had faked my picture. The thing might have been done easily in the Canadian Rockies. It could be done in a dozen more accessible places in Alaska; but, without real work, it could be only crudely done near Mt. McKinley. The photograph which Peary's friends offered to discredit the first ascent is one of a double peak, part of which vaguely suggests but a poor outline of Mt. McKinley, and in which a rock has been faked. Who is responsible for this humbug? Where is the negative? The photograph bears no actual semblance to my picture of the top of Mt. McKinley whatever. But why was the negative faked? Parker excuses the evident unfairness of the dissimilar photograph by saying that he could not get the same position as I must have had. But is laziness or haste an excuse when a man's honor is assailed.[28]
Let us follow the Peary high-handed humbugs further. To the southeast of Mt. McKinley is a huge mountain, which I named Mt. Disston in 1905. This peak was robbed of its name, and over it Parker wrote Mt. Huntington. To the northeast of Mt. McKinley is another peak, charted on my maps, to which Peary gave the name of the president of the Peary Arctic Trust. To this peak was given the same name, by the same methods of stealing the credit of other explorers, as that adopted by Peary when, in response to $25,000 of easy money, he wrote the same name, "Thomas Hubbard," over Sverdrup's northern point of Heiberg Land. Can it be doubted that the Peary-Parker-Brown propaganda of hypocrisy and dishonor in Alaska is guided by no other spirit than that of Mr. Peary?
Many persons say: "We will credit Dr. Cook's attainment of the Pole if this Mt. McKinley matter is cleared up." I have heard this often. I have offered in my book proofs of the climb—the same proofs any mountain-climber offers. To discredit these, my enemies stooped to bribery. I have in my possession, and have stated here, proofs of this. Such proofs are even more tangible than the climbing of a far-away mountain. Is any other clarifier or any other evidence required to prove the pro-Peary frauds?
This chapter is best closed by an analysis of the second effort of Parker and Brown. It will be remembered that in their first venture as hirelings of the Peary propaganda, they balked at the north-east ridge, without making a serious attempt. This ridge—(the ridge upon which I had climbed to the top of Mt. McKinley) was pronounced impossible and therefore my claim in their judgment was false, for such a statement $3,000.00 had been paid. During the spring of 1912, again with $5,000 of Pro-Peary money to discredit me—The same hirelings went through the range, attacked the same ridge from the west and by the really able efforts of their guide, La Voy, a point near the top was reached. The Associated Press report of this effort said that the principal result of the expedition was to show that the north-east ridge (the ridge which I had climbed), was climbable. The very men sent out and paid, therefore, by my enemies to disprove my work have proven, against their will, my first ascent of Mt. McKinley.
Two other exploring parties were about the slopes of Mt. McKinley during the time of the Peary-Parker defamers. The first, a group of hardy Alaskan pioneers, whose report is written in the Overland Magazine for February, 1913, by Ralph H. Cairns—after an unbiased study of reports both for and against, Cairns credits my first ascent. The well known Engineer R. C. Bates, who as a U. S. revenue inspector of mines and an explorer and mountain climber, did much pioneer work about Mt. McKinley. He also goes on record in the Los Angeles Tribune of February 13th, 1913, as saying: "Dr. Cook really succeeded in ascending the north-east ridge of Mt. McKinley as claimed in 1906." Bates confirms the charge of $5,000 being paid the Parker-Brown expedition to refute my 1906 ascent, and says: "In 1906 Dr. Cook claimed he climbed Mt. McKinley by the north-east ridge. In the account of the 1910 expedition, Parker claimed that 'the north-east ridge, the one used by Dr. Cook, was absolutely unsurmountable'. I, with a party of two, explored the mountain in 1911 and selected the north-east ridge as the only feasible route to the top. I ascended to 11,000 feet, according to barometric measure. I told of the exploit to members of the Parker party, who took the same course in 1912. Mr. Parker now contradicts his former statement by saying, 'The north-east ridge is the only feasible ridge, and whoever goes up will follow in my footsteps.'" It is important to note that Dr. Cook's previous footsteps were eliminated, $5,000 had been paid for that very purpose.
In a personal interview Mr. Bates made the very grave change that one of the leaders of the very expedition sent out to discredit me, had offered him a bribe to swear falsely to certain assessment work on claims which had not been done. The Peary-Parker-Brown movement is therefore from many sources a proven propaganda of bribery, conspiracy and perjury. That such men can escape the doom of prison cells is a parody upon human decency, and yet such are the men who are responsible for the distrust which has been thrown on my work.
