The Kimball Graphic

Don't Want Wires

On the roof of a lofty building in the business district two brawny linemen were toiling along the network of wires fastened to a high series of cross arms. One bent his ear close to a tiny telegraph instrument connected with a wire, while the other, under his direction, busily twisted two wires together.

"Hold on," cried the man listening at the instrument. "They want to measure resistance. We'll have to wait awhile."

The two descended, and behind a huge chimney lit their pipes. Asked a young man, who had been watching them with interest: "Suppose you wanted to string a wire from this to that building opposite, how would you do it?"

"That's against the law, young man," responded the taller of the two linemen. "Telegraph companies never break the law."

"But suppose you wanted to?"

"Young man, if I wanted to carry a wire across the street from here I'd let you go down on the sidewalk and watch, and while you were watching I'd get the wire over and you'd never know it. How? Well, that's a business secret, but I don't mind telling you that I've known men to perform the feat several ways. If I wanted to do it I might take that pilot wire for instance that is composed of two or three strands. I might twist a bunch of wires to go across the street till they exactly resembled the pilot wire to an observer on the sidewalk. I might cut the pilot wire, hitching on my bunch, and keeping it taut by main strength my man opposite would slowly haul it over. You wouldn't know it was moving. When he had wire enough I'd shake out the wires I wanted from the bunch and leave the rest to make good the gap in the pilot. If I couldn't find a pilot wire on the particular roof I'd take the biggest gauge single wire there and hitch two small wires twisted together to it, make a fine joint, and my assistant would haul them over. One would serve to make up the break in the big wire, the other would be mine. If I were driven to it and had to get a rope across the street I'd work either early in the evening or early in the morning, when I have heard there are only a few policemen around, and those either asleep or chumps that wouldn't know what I was doing.

"I knew a man on Dearborn street who had one wire in his office and had to have another. An enemy swore he shouldn't, and hired a man and a policeman to watch the corners of two buildings on opposite sides of the street and the sky to see that no wire was strung. While they were looking the wire went over. It was a little, two-strand cable, just the size of the single wire, and after it was fastened to the latter and the joint nicely soldered it took an hour to pull it slowly over."

"If you were to undertake such a job wouldn't you be liable to mistake the wire--get the wrong one? There are a good many on the roof tops."

"Yes, there are thousands of them--telegraph, telephone, electric light, signal, fire alarm, public and private, dead and secret--but there are scores of linemen that know every one. I can put my hands on a dozen men, any one of whom you can take blindfolded on any roof and he'll tell you the name, number, ownership, use, destination, origin and age of every wire in the biggest rack you can find. It's kind of a natural knowledge. You either know it or you don't. I know a man who can't read or write, but he can break open a thirty-two-strand cable and pick out the wire he wants.

"It is always a fellow who knows the wire geography of the roofs," he continued, "that makes the taps. Are there many taps? You don't hear of a fraction of them. It is natural that sometimes people would try to catch the secrets worth thousands of dollars that go over telegraph wires, ain't it?

"I was after a tap the other day and found it in our own office tower. It reminded me of another in the days of the hottest war against the bucket-shops. A certain shop was getting quotations. We made a dozen tests and tours and found nothing. Finally, by accident, I discovered the operator in a certain hotel had his instrument near a telephone, and shouted quotations out too loudly. I looked at that telephone and found that it was kept in-circuit by a little wooden peg under the lever, which was apparently with the earpiece hanging in it. That was a good dodge, but the tappers made it a beautiful one by taking that telephone wire all over town and actually breaking open a telephone cable, running it through that a piece, then into another cable, and finally taking it through a central tower, all to disarm suspicion. We located its other end in an office in a high building on Clark street, and there sat a telegraph operator, the 'phone to his ear, catching the shouted quotations of the other operator and telegraphing them over a secret wire to the bucket shop.

"In another case they left a blind lead for us in the shape of a wire half concealed running into a hole in a brick wall, while they broke open the linen-covered line wire, fastened their tiny copper threads to it, and ran them down holes bored in the insulator into a chimney. In another case they tapped every wire of a certain company and rigged up a battery of their own, thus making themselves independent, and bade defiance to that company for four weeks, till it dropped on the taps in its own office. In another case they went on a certain roof--the owner of which swore he would shoot any man found there stringing more wires, and kept a guard to do it--and while the guard was on hand they tapped the wire they wanted. Of course we didn't think of looking there and didn't go up there till we had to, fearing we'd be thrown off. O, there are tricks in all trades--but ours."--Chicago Tribune