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Show MACKINTOSH'S CLOSING STATE- ' ME NT, What has to Oii'cT as a La.3t Shot at tha "Singular Trans action." ac-tion." H lt LiiK Cil v. Jan. -2 j, W I. i J.1 (ifn.-.t J(-,:.l.l: 1 gave to you fur publication on Saturday morning the exposure of a clear ea-te of deliberate and intentional inten-tional fraud, on the part of J. B. jSc.it, of Detroit, Michigan, who, but tor the detection ot his miitmy, wnuld have dealt a blow to the mining interests in-terests of Utah bevond anything that has yet occurred hi our experience. To the charges that I preterm! against him and my statements were endorsed by seven gentlemen who were present at my olfice when I exposed ex-posed the intended swindle J. B. Scott in ikes a reply over his own signature sig-nature in vour paper, to answer which 1 request the favor ol your columns; but before I enter on the subject matter, permit inn, gentlemen, to say that if this were strictly a personal per-sonal a flair, a controversy on veracity, between Scott on the one side, and the ore buyers of Utah referred to on the other, I should not write a line. Any man capable of concocting I with deliberation a (rand and pursu-ing pursu-ing his plan with such persistency as Scott hits shown in Ins recent ollort lo swindle the ore buyers of this city, and then, afterwards, when he was detected, to have the brazen ellVontcry to claim the virtue of philanthropy for his actions, when he knows that the evidence in my possession of his guilt would send him to the penitentiary, peniten-tiary, if there was a s Ui tutu in the Territory punishing the attempt to swindle such a man, I think, is beneath be-neath the notice of any gentleman. But as I am advised, having no statutory law to reach him, I deem it a duty that 1 owe to the mining com munity here, to the smelting estab- ments abroad, and to the capitalists " whom we invite to Utah, that 1 j should give a fuller statement of , facts connected with this attempt to i swindle, than I gave in my former , communication on the rascality of J. . B.- Scott, the Detroit philanthropist, ' Lhe man of unsullied reputation ! , Mr. Scott desires to impress upon ( the public mind that in this very ex- ( traordinary case he has acted solely t as a detective in the interests of capi- i lalists abroad; that he was willing to . commit all the acta of a would-be swindler, and confesses that he actually actu-ally did commit such acts, but it was j all done from the best of motives and ( for the public good! Well might the editor of another paper enquire of Mr. Scott "if he did not feel he was running run-ning great risk in entering into such an arrangement." Ho certainly did run a great risk. He did everything to accomplish a felony but the last act and that I stopped him from doing by exposing his rascality in the presence of the trentlemen whom he had met to victimize. If Mr. Scott hod been an innocent man he could never have been bo stupid stu-pid as to write such a reply as he has done to my charges. His very sense of guilt nasreuUereu nun incapable ol seeing that his defence would lurce'.me tU.i give the public greater evidence ot i his guilty intention. He aliWuld have been discreet and held his tongue. In addition to the arrangement that he endeavored to make with my foreman fore-man for "saiting" the sampling ore from the Ox lord ik Geneva mine, he also wrote to the foreman from Detroit and sent him a cypher communication communica-tion in which he instructed the foreman, fore-man, Mr. Wallace, to substitute "sacks" for ounces and "bags" for lead. When the sampling was effected as Scott had arranged for it lo be done, Air. Wallace was to telegraph him in this cypher, so tnat if he brought the sample up to 1(H) ozs. of silver and 40 per cent, of lead, the telegram would read: "100 sacks and -10 bags." Let the reader bear in mind that this' cypher cy-pher communication was for use only between tho foreman in Salt Lake city and Scott in Detroit, and the foreman is not only willing to swear to this fact in any court of justice, jus-tice, but he will further swear that in addition to the money that he was to receive for his criminal services in first sampling the ores as directed, Scctt protfered to pay him ten per cont. on all the stock he eold in Detroit, De-troit, it he raised tho ligure high enough. That Sctt did intend to carry out the swindle here, as well as in Detroit, is unmistakeable, for he arranged with me to sell his ores here after they were sampled. Had he got Mr. Wallace to have written to him and telegraphed him as he expected, the double swindle would have been perpetrated per-petrated in this city and in Detroit, and the virtuous, honorable, high-minded high-minded Capt. J. B. Scott would have been as innocent rs a babe. But his little game did not work smoothly, and Mr. Wallace received the following follow-ing letter: Detroit, Nov. fi, 1873. Alexander Wallace, Esq ., Salt Lake City, U. T. Dear Sir: Wrote you on the liil i.f Oei. nbont matter ns wo tnlkod and as yet g t no Reply. Am waiting anxiously as we are getting down about 100 ton,-, to sell. Now you ij;t tho samples as to talked and your Cfi'h Is ready as wn talked. Attend to this mutter imediully &. writu & telegraph us and oblige. Years Ki-ijwtfullv. Scott & lfKm x. I should hke to know if the articles of copartnership of the firm of Scott A. Brown admitted the firm signature to be attached to such a letter. With such facts, and such a letter, worded with the aire and craftiness of a man conscious that it might fall into the wrong hands and be wit nest against him some other day. can any one doubt of the purpose and intent of J, B. Scott? But the evidence evi-dence of his guilty purpose increases as we follow him in his dark, pat lis. Every circumstance connected with this rascally transaction bears evidence evi-dence of an intontional swindle, and not a single circumstance points to the purpose, as Scott now assumes, of discovering whether the sampling mills of Utah can be tampered with. Tho very ore tnat he sent down to the mill is unmarketable I Can any one believe that a man as capable of concocting villiany as J.B. Scott has exhibited here within the past ten days would be so confoundedly confound-edly stupid as to arrive at the conclusion con-clusion that because he had found an employe" of a sampling mill corrupt that he had established in the public mind the point which lie assumes ho came here to learn V To have reached this assumed point of information, infor-mation, it was not the foreman but the proprietors of the sampling mills in Utah who should have been temp-tied temp-tied and corrupted, then the virtuous Scott, the Detroit philanthropist could have returned to his virtuous and philanthropic associates and informed in-formed them that he had proved, to his satisfaction that the sampling mills of Utah could be tampered with.. That he thought he could have succeed-' ed with the employe-, there is abundant 1 evidence, and had lie succeeded in I robbing the ore purchasers by selling them on false samples, it would only have proved that the sampling mills in Utah were subject, liko every establishment es-tablishment in the world, to havo a dishonest employe in their service!' That is all it would have proved and nothing more. Because it lias been my unpleasant duty to unmask Capt. ,1. B. Scott, of the firm of , 'Scott tfc Brown, ship merchants and slop brokers," of 1'2, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, and show to Lhe public that he had but one more step to lake and then commit a felony, when I kindly prevented him from taking that fatal slep, would it be fair losay that all the ship merchants and ship brokers in Detroit were studying felony? Certainly Certain-ly not. Captain Scott. h;ui no such purpose in view as he now assumes. There is not a shadow of evidence- U) support it. Everything he did, and what he did not do, tends to the clearly clear-ly arranged purpose- of a fmud. No 'man of- his years and shrewdness would have run the risk of detection in a course of procedure that would subject him to the charge of intentional inten-tional (ymuI without providing for the protection of his name. J. B. Scott is too shrewd a man not to have seen tho advantage it would have been to i.lm irimnsliatfU- that he was caueht. to have produced gentlemen of irreproachable irre-proachable veracity who could have testified that they were cognizant of his phil inthropic purpose. He has no such witnesses here; but he intimates that he has some associates in Deiroil who induced him lo come here anil do as he has done, and placed money in his hands for that .purpose. Capt. Scott does not improve his unfortunate unfortu-nate position by any such statement. I can readily believe that he is not alone in Lhe vilUiny! It is rarely the case that a gigantic swindle is undertaken under-taken single-handed. But I am not through ivith the virtuous Scott, the Detroit philanthrop'st. If his purpose was to test Alexander Alexan-der Wallace in the sampling mill, what necessity was there lor trying to sell the ores at all? Way should Mr. Soit go lo the ore purchasers and toll them that he hod some excellent ore to sell, and ask them to bid upon it, and that they might do so intelligent-lv intelligent-lv Iim rnnrcsHiitfd Lhaf. thfi nrn wnuld sample about 100 ozi. hi silver and -10 per cent, in lead ; the very figures he had arranged with Mr. Wallace to make the samples! Instead of offering for sale these ores tu the gentlemen whose business it is to buy ores, he should have confided to them his scheme of testing Mr. Wallace; they were the very men interested in the discovery; they were ten thousand times more interested than any person per-son could be in Detroit. They would hove been the victims ofthe swindle, and but for the information I received from Mr. Wallace and im ported to those gentlemen, one 1 1 them would surely have bought the ore, and the virtuous Scott, the De troit philanthropist, would have put in his pocket about $10,000. Jn this time of scarcity of greenbacks green-backs it is customary for ore purchasers purchas-ers lo pay a part ofthe amount in checks and a part on tiiue say thirty days. With such a virtuous and philanthropic purpose in view thede-lection thede-lection of Alexander Wallace hero , was an excellent opportunity for Scott to have defended himself against all charye of swindle; he could have said to those ore purchasers, Gentlemen, Gentle-men, I will take your paper for thirty days; and when the whole Detroit laid scheme had been carried through, and the evidence was there that the foreman of the mill had betrayed my trust, the virtuous Scott could have triumphantly handed over the evidence evi-dence of his skill, and could have said: "Gentlemen, I have run a great risk to satisfy myself and friends in Detroit that the sampling mills in Utah could not be trusted; I have proven it and that there should bei)o misunderstanding about the purity of my motives', you will remember that I consented to take only paper; which, after it had passed from your hands to mine, and 1 had shown you that you had been robbed by a dishonest dishon-est employe" of the sampling mill, I return you the paper an 1 you have no reason to complain of a ny trouble that I may have caused you in carrying out my experiment, for all that you hove done has boon to fill out a bheck." Once that the money received for the ore was in your pocket who could have reached either you or the cash? When the swindle was found out, of course you had nothing to do with it. You had h;ul the sampling from the mill, and the assoyers had given a certificate of the value ofthe ores and yon had sold the ores upon the figures of the certificate. If there was u mistake, you were not responsible, and you could not return back the money! How could you? But the ore purchaser would have pursued me for the false sampling done at my mill, , and toe price paid to yon and the alter freight expenses, and other contingencies con-tingencies added to it, to the tune of something reaching to Slo.000, would . have come out of toy pocket, ami my j mill would have lost its reputation, j Should I not hold you in high esteem j and affection? j There is not a word of truth in the! reply of the virtuous Scott, onlyl wherein he admits that with which j he is charged, and so far from being 1 strong in his innocence, when one of the gentlemen charged him in the strongest language, and with his clenched fist shaken in his face, with being a cheat and a swindler, the virtuous vir-tuous Scott, the Detroit philanthropist, philanthro-pist, asked us "not lo take it to heart," and when I told him that I should publish tho whole affair, he begged us again "not to take it to heart," asked pardon of ua all, and plead that if I did not publish it he would promise that "it should not occur again." When, in our presence, pres-ence, Mr. Wallace related that the virtuous Scott had promised to take him into his service in Detroit as a ; wheat weigher if he were discharged 1 from the sampling mil!, Scott did not ; deny his promise, nor did he blush to acknowledge that he had told Wallace Wal-lace that he could make in his service ser-vice from $100 to $lo0on even" ship's cargo that he weighed as directed, and lor placing this temptation bclhre a young man, he plead that "every shipper hod to do it, tor the grain never did hold out." Now, Messrs. Editors, I shall close with tins Detroit philantiiropist. in citing lhe lost of lhe evidence that I care now to name of the deliberate intention ol fraud on the part of Copt, Scott. As soon as he arrived lure, he promised to those who had claims against him. including myself, thai when he sold his ore he Wuiild pay his indebtedness, and had he sold it, as he tried to do, at the prices which he arranged with Mr. Wallace that the samples should be made up to, he could have done so. He was detected and exposrd, and tho ore that be did send to the city is unsaleable, and tor which he now owes ibr hauling. The freight alone from here to Chicago is more than it is worth even ifany one would take it Ibr nothing and so the virtuous I Scott, the Detroit philanthropist, has I had to confess to us alt that we shall hive to wait till lie can return to Detroit to make arrangements for payment. Nothing can bo clearer evidence than this that he meant to have taken o hinh price for the ore had he been sueeosdu!. His little experiment has cost him about Of A) in money and the loss of whatever what-ever reputation he may have had. It is a heavy penalty hut a just one. from long acquaintance with "ways that are dark, "Mr. Scott has been Uo venturesome uud has stumbled Juig a very bad position. Ho will return to Detroit a sadder and a wiser man, and he will, I trust, wherever he goes say a go.nl word for Utah in the future, fu-ture, and when any of his friends should suggeL to him that the people of Utah are not to be trusted, I shall admire his bravery should iio relate the little experience he has h;l with "The Pioneer Sampling Mill." Thanking you, geutlemen, for the use of your columns, lam respectfully, respect-fully, etc., R. Mackintosh. |