The Standard Bearers. True Stories of Heroes of Law and Order

This volume about the Pennsylvania State Police was first published in 1918. A summary from the book's Foreword: In the foreword of an earlier book, 'Justice to All', I have told the story of the dastardly murder and heroic death of Samuel Howell, carpenter, ambushed by robbers on a lonely country road in the State of New York. In the book itself I have tried to tell the story, equally heroic, of the Pennsylvania State Police. The slaying of that fine young American laboring man, too true of heart to buy his life with his honor, unmasked once more an old and shameful fact that the Empire State connived at such tragedies accepted them without feeling, without action, and without remark. The trade of robber and murderer, so long as exercised upon the poor, was practically a snug and safe employment in rural New York. Then, at last, because no working account of the subject already existed in print, and in order to lay the plain facts in available shape before the people of New York and of the Union, I wrote 'Justice to All', the story of the Pennsylvania State Police. The purpose of that book exacted condensation and the cutting-out of much incident that might have served to bring its meaning home. Out of the mass of material thus set apart have been taken the narratives that form this present volume. It has been a difficult and unwelcome task to choose, from so large a sheaf, what to take and what to leave. The incidents here related are chosen, not because they stand out from the rest, but just, on the contrary, because they fairly illustrate the common daily round of the Pennsylvania Force. Space alone governs their number. For there is not one seasoned man in the entire Squadron who has not performed many an act of valor and of service equal in quality to those recounted here. 324 pages.