A Farmer Vanishes in the Night, and a Secret Order Is Blamed
Charles Gloystein was called from his Spokane County home at midnight. Weeks later all that has surfaced is his battered, bloody hat — and the editor points straight at the oath-bound Freemen's Silver Protective Federation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Several weeks have now passed since the extraordinary disappearance of Charles Gloystein, who was to all appearances enticed from his home near Mica, Spokane county, at the dead of night. During that time everything possible has been done by the sheriff of Spokane county and his deputies to find some trace of the missing man, but their efforts have been rewarded by nothing more than the recovery of the battered and bloody hat which was found on the day after his disappearance. The rewards offered by the sheriff and the governor have been of no avail. Gloystein has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed.
Of course it cannot be said with entire positiveness that the missing farmer is dead. It is certain, however, that the probabilities point very strongly in that direction. No adequate motive can be assigned for his voluntary disappearance. It is certain, furthermore, that he did not go off alone, for the evidence of his wife, as well as that of the neighbor's boy who heard their voices, proves unmistakably that he was enticed from home by two or more persons, who are thus far unknown.
With the fact that he did not leave home alone admitted, the presumption that he was decoyed away for a criminal purpose and that he has been murdered becomes very strong indeed. And, if the fact of murder be acknowledged, the crime is brought very close to the doors of the Freemen's Silver Protective Federation. No other explanation for the murder has been suggested. Gloystein had been involved in a heated dispute with the members of the federation, and he had been warned by it that he would be punished. They have acknowledged their bitterness toward Gloystein and have admitted their murderous threats against him.
Given an armed secret political organization like this, whose officers openly threaten lawlessness and violence; given a neighborhood in which this organization has almost full sway; given a farmer in an isolated community who denounces and defies it; given threats that if this farmer does not cease his opposition he would be murdered; given the disappearance of this farmer under the circumstances of Gloystein's disappearance; given the failure of every effort to explain that disappearance on any theory other than that of brutal murder — given all these things, and the conclusion is almost irresistible that the threatened farmer was murdered, and murdered because of feeling growing out of his political convictions.
And all this is supposed to have happened in the state of Washington and in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-four.
“Gloystein has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed.”
An isolated farmer, a midnight abduction, and a powerful oath-bound political society that terrorized its opponents: the Gloystein case captures how paramilitary grievance could rule a rural county in the Populist era. More than a century later, Washington still wrestles with the line between impassioned political organizing and organized intimidation of one's neighbors.
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