"It would be a cinch to burn the McKinnon, Dash plant. I could go back to work there as foreman. Any Saturday night I could be the last to leave. Before going I could saturate flooring with benzine and put a lighted candle where within a half hour or so the flame would reach the benzine."
Newton also suggested his willingness to dynamite the banking house of J. P. Morgan & Co., at 23 Wall Street, or to dynamite the banker's automobile. He had a series of postcards in his own handwriting, which, in case he was hired for a dynamiting, were to be mailed from distant points every day while he was on the assignment, in order to establish an alibi.
He was an irresponsible person, and one who could not be said to be under orders from the attachés in lower Broadway. Yet he is typical of the restless and lawless floating population of which the Germans made excellent tools. When he heard Galley he promptly offered his services; his boldness would have made him a capital destroying agent, and it was fired by the speech in Herald Square, a speech inspired from Berlin. Here was his opportunity to make money. Thus, by a word of encouragement, by the whisper of "big money" to discharged, dissatisfied or disloyal employees of munitions plants, the seed of German violence was sown everywhere. Men who were well dressed and of good appearance would be remarked if they prowled about factory districts; men must be employed who would fade into the drab landscape by the very commonplaceness of their clothing and action. They could be hired cheaply and swiftly disowned, these Newtons!
The _New York Times_ on November 3, 1917, recapitulated the damage wrought by German incendiarism as follows:
"A graphic idea of what the fire losses in the United States owe to the work of war incendiaries may be gained from consideration of the fact that the total fire insurance paid in the United States in 1915, according to the figures of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, was $153,000,000. It is estimated that 60 per cent. of the loss by fires in this country is represented in insurance. Therefore, the total fire loss in the United States in 1915 was something over $200,000,000. Of the $153,000,000 paid out by the insurance companies, $6,200,000 was represented by incendiary fires. A total of $62,000,000 was charged to fires from unknown causes.