I think I would attempt making a bronze, brass, alumnium or steel of some description plate which
could be tapped so the tote is secured like on regular Bailey's....
Personally, I wouldn't do anything too radical or irreversible to it. My guess is that the original 'tote' had a metal plate screwed to the bottom of it, which slid into the dovetailed receiver on the sole. Or the wood of the tote was just dovetailed to make a very tight fit.
[Edit:

I should have looked at your original pics more closely! I just looked at them again now & saw that the tote was fixed directly by a sliding D/Tail. Don't know how I missed it. Anyway, that should be easy enough to copy, though my idea od a dovetailed brass plate screwed to the bottom of the tote (which is what TTrees is suggesting?) may be more durable in the long haul...]
It would appear it relied on nothing more than the tightness of the fit to keep it in place since there is no evidence of anything else to retain it. Whatever method they used, it eventually failed & the tote went AWOL before anyone decided to fix it.
It would seem the north-eastern US was a hive of inventors in the latter half of the 19thC, all working feverishly away on building better mouse-traps. This plane is perhaps someone's idea of the plane that was going to blow the Stanley/Bailey out of the water. Looks like it didn't quite do that, but it just
might be some "missing link" that collectors have been searching for for decades.......

Cheers,
Ian