1911. 
THR RURAE NEW-YORKER 
eii 
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. 
Talking Back to Senator Jeff Davis. 
To Senator Jeff Davis: 
In the Congressional Record of April 
10 you are reported as appearing on the 
Senate floor as the champion of E. G. 
Lewis, and as a defender of his publi¬ 
cations. You express your admiration 
of him as a business man, and your ap¬ 
proval of his papers as a service to 
womanhood. We discard the suggestion 
that this was merely a bid for cheap 
notoriety on your part. We are not 
prepared to believe that you spoke with 
a knowledge of the facts. We are in¬ 
clined to believe that you hastily ac¬ 
cepted the protests of Mr. Lewis and 
his friends as made in good faith, and 
that relying on this exclusive informa¬ 
tion you believed that Mr. Lewis was 
conducting an honest publishing busi¬ 
ness, and that he was the publisher of 
legitimate and worthy publications. It 
would have been wiser to have informed 
yourself more fully before delivering 
yourself of such an unsparing endorse¬ 
ment of the Lewis schemes; but we 
have no disposition to criticize an honest 
error. 
We, however, take the liberty to give 
you some voluntary information. Here 
it is: For the last 10 years Mr. Lewis 
has been working confidence sphemes 
on country people. The principal func¬ 
tion of his papers has been to sell 
“gold bricks” to his readers. It is 
estimated that he got from these people 
in all about $10,000,000. Much of it he 
promised to return at definite fixed 
times with great profits. He has re¬ 
fused to return it at all. The profits 
they never got. He got the money from 
children, from widows, from orphans, 
from w’orking girls, from washerwomen, 
from cripples, from the aged and infirm, 
from old soldiers and superannuated 
ministers of the Gospel, and from peo¬ 
ple whom he induced to mortgage their 
homes and their farms to share the 
wonderful profits he promised them. 
Some of these deluded victims have 
since died, piteously appealing to Mr. 
Lewis to return the money to provide 
the necessities for their last hours. 
Others are appealing to him yet in a 
blind faith . in humanity, that no one 
could be so dishonest and cruel as to 
keep it. Some of them are completely 
dependent. He is as indifferent to the 
appeals of widows on behalf of sick 
and fatherless children as he is to the 
dying appeals of husband and father 
in behalf of those dependent on him. 
Don’t be misled by his lying pretense 
that this all happened because the Gov¬ 
ernment interfered with his bank and 
his publications. Most of these com¬ 
plaints come from people who sent him 
the money on new schemes since the 
Government interfered. The Depart¬ 
ment could not fully rescue his early 
dupes, but it did give them an oppor¬ 
tunity to recover part of their loss, and 
furnish an intimation for the protection 
of others. You interfere with the busi¬ 
ness of the safe-breaker and the pick¬ 
pocket when you apply the law to their 
trade. The Government simply applied 
the law established for the protection of 
its subjects to the Lewis enterprises. 
The details of his schemes to get 
money from country people would take 
volumes to relate. The schemes were 
laid, with a forethought and cunning 
worthy of a better cause. The amount 
each dupe could contribute was limited. 
It would not do to take enough from 
anyone so that he could afford to ap¬ 
peal to United States courts. The vic¬ 
tims must be widely distributed. It 
would not do to get too many dissatis¬ 
fied victims together. Numerous com¬ 
panies must be formed. If you became 
dissatisfied with one paper certificate, 
you could have another—an old fake 
trick. He added $5,300,000 to a com¬ 
pany already grossly over-capitalized, 
and by hysterical appeals and gross mis¬ 
representations induced his dupes to 
buy over a million of it. After three 
years without profit, he declared a divi¬ 
dend of 18 per cent, which had not been 
earned, promising to pay it in install¬ 
ments, and actually paid V /2 per cent. 
Then he offered the stock at par, and 
sold more of it. The balance of the 
dividend never was paid, but we can tell 
you where stock was bought and paid 
for on the strength of that promised 
dividend. Perhaps you think it was not 
declared for that purpose. When sell¬ 
ing this stock he promised that a pool 
of rich men had been formed to redeem 
the stock when the purchaser met a 
necessity for selling. Do you think the 
lie helped sell stock? He capitalized a 
few stopper patents for another million; 
and we can direct you to boys whom he 
induced to buy it at double its face 
value. Neither of these stocks was ever 
worth the paper the handsome certifi¬ 
cates were written on. They are not 
worth so much now. He advertised 
notes secured by a first mortgage on 
real estate, and when he got the re¬ 
mittance he sent an unsecured note, of 
doubtful value. He made promises to 
induce people to send him money on 
"Readers’ Pool” certificates; and broke 
the promises. He repeated the promises 
and again broke faith on building cer¬ 
tificates. He induced many women to' 
send him money for subscription pur¬ 
poses, under the promise that he would 
make them members of a League with 
millions of dollars of endowments. He 
now admits that instead of the millions 
of cash in hand, the so-called League 
is several hundred thousand dollars in 
debt. He promised that all these stocks 
and notes and certificates would be ex¬ 
changed for bank stock. It was a lie. 
When notes became due, he wrote the 
holders to send them in for cash pay¬ 
ments, if cash was wanted. It was an¬ 
other lie. Lie got the notes out of their 
hands, but did not return the cash. Read 
his papers for three years and see how 
he lied about membership in the League. 
Last August he got to his limit for cash, 
on the old schemes, and promised to 
turn over everything he had in the 
world to some sort of a straw-man who 
was to issue debentures to pay all his 
debts. Read his paper for six months 
following and see how he lied about this 
scheme. That failing, he now has a 
new scheme to get all of the evidence 
of indebtedness and criminality out of 
the hands of his deluded dupes. It is 
the judgment of every disinterested 
business man and lawyer familiar with 
his affairs whom we have consulted 
that he has been insolvent for years, 
that he has no paying business, and that 
he has kept up an appearance with the 
money borrowed from country people 
on these schemes. 
This, Senator Davis, is part of the 
record of the man you have championed 
in the United States Senate. Are you 
proud of your hero? 
Bankruptcy. 
We have the following dispatch from 
St. Louis:— 
Claud D. Hall, local attorney represent¬ 
ing creditors from all parts of the country, 
has filed involuntary bankruptcy proceed¬ 
ings in the United States District Court 
against Lewis Publishing Company, and 
also a suit to foreclose mortgage against 
the University Heights Realty & Develop¬ 
ment Company and People’s Savings Trust 
Company, trustee in mortgage dated .lune 
4, 1909, and for appointment of receiver 
for real estate covered by said mortgage, 
and a temporary restraining order was 
granted. 
Aniong other allegations in the pe¬ 
tition it is charged that Lewis paid 
$114,000 for the property in the Realty 
suit and sold it to the Company which 
he controlled for $537,788.16, and on the 
day of the sale issued a mortgage for 
$537,788 and sold the notes secured by 
the mortgage to various persons of all 
ages and sexes throughout the United 
States; that no interest has ever been 
paid on the notes except the first six 
months, which was paid in advance, and 
it is alleged as a bait to get people to 
invest in the notes. Taxes on the prop¬ 
erty have not been paid since 1906, and 
suit is pending in the county for four 
years’ taxes. This is charged as a vio¬ 
lation of the deed of trust. In addition 
to this the People’s Savings Trust Com¬ 
pany, trustee, had never given any se¬ 
curity, although it has trusteeships of 
six million dollars with paid-up capital 
of only $400,000. Further that L. B. 
Tebbetts, chairman of the board of di¬ 
rectors, to whose credit a deposit of all 
monies was to be made that were re¬ 
ceived from the sales of lots covered by 
the mortgage, was adjudicated a bank¬ 
rupt on February 13, 1911. Lie never 
gave any security for his trust and the 
court is asked for his removal and the 
appointment of a receiver for the prop¬ 
erty. The deed of trust in this case, 
which the people had a right to expect 
to be in due shape and legal form, is 
alleged to be a mere pretense and made 
for the purpose of Lewis’s Realty Com¬ 
pany and Trust Company controlling this 
property and the proceeds thereof al¬ 
most indefinitely. 
It is also charged that the Trust Com¬ 
pany had authority to convey any or all 
of this property without the consent of 
the holders of the notes and without 
surrender or payment of these notes. 
This proceeding looks like the begin¬ 
ning of the end of the Lewis schemes. 
The attempt to form a board of trus¬ 
tees under the control of John H. Wil¬ 
liams seems to have failed, partially be¬ 
cause publishers with a reputation to 
sustain were not willing to become a 
party to it, and further because creditors 
were unwilling to surrender their evi¬ 
dence of claims to Mr. Williams. It 
has been intimated by Lewis’s agencies 
that there was really nothing in the way 
of assets left in the Lewis Publishing 
Company, and that in the case of the 
bankruptcy proceedings there probably 
would not be enough of assets to pay 
the cost of the action. Whether this is 
so or not, the suspense may as well be 
over, and creditors may as well know the 
worst as to delude themselves with vain 
hopes. 
Creditors of these two companies 
have now only to place their claims 
where their interests will be protected. 
The attorney in this case is Mr. Claud 
D. Hall, 705 Olive Street, Saint Louis, 
Mo. Claims sent to us will go in with 
our other claims. We will gladly look 
after the interests of our subscribers or 
their friends; and will not receive nor 
accept any pay for the service; but these 
claims will now need to be looked after 
by attorneys at St. Louis, and the 
usual 10 per cent, will probably be 
charged by them on the amount col¬ 
lected. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—Two men were killed and a 
score of others injured when unknown per¬ 
sons on May 3 dynamited two box cars 
standing in the Kirk railway yards at Gary, 
Ind., in which a number of Italian laborers, 
employes of the American Bridge Company, 
were sleeping. . Rivalry between Chicago 
labor agents is advanced by the Gary police 
as a. possible clue to the outrage. The 
victims of the explosion were hired through 
Joe Macaluso’s labor agency, 382 Clark 
street. Chicago. Because of his success in 
this line Macaluso has incurred the enmity 
of the Black Hand and he has himself twice 
been the victim of dynamite plots. 
As a result of probing the Franklin Coun¬ 
ty, O., grand jury May 3 indicted five mem¬ 
bers of the Ohio General Assembly on the 
charge of soliciting bribes. One legislative 
attache was indicted on the charge of aiding 
and abetting in the solicitation. 
The Treasury Department May 3 issued a 
statement confirming the report of the ac¬ 
ceptance of the offer of the counsel for 
Duvcen Brothers for the settlement of the 
civil snit pending against them for the 
fraudulent importation of works of art and 
antiques at the port of New York. The 
amount to be paid by Duveen Brothers in 
the settlement is given as $1,180,000. 
The severest sentence ever imposed on a 
violator of the local option law in Douglas 
County, Ill., was given to Horace W. Sor¬ 
rells by Judge Dolson at Tuscola, Ill., May 
3. Sorrells was sentenced to 300 days in 
the connty jail, was fined $4,900, and must 
pay $550 court costs. 
Nearly a score of miners in the Hartford 
mine of the Republic Iron and Steel Com¬ 
pany, at Negaunee, Mich., were cut off from 
escape when the timbering took fire May 5, 
and seven are dead. The fire began on the 
third level of the mine 400 feet under 
ground. It is the theory that some care¬ 
less miner left a lighted candle too near 
the woodwork of the shaft. As soon as the 
fire was fonnd to be serious the 100 men 
were notified. Some gained the surface by 
the cage, while others made their way 
through the Cambria mine, adjoining. 
Forest fires May 7 swept over territory 
estimated at ten square miles in Rhode 
Island and the neighboring parts of Massa¬ 
chusetts. In South Kingston three men were 
cut off and one was burned to death. The 
damage will amount to many thousands of 
dollars. The most serious fire began near 
Larkins Pond, in the town of South Kings¬ 
ton, early in the day. The village of Kings¬ 
ton, near the Rhode Island State College, 
was in danger of being wiped out, and the 
whole force of students and faculty of the 
college t numbering over 150 men, turned out 
and with shovels, brooms and brush aided 
the farmers in saving their homes. This 
fire burned over a space of between four 
and five square miles. Several buildings 
in town were destroyed. These include a 
sawmill, near which was 800 cords of wood 
cut and piled up. Fire in Oakland, near 
the town of Cranston, swept over 50 acres of 
timber land. Another in Seekonk, just ovo< 
the State line in Massachusetts, covered 30 
acres. Both the Attleboros had extensive 
fires May 7. In North Attleboro a tract 
three miles square was burned over and 
much standing timber was destroyed. In 
Attleboro the fire department fought all day 
to protect houses threatened by two fires. 
Three forest fires surrounding May’s Land¬ 
ing, N. J„ May 7, destroyed thousands of 
dollars worth of timber land before they 
were put out by hundreds of fire fighters. 
Automobilists on the country road from 
Philadelphia to Atlantic City had to pass 
through clouds of smoke. Trains on the 
electric railway between McKee City and 
May’s Landing passed through flames on 
either side of the tracks. 
Settlers living along the Minnesota-On- 
tario boundary fear a repetition of the dis¬ 
astrous fire of last Fall, when some forty 
or fifty people were burned to death, a 
dozen or more towns razed to the ground 
and millions of feet of valuable timber went 
up in smoke. Never was the bush so dry 
or the water so low in the rivers and creeks. 
May 8 big forest fires were raging to the 
north of Beaudette, Minn., and in the vicin¬ 
ity of Williams, and conditions are ideal 
for the already large fires spreading. Al¬ 
ready a number of settlers have been burned 
out and reports of loss of life have been 
received, but as yet need confirmation. That 
some persons have lost their lives is as¬ 
sured, for there would be but little chance 
for escape for a number of settlers home¬ 
steading in the bush country. The towns 
of Quitico, Hunters Island and Frog Creek 
are in grave danger, and their residents es¬ 
caped in relief trains. Fires are raging in 
the valuable timber limits to the north of 
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and already 
millions of feet of timber have gone up in 
smoke and a number of homesteaders have 
lost all they had. May 8 the fire got into 
the limits of Hudson's Bay Junction and 
Mafeking, but with the relief sent by the 
Canadian Northern Railway, combined with 
the efforts of the entire population of the 
two towns, the buildings were saved except¬ 
ing a few on the outskirts. Forest fires are 
burning in Houghton, Ontonagon, Keewenaw 
and Baraga counties in the upper peninsula 
of Michigan, particularly in the neighbor¬ 
hood of Rockland, Chasscll and L’Anse and 
near Otter Lake, the centre of a rich farm¬ 
ing district. Many farms were destroyed at 
Otter Lake. Fires started May 8 in timber 
lands west of Calumet on the shores of 
Lake Superior and the lower lake region 
Is covered with dense smoke. 
DIARY OF FARM WORK. 
Busy Week on a Fruit Farm. 
This is the first of a series of reports 
of farm labor which we hope to print dur¬ 
ing the year. We want them as widely 
scattered as possible, and would like to 
have them as clear in detail as this excel¬ 
lent report from Mr. King. Can we have 
volunteers for the work? 
Monday, April 24.—Finished grafting 123 
plum trees to-day. There was a block of 
140 set for Reine Claude seven years ago 
this Spring, and only nine were true to 
name; the rest have never had a dozen 
plums on, and they were small yellow ones, 
and there are no blossom buds on this 
Spring. They were very strong, vigorous- 
growing trees, and wo put in from eight 
to 12 scions in each, leaving enough limbs 
to take up the sap and shade the bodies 
pretty well; shall fasten burlap around the 
bodies later to be sure to keep them from 
sunscald. We put on 2,200 pounds of fer¬ 
tilizer on a block of 500 Iron Mountain 
peach trees, 700 pounds muriate of potash, 
1,500 pounds acid phosphate. It took two 
men just one hour to mix this ami load 
half of it on a wagon ; sowed this by hand, 
about 4% pounds to a tree. We used no 
nitrogen, as there wex'e about 25 loads of 
stable manure put on this ground last Win¬ 
ter. We had three teams plowing and 
one pulling stumps, and three men setting 
trees. 
Tuesday, April 25.—finished pulling 500 
nine-year-old peach trees to-day; it took 
three men and a team 1 y 2 day, used a 
heavy hay rope and one pulley block; 
hitched the rope ahead and pulled six to 
eight trees without backing up. Our rope 
was hax-dly heavy enough, as we had to 
splice it several times, and we had to cut 
occasionally a i - oot. These trees were set 
for Chairs Choiee, but have been practically 
worthless. They were of the Crawford 
type, and somewhat resembled the Chairs 
Choice, but they were surely not purebred* 
The root growth was strong and healthy, 
but the trees were weakly. From the bud 
up something was the matter. We are 
going to set Elbertas this Spring in the 
holes where we pulled out these trees. One 
team has been subsoiling for another block 
of trees, one plowing with gang plow, and 
one harrowing. The rest of the men have 
been setting cherry trees. 
Wednesday, April 25.—Started spraying 
again this morning, and the engine balked, 
so we got another man and hitched on to 
the hand sprayer and used that. Two men 
and a team dug 629 holes this forenoon. 
We stake the ground out one way, then 
turn two heavy furrows out, and subsoil 
the middle furrow. The hole digger is a 
largo spade fastened to a standard and 
beam with handle something like a ditching 
plow ; this we hitch onto a sulky in place 
of the plow. The team straddles the fur¬ 
row, one man drives and the other digs 
the holes. One team has been plowing in 
the gooseberries with a gang plow, and one 
team plowing under the trees with a set- 
over iron on; we don’t use a one-horse 
plow much now, as we can do better work 
with a team. Began making some moixe 
lime-sulphur to-day; we thought we had 
enough to take us through the season, but 
have let our neighbors have some, and 
have done more spraying than we expected. 
The rest of the men have been setting trees. 
Thursday, April 27.—We got the engine 
started again this morning, and it worked 
well for about four hours and then balked 
again. A balky engine is worse than a 
balky horse; pulling, pushing, coaxing or 
scolding don’t do a bit of good. We have 
about 2,000 more peach trees we haven’t 
sprayed, but they are varieties that curl- 
leaf does not damage unless it is a very 
bad Spring, so think we will not try to 
use the engine any more this week but 
give it an overhauling and have it ready 
for the apples next week. We have sprayed 
about 17,000 trees this Spring with one 
hand and one power sprayer. This weather 
is hustling things ; had to spray our goose¬ 
berries this afternoon with the hand rig; 
nearly finished 5,000 to-night. Finished 
setting the 029 trees this morning, pulled 
up our stakes, took them, puddling tub 
and tools and moved to the block we pulled 
the trees on and got to setting there. The 
teams wei'e plowing and harrowing all day. 
Friday, April 28.—W T e finished making 
our lime-sulphur mixture yesterday ; two 
men made 16 barrels in a little less than 
two days, testing 27 to 29 degrees Beaume. 
Finished pulling wood from the vineyard 
and burned the brush and set ti’ees with 
the men to-day. It is quite a slow job 
to set where we pulled the stumps; there 
are a good many roots left. Evei - ything 
didn’t go quite smooth again to-day. One 
man broke a plow beam and another broke 
an iron that clamps the handle onto one 
of the gang plows. I guess we have to 
get steel plows, and then—how I would like 
to have talked to the px-esident of that 
company ! This is the third one of these 
clamps * we have broken, and they could 
just as well have been made out of mal¬ 
leable as cast iron. 
Saturday, April 29.—Fnished raking and 
burning brush to-day in our peach orchards. 
We find the best thing we ever used is one 
of the old revolving wooden rakes; it gathers 
it up pretty clean and will haul a good 
load. When I was a young fellow I bought 
one of those rakes and raked the wheat 
stubble on my father’s and uncle’s farms 
for half, and I made enough to pay for 
the i-ake and $10 besides. This was cradle 
stubble ; 1 grew an inch on that deal. We 
nearly finished setting ti’ees to-day, set 
in some gooseberries, and did several odd 
jobs. I had one man with me setting out 
a lot of odd trees, about 30 varieties of 
peaches, cherries and apples that we have 
not tried before. We do some experiment¬ 
ing. This has been a hot, busy week. One 
week ago to-day it snowed by spells all 
day, and the buds had hardly begun to 
start, and to-night there are some apricots, 
Burbank plum and sweet cherries in bloom. 
With quite a little balking and breakage 
we have done a lot of work this week. All 
hands have earned their wages and quit at 
five o’clock, so as to wash up and get ready 
for Sunday. The boss and some of them, 
too, go to church and Sunday school. 
Tompkins Co., N. Y. T. H. king. 
