789 
1911. 
OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. 
On Monday Judge D. P. Dyer of the 
United States District Court at St. Louis, 
Mo., announced that he had invited Judge 
Smith McPherson of Iowa to assist him 
in the final determination of the suits filed 
against the E. G. Lewis properties by 
Claud D. Hall, who represented numerous 
creditors. About twenty affidavits were 
filed by Mr. Hall on behalf of complain¬ 
ants, and intervening petitions of forty ad¬ 
ditional creditors representing claims from 
THE RURAh 
per front foot would be placed with the 
People's Savings Trust Co. for improv¬ 
ing the lots. Claud D. Hall, the credit¬ 
ors’ attorney, contended from the first 
that as this fund was promised to be 
used as an improvement of the prop¬ 
erty, it was part of the security belong¬ 
ing to the note holders. The receiver 
is of this opinion also. This amounts 
to about $80,000 and he has demanded of 
the Trust Company that this amount be 
$200 to $1,800 each were also filed. Lewis’s ... -- —-- - —„ 
It, ome y Med a plea denying , he jur M , cion pa.d over for the benefit of the credt t- t,o awnjen and ^ysetf 
of the court, claiming that applications 
held against properties of the defendants are 
separate and distinct and no one claim was 
sufficient in itself to be heard in the Federal 
Court. 
On Wednesday the court, consisting of 
Judges Dyer and McPherson, heard the 
cases and on Thursday morning a decision 
was rendered in favor of the creditors 
and a receiver was appointed for all the 
Lewis companies including the Peoples’ Sav¬ 
ings Trust Co. A receiver also was ap¬ 
pointed in the Mercereau foreclosure pro¬ 
ceeding on the trust agreement of February 
14, 1910, involving sections 1, 2 and 3 of 
University Heights.—Dispatch, St. Louis, 
Mo. 
Last week Lewis was indicted by the 
Federal Grand Jury for alleged fraudu¬ 
lent use of the mails. Some weeks pre¬ 
vious a bankruptcy suit on behalf of the 
creditors against the Lewis Pub. Co. 
was filed in the United States Court and 
at the same time a receiver was ap¬ 
pointed for the foreclosure of the mort¬ 
gage of June 4, 1909, covering 70 acres 
of the University Heights Realty and 
Development Co. Now we have a re¬ 
ceiver for foreclosure of the mortgage 
of the remaining property of the Realty 
Company, and a receiver under the gen¬ 
eral creditors’ bill for all of the Lewis 
companies, including the People’s Sav¬ 
ings Trust Co. E. G. Lewis and his 
wife, John Lewis, John W. Williams, 
his agents, attorney and representatives, 
and Lewis B. Tebbetts. The Lewis at¬ 
torneys admitted that the State Banking 
Department had already demanded that 
the People’s Savings and Trust Co. pay 
off its depositors and cease doing busi¬ 
ness, and that it was unable to pay a 
certificate of deposit for $80,000, an ad¬ 
mission of insolvency. Asked by the 
court if he could give the entire indebt¬ 
edness of the Lewis Pub. Co., he replied 
that it owed $600,000 on notes and about 
$300,000 additional, and that the real 
estate was mortgaged for more than it 
is worth. The court asked if he could 
give approximately the entire indebted¬ 
ness on the real estate properties. The 
attorney replied: “Impossible, I could 
give you a list of the mortgages, but you 
would find that one Lewis company 
owes another, that the other one owes a 
third one, and that the third one owes 
the first.” He said he had been working 
at it for months, and the best firm of 
accountants he could get said it would 
take eight or nine months to get at the 
bottom of it. 
In his opinion Judge McPherson is 
reported to have compared the Lewis 
schemes to the Mississippi Bubble and 
other historical get-rich-quick episodes, 
and said if a fraction of the allegations 
made in the receivership petition are 
true, the Lewis affair constituted one of 
the most gigantic frauds of the cen¬ 
tury.. The dispatches indicate that the 
court had a pretty clear conception 
of the fraudulent character of these 
concerns and the result would seem to 
indicate that whatever is left of these 
properties will now be liquidated for the 
benefit of the creditors. At all events 
Lewis’s exploitation of sensible country 
people will cease. It is not conceivable 
that any one outside of a lunatic asylum 
would again contribute to his fraudulent 
schemes, no matter on what pretext, or 
how alluring he made them. 
The receiver in the first foreclosure 
suit made his first report on Monday. 
Holders of the notes against this mort¬ 
gage will remember that they were 
promised that a fund amounting to $6 
ors. The attorney admitted that this 
was in the form of a matured certificate 
of deposit; but that the Trust Company 
could not pay it. Lewis, who, he said 
always did everything wrong, turned 
over notes to the amount of $80,000, and 
the certificate of deposit was issued 
where no money had been paid in. This 
trick was used to boost the deposits of 
the bank. The court inquired if reports 
of the bank were made under oath, and 
it was assumed by attorney that they 
were. This feature may be inquired 
into again. The receiver reports that 
the issue of notes on Section 5 ex¬ 
ceeded $985,000, part of which have 
been cancelled; that the entries as 
to Section 5 are almost inextric¬ 
ably commingled with the entries re¬ 
lating to other sections; that they have 
been unable to ascertain to what extent, 
if any, interest has been paid. The re¬ 
ceiver’s report states: 
The University Heights Realty & Devel¬ 
opment Company appears to maintain in¬ 
tricate and intimate relations with the 
Lewis Publishing Company, the People’s 
Savings Trust Company, E. G. Lewis and 
various others, many cross entries are made. 
It is difficult to exact much sequence from 
the correspondence. A number of files have 
been examined and all have been found 
fragmentary. The monies derived from the 
sale of notes on Section 5 were commingled 
with other monies derived from the sale of 
other notes of the Realty Company. These 
monies were in large part deposited in the 
St. Louis County Bank and considerable 
of said money so deposited appears to have 
been eventually transferred to the Lewis 
Publishing Company and E. G. Lewis. 
While the receiver seems to be unable 
to show with any degree of accuracy 
what interest, if any, has been paid on 
the notes, he does show that the total 
amount of the notes issued is far in ex¬ 
cess of the mortgage of $537,000, but 
they have been unable to ascertain just 
how many were outstanding at any one 
time. Many of the notes seem to have 
been issued to Lewis himself, to the 
Realty Company, and to the Trust Com¬ 
pany, and the Trust Company seems to 
hold many of them now. The attorney 
believes that if Lewis holds any of these 
notes yet, they will be able to have them 
cancelled. It is not thought that the 
court would permit him to reap the 
benefit of the notes after having bought 
the property for $114,000, and having 
sold mortgage notes against it to the 
people for $537,000. 
All claims whether sent to Williams or 
not, should now be properly presented to 
the court. This may be done through 
your own attorney, or if the claims are 
sent to us they will be protected with 
those of our other clients; or the claims 
may be sent direct to Mr. Claud D. Hall, 
705 Olive street, St. Louis, Mo., who has 
charge of the interests of creditors in all 
of these actions. 
Because E. G. Lewis and his associ¬ 
ates objected to having his books in¬ 
spected by Federal officials, District At¬ 
torney Houts secured an order from the 
court to have them impounded, and the 
books are now in the custody of the 
court, though, of course, Lewis and his 
attorneys have access to them. They 
include the records and account books 
of the Lewis Pub. Co., the University 
Heights Realty and Development Co., 
the Development and Investment Co., 
the E. G. Lewis Estate, and files of the 
Woman’s National Daily. These books 
are impounded, so that they will be 
available when the Lewis trial comes 
up. It is thought that the indictment 
of Lewis was largely on information 
received by the Grand Jury from these 
records. 
NEW-YORKER 
DIARY OF FARM WORK. 
A Day in Indiana. 
Our farm is 75 acres, 21 acres corn, 29 
in potatoes, five in Alfalfa ana six being 
prepared for Alfalfa; six left to spread 
manure on during the Summer from our 
barn and two livery barns one and one- 
quarter miles distant. One acre in com¬ 
mon hay, and remainder for buildings and 
pasture. Four horses, three cows, two 
yearlings and one calf and nine pigs are 
on the place. We get up at 4.50 A. M.; 
hired man and myself do the barn chores, 
my 17-year-old son working in the garden. 
We had breakfast at 6.10; at 6.40 two one- 
horse cultivators started in the potatoes 
hoeing them. 
__ _ _ my wife get 
ready, on short notice, to go to Shelbyville, 
Tennessee, to see her brother’s wife, who 
is very sick; raked and bunched the one 
acre of hav, then went back to the pota¬ 
toes. At 6' P. M. we all came in from the 
field, the day men went home and the rest 
of us did chores, supper at 6.45 o’clock. 
Posted my journal, read some in Tub R. 
N.-Y. and daily paper and went to bed at 
9 o’clock. k. c. b. 
Crown Point, Ind. 
we raise, for we have the market of the 
Thousand Islands. The long drive to Clay¬ 
ton with produce is the hardest part of the 
work, for the trip is best made early in the 
morning or late at night. The proceeds of 
this day are as follows—it has been the 
banner day for sales so far this year: 
46 quarts strawberries fit 15 cents.. $6.90 
38 quarts strawberries at 12 cents.. 4.56 
2 quarts strawberries at 12% cents .25 
106 quarts strawberries at 10 cents.. 10.60 
11 8-12 dozen eggs. 2.10 
1 rooster.50 
Total .$24.91 
Cape Vincent, N. Y. e. r. f. 
On a Mississippi Farm. 
We have been having a wet spell. There 
has been rain 20 days of the last 23, though 
sometimes only light showers, and the grass 
and weeds have not neglected their oppor¬ 
tunity. Our soil would be called a clay 
loam. Dews and capillary water make the 
surface wetter in the morning than it was 
in the evening before, so much that if it is 
too wet to work in the afternoon, it is not 
much use to try the next morning. 
Monday morning, July 12, did not look 
very promising for fair weather, but the 
bit of Alfalfa needed cutting. In fact, it 
should have been cut at least 10 days ago. 
The cutting took about 3% hours, and then 
the team cultivated corn till noon. The 
ground was really too wet to work. One 
horse was set to work running a swath 
around the cotton and kept at ‘t all day. 
Two of the boys who are in the boys’ corn 
club, hoed weeds and grass out of then- 
corn. One team took a load of stove wood, 
two-fifths cord, to town, and brought back 
a barrel of flour, three sacks of cornmeal 
and a bag of chicken feed. In the after¬ 
noon we brought in that Alfalfa. I know 
writers recommend more curing than that, 
but we only have a little at a time and it 
is not very heavy, and we have. had no 
trouble from mowing it the day it is cut. 
One of the boys spent some time shooting 
bluejays that are destroying lots of our 
oldest corn. After the hay was in, one boy 
plowed sugar cane the rest of the evening 
and the rest of us hoed peanuts. We had 
our first ripe grapes for supper, Delawares. 
Of course the chores, feeding and milking, 
come morning and evening as on every 
farm. We began this morning at half-past 
four. Supper comes after the evening’s work 
is all done and the clock struck eight while 
we were eating it. 
Tuesday I took one team and began 
plowing wheat stubble for Alfalfa. The 
ragweeds are up waist high on about half 
of it. This is a black gummy land, and the 
plowing is hard work for both man ana 
team. It is about three-quarters of a mile 
from the house, and so we take a load of 
manure, morning and noon as we go to work 
and scatter over the poorer spots ahead of 
the plow. One team cultivated corn. This 
corn was planted middle of June after oats. 
The rains brought up the morning glories 
and grass in about two days, but it took 
the corn five. It was too wet to harrow. 
r I’he corn was cultivated when a week old, 
but the ground was not dry enough and we 
did a poor job of killing grass and weeds. 
The ground is still a little wet, but lots of 
the morning glories are as high as the corn, 
and something has to be done. One horse 
worked all day in the cotton and another 
was kept busy in the sugar cane and sweet 
potatoes. w * M - 
Jackson, Miss. 
A Day On a 25-acre Farm. 
It was not yet light enough to see clearly 
when we began our work on July 3. Farmer 
F. did the chores at the barn, cutting green 
peas and oats for the four cows, doing the 
milking and feeding the horses and water¬ 
ing them, also the 75 hens and 200 chickens. 
Then the steady old horse was hitched to 
the buggy, ready for the two boys (10 and 
five years old) to drive to Clayton, 8% miles 
awav, with a crate of berries picked the 
evening before. As early as 4 a. in. break¬ 
fast of a cereal, toast and eggs, coffee and 
strawberries was on the table, and the two 
little boys started for Clayton directly after¬ 
ward. I had a lunch put up for them to 
eat on the way, and besides they bought 
oranges at Clayton to eat on the way home. 
At 6 a. m. we began to pick strawberries, 
for there had been scarcely any dew. We 
worked until 11 a. m., but because of the 
intense heat did not begin work in the field 
again until 2 p. m. Two of the helpers 
could not stand the heat, so that left but 
two of us to finish the work. We picked 
until dark—198 quarts in all. After dinner 
the little boys washed the buggy down by 
the spring under the big trees, so as to have 
it ready for the Fourth, and later they 
helped get in the hay. This seems like 
heavy work for boys, but they are little 
workers and strong and large for their ages. 
Their appetites are alarming, and the work 
of getting the meals is the hardest part of 
the housework at the camp. But with green 
peas, new potatoes and strawberries right 
at hand it is not too hard a task. It seems 
as if we were getting away from our hard 
work for a while when we have our nice 
dinner, served picnic fashion in our outdoor 
room at the camp. It is a large porch with 
a railing, built around seven big trees, and 
it makes an ideal dining room these hot 
days. 
At 4 p. m. Farmer F. milked the cows and 
left the milk in the can in the spring house 
cooling, fed the stock, and at 5 p. m. was on 
his way to Clayton with berries again. I 
picked one more crate of 32 quarts after 
that, and sold them; also 20 quarts more 
that had been saved out for some neighbors. 
The 12-year-old girl did the housework at 
the camp, except getting the meals, and I 
helped take care of baby John. This was a 
strenuous day, but not unusually so for this 
time of year. We get good prices for what 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—The village of South Water- 
boro. Me., was swept by flames July 12. 
Thirty dwellings and nine other buildings 
wei-e destroyed and 100 persons made home¬ 
less. The loss is estimated at $300,000. 
After destroying the village the fire raced 
through the woods and swept a path four 
miles long through valuable timber land, 
leaving also the ruins of three isolated farm 
houses in its trail. 
As a result of the forest fires that are 
sweeping unchecked through northern On¬ 
tario at least 50 lives are lost, many have 
been injured, hundreds are missing and it 
is feared scores of these will be included in 
the fatalities. Thirty persons died in Por¬ 
cupine. Fifteen men were drowned at South 
Porcupine. They were driven into the lake 
by the clouds of smoke and rolling wave of 
fire. Two men were burned to death at El¬ 
dorado mine and another met a similar fate 
at the United Porcupine mines. Three 
towns have been wiped off the map and hun¬ 
dreds of refugees are facing starvation. A 
train containing 600 women and children 
was rushed out of Cochrane July 12 for 
the south, as the wall of flames advanced 
toward the village. The town of 2,500 in¬ 
habitants was soon a mass of fire and is 
entirely destroyed. South Porcupine and 
Pittsville are charred ruins. Two special 
trains were sent to bring the 4,000 persons 
facing starvation or death by lire in the Tis¬ 
dale district. The flames swept down on 
South Porcupine and Pittsville almost with¬ 
out warning. The alarm came just in time 
for the people to rush for the lake, but they 
were forced to abandon all of their belong¬ 
ings. Refugees from the burned area say 
that it covers 10,000 square miles, com¬ 
prising a district that housed 20,000 people. 
From every quarter have come fugitives who 
escaped the flames, many of them badly 
burned in their efforts to save effects in their 
flight. Many of the terror-stricken fled into 
the interior of woodlands. They have not 
been heard from since. Others who possibly 
survived the storm of fire are believed to 
have diiM from exhaustion. 
More than 10 barrels of flies were gath¬ 
ered by the 232 contestants in an anti-fly 
crusade, which began on June 22 and came 
to an end July 13 at Worcester, Mass. The 
winner, who gets a prize of $100 and turned 
in 95 quarts, or a total of 1,219,000, flies, 
captured in traps of his own construction, 
claims the world’s championship. lie is 
Earl C. Beusquet, 12 years old. The entire 
collection of flies will be placed on exhibi¬ 
tion in Clark University. 
Two revenue officers and former govern¬ 
ment officials are charged with accepting 
bribes in indictments returned by a Federal 
grand jury at Chicago, July 13. Twenty- 
one officers and employees of butterine 
manufacturers are charged with conspiracy 
to defraud the government out of the but¬ 
terine tax, the bribery of government offi¬ 
cials, it is charged, being a part of the 
conspiracy. Four of the employees of a 
company of which former Congressman 
William .1. Moxley is president, are among 
those indicted. The government is said to 
have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars 
by the alleged frauds. The investigation 
which resulted in the return of the indict¬ 
ments was begun by the Federal grand jury 
last March. The grand jury also returned 
a special report charging three revenue de¬ 
partment employees with giving the secrets 
of the jury room to interested persons, and 
these men have been summoned bfore Judge 
K. M. Landis to show cause why they 
should not be punished for contempt. 
Two persons are dead, one is dying and 
30 are ill in one district in Englewood, 
Chicago, as the result of using milk in¬ 
fected with typhoid fever bacilli, according 
to the Health Department. The preva¬ 
lence of typhoid cases in the Englewood 
district attracted the attention of tly; 
Health Department. Investigation showed 
that most of the families affected received 
their milk from one dairy. Further inves¬ 
tigation showed Rose Roersma to be what 
the medical profession term a “natural car¬ 
rier.” Like the famous “Typhoid Mary” of 
New York, who worked as a domestic and 
who, though free from the disease herself, 
carried it to the house of every family 
where she worked until she was finally 
isolated. Miss Boersma apparently is in 
good health. 
Another death from cholera occurred at 
the Swinburne Island Hospital, New York, 
July 16, and four additional cases devel¬ 
oped, all being passengers on the steamer 
Moltke from Italian ports. There is is a 
serious outbreak of cholera in Italy, and 
passengers arriving from that country are 
strictly quarantined. Eighteen cases of 
cholera have been treated at New York so 
far. 
Rescued with difficulty by the keeper in 
charge of Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary's 
dogs at Eagle Island, Maine, July 18, Mar¬ 
garet Neal, the 10-year-old daughter of Pro¬ 
fessor Herbert V. Neal, of Tufts College, 
was horribly bitten about the feet and legs 
by Old King, the leader and the largest and 
most ferocious of the pack. The child was 
wading, while her father and sister, who 
had accompanied her to the spot, were in 
another part of the island, when the dog 
sprang upon her, and the remainder of the 
animals, 12 in all, gathered about and 
fought to get at her. The keeper of the 
island was attracted Dy the child’s screams 
and the snarling of the pack, and with 
much difficulty drove the animals off The 
little girl, semi-conscious, was carried to the 
Tufts laboratory, in So. Harpswell. where 
her wounds—12 ragged gashes—were 
dressed. She will recover. 
