1910. 
THiC RUR-A.I> NIC W-YORKER 
1146 
GETTING AFTER THE MAIL GRAFTER. 
Uncle Sam Found the Frauds. 
Postoffice inspectors did a good job 
last week when they raided the notorious 
get-rich-quick offices of Burr Bros., New 
York City and arrested three of the mem¬ 
bers of the firm. They were held in 
heavy bail, and in default of security 
were locked up. The business of this 
firm was the selling of worthless stocks, 
principally in mining and oil companies. 
The inspectors estimate that this con¬ 
cern sold stock at par value to the 
amount of forty to fifty millions; and it 
is thought that the profit to the pro¬ 
moters is at least $15,000,000. Of course, 
the only cost to them was the expense 
of selling, as the stocks cost practically 
only the expense of printing. The Burr 
Bros., Inc., is a Connecticut corporation, 
capitalized for $200,000, and it is re¬ 
ported that this company has been pay¬ 
ing a dividend of one per cent, monthly. 
Recently they have been selling the stock 
of the Buick Oil Company, which is cap¬ 
italized at $5,000,000. It is thought that 
$2,000,000 of this stock has been sold 
to the public. Three men were arrest¬ 
ed—Shelton C. Burr, the company’s 
president; Frank H. Tobey, vice presi¬ 
dent, and Eugene H. Burr, secretary- 
treasurer. All were held first in $20,000 
and later in $10,000 bail by United 
States Commissioner Shields and jailed 
overnight in the Tombs. Soon after the 
arrest of the principals in Burr Bros., 
Inc., Charles L. Vaughan, director and 
until recently vice president and treas¬ 
urer of the Continental Wireless Tele¬ 
phone and Telegraph Company, of 56 
Pine street, and treasurer of the Colum¬ 
bia Finance Corporation, fiscal agents 
for the wireless company, was arrested. 
He was held by Commissioner Shields 
in $10,000 and sent to the Tombs. All 
the men were charged with fraudulent 
use of the mails. 
When the arrests were made last 
week the offices were full of people, 
many of them women, eager to exchange 
their money for the worthless stocks. 
The day following the arrest, the same 
offices were full of people, who were 
anxious to get their money back. In 
this they were, of course, disappointed. 
The mails intercepted by the detectives 
amounted in one afternoon to $20,000 
cash remittances, in sums for $3 to 
$11,000. There were several telegrams 
from anxious investors, requesting that 
stocks be held for them, and that certi¬ 
fied checks had been mailed. 
Postmaster General Hitchcock esti¬ 
mates that not less than $100,000,000 
has been collected from gullible inves¬ 
tors in five years by this and similar 
concerns. He is waging a relentless 
warfare on them now, and has already 
caused the arrest of promoters in 78 
such concerns. Formerly the depart¬ 
ment issued “fraud orders”; but the 
same promoters opened up under a new 
name and continued the same kind of 
business; and the present plan is to find 
evidence of fraud and arrest the offend¬ 
ers. Some of them are already doing 
time in Federal prisons, and these are 
likely to have distinguished company. 
We are devoting considerable space 
to this report as a warning to people 
who hope to get rich quick by turning 
their savings over to concerns who make 
big promises, and about whom they 
know nothing. The Postoffice Depart¬ 
ment is doing what it can to weed out 
these concerns, and the people must 
learn to use a little sense in these mat¬ 
ters. It is really the States that are to 
blame. Corporations may be organized 
under the laws of any State, and mil¬ 
lions of capital stock issued under the 
seal of the State with absolutely no 
property or value whatever behind it. 
This stock, which costs only the price 
of printing, is then sold to the confiding 
public under promises of big dividends 
and profits. The amount of money lured 
from the public on these schemes is 
really alarming. The victims often be¬ 
come a public charge. The press could, 
of course, make short work of these 
rogues if it informed the people about 
them; but the lamentable part of it is 
that many of the papers are working 
the same game themselves in one de¬ 
gree or another and profiting by the en¬ 
terprise. Many of the city papers car¬ 
ried full pages of the Burr Bros.’ ad¬ 
vertising the day of the raids. 
BEE-KEEPERS’ MEETINGS. 
The New York State Department of Ag¬ 
riculture will hold this season bee-keepers 
institutes as follows: Geneva, December 
12-13, Charles Stewart, Johnstown, as con¬ 
ductor ; Rochester, December 14, W. D. 
Wright, Altamont, conductor; Syracuse, 
December 15, N. D. West, Middleburg, 
conductor; Ogdensburg, December 16, M. 
Stevens, Pennellville, conductor; Amster¬ 
dam, December 17, in charge of Charles 
Stewart; Utica, December 17, in charge 
of W. D. Wright. A morning and after¬ 
noon session will be held each day, includ¬ 
ing, in addition to papers and discussions, a 
question box for bringing up certain points 
not made sufficiently clear at the preceding 
sessions. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK. 
DOMESTIC.—The suit brought at Green¬ 
field, Ind., November 25, by Mrs. Alta M. 
Ward against the Terre Haute Brewing 
Company, Claude D. Miller, a saloon¬ 
keeper, and David O’Donnell, his barten¬ 
der, for $10,000 damages resulted in a 
verdict for the plaintiff for $3,500. It 
was alleged in the suit that the defendants 
sold liquor to Mrs. Ward's husband until 
he became intoxicated and shot and killed 
Thomas Mclntire, for which crime he is 
now serving a life sentence in prison. 
Representative P. P. Campbell, of Kan¬ 
sas, one of the two regulars who were re¬ 
turned to Congress from a Kansas district, 
intends to urge upon President Taft a 
recommendation in his message for the cur¬ 
tailment of the franking privilege. “It 
was never the intention of Congress,” said 
Mr. Campbell at the White House Novem¬ 
ber 25, “that the franking privilege to its 
members should extend beyond their Con¬ 
gress district. The abuse of that privilege 
has grown gross. There should be limita¬ 
tions for the benefit of the Post Office De¬ 
partment if for nothing else. It has come 
to be a fashion now to send tons of franked 
stuff and it should be stopped.” 
Indictments against four men in connec¬ 
tion with the frauds by which the Illinois 
Central Railroad Company Is alleged to 
have been mulcted of more than $1,500,000 
were returned at Chicago November 25 by 
the Grand Jury. Those indicted are Frank 
B. Harriman, general manager of the Illi¬ 
nois Central Railroad, resigned March 15; 
John M. Taylor, general storekeeper of 
the system, resigned May 1 ; Charles L. 
Ewing, general superintendent of northern 
lines, resigned July 1, and Joseph E. 
Buker, superintendent of the car depart¬ 
ment, resigned February 1. The indict¬ 
ments charge conspiracy to obtain money 
from the Illinois Central Railroad by false 
pretences. Two counts in the blanket in¬ 
dictment which was returned also contain 
charges of working a confidence game. The 
bond of each of the men is fixed at $20,000. 
The names of the Ostermann Manufactur¬ 
ing Company, the Blue Island Car and 
Equipment Company, the Memphis Car 
Company and the American Car and Equip¬ 
ment Company are mentioned in the indict¬ 
ment. The loss by fraudulent deals esti¬ 
mated by officials of the railroad was over 
$1,500,000, but the amount set up in the 
indictment, $4,825,650, represents the total 
business the railroad did with the four 
repair concerns named, going back to the 
Summer of 1906, when the alleged scheme 
is supposed to have been put in operation. 
In his forthcoming annual report Post¬ 
master-General Hitchcock will renew the 
recommendation he made a year ago for 
the introduction of a limited parcels post 
service on rural mail routes. The Post¬ 
master-General believes that as soon as the 
postal savings system is thoroughly or¬ 
ganized the Post Office Department should 
be prepared to establish throughout the 
country a general parcels post. As the 
preliminary step in the development of such 
a service he hopes Congress will authorize 
the delivery on rural routes of parcels 
weighing as high as 11 pounds, which is 
the weight limit for the international par¬ 
cels post. This form of service can be 
conducted with little if any additional ex¬ 
pense to the Government. It will not re¬ 
quire the appointment of more carriers, for 
those already employed have the necessary 
equipment in the way of horses and wagons 
to distribute the parcels as well as the 
ordinary mail. A rural parcels post of 
the kind proposed if successfully conducted, 
officials say, would probably lead to a more 
general system. Mr. Hitchcock believes 
that before the parcels service is extended 
generally definite information should be 
obtained as to the nature and volume of the 
business to be handled. He will urge that 
in conjunction with the experiment on 
rural routes a further inquiry be author¬ 
ized by Congress in order that the De¬ 
partment may be in a better position to 
develop the system on conservative lines. 
He will recommend that a special appro¬ 
priation for the inquiry be granted at the 
coming session. 
A jobber’s or trust agreement, whereby 
the Bathtub Trust forced all jobbers to 
sign or buy “licensed enamelled sanitary 
ware” in the open market at increased 
prices, was told about by a large number 
of jobbers who testified at the hearing 
held November 25 before Lindsay C. Spen¬ 
cer, special examiner of the United States 
Circuit Court at Washington. The action 
is brought by the Government against tne 
Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Com¬ 
pany and 16 other corporations comprising 
the so-called Bathtub Trust. The com¬ 
plaint asks for the dissolution of the com¬ 
bination on the ground that it is a mon¬ 
opoly in violation of the Sherman Anti- 
Trust law. Previous hearings held in 
Pittsburg and Chicago developed proof that 
restraint in trade had been imposed upon 
the largest wholesale jobbers in the coun¬ 
try by the trust for not having entered 
into a price fixing agreement and that the 
trust refused to sell to those who refused 
to sign the cast-iron contract with the 
penalties it imposed. 
Congressman-elect Henry George, Jr., 
pledged himself, at a meeting of the Postal 
Progress League, held November 29, in the 
rooms of the Merchants’ Association, New 
York, to help Congressman Sulzer pass his 
bill for an extended parcels post. Mr. 
George said that in effete Asia and Europe 
he had found a parcels post service, and 
that the way to secure it in this country 
was by rousing the trade unions and the 
farmers to bring pressure on their Con¬ 
gressmen. He does not fear that the par¬ 
cels post will mean a deficit, but does 
not care if it does. Let us have less big 
ships and less Uap-doodle business about 
whom we are going to lick, said Mr. George, 
and in their place a better postal service. 
Mr. Sulzer described his bill for a parcels 
post, which was introduced in the House 
last June but not reported by the com¬ 
mittee, the reason given to Mr. Sulzer be¬ 
ing that the express companies did not 
want it. The other speakers were Fred¬ 
erick C. Beach, the president of the league; 
It. W. Bowker, of the Publishers Weekly, 
and James L. Cowles, the secretary of the 
league. 
Michael Cudahy died at Chicago Novem¬ 
ber 27 after a five days’ illness from pneu¬ 
monia. He was the founder of the Cudahy 
packing establishments. Michael Cudahy 
was bom in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ire¬ 
land, December 7, 1841. He came to the 
United States in his childhood with his 
family, who settled in Milwaukee. He 
went to work in a packing house in his 
young manhood and rose to be manager. 
Later he was a meat inspector. In 1873 
ne was made a partner in Armour & Co., 
and remained in the firm until 1890. At 
the time of his death he was president of 
the Cudahy Packing Company, with plants 
in Omaha, Sioux City, Los Angeles and 
other cities, and of the North American 
Transportation and Trading Company. 
The Supreme Court of Tennessee No¬ 
vember 26 handed down a decision in the 
case of J. W. Kelly & Co., of Chattanooga, 
against the State, in which it was held 
that the act of the last Legislature pro¬ 
hibiting the manufacture of whiskey in 
Tennessee is constitutional, Judges Board 
and Green dissenting. Kelly & Co. were 
indicted under the prohibition law charged 
with manufacturing whiskey in the State. 
The court also held that the shipment of 
whiskey out of the State was not in vio¬ 
lation of the prohibition law, as it would 
be interfering with interstate business. 
Kelly & Co. had been indicted for shipping 
whiskey to New York. 
One of the States in which Burr Bros., 
Inc., whose members were arrested ip the 
Post Office Department’s raid in New 
York November 21, found it easy to pick 
up money is Kansas. J. N. Dolley, the 
State Bank Examiner, says that he be¬ 
lieves that Burr Bros, and others of the 
et-rich-quick clan have taken more than 
200,000 out of Kansas quite recently. Mr. 
Dolley has written to Postmaster-General 
Hitchcock suggesting that the get-rich- 
quick business can be wiped out only 
through cooperation between the Post 
Office Department and the heads of the 
various State banking departments. He 
suggests that the departments exchange 
information about wild-cat mining com¬ 
panies and those who offer 50 per cent in¬ 
terest for queer investments. Mr. Dolley 
intends to protect his own people anyway. 
He says: “This department offers to fur¬ 
nish definite and reliable information of 
any stock or bond scheme that Kansas peo¬ 
ple will write about. If the people of the 
State want to know about any company 
or promoter we will dig out the informa¬ 
tion for them. This already has saved 
thousands of dollars to Kansas people who 
have asked for investigations.” 
Fire in a factory at Newark, N. J., No¬ 
vember 26, caused the death of 25 girls 
and serious injuries to many more. It was 
caused by a spark from a machine setting 
fire to gasoline vapor. The building was 
a firetrap, with insufficient exits. There 
is a county and city regulation requiring 
that there be at least one fire escape for 
every 25 persons at work three stories 
above ground. There were two fire escapes 
leading from the third floor and those 
above it, and a moderate estimate of the 
girls employed on these two floors places 
the number at 100. The building was ai 
old wooden one, the floors were soaked in 
oil, and gasoline was in use. 
United States Attorney Wise filed in the 
United States Circuit Court November 2S 
the long expected bill of complaint in the 
Government’s suit to dissolve the sugar 
trust under the Sherman anti-trust law. 
The suit, like that against the Standard 
Oil, is a proceeding in equity in which the 
Government asks the court to declare upon 
the facts alleged that a combination and 
conspiracy exists for the monopoly of the 
sugar business, and to restrain the Ameri¬ 
can Company, the National Sugar Refining 
Company and the Western Sugar Refining 
Company from engaging in interstate com¬ 
merce in sugar and to restrain any one 
from voting on the stock of the companies 
mentioned in the bill. The bill, to which 
are attached copies of agreements as far 
back as the original trust agreement of 
1887, makes up a book of 237 pages. It 
was drawn by Mr. Wise under the direc¬ 
tion of Attorney-General Wickershara and 
names as defendants thirty sugar compan¬ 
ies alleged to be part of the trust, together 
with their officers, and also the executors 
of the will of II. O. Havemeyer, head of 
the American Sugar Refining Company, 
under whose direction the alleged monopoly 
was formed. The principal companies 
named as defendants are, besides the 
American, the Western Sugar Refining 
Company, the National, and a California 
cane sugar refining company in which the 
American holds one-half of the stock. 
Among the individual defendants named 
are Washington B. Thomas, Charles II. 
Allen, former Assistant Secretary of the 
Treasury, and lately elected treasurer of 
the trust; John D. Spreckels, Adolph B. 
Spreckels and John D. Spreckels, Jr., and 
Joseph F. Smith, of Utah, head of the 
Mormon Church. 
Sentences of imprisonment imposed upon 
W. S. Harlan, Robert Gallagher, C. C. 
Hillon and S. E. Huggins, of Alabama, on 
peonage conspiracy charges, were allowed 
to stand as legal November 28 by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. These 
were the first convictions, under the move¬ 
ment of the Federal Government against 
peonage. 
FARM AND GARDEN.—The thirty-sixth 
annual meeting of the New Jersey State 
Horticultural Society will be held at the 
State House, Trenton, Wednesday and 
Thursday, December 14 and 15, 1910. Full 
attendance of members requested. For par¬ 
ticulars address H. G. Taylor, Secretary, 
Riverton, N. J. Annual meeting of the 
State Board of Agriculture, Trenton, Jan¬ 
uary 18, 19 and 20, 1911. 
In order to enforce more thoroughly the 
provisions of the tariff law instructing the 
Secretary of Agriculture to “determine and 
certify to the Secretary of the Treasury 
what are recognized breeds and purebred 
animals” as a basis on which customs 
officers may determine what animals may 
be passed through the customs free of 
duty for breeding purposes the Secretary 
of Agriculture has revised the regulations 
on the subject. In order to be entered free 
of duty all animals imported into the 
United States by citizens of the United 
States for breeding purposes on and after 
January 1, 1911, must be accompanied by 
certificates of the Bureau of Animal In¬ 
dustry that the animals are purebred, of 
a recognized breed and duly registered in 
the foreign book of record established for 
that breed. 
The Federation of Jewish Farmers be¬ 
gan its annual convention at the Educa¬ 
tional Alliance rooms, 197 East Broadway, 
New Y’ork, November 28. The vice-presi¬ 
dent, S. Hein, presided. Short speeches 
were made by Isidor Straus, president of 
the Educational Alliance; Oscar Straus 
United States Ambassador to Turkey, and 
Rear Admiral Adolph Marix, U. S. N., 
urging Jews to follow the plow and lessen 
congestion in the cities. South America 
was represented by a cablegram which 
read, “Fraternal regards Confederacion 
Agricola Argentina Israelita," showing that 
a similar organization exists in the Argen¬ 
tine Republic. The story of Harris Rot- 
man, of Millis, Mass., was typical. In 
1866 he came from Russia to this city, 
where he sewed shirts for two years. Then 
he moved to Boston and kept a dry goods 
store until in 1909 he bought his 70-aere 
farm in Millis with the proceeds of the 
dry goods business and some money loaned 
him by the Federation. From a start of 
nine head of cattle and one horse he has 
increased to 20 cattle and three horses. 
His daughter is taking a course at the 
Massachusetts Agricultural College to pre¬ 
pare herself for becoming a florist. II is 
son is taking a course in horticulture. 
When the son is home on a vacation he 
works on the farm. In Millis are 15 mem¬ 
bers of the Federation, all of whom, Mr. 
Rotman said, are prosperous farmers who 
have succeeded in making the abandoned 
farm pay. The Federation of Jewish Farm¬ 
ers of America was organized in January, 
1909. It is the outcome of the work be¬ 
gun nine years ago by the Jewish Agricul¬ 
tural and Industrial Aid Society. 
The New York Plant Breeders’ Associa¬ 
tion will hold its annual meeting at th 9 
College of Agriculture at Cornell next Feb¬ 
ruary during Farmers’ Week. It is ex¬ 
pected that a two-days programme will 
be arranged. It is desirous that every one 
who is engaged in plant breeding will be 
present and join the Association. If there 
is anyone who is interested in selecting 
a particular strain of onions, lettuce, 
Asters or Phlox, he will be just as wel¬ 
come as the one who is growing potatoes, 
corn, peas or beans. We would like every 
one who is interested in this work to drop 
a postal to Dr. A. W. Gilbert, College of 
Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y., and announce 
the line he is working in and whether it 
will be possible to send an exhibit. 
The sixteenth annual dairy school at 
New Hampshire College opens January 3 
and closes March 10. The school oners 
instruction in dairy farming and creamery 
and farm butter-making. This year special 
efforts are being made to give a strong 
course to dairy farmers. This course in¬ 
cludes a study of such subjects as the 
growing of profitable crops for dairy cattle, 
the judging, feeding and breeding of dairy 
cattle and a study of factors influencing 
the quality of the milk from the time it 
leaves the cow until it reaches the con¬ 
sumer. A study is made of surrounding 
dairies giving practice in the use of the 
score card in dairy inspection. With the 
new dairy building completed and equipped 
the school offers better opportunities for 
giving instruction in practical dairy work 
than it ever has in the history of the in¬ 
stitution. Milk and cream are received 
from over 40 farms, assuring sufficient 
material for practice and demonstration 
work. The practical work in milk testing, 
milk inspection and in the farm dairy and 
-creamery offers valuable training and ex¬ 
perience for men who desire to take up 
commercial dairy work in milk plants, 
creameries or as dairy or milk inspectors. 
Address Dairy Department, New Hampshire 
College, Durham, N. H., for illustrated an¬ 
nouncement giving details about the dairy 
school. 
MEAT PRICES. 
That drop in meat prices announced by 
the Chicago packers appears to have got 
lost on the way. At least retail buyers in 
New York have not heard of it. They are 
paying upwards of 25 cents for steaks, 
chops and cutlets, and 20 cents or more 
for roasts. Mutton of fair quality costs 
18 cents; ham, 20; bacon, 30, and corned 
beef, 12 to 18 cents. Reports from Ar¬ 
gentina, a great cattle country, show that 
great use is being made of Alfalfa as a 
beef producer. By means of this fodder 
it is possible to send a steer to market a 
year earlier than when the animal is fed 
on native grasses, and the carrying ca¬ 
pacity of land is increased thereby from 
three to six times. All animals destined 
for the freezing works are now finished on 
Alfalfa. Ranches which do not have their 
own tracts send their cattle for fattening 
to other pastures. Fattening with corn is 
as yet practically unknown in Argentina, 
but it is commencing on a small scale on 
some of the most progressive farms, and 
probably is destined to become general in 
future. Argentine beef is not regarded as 
highly in the English market as that from 
the United States, and sells for a trifle 
less. The difference is said to be due 
largely to the difference in the method of 
fattening. Beef from the United States is 
fattened on corn, whereas Argentina de¬ 
pends upon Alfalfa solely. The present de¬ 
mand of the freezing works for a higher 
grade of animaj means inevitably that 
corn fattening must be undertaken, and 
there is no reason why it should not be, 
as the country raises an abundant amount 
of coin for export. 
THOSE CANADIAN DRAIN LOANS.— 
The Provincial Government set apart a cer¬ 
tain sum for this particular purpose, and 
each township could make application for a 
certain sum or percentage, and when that 
amount was withdrawn that particular 
township could not secure any further loan 
until there was a repayment of part of 
the loans. Then any landowner wishing 
to take advantage of this loan, makes a 
personal application to the township coun¬ 
cil for a stated amount. The council em¬ 
ploy a practical man to inspect the work 
upon which the loan is to be charged; the 
amount of loan is never more than two- 
thirds of the value of the work; and is 
charged directly to the lands benefited; 
said loan being collected in 20 annual 
instalments, including interest at 7 per 
cent, (“along with the general taxes”). 
This plan is working well in South Gos- 
field, and has been the means of bringing 
many acres of low land under cultivation, 
producing excellent crops, and giving a 
man of ordinary or perhaps poor circum¬ 
stances a chance to help himself, as well as 
a great benefit to the township at large. 
I speak of this particular township as that 
was my location up till a few months ago; 
but the same scheme applies to the whole 
province, but to what extent it has been 
used outside of South ■ Essex, I could not 
inform you. The farmers in South Essex 
have done a great amount of work in this 
way. IVAN SHEPLY. 
Ontario, Canada. 
