Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1910 — RAGS FOOLED GATES. [ARTICLE]

RAGS FOOLED GATES.

Wall Street Man Gave Alma to a Family Worth f 15,000. The people of Okmulgee are still laughing over a Joke that John W. Gates, the millionaire, played on himself there while on a trip through the oil fields of Oklahoma. And the real humor of it all is that Mr. Gates is blissfully unconscious of the Joke. It was at the St. Louis & San Francisco station in Okmulgee, a Kansas City Times correspondent at Muskogee, Okla., says. Mr. Gates had arrived before the. other members of his party and his special train was on a siding ready to leave. He became Interested in a woman with seven small children waiting in the station. The woman was wan and lines of care marked her brow. The children were bright little chaps, roughly dressed, but clean. A question from Mr. Gates brought the lnformatioti that three of tjie children were being reared by the woman. The dead mother was her sister, and she had added the little flock of orphans to her own • and was bringing them up as best she could. Gates pulled out a roll of bills of immense proportions and, splitting It in half, handed it to the woman and asked her to spend it on the children. The woman protested and refused to accept the money. She Baid she had done nothing to earn it and that she would not touch the money she had not earned. But Gates would listen to no excuses. He said that any woman who had four children of her-own and was rearing three more had already earned more than he could give her and made her accept the roll of bills. About this time the rest of the Gates party arrived. They foathwith sent out and bought a basket of sandwiches and fruit and gave It to the children. As the special train pulled out Gates stood on the rear platform and the little, chaps waved their unoccupied hands at him, while they stuffed fruit with the others. He waved his handkerchief at them and went on his way. Later it developed that the woman and the children were waiting at* the depot for the husband and father a*d were Just starting on a trip to Nebraska. He had Just sold a lease on 300 acres of oil land at SSO an acre end uptown getting the money Krhen the charity scene was enacted at the railroad station. The family had'been poor until that day, but a new oil field had suddenly made them rich and they had not had time to draw their money and buy new clothes.