Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 140, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1910 — Government Saves $675,000 in Fight with Cement Combine. [ARTICLE]

Government Saves $675,000 in Fight with Cement Combine.

By resorting to a little commercial \ stratagem, the government ha>s now completed the cement of the Roose- ; velt Dam in the Salt River valley of \ Arizona at a cost $675,000 less on this ■ one item than was originally calcu- ■ lated. The secretary of the interior i today gave orders to the reclamation ! service to close down the big cement ' mill at the dam site, and if this mill is sold for its intrinsic value of $150,000, the sum can be added to the $675,000, the entire $820,000 proving that the use of ordinary and legitimate business methods in all ; branches of the government could ; yearly save the $300,000,000 which Senator Aldrich believes is wasted. z The cement mill at Roosevelt —85 miles from Phoenix— was erected in April, 1905, after an interesting battle of wits between the officials of the reclamation service and the Cement Trust. It has in those years turned out 337,000 barrels, at a cost of about $2.90 a barrel, at a rate of 500 barrels a day. When Chief Engineer Davis of the Roosevelt project was ready to advertise for bids on cement in 1905 he so informed the Department of the Interior. Only two firms responded, there having been a territorial distribution between the cement manufacturers, and the two who bid were allotted the entire Arizona-New Mexico district upon which to prey. No easier quarry is there usually than the United States Government, so the lower of these two bids was $9 a barrel, upon the publication of which there was protest. B. A. Fowler, head of an association of farmers in the Salt River Valley which would eventually have to repay the government the actual cost of the Roosevelt dam, caine to Washington to see if a lower price on cement could not be, obtained. The members of the Cement Trust were inflexible, however, and the government officials helpless, it seemed, until Fowler learned the value of publicity for a project which Chief Engineer Davis had thought out. This project he had communicated to Secretary Hitchcock, but that official feared the criticism which he knew would follow it. One morning Fowler had an interview in a Washington paper. He remarked that the Salt River valley was full of the material from which cement is made. He saw no reason against and a hundred reasons for the erection by the government of its own cement mill on the site of the dam. Cries of “socialism” and “paternalism” burst from the cement dealers at this suggestion, but the department was in the limelight and had to give the Fowler plan consideration. Then the cement dealers asked for another chance to bid. This time the, lower figure was $4.85. Davis and Fowler contended that the government could turn out every barrel for three dollars. At last Mr. Hitchcock yielded, and amid a storm of objections, political and otherwise, the mill was built. Six hundred Apache Indians, a remainder of Geronimo’s hand,- were hired ’ to puddle and do the bulk of the day labor. The scheme was also assailed as visionary and impossible. It was pointed out that the Apache, of all Indians in the Edda, was the most shiftless and unfit for work. Now the cement work on the dam is finished; the government has thus far saved on cement alone $675,000; the type of government is still republican and socialism has not yet become regnant. The Apaches, under Louis Hill, of Detroit, a civil engineer, have proved remarkable fit and ambitious laborers, some of them earning as much as $4 a day. There has been no trouble with them; they have been found honest and careful always to pay back what they borrow from the fiscal agent. So the reclamation service feels that it has done its part in heeding the suggestion of Senator Aldrich. Faint heart never won a dinner—for a-hobo. Our Classified Column does the work