Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 141, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1918 — ONION KING IN LIMELIGHT [ARTICLE]

ONION KING IN LIMELIGHT

CHICAGO DAILY NEWS FEATURES THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE. ♦ Col. Edward Oliver is in the limelight again, and this time it is not so pleasant a glare as blazed upon him two yearn ago when the hale Hoosier monarch of onions married Mrs. Warren Springer., To state it as dispatches from Rensselaer, Ind., do, rather bluntly, the onioh colonel seem? to have gone in for sugar on a larger scale than the Jasper county (Indiana) food administrators thought he should, and now he is to have a chance to explain to the county council of defense. Col. Oliver —who denies violation of the law—obtained 500 pounds of sugar from a grocer, making affidavit that the sugar was to be used for preserving, saying that he was part owner.of the Saratoga hotel in Chicago. Now it .is known in Indiana that the succulent onions grown by Col. Oliver are served in nearly every big hotel in the country, but just how 500 pounds of sugar would .fit into this scale could not be determined by the food administrator. Therefore —the 500 pounds of sugar was seized. A special trip to the Oliver onion plantation near Newland, Ind., was madi for the seizure. The last heard from the seat of the disturbance was the colonel vigorously protesting that he had violated no food laws.

Col. Oliver was more or less quiescent before this time until he was married Sept. 2, 1916, to Mrs. Springer. He had 'known her only a short time, becoming acquainted with her when he bought a part of her farm land near his in Indiana. Col. Oliver is reputed to be worth $3,000,000. Mrs. Oliver, through, philanthropic announcements, maintained a prominence from 1901 to the present time. She was sued in Jline, 1915, by Cornelius A. Murphy for $50,000 in a “mystery suit” and a year after J. D. York, an architect, sued for SIO,OOO for the failure of some colony plans. She narrowly escaped capture by Mexican bandits in July, 1915, and in the fall of that year it was reported that she had offered some one $40,000 to keep Italy out of the war. This she denied.