Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1897 — Page 1

THE RENSSELAER SEMI-WEEKLY REPUBLICAN.

VOLUME XIX.

Those Merry Aguey Days of Yore.

Ye Old Timer John E. Alter’s Old Settlers’ Day Address. Ladies and gentlemen, Old Fellow Settlers: Kind friends and relatives, I come before you today, not to plead any merits, morals or innocence of my own, noi to tell you something yon don’t know. But to stand by you in whatever you tell to the growing generation—about the old time history of Jasper County. lam a Hoosier by birth, blood relationship and nationality. 44 years ago last Ground hog day, in a little hut on the reedy banks of the rushy Pinkamink, like Moses and Aaron I was born among the bullrushes, a simple child, —but not as simple as I have been several times since. That hut is standing today, and is just the same to me as that little old hut on the Avon River in Stratford, is to Shakespeare. Its my birth place and you can’t help it, and so do I. The first two years of my life were spent in crying and bawling. I had help in these little songs, for the wilderness abounded in whippoorwills, owls, wolves and. bull frogs. The Old Haddix marsh was then one vast morass of swampy quagmire, covered with wild rice, wild cane, blue flag, calamus, bullrushes, cattails andw muck. Wriggling snakes crawled in every direction all over each other. Big snapping turtles paddled theiVway through the mud, looking so/ a soft snap. Little frogs and big frogs hopped and hollowed, both day and night, of every color in tire rainbow and of all sizes, that a frog can grow; we used to eat them, frogs and snapping turtles, and it is nobody’s business either. Well then the prairie wolves, say: one wolf sounds like 4 and I could put ten thousand to flight. I like to hear wolves a-singing, when there ’aint no moon. It makes one feel so solemncolly and good. People nowdays call prairie wolves cow yokes. The hollow black oak trees on them sand ridges had wild bees and honey. You watch the bee when he is getting juice out of the posies; he gets k his craw full: and then circles round and then makes a straight line for his nest and you go straight after him. Then you cut the tree down with an ax and chop a hole in and out comes about a million mad bees. Each one has

a stinger full of stings and they fast fall ou you in clouds and sting you about 100 times, in the face as soon as any other place. Then you take out a little honey, some bee bread and young bees, and eat them up, and go home with both eyes swelled up, and tell your neighbors what a big lie you found out on black oak ridge, with 6 wooden buckets full of honey in it. Five years of my life were spent in the rock ribbed hills of Wisconsin, along the Bluffs of the Mississippi River among the rattlesnake caves with yellow spots and big rattles on and badger dens way back in the rocks. Then we came back to the troubled waters of the Iroquois and spent half a life time eating cucumbers, yankee pumpkins, musk melons and quinine and shaking with the ague. But we had no doctors much to bother with and soon got well. We husked corn and pumpkins and beans and turnip, had corn pone and roasting’ears for dinner and mush and milk for supper, ..after supper we went over to a neighbors and stayed till bed time, and went home happy because we didn’t say anything mean about eomebodyjelse’s folks. On every Saturday night we all got together by the biggest log cabin in the

woods and got a fidler and a lot of girls, boys, and old people, and had a regular break down, Cotillins, french four, double shuffles etc. On other nights we had apple corn husking, pumpkin peelings etc. In day time we had log rollings, huskings bees, house raisings, wood choppings, foot races, wrestling matches and swimming bees. Alas all these things have changed. Everything is made more convenient but not half so handy. We have more sociables, but they are not half so sociable. We have more benevolent institutions and but little benevolence. We have donations, but little generosity. The improvements are good but the habits are bad. There is more money but less means. More people but not so many friends.

The Lights are Ours.

The city of Rensselaer is now in receipt of the revenue and emoluments of the electric light plant. The sum of SSOO has been paid the General Electric Co. by Mayor McCoy; while Horace E. Horton of the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company has paid to the same, $6,000. The legal title of the plant has therefore passed to the Bridge &Iron Company. The management and actual control will be in the city, and the legal title as soon as the money advanced by Horton is repaid As yet no documents have been put on record, and the formal change in managemant has not been made, but it will be in aday or two. The city will collect the light rentals for all of the present month, however.

First Money Again.

The Rensselaer Band Boys Gain More Wealth and Honor, at Francesville. The Rensselaer Citizens Band has again demonstrated their excellence in a contest. At Francesville street fair Thursday, they took first moneys a prize of S4O in competition with two other good bands. Their standing and that of the competing bands was as follows, Rensselaer, 96 per cent S4O Winamac, 92 per cent $25 Francesville, 91 per cent sls The high standing of the Rensselaer band is all the more satisfactory from the fact that only 14 members were present, and among those absent were several of the best players in the band.

Cowboy hats, only 49 cents, at Mrs. Lecklider’s. 6 pressed tincups for five cents at C. A. Leckliders. 100 piece English semi-porcelin dinner sets, $4.75 at C. A. Leckliders’ for four weeks only. Competition not in it. Ladies. Call at Mrs. Austin Hopkins’ Corset Parlors and be fitted. More than a dozen styles to select from. Correct measure taken and corsets made to order, Residence 2 doors south of Co. Clerk’s office. dwtf. See the cheapest small tinware in the city, at C. A. Lecklider’s. Also best graniteware, at rock-bot-tom prices. Lamp flues 4 and 6 cents at C. A. Leckliders.

RENSSELAER, JASPER COUNTY, INDIANA, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1897,

A Card From R. S. Dwiggins

With Some Editorial Comments On The Same.' Irvington, N. Y., Sept. 23, 1897. Geo. E. Marshall Esq. Dear Sir: I am just in receipt of the Republican of the 17th inst. containing a libelous article referring to my sons. You say that it is almost the universal opinion of the people of Rensselaer that the failure was planned and contemplated to take place as it did. That statementds. not only a libel on my sons but it is a libel on the good people of Rensselaer. When I say that the people of Rensselaer will not, and do not, condemn anyone without knowing something of the facts in the case I but state what everyone who is well acquainted with them knows to be true. I lived with these people more than thirty long years and I know them well. They are fair, honest and candid and do not condemn anyone without a hearing. At the time you wrote and published this article you did not know one single fact which in any manner tended to prove that the failure was “a premeditate money-making scheme” as you say it was. I had no interest whatever in the firm of J. R. Willard & Co., and was not familiar with the details of the business but I personally know that Elmer (Jay was in Europe. Sent there by his physicians) raised every dollar he could, by selling and pledging everything they both had, and put the money in the business and thus did everything in his power to stem the tide and carry the business over. The boys have both lost everything they had. Your statement that the boys left Chicago to avoid prosecution is libelous in the extreme. “ You can’t put your finger on one iota of evidence to sustain the charge. On 4he contrary the facts are that it was publically known in Chicago for weeks before they left for New York, that they were going. They have both been back to Chicago repeatedly since they left there. Their place of business in New York was published daily in both the Chicago and New York papers. The authorities could have found them any day, had they desired to do so. The whole article is a libel from beginning to end. Yours &c., R. S. Dwiggins.

BILL BAT.

We do not care to enter into any extended controversy on this matter, but a few of Mr. Dwiggins’ rather vehement assertions will be briefly alluded to. In the first place we hasten to assure him, that the people here seem to endure with great equanimity the alleged libel upon them, contained, as Mr. Dwiggins asserts, in our statement that the majority of them seem to believe that the recent failure was a part of a scheme. So long as the people here are not troubled by the alleged libel against them, we see no good reason why Mr. Dwiggins should be disquieted on their account, either. We would also say, further, that however good an opinion the people here hold of Mr. Dwiggins himself, that it does not necessarily > follow that the same good opinion extends to all the financial methods of Mr. Dwiggins’ talented sons. Mr. Dwiggins asserts that our whole article is a libel from beginning to end, yet we notice that of the quite numerous points qf that, article he enters special denial on only two. If what we said about the Mexican mine fraud, Elmer’s connection with that great scamp, Pennington, their gambling bucket shop business under other people’s names, and the booming of the Griffith fake town were libelous, he does not tell us wherein the libels consist. What he declares to be libelous in the extreme, was our statement that the boys left Chicago to avoid prosecutions for their bucket shop dealings. The statement has been

generally published in the New York and Chicago papers. Probably it is not literally true, but certain it is that about the time the general movement against the bucket shops was inaugurated in Chicago, the boys found it convenient to close up their Chicago houses and seek other fields. Certain it is, further, that had they remained in Chicago and continued their bucket shop dealings they would have been prosecuted, as others who did continue in that business there, have been prosecuted. In regard to the statement that the Dwiggins boys published their places of business in Chicago and New York papers, we would remind him that that was the very thing they seem to have been careful not to do. In Chicago their bucket-shop dealings were concealed under the name of Arbogast & Co., aiid Valentine & Co., and perhaps other aliases, while in New York it was J. R. Willard & Co. The man Willard being, as New York and Chicago papers repeatedly assert, simply hired to give the firm the use of his name. A circumstance in itself that looks suspicious. People doing a legitimate business in a legitimate way, do not usually conceal their identity with so much care. As to the assertion that we knew no facts tending to prove that the failure was a njoney making scheme, we will say, first that we did not assert that it was such a failure, but that the people here generally took that view of it. In forming that conclusion they would naturally be influenced very much by the young men’s past financial history. The nature of their business also would have its influence. It was so illegitimate, or at least irregular, that the nominal head of the firm, J. R. Willard, was expelled from the Chicago Board of Trade for his connection with it; or so at least the New York and

Chicago papers openly assert. Furthermore these same papers assert that the firm’s methods’were so suspicious that the police had it undersurvelliance some time before the failure. Another feature that would naturally create suspicion, was the assertion of the New Jersey man who was the principal creditor of the firm, that they owed him $500,000. If the firm was looking for a good time to let go, the time that the Jersey man was stuck for a half million would have been well chosen. Mr. Dwiggins admits that he knows nothing of the details of his sons’ business; is it not also quite possible, and we mean no disrespect in saying so, that he knows much less about their failure than he thinks he does? Simply as a sample of what the city papers published regarding this failure, and which, not being denied by anyone, naturally had great influence in causing people here as well as elsewhere to doubt the genuineness of the failure, we give the appended short extract from a long article in the New York Journal, a paper published right on the grounds. It will be noticed from the extract that no less a person than J. R. Willard, of Chicago, the nominal head of the busted firm and presumably knowing more about its business and conditions than anyone else, outside of the active partners, is said to assert that there was no need for the failure. The following is the Journal extract: “J. R. Willard, whose name they used, and whom the Chicago Board of Trade suspended for that very reason, calls them “clever money sharks,” and says they came to New York to turn this trick, and that Starbuck was the tool whom they brought along for the purpose. He says there was no need of their failure; that they have plenty of money; that they could continue

business without a chance of failing. , The assignee, Starbuck, gives as an excuse for the failure that the firm was short on the rising market. Is that true? One of the clerks of the firm, under strenuous cross-questioning, has said within the last forty-eight hours; “All hands have been leaking money —barrels of it—making it hand over fist.” One of the Starbucks has said, but not for publication, that Jay Dwiggins took $700,000 of money with him when he went abroad. The boys had come to New York to make money, had risked their necks and won. “How much?” “Over $ <OO,OOO ” “And how much more do they want?” “Everything in sight,” answered Starbuck. And now that the Dwiggins coup, if indeed it be what the title partner of the concern calls it, is complete, there are others whose turn is to come. Some of the head employes of the firm are planning to go into business for themselves. There may be more circulars, and more branch houses, and perhaps after a conventional time allowance of two years, another failure. Then other Indiana retainers will take up the lines.” This we repeat is from the New York Journal, the second most popular paper in that city. In all candor we ask Mr. Dwiggins what he could expect but that the people here would believe as we said they did, when the daily papers were full of such statements as the above, and when furthermore, the past financial the parties has been such as it has?

Prairie Fires at Kniman.

There was great excitement in fighting fires at Kniman, Saturday and Sunday. Some four or five hundred acres of hay land, adjacent to the town, were burned over, and several hundred tons of hay in the stack was distroyed. At one time it seemed almost certain that the progress of the fire could not be stayed until Kniman itself was reached and burned down. Fortunately- the direction of the wind changed, and to that circumstance alone, as stated by a prominent resident, was owing the escape of the town. Much of the land burned over belongs to A. Leopold, of this place, but the hay belonged to other parties. The fires started from the “scrap-iron” engines of the Coai Road, and the company will no doubt have to settle the damages, which are being appraised today. The soil of the burned over tracts is on fire in many places, and the fire liable to break out again, almost any time.

Fine Stock for Sale At O. K. Ritchey's farm 4 miles south of Rensselaer. Having “retired from the turf’’ not from choice but necessity, will sell all my thorough-bred horses, Jersey cattle, thorough-bred Poland-China hogs, both male and female, bred and unbred, and all being fashionably bred stock. —-- • <4* ► • Mrs. Lottie George has moved into Mr. Day’s house recently vacated by Mr. Will Mossier, east of the court house, where she is prepared to take any number of boarders. Good rooms and first class table are guaranteed. Trancientssl. a day. $3.50 per week. Paid For That Twine ? Have you paid for that binder twine at N. Warner & Sons’, which was to have been paid for the first of September? If not, it is time you did, for you may want to buy some more on the same terms next year. wtf. Dakota hats, best grade, only 69 cents, at Lecklider’s. Cheaper grade, 49 cents. 1 House for rent. W- M. Cotton.

NUMBER 9.

Death of Shadraek F. Brown.

Shadrack F. Brown, an old and honored resident of this county, died Thursday, Sept. 30th, at his home in Wheatfield, after a long illness. His funeral is held today, at W’heatfield cemetery. He lived for many years in Walker township, where he was a prominent and much respected citizen. He held the office of justice of the peace for many years, and his decisions and rulings always commanded the highest respect, from their evident fairness and justice.

NORTH BARKLEY

John Fanson was in Wheatfield Monday on business. Miss Eva Witzler is threatened with typhoid fever. Mrs. James Stevens returned home Sunday after an extended visit in Illinois. John Dodd and family Sundaved at Harry Gifford’s. Wm, Hickman and wife returned Sunday from a two week’s visit with Mrs. Hickman’s sister in Illinois. Wm. Poisel, of Medaryville, was in our vicinity Friday Jack Knedler who has been visiting at Remington and Goodland for the past week returned Monday. Miss Jennie Beedy went to Chicago last Tuesday.

Annoiincenieot. Valparaiso, Ind. Sept. 29, 1987. Mr. Editor: Permit me to announce to the people of this congressional district that I have for distribution, several hundred copies of the year book recently issued by the secretary of agriculture, and that I will send copies to all who forward requests, until the supply is exhausted. E. D. Crumpacker. Farm For Sale. 122 acres of good land 5| miles south of Wheatfield in Walker tp. All new fence, new bouse 20-28-7 rooms, good water, good outside cellar, new summer kitchen, 12-20, stable room for four horses, corn crib and buggy shed. Good drainage, 30 acres under cultivation. I will sell cheap for cash or on easy terms. Address, John G. Dodd, Wheatfield, Ind.

Card of Thanks. We desire to thank our friends and neighbors for their kindness shown during our late sad breavement. Chas, and Rosa Platt. 1 —4 • ’7«>od Saws Wood With His Wood Saw. Remember Dick Wood is againon deck with his steam wood saw and ready to call at any place in town to saw a cord or more. Price for sawing only 40 cents a cord. If you don’t see Wood to saw Wood telephone your order to the Republican office, telephone 18. - - ; Cattle For Sale. For sale 36 steer calves, 11 heifers and cows, 2 two year old steers. Wm. Shirer, Kniman, IndFor Trade A new, first class, 1897, model bicycle fully guaranteed, to trade for wood, or good buggv horse. Call at Republican office for name of party. J. P. Hammond will write your fire or life Insurance, as cheap as the cheapest. Give him a call. Office with James H Chapman. s4w Mrs. Austin Hopkins Dress making & Corset Parlors. Mackintosh dress skirts and capes. I Girls’ Macintosh circulars, made of Macintosh serge blue and black, plaid lined. Residence 2 doorssouth of Co. Clerks office. East side of Court Housesquare, dwtf.