USA > Indiana > Public men of Indiana : a political history, 1890-1920, v. 2 > Part 2
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honor of being the first American woman to be- come a full-fledged princess of a reigning family of Europe, if it may be called an honor, fell to her by her marriage to Prince Christopher, of Greece, when she was given the name of Princess Anastasia. For some time before her marriage to him royal gossip said that Prince Christopher, brother of King Constantine, was in London courting a wealthy American lady, whose identity was an absorbing mystery, and that her millions were to be used to restore King Constantine to the throne from which he had been deposed early in the World War.
So it is that Indiana has not only been the home of financial kings, but a fraction of its great wealth may have gone to the support of a tottering king- dom of the Old World.
The natural gas wells in some localities showed signs of exhaustion a few years after their dis- covery, and some of the mushroom cities showed signs of decay and lost many of their inhabitants. Among these were the cities where Reid and Leeds amassed their first wealth. Geological science and the drill quickly supplied a substitute for natural gas as a fuel by expanding coal production in south- western Indiana, with the result that the manufac- turing processes were kept in operation and that section of the State now not only supplies the domestic demands for soft coal but is relied upon to supply other sections of the country.
The Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company, soon after the discovery of natural gas in Indiana,
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acquired right-of-way and laid three lines of eighteen-inch steel pipes from the gas districts of Grant and Howard counties to Hammond, where they connected with other pipes extending into the city of Chicago, and for a time that city was fur- nished with quantities of natural gas from Indiana. One of these lines of steel pipe was taken up after the supply of gas gave out, but now at the time this is written it is stated on reliable authority that it may be relaid and used with the others in conveying back to Indiana cities and towns the artificial gas that is extracted from coal in the process of making coke, and that the numerous coke ovens of Gary, East Chicago, Whiting and Hammond are capable of supplying enough to meet all the wants of Indiana towns and cities that can be reached.
Vast quantities of coal from Indiana mines are transported over the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad, that has acquired the lines of rail- roads formerly known as the John R. Walsh rail- roads, to supply its own fuel requirements and the northwestern territories it traverses.
The natural gas and coal mining industries were not alone the causes of increased wealth and popu- lation of Indiana. The construction of lines of interlacing interurban railways began in 1890 and continued until every town and city of any impor- tance was connected by them with the State capitol, and the great automobile industry soon followed as the result of the achievements of Elwood Haynes, of Kokomo, Indiana, the originator and first success- ful operator of automatic vehicle power in America,
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and the consequences of his success are now ex- hibited on every highway and byway of the world in the never ending lines of motor vehicles that traverse them. He had the great ideals, visions and ambitions that brought this wonderful instru- mentality of commercial and individual transporta- tion into practical reality so that it has reached out to millions, brings the town to the farmer, the coun- try to the town, the worker to the factory, the chil- dren to the school, the worshiper to the church, the family to health, pleasure and contentment, and the producer and consumer into co-operation.
The billions that Henry Ford has accumulated and the millions that other manufacturers have become availed of are but the fruits of the genius of this plain, unassuming citizen of Indiana. His achievements were not the offspring of greed, avarice, or infringements upon the discoveries of others, but of scientific and inventive intellect, that few profiteers possess, and came only from a self- determination to bring ideality into reality. Not only does Indiana have the honor of being the first State to produce a motor vehicle, but it is interest- ing to record the fact that some of the foremost principles of modern aviation were worked out on Indiana soil. Octave Chnute, the eminent engineer and aviation expert, made gliding flights during the middle 90's in the sand dunes at Miller Beach near the city of Gary, and while flying from one to an- other broke one of his legs. His name is embalmed in some of the American aviation works and the city of Berlin, in Germany, set up some kind of
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a tribute to this pioneer birdman who experimented in Indiana.
The exhaustion of natural gas caused no mate- rial reduction in the number of manufacturing con- cerns, but some of them changed their location to other states and to another part of this State that will be given much space hereafter.
In 1919 the State legislature created a Depart- ment of Conservation to safeguard, augment and perpetuate the State's fast diminishing natural resources. The mission of this department is not only to safeguard resources but to promote the use of numerous resources that have hitherto lain dormant or been only meagerly drawn upon. As a result of its investigations already made was the discovery of approximately nine million tons of mineable coal underlying the bed of the Wabash River. It has also discovered oil and new gas fields, high grade clays, kaolins, and many other valuable minerals. It has pointed out that two million acres of land in southern Indiana now unfit for agri- culture can grow the finest hardwoods in the world and shown the importance of immediate steps to replant forest lands.
Its many activities are detailed in the publica- tions of the divisions of its department that include the Departments or Divisions of Geology, Ento- mology, Forestry, Lands and Waters, Fish and Game, and Engineering, all operated by capable officials, under the supervision of Director Richard Lieber, and Commissioners W. H. Guthrie, Dean Stanley Coulter of Purdue University, John W.
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Holtzman and E. Mortimer Wilson. Its division chiefs are: Geology, Dr. W. N. Logan; Ento- mology, Frank N. Wallace; Forestry, Charles C. Deaus; Fish and Game, George N. Manfield; Lands and Waters, Charles G. Sauers; Engi- neering, Dr. W. K. Hatt.
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CHAPTER III
0 OLITIC limestone is probably the most valuable of all the State's mineral resources. Immense deposits of it are in the counties of Lawrence and Monroe, and there are considerable quantities of it in Owen and in other counties. It is commonly called Bedford stone, the name given it because of the nearness of its location to the town, now city, of Bedford, the county seat of Lawrence County. Its discovery has been traced to Professor John Collett, an eminent geologist of the State. Its value for building purposes soon became apparent and architects generally recommended its use. It gained commercial value soon after the Civil War when its quarrying began on an extensive scale. The State Capitol building, constructed following the legislative session of 1877, was built of this stone and attracted attention to it from all sections of the country. It soon appeared in both residence and office buildings in the cities of other states and notably so in New York City and Chicago. It has gone into the construction of the State Capitol of Mississippi, Minnesota, and two other state houses, in the Allen County courthouse and others in In- diana, and in other states, also in many federal buildings.
An attempt to create a monopoly in the pro-
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duction and sale of it was made in 1892 by Dr. William L. Breyfogle, of New Albany, Indiana, who had been president of what is now known as the Monon Railroad during the preceding year. His project contemplated the purchase of all the quarries and stone lands in the Bedford distriet and the construction of a railroad to encircle them and extending to lines of connecting railroads. In his operations he became the borrower of about half a million dollars from a Chicago bank and trust company, controlled by John R. Walsh, a promi- nent financier and journalist of Chicago. This debt became due when the great financial depres- sion of 1893 occurred, when Walsh, to protect his own financial interests, found it necessary to dis- continue advances and extensions to Breyfogle, and after some litigation between them that was adjusted, the property in both the quarries and railroad passed, in 1894, to the full control of Walsh, who completed the work that Breyfogle had begun, but at an enormous cost, and in addi- tion to this cost he made a voluntary donation of forty thousand dollars to Breyfogle.
He fully equipped the quarries with modern machinery and appliances, and to establish a greater market for the product he established stone yards in many places and one on a particularly extensive scale at Weehawken, New Jersey, and then en- gaged a special train of three Pullman coaches and filled them with stone cutters of New York City to make a visit at his expense to see the quarries. He completed the belt railroad to a point of con-
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nection with what was then known as the Evansville and Richmond Railroad that began sixty miles from Evansville and ended sixty miles from Rich- mond, but was 102 miles in length, extending from Elnora in Daviess County to Westport in Decatur County. It was designed as a feeder for the Evans- ville and Terre Haute Railroad, but was found to be so useless that the owners of it were about to "junk" it, although it had cost nearly three millions to build. An inspection trip over it was made by Walsh and the writer on a hand-car and Walsh bought it for the small sum of one hundred and ninety thousand dollars, closing the deal in 1897. In its reconstruction and in extending it from El- nora to Terre Haute under the corporate name of the Southern Indiana Railway he expended about five million dollars. Its extension was through the rich coal fields of Greene, Clay, Sullivan, and Vigo counties, and caused the opening and operation of the many productive mines of that section that are now supplying the vast quantities of coal for trans- portation to all parts of the country.
The extension of the road to Terre Haute was the beginning of a bitter conflict between Walsh and the owners of the other roads that passed in both directions through Terre Haute. They seem- ingly did not want him in the railroad game and to keep him out they insisted on having eighty per cent of the tariff rate for hauling the stone and coal produced in his territory and hauled to them in his cars, leaving him but twenty per cent of the through rate. He was so enraged by this imposi-
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tion that he determined to not only extend his line on to Chicago, but to get even with his enemies to construct a line paralleling theirs into Indianapolis. He immediately prepared to enter upon the work, acquired right-of-way, made locations and began construction work, and purchased extensive and expensive terminal facilities in Indianapolis. To carry on this work he placed new mortgages on his already constructed roads and on the lines he was proceeding to construct to secure bond issues that he sought to sell through the usual bond sell- ing agencies in New York, but it developed that his enemies had sufficient influence in financial circles to prevent the sale of his bonds. He was also made to believe that his opponents were nego- tiating for the purchase of all the coal mines along the line of his road so as to deprive him of traffic on his lines after they were completed.
His fear that they would succeed in this caused him to enter upon the purchase of all these coal mines, and their owners were, of course, ready to sell to him at the enormous prices they placed on their holdings. It was under these circumstances that to make these purchases all in cash he with- drew three million dollars from the Chicago National Bank, of which he was president, on what he called "memorandum notes" for various amounts to each of which was attached as a form of security certain of the bonds that he had attempted to sell in New York. These so-called "memorandum notes" had all been filled out by one of his clerks purporting to bear the signatures of a number of
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his employes without any attempt at imitation of the real signatures of the apparent makers. The notes being entirely fictitious, the funds of the bank thereby withdrawn were held by the government authorities to be a misapplication of the funds of the bank and his acts a violation of the national banking laws. For this violation he was indieted and on a trial by a jury of the United States Dis- trict Court of Chicago, at which Judge Albert B. Anderson, of Indianapolis, presided, he was con- victed. The contention of his counsel that he was not guilty of any criminal intent did not prevail over the legal presumption that he intended the necessary consequences of his aets. He was seventy years old at the time of his trial. Judge Anderson gave him the minimum sentence. He was confined in the Federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, for a little more than a year, when he was paroled and died at his home in Chicago a few days after his release. The great good he had done in develop- ing the natural resources of Indiana and the for- tunes he had made for others made him many friends in Indiana who never believed that he was a crim- inal or had done more than commit a then very common offense by bankers of enriching themselves at the expense of their depositors and stockholders, of which many were supposed to be guilty.
He was born in Ireland and came to Chicago in his fourteenth year. He attended night schools and · educated himself to become a master of the English language. He commenced his business life on his arrival in Chicago by selling newspapers and shin-
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ing shoes and established his newsstand on a busy corner a block distant from where his Chicago National Bank a few years later became one of the strongest financial institutions of the West. He organized the Western News Company to sell news- papers, magazines and books on railroad trains dur- ing the Civil War and later sold his franchise for a million dollars. He established the Chicago Herald and Evening Post and built up immense circula- tions for them, and a few years later sold them at a profit of three million dollars.
He became a power in political affairs in Chicago and in the State of Illinois, was a supporter of President Cleveland and his administrations and sufficiently influential to secure the appointment of James H. Eckels, an obscure lawyer of Ottawa, Illinois, as Comptroller of the Currency. Eckels later became President of the Commercial Na- tional Bank of Chicago. In 1896 Walsh sup- ported Mckinley for President, and to make his support most effectual his Chicago Chronicle news- paper that he had established brought about the formation of what was called a gold standard Democratic party to oppose William Jennings Bryan and nominated General John M. Palmer, of Illinois, for President and General Simon Boli- var Buckner, of Kentucky, for Vice President. When the campaign was over his Chronicle news- paper became a losing enterprise, the Democrats wouldn't read it and the Republicans didn't need it.
Charles G. Dawes, who became Brigadier Gen- eral in the World War, was appointed Comptroller
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of the Currency by President McKinley and later was a business associate of Walsh in some gas com- panies in which they both amassed fortunes. Walsh performed an essential part in the election of one of Indiana's Republican United States Senators and repaired the financial fortunes of the other. He was noted for the liberality of his charitable donations, but never bestowed them with ostentation. A magazine writer, in giving an account of his boyish ambitions, quoted him as say- ing that his aim in life was to own a newspaper, a bank and a railroad. He was reminded of this by the writer when he closed the purchase of the Evansville and Richmond Railroad and replied, "But no one ever said I wanted to own a stone quarry, did they?" His quarries and Indiana rail- roads were large earning institutions while his Chronicle newspaper and other properties were big losers.
He made many enemies in his business life and was never known to conciliate one. The friends he made were generally of the fair weather kind who generally deserted him in his troubles while his enemies lingered to punish him. Among the latter was William Randolph Hearst. When Hearst decided to establish his newspapers in Chi- cago every newspaper of that city ignored his existence and purposes, and he couldn't purchase spaec in them to announce his purpose in entering that field, but he was able to place large posters on all the billboards and delivery wagons of Chi- cago announcing that on a certain day his American
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would be published at the price of one cent the copy and everybody bought it when it appeared, and the other newspaper owners of Chicago were forced to make the same reduction in price to main- tain their circulation. From that time on Hearst conducted a vigorous and vindictive warfare on Walsh and was greatly aided by a former employe who was familiar with Walsh's business methods. Hearst charged by innuendo that Walsh had been protected in his violations of bank laws by com- plaisant comptrollers of the currency and, it was reported, personally called upon President Roose- velt to prevent a scandal in his administration by having Walsh prosecuted as the country was de- manding that an example be made of the big vio- lators of the National banking laws. Whether it was Hearst's reported call on Roosevelt or the latter's volition that brought about Walsh's prose- cution is not known, but it is a fact known to the writer that Roosevelt's peremptory direction to his Department of Justice caused Walsh's arrest and vigorous prosecution. It so happened that the National Bank Examiner who detected his viola- tions was Charles H. Bosworth, a relative of Gen- eral Dawes, and who had also been president of Walsh's Illinois Southern Railroad. In the usual course of procedure Judge Kenesaw M. Landis would have presided at Walsh's trial, but he preferred to not try the case and called Judge Anderson to hear it. The appointment of Judge Anderson as Federal Judge by President Roosevelt was generally credited to the endorsement and in-
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fluence of Congressman Charles B. Landis of the Ninth Indiana Congressional District, a brother of Judge Landis. In the trial and in giving Walsh the minimum sentence, Judge Anderson demon- strated his rule in the administration of justice that it is the certainty of conviction of the offender and not the severity of punishment that should prevail.
The Herald newspaper that Walsh founded is the same Herald that Hearst combined with his Examiner that is now published at three cents the copy under the name of the Herald-Examiner, while its rival, the Chicago Tribune, is sold at two cents the copy.
The magnificent Chicago National Bank Build- ing, constructed by Walsh in 1902 of Bedford stone and patterned in architectural design after the Bank of England, became the property of the Cen- tral Trust Company of Illinois, one of the great financial institutions of the West founded by his friend General Charles G. Dawes.
His valuable railroads and other properties passed into the control of the Chicago Clearing House Association in 1905 at the time that his bank was forced into liquidation. That association, composed of Chicago bankers, assumed the full pay- ment of the depositors in his bank and took over the property for their indemnity. Their action was not prompted by any admiration of Walsh, but was taken at a long night conference to protect them- selves from the great crash that would otherwise have occurred and involved them all in financial disaster. Each of the member banks of the Clear-
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ing House Association was required to contribute in proportion to their respective capitalizations in paying the obligations assumed, and not upon the basis of their surplus or ability to pay, and there were afterwards many complaints about the unfair- ness of the burdens placed on the smaller banks by those much more able to pay, and the final dis- position of the property was taken charge of by the larger institutions that got the advantages that fol- lowed from their control and power of disposition. The actual value of the great properties that were taken over was greatly in excess of all the obliga- tions assumed. Whether this value was in fact ever realized is not known, nor is it a matter of any concern to the general public.
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CHAPTER IV
T HE extension of steam railroad construction in Indiana gained great impetus during the dec- ade preceding 1890, when there were constructed the Chicago and Erie, Nickel Plate, and the Indian- apolis division of the Monon, the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, the Clover Leaf from Toledo to St. Louis and other roads, and the beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio of Indiana, first known as the Cincinnati, Richmond and Muncie, the Bedford Belt, the Southern Indiana, the Illinois Central from Effingham, Illinois, to Indianapolis, the Indiana Harbor from Lake Michigan to Danville, Illinois.
The transmission of articulate sound for long distances by wire passed the experimental stage in 1900. Prior to the year 1890 many local telephones were in operation throughout the State and are now in all business places and almost every household.
An event of the year 1890 was the passage on April 25th of that year of the Act of Congress providing for the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Chris- topher Columbus by an international exposition of the arts, industries, manufactures, the products of the soil, mine and seas of the world, to be held in
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Chicago in 1893. Provision was made for the appointment by the President of the United States, upon the nomination of the governors of two com- missioners and two alternates from each state to arrange for the celebration. Judge Elijah B. Martindale, of Indianapolis; Thomas E. Garvin, of Evansville; Professor John L. Campbell, of Crawfordsville; and Captain Ben F. Havens, of Terre Haute, were Indiana's commissioners and alternates and stimulated great activities among Indiana people in the exhibition of the State's great resources.
The Act of Congress required that ten million dollars as a preliminary fund should be raised by voluntary donations or subscriptions of stock to the capital stock of the corporation that was created to conduct the exposition. The President was re- quired to invite foreign nations to become par- ticipants. These invitations were extended through their ambassadors to the United States. To en- courage the free exhibition of their products all tariff duties were remitted. It was required that the site for the celebration should be dedicated by appropriate ceremonies on the 12th day of October, 1892, and that the fair should be opened for attendance of the public in May, 1893.
President Harrison, by wire from Washington, opened the dedication ceremonies which were attended by the governors and their staffs from each State. Ira J. Chase was then Governor of the State of Indiana. He had been elected as Lieutenant-Governor and succeeded Governor
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Alvin G. Hovey, whose death had occurred. He and thousands of Indiana people attended. At the opening in 1893 President Cleveland and his entire cabinet attended. Jackson Park in Chicago, where the exposition was held, was covered by magnificent buildings and structures constructed by the gov- ernments of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other foreign nations, and by buildings of each state of the United States, Indiana's building being centrally located and reflecting great credit upon the State.
The great success and beautiful views of the grounds and buildings and of the exposition have been the subject of many descriptive publications, particularly "Stoddard's Views," and many people yet living recall the magnitude and splendors of the exposition and interestingly relate their experiences and observations on the many days of their visits.
The gate receipts were not only ample to repay all the expenditures but created a surplus fund sufficient to pay dividends on the stock subscrip- tions that had been made to insure the success of the project. It was estimated that the attendance from Indiana was greater than any other State out- side of Illinois.
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CHAPTER V
TN the new centers of industry in Indiana and other states there came new classes of workers, both skilled and unskilled, to engage in employ- ments in which Americans are unfitted for or un- willing to engage in, many of them coming from countries where civil, and often religious, liberty and freedom from despotic power are unknown. The officers and managing heads of the great cor- porations assembling them in and about their plants had a full realization of their duties and responsi- bilities in making them their employes. The risks they assumed in creating the relation of master and servant sometinies were hazardous as related to their own property and affairs and these they neces- sarily assumed, and at the same time there was imposed on them responsibilities to the State and communities in which they were assembled that they could not avoid; among these, the duties of pre- venting pauperism, crime and disloyalty, and other perils and consequences that were obvious. The association of scores of races, speaking as many languages, into racial groups that were alien to each other, in some cases rendered assimilation and amal- gamation into American citizenship as uncertain as the experiment of reaching the "Gate to God" by the erection of Babel's tower.
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