A MAN OF MYSTERY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13430, 22 March 1907, Page 3

A MAN OF MYSTERY.

WEYERHAEUSER, THE MISSING

MILLIONAIRE.

In an article in the Cosmopolitan, entitled " Weyerhaouser — Richer than John D. Rockefeller," Charles P. Norcoss thus refers to the American millionaire whose mysterious disappearance was recorded in a recent cablegram : — Frederick Weyerhaeuser! The name conveys no moaning to the average reader. Even in his home town few know him. He never attends public meetings. He shuns society. His home is quiet and not out of the ordinary. Yet Weyerhaeuser, timber king and recluse, is lord of millions of far-flung timber lands, with a fortune that overshadows that of John D. Rockefeller, popularly believed to be the richest man in the United States, if not in the whole Avorld. As silently and as patiently as one of the giant trees oh his land grew to its majestic maturity, Weyerhaeuser has grown. He is master of vast reaches of wpnderful forests, extending, from the cluttered drives of Wisconsin lakes

and rivers to the Pacific Coast. He

has behind him 50 years of unremitting toil along lines of telling organisation, l > atieixt, shrewd, and far-seeing, he has given his life to bringing underneath his dominion the great forest tracts of the North-west; It sofcns astounding that such an enormous, accumulation could be effected without the Avhole world knowing it; but Weyerhaeuser is a man of mystery. To his, intimates he is known as a man of enormous fortune, and by the general public hearing' of him in a desultory way he is popularly credited with great , wealth; but all estimates fall far short i of the reality. 'Weyerhaeuser x makes no boast of his wealth. He shuns publicity. The spectacular pleasures of the ordinary millionaire have no fascination for him. He moves along in the same well-ordered groove, with the same ways of enjoyment, that he followed 40 yean> ago. He is essentially a worker, but he works in the dark. He is a man of a thousand partners. His hand reaches the uttermost recesses of the jvilds of the North-west, and the highest mountain peaks -are spots f^>m which he could unfurl his banner to the air if he desired. Secrecy is his hobby. One partner has no idea of what his relations with another partner are. His business is one of magnificent distance^. His great wealth is in forosts, and .he* seems to have acquired some of the impenetrability and brooding silence that are characteristic of them. There are many men rich through lumber traffic, but Weyerhaeuser is king of them all. When any knotty problem arif-js, when there is any complication in the trade, or any question of moment to bo settled, it is to Weyerhaeuser the ]Lu.Hiherrnen turn, and his decision is final aiid binding.

binding. Weyerhaeuser,, born in a land where forestry is an exact science, realised that the methods, in vogue, if left unchocked, would in time exhaust even the prodigal wealth of the land and bring on a timber famine that would causer' forest lands to appreciate in value. Fifty years ago he started in po acquire timber tracts, and he has followed that policy without deviation. As shrewdly as the first Astor sought out and accumulated New York city property, Weyerhaeuser, has sought out and. secured the best of timber properties.

There is nothing in this country growing in v,alue by leaps and bounds like timber properties. The pinch is coming. The prodigal waste of years is ■creating a paucity of desirable timber tracts. Weyerhaeuser is beginning to rißap the fruits of his foresight. If he Jive 6 20 years longer and retains what h? has to-day, he will be wealthy beyond all computation. It is hardly necessary to be specific as to the increase in the value, of timber lands, but just a couple of cases may be cited as instances, and for these cases John G. Staats, editor of the 1 Lumberman's Review, and one of thd best informed lumber experts in the country, is authority.

According to Mr Staats, one piece of yellow-pine land, held 10 years ago at a priep of 75,000 dollars, is to-day unobtainable at 750,000 dollars. Another tract in West Virginia, coverod with spruco and hemlock, and purchased five years ago fqr 12,000 dollars, has recently been sold for 500,000 dollars. The cases might be continued indefinitely, but these tv7o are cited simply to show the way the timber tracts have increased in value. They are in no way remarkable. Hundreds of others just as impressive could be given. The question naturally arises as to how much timber land Weyerhaeuser owns. He won't tell, and even his closest lieutenants admit that they can only speculate. There are 50,000 square miles of s timber land in the state of Washington alone— 32 million acres. Pretty much everything outside of the Government forest reserve is tributary to Weyerhaeuser. He may not own it, his name may not appear as record anywhere, but it is under his domination. Such is true of Oregon's great forest lands also. In the territory around Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Mississippi River district, he has reigned *or yearß undisputed. It is estimatod by thoge who have studied Weyerhaouser's widespread business interests that fully 30 million acres of' timber land are under his control — 50,000 square miles, an area six times as large as the state of New Jersey. As to value, again one nuiijt speculate. It may bo cited that recently the Weyerhaeuser interests sold one square mile in Thurston County Washington, for 76,000 dollars-^-an average of nearly 120 dollars an acreOf course that was cream. It would be safe to say, however, that the land is worth close to a, billion dollars — and it is increasing in value at a" greater rate than any other public utility. Weyerhaeuser is of German birth. Born at Neidersaulheim in Southern

Germany in 1834, he tilled tue vineyard on the farm until 18 years r-f e^e. li. 1852 he decided to' emigrate to America JI3 brought hi 3 mother and sisters with him, and they went first to Erie, Pennsylvania. Four years later he left Eric and went to Rock Island, Illinois, Ho secured work in a sawmill, and within six months Avas manager of >he plant. He became acquainted* with 1 F. C. A. Denckman, a compatriot, while they were courting sisters. Both were thrifty, industrious, honest, and obliging. When the sawmill owners wanted to sell; they agreed to take the notes or the young Germans, who thus formed a partnership. Weyerhaeuser, the outside man, wont north to investigate the lumber lands of Wisconsin. He saw all around him tho lavish waste of timber, and it struck to his saving soul. In 1864 the firm had laid aside enough money to make its initial investment. Chippewa land .was bought for i lmost a song. - They acquired, more land, and soon additional sawmills were started. xnd the partners were on the; high road j

to prosperity.

It was in 1872 that

I Weyerhaeuser began io'branch out, and started in to create "tlie indefinite, allipdwerful organisation "which has beI come known as tue "Weyerhaeuser syndicate." Weyerhaeuser was elected president of the Mississippi 1 River Boom and Logging Company.. Thi3 has always remained the' Central,,, or . governing body in his known transactions, and its ramifications reach every lumber samp in the North-west. Just about this time he paid two milliqU dollar,-; tor the great lumber plant of the C N. Nelson Company, at Colquet, with 300 million feet of standing Step by step, the Vusinesi grew. Weyerhaeuser formed new partnerships. He

bought more lands. He stretched out

farther, and the v annual cut ran over a billion feet. , As his business, grew his

iecretiVeness grow. Ho had many partners, but none to wh6m u he told all his business. To-day everything in the Mississippi River lumber district , is owned by him. < - f * Prior to 1897, access, to the public lands was limited to the actual settler who could go* in and acquire 160 acres (quarter section) of land 1 under the Homestead Act. In that year the sobailed "Lieu Selection Act" was passed. Vt that time the once enormous timber resources of the Middle West, ."tid more -particularly tho timber tracts of Wis-

jonsin, Michigan, Minnesota, nnd the Mississippi River section, , where the vVeyerhfteuser companies were operat-

ing, had been practically exhausted. rlte» Weyerhaeuser people wore casting about for other lands. The south and <=>ast offered no real relief. True, the <reat fields of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana were practically un-i touched, but there was nb legal method ->f reaching the timber, it was the property of the /United States, and was.re^ served for thfc a-ctilal^etticr* It was* true that in a small way, by subterfuge, and by employing the make-believe set-

Jpt, tho companies had some land : but this method was slow and unsatisfactory. The Government could not sell or apportion any of these lands, and it was a settled policy to hold tliem. „ ' They included millions of acres of tho finest timber in the world. The average cut an acre was .©normpus and much in /excess of the cut of any other known timber tracts. For years the eyes of the lumbermen had been 6n this section, ai}d they had schemed without avail until the 1897 session of Congress, when a way was found to get into the land.

In the closing hpurse of the session of 1897, an item appropriating a sniall sum for the preservation of forests was introduced and passed. Following it hi the Bill came, the provision : — "That iv cases in which a tract .covered by an nnperfected* bona-fido' i claim , or by a patent is included within the limits of a public forest reserve, the settler or owner thereof may, if he desires to do so, relinquish the, tract to the Government, and in lieu thereof select a tract of vacant land open to settlement, not exceeding in area the tract covered. by

the claim or patent, and no charge shail be made in these cases' feu* the making of the entry or record, or issuing tho

,)&tent to cover the tract selected."

This looked like an innocent proposition, and it is possible that the committee that indorsed it, aad the Oongrosj that passed it, were ignorant of its vicious features. It was apparently an Act to relieve a poor homesteader Tit off by forest reservation definitions. It may be recorded in passing that when Congress realised what abuses were enact-

M under this apparently innocent Act it was repealed in 1904; but the damage had bfeen done.

The joker came in this wise: At clif-

forent times, and in order to aid in the construction of transcontinental railroads, Congress made land grants to the roads. The Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, and the

Atlantic and Pacific (now the Sai-ta Fe) were the beneficiaries. These giants carried with them millions of acres, tak-

ing in as they did every alternate sec-

tion of 640 acres on both sides of tliA tracks for a distance of 20 miles. When

this Act was passed in 1897, the land which had been used to finance the railroads had largely passed out of their hands, and there remained only, generally speaking, worthless or (hnuded

lands. There were, however (and here the whole scheme stands repealed), somewhat less than four million acres of these worthless or dejiudod lands owned by the companies in the year 1897 which had been caught within the confines of Government forest reserves. Ab soon as the law, passed, the railroads proceeded promptly to exchange out these worthless lands for the finest timber

lands the Government owned. The total amount owned within forest reservations by tho land-grant roads was: —

Santa Fe, 1,368,960; Southern Pacific, 543,000; Northern Pacific, 1,401. 000. .

There were other subsidiary tonrpan>es of the railroads, such as the Aates Land and Cattle Company (the Selig-

mans) wnich owned 132,000 acres, owning thousands enough to oring the grand total , close ( to four millions of acres. The Santa Fe was a laggard in the deal, and it is surmised that they did not tumble to what was going on until, some.. time after the Act was passed. There was nothing dense about the Northern Pacific, however, and scarcely was tlie law passed before they were into the- wonderful forests of the North-west like hungry wolves. It was the Northern Pacific that turned the trick, but it was* Weyerhaeuser who was to benefit. For the last thirty years Weyerhaeuser has been practically timber agent of. the I Northern Pacific) and also of the Great Northern. The officers of the Northern Pacific, working through the Weyerh,aetiser timber companies, sold great traces of these rich lands to the Weyer'haeuser syndicate for a song. Six dollars an a'crfc is &ai<J to have fc««en the ruling price. R. L. McCormiek, the Weyerhaeuser agent in Tacoma, Wash' ington, , admits that thafr is vbat the Company^ paid for ornd million acres or, Northerij Pacific land lying west of tho Cascades. It , was one quarter section 1 out of this lot, the 160 acres icferrod. to earlier, that sold for 76,000 ' dollars -J-a profit' of 2000 per cent. In a few short years.

suors yeazs. , t This shrewd deal, whereby • Weyerhaeuser got the richest timber landsdn the world at, practically noost, ana. without the slightest danger to anyone* turned the attention of the syndicate to the North-west, and having gobbled up everything in the Mississippi River district, the same machinery ibat had worked so effectively there was put iv operation inthe West. For some time, Weyerhaeuser had been buying, trading, and by other means taking over lands in the North-west. It was in 1900 that a big splunge was made. All of the Northern Pacific land wast of the Cascades, something over a million acres, Was takon at a flat race of six dollars an acre. According to* well-in-formed men dealing in lumber on the coast, there is already a profit' of 20 ! millions in that one deal: ' • - |

Anyone trying to v,Tite of the machinations of the lumbermen in the North-west stands' appalled .at their magnitude. The facts cited are set forth only as high-lights to illuminate* what has been going on. They may, in a way, tend to proft^ how these gigantic combinations have been effect 3d, how the syndicate converted to its own us» the millions of acres with the bullions o ? value which rightfully belong to the people, and how the colossal Weyerhaeuser fortune wag built up. Behi'ii«l it ail stands the old man in St. Paul, quaint in his moods, somewhat broken in speech, kindly in manner, who, 50 years ago, came- here ,froni v a foreign land to carve out his fortune, an achievement in which he h?is succeeded far beyond the dreams of avarice.