Millionaire's Stockade.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13828, 13 February 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

Millionaire's Stockade.

A Chicago message of December '22 nd to the London papers, says:— Mr W. R. Hearst's newspapers in various cities published a report in which Mr John D. Rockefeller, junior, was charged with rrganising stockades in which workmen were hold in a state of bondage and never allowed outside the works. Mr .Rockefeller has instituted a suit for criminal libel against the managers of the papers, and Mr Carvalho, the manager of the "American " in New York, has been arrested and released on hail. In Chicago a workman named Charles Verman came before the grand jury, and stated that he was held in a state of peonage for four months by the Corn Products Company. In which Air Rockefeller, junior, is interested. Verman declares that he was held at the company's plant outside Chicago, and that a stockade was built around it, and that ho and others were notallowed to leave. Verman says that lie (.-scaped from the stockade concealed in a waggonload of dirt, but that his presence was discovered by the guards at the gate, and shortly "after getting, outside the stockade the guards fired upon him. He mauaged.. however, to make his escape in the dark. This story has an important bearing on the case, and the Courts will have the a Hair investigated at once.