PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIV, Issue 22, 3 June 1905, Page 2

PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT

William Rockefeller and His Private Park. “NEW YORK, May 23. “Mr William Rockefeller, son of Mr J. D. Rockefeller, the “oil king,” has evicted a number of “squatters” on his estate in the Adirondack Mountains, in New York State. He has also demolished the houses they had erected. He has thus cleared 150 square miles of land which he intends to use as a hunting reserve. “He has received from the evicted people many threats to murder him. Similar threats have reached him because of his attempts to discover the murderers of Mr William Dexter, a New York lawyer, who was murdered on his estate in the Adirondacks last year.” The foregoing cable, which appeared in the papers last week, reminds us that even in the Hand of Freedom all men are not brothers, and that even a plutocracy has dangers which are usually associated in the popular mind with feudal times. It is a most interesting and instructive story this about Mr Rockefeller and his private park, as will be gathered from the following article, which appeared in “Collier’s Weekly” quite recently: — “To buy a wilderness and make a community of it is within the opportunity of any moneyed man. To ouy a community and make a wilderness of it may well be beyond the powers of the greatest of millionaires. William Rockefeller, vice-president of the Standard Oil Company, is making the experiment on the little hamlet of Brandon in the heart of the Adirondacks. By methods that are always within the law’—or what has attorneys interpret as the law —he is patiently striving to dislodge the remnants of the populace that still hold root inside the circle of his great game preserve. All the land about them is his; he has bought it and paid for it, thousands upon thousands of acres, more than two whole townships, comprising lakes, rivers, forest, and mountains. “Only Brandon stands in his way; therefore Brandon must go. Not in any spirit of vindictiveness has Rockefeller reached this determination, but because he wants the land upon which the population now lives for the deer and the foxes, the partridges and the quail of his domain. To that end he has brought every means in his vast power for several years, from damage suits for trespass in which sterile victory brought him six cents., to making the Government of the United States, through the Post Office Department, his Instrument of persecution. But the town is still on the map. Five years ago Brandon boasted twelve hundred inhabitants. It had its church. its prosperous hotel, its flourishing school, and its busy mill. To-day it can muster but fourteen families ami as many more deser cd houses. All the rest is scrub-grown space. The hotel is burnt down, the mill is razed, the church stands empty, the two or three hundred dwellings have vanished. Enemies of Rockefeller named him butterly as the agent of devastation. This is true onlv in a physical sense. The disappearance of the buildings is due to the Stan dard Oil man, but the town's reason for existence had lapsed before he set his wish and his will upon Brandon. Had William Rockefeller never entered the Odirondacks. Brandon would be to-day a congeries of empty shacks surrounding a summer hotel. With the passing of its timber interests, its local life passed also, and its sturdy, independent, fighthearted lumbermen, packing up their small household belongings and their large families, wandered forth to fell new acreage of woodland. Behind them remained a few of the older dwellers, too inert, perhaps, perhaps too obstin-

ate, or possibly too long-rooted in habit, to be moved. These conservatives sat and watched Rockefeller buy’ land all around them until they were completely inclosed. Most of it he bought for £20,000 from one Pat Dueey, who owned twenty-five thousand acres of timber land around and including Brandon when Rockefeller came to the mountains for the purpose of buying an estate there. Dueey was a practical lumberman of the sort that is fast stripping the forest regions of the United) States stark naked. He left no tree that could possibly be regarded as a log. There are whole sections about Brandon where the face of nature has been shaved as by’ a skilful barber. Rockefeller built himself a superb country place on BayPond. one of the fairest little bodies of water in the Adirondacks, some four miles from Brandon. Other purchases

followed until he owned all the land for miles around the town, including both banks of St. Regis River and its tributary streams. But Dueey couldn’t sell the town of Brandon entire, because he didn’t own it all. For instance, Harrison G. Baker owned the little summer hotel. Being in the centre of a rich fishing and hunting country, it was a paying enterprise. But to have a lot of summer and fall fishermen and gunners tramping over his property was no part of Rockefeller’s programme. He undertook to buy the hotel. Baker named a pretty stiff price. Rockefeller’s agent laughed at him. “Your hotel isn’t worth anything now,” said he. “You won’t have any guests after this.” “Oh. I think they’ll stand by me,” said Baker, failing to see the point. “Then they’ll have to go a long way for their fun.” retorted the agent.

"They can’t cross our property to get to the St. Regis River, and they couldn't fish our stream if they could get there. We’ll prosecute if they shoot in our woods. What are they going to do?” In vain the hotel-keeper protested that the river had been stocked at State expense, and that, as a stream used for years for floating down lumber, it was public water. “You’ll have to prove it in every court, right up to the Court of Appeals,” said the agent. “We’ll fight you to a finish on that point.”

Baker had no money to undertake an expensive legal campaign. He sold his hotel for £IOOO, went away and died shortly after. In Brandon one hfears that he was “hounded to death by Rockefeller.” but such is the local feeling in the matter that had Baker fallen overboard in mid-Atlantic or been butted to death by a pet goat, some way would he

found to lay the responsibility at Rockefeller’s door.

The next move was upon the local store owned by Charles Dwight, a hard headed, cool business man. There was no difficulty here. This is Dwight’s version of the proceedings: “Rockefeller wanted the place and I didn’t. The trade was gone. I though I’d get all T could out of it. So I named a big price. The agent wasn’t so easy. He split my price in two. ‘You’ve bought a store,’ T says. ‘Count the dollars right out,’ says I. ‘You can’t do it

trout from the streams, partridge and deer from the forest, and berries from the mountainside. When Rockefeller forbade hunting and fishing around Brandon, old Lamora was bitter and outspoken against the edict. What did be care that Rockefeller had bought the land; lie had always hunted and fished there, and no interloping millionaire could stop him! Sueh was his attitude. By general consent he became the mouthpiece and leader of the “Old Guard” who still stuck to Brandon.

too quick!’ Fail- price? Why, I wouldn’t have bought it back next day for half what I got for it.” By paying £2O, £3O, £4O each for the houses. Rockefeller soon owned nearly the whole town. Then came a move which startled the inhabitants—the “letting in the jungle.” Like a destructive horde of ants came the money-king’s men, carried away the houses piecemeal, and soon the little cluster of human remnants looked out upon the place where their neighbours had once lived to see only the swift-growing brus drawing its mask of warm and kindly green across swept ground and raw excavations. The making of wilderness was in progress. Thus far the pursuance of the Rockefeller ambition was along legitimate lines. Now, however, it encountered the first serious obstacle in the person of Oliver Lamora. Lamora is a FrenchAmerican; old, ignorant, poor, obstinate, and fearless. A veteran of the Civil War, he has pension enough for a plain subsistence, which he ekes out with

Little by little he saw the numbers of his companions dwindle. Fauche, who kept the little grocery store, found his trade so waning that he, sold out. Lam ora’s two cousins got jobs elsewhere and were glad to leave. The family across the street departed and Rockefeller left the house standing for the purpose of putting in it Eugene Flanders, one of his “watchers,” as the gamekeepers and forest guards are called. To Lamora’s mind, Flanders was set there to spy upon him, but Lamora’s views must be taken with a lib oral allowance for bias. Probably had the old man been less defiant in his attitude from the first, the offer which was finally made would have come soon er. And right here it is well to note that Lamora is no yellow journal “hero” defending his home against the depredations of a heartless millionaire. He was willing to sell out if he could get his price. And he thought that Rockefeller with his vast wealth ought to pay roundly. So he asked £3OO. Now Lamora’s house is unusually large for Brandon, and is better built than the average, but I very much doubt

whether as a real estate proposition it is worth £3OO. Whether it was worth that to Rockfeller to tear down was for the maker of wilderness to determine. 1 he agent asked for two weeks in which lo refer the matter. Lamora gave him three. That is the last he heard from the agent. But some weeks later one of the watchers, meeting him, told him that he’d better get out while he could sell his place for something or “they'd law him out,” as Lamora quotes the warning. To the ill paid woodsmen of Adirondack*, who have had or heard of experiences with suits brought by absentee landlords, involving expensive defence, the law is not a protection, but a threat. In Lamora if served to rouse only wrathful obstinacy. “He don’t get it for no fifteen bunder’ dollarr now, Ole Rocyfellow don’,” he saiil to me, in his quaintly accented English. “He pay me five thousan’ dollarr now if he want it.” Legitimate methods failing to oust Lamora, Rockefeller now resorted to measures not so clearly defensible. In

Marell, 1902, he caused the old man’s arrest for fishing in a branch of the fit. Regis River, which the millionaire claims to own.

This is not all. The Standard Oil magnate had also brought suit against Lamora under the common law for £ 15 for trespass. He got six cents. This was followed by another suit, this time for exemplary damages, which was soon withdrawn. Rockefeller has been making legal action pretty expensive in time, money, and worry for the obstinate fisherman.

The campaign against Brandon now began to broaden. Signs warning off trespassers were put up on all the roadi leading out from the town. Many of these are highroads, but the Rockefeller attorneys assume that they are private property. “Let the other fellows prove that they are highways,” say the lawyefs. Old trails were closed, and barred against, the passage of the Brandonites. Residents of the little settlement, who had obtained employment in a lumber company controlled by William Rockefeller, were discharged at the behest of the Bay Pond estate watchers. iTlie word went forth that no Brandon man eould get a jobin that country. Children going out from the hamlet to pick berries on the mountainsides were driven home by the watchers and threatened with harm if they repeated the offence. Undeniably the berries belonged to Rockefeller, but in view of the faet that they were never marketed, and that ninetynine per eent of them were left to wither on the bushes, the inhibition is regarded by those most concerned as harsh, though legal enough. But the Rockefeller employees have not always kept within the law, and herein, presumably, they have gone beyond their instructions. A- Brandon man named Barcumb, While fishing in the. St. Regis, had his pole shot in two by a watcher who is a crack marksman. At the same time he was struck by a rock, from the hand of the watcher's companion. Both assailants were arrested, but before the case came up for trial. Barcumb (without any procurement on the part of the Rockefeller inflfienees, it is but fair to say) had gone to the poorhouse. Other charges of violence are made against the gamekeepers, but most of them lack substantiation.

Naturally, methods such as these made William Rockefeller unpopular, but what followed was a sorer exasperation to the thinning' population of Brandon.

Since 1887 the little place has had a post-office of its own. It was in the middle of the village, convenient for all, and the nearefet available point, moreover, for several lumber camps in the vicinity. Late in April of last year William Rockefeller wrote a letter to Henry C. Payne, then Post-master-General. about the post-office at Brandon. Persons who declare that they have seen this document quote from it this passage: “Heretofore you have granted us many favours. We have still one more to ask of you. that you remove the post-office from Brandon to Hay Pond.’’ Mr Payne is dead; suffice it to say of him that he was a man peculiarly amenable to such influences as Mr Rockefeller eould bring to bear. Instead of referring the matter to the Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General, Mr Bristow (an official reputed to lie disobliging in delicate matters of this sort), as is customary in the affairs of "fourthclass post-offices. Mr Payne himself sent an inspector to investigate. Before the inspector's report came in, Mr Payne, by what urgency it is impossible to state, took matters into his own hands and ordered the Brandon post - office closed. The effects were removed to: Bay Pond, a settlement • exclusively made up of the Rockefeller menage, four, miles distant in the heart of. the estate. The personal bequest of a’private citizen had sufficed to move a post-office from a point where it was needed to a point where it wasn't. Bay Pond already had a post-office of its own.

, To the Brandoil people thia seemed

aninjustice. Some of them even went so far as to say that the Government had been influenced by Mr Rockefeller’s position and riches. They got up a petition for the return of their post-office. Seventy-four people signed it —a number, by the way, considerably in excess of the Bay Pond population. The petition went to Washington and was pigeon holed. Brandon came to understa'nd that it could tramp to Bay Pond for its mail, or it could go without. It tramped. And it tramped over roads lined with signs announcing that this was William Rockefeller’s private park, and warning trespassers away under penalty of the law. That is, the United States was maintaining a post office to which Mr Rockefeller might, if his claims were made good, deny access to any person distasteful to him. That he did not deny such access perhaps speaks well for his wisdom. On the whole, the Rockefeller employees were not disobliging to the Brandon people in the matter of mail. The postmaster at Bay Pond even went beyond the requirements of his office, often sending mail down to Brandon by one or another of the railroad hands. But the rape of their post-ofliee rankled in the minds of the Brandon folk. One day last fall Oliver Lamora sent his son to Bay Pond after a newspaper which he expected. The son returned emptyhanded. Thereupon the old man shouldered his rifle and set out himself. At the post-office he found William Rockefeller and Flanders, the watimer. Lamora declares with glee that Rockefeller immediately s'epped behind his employee and maintained that strategic position throughout the proceedings. Not that there was any danger, says the old man, for he only brought the weapon to protect himself against Mr Rockefeller’s wild deer. Lamora demanded his paper. The postmaster instituted a search, found it in a corner where it had been mislaid, and delivered it with an apology.

William Rockefeller does not seem to b? an object of personal hatred; as was, for instance, his neighbour, Orlando P. Dexter, who met so tragic and mysterious an end in 1903. Dexter was a millionaire owner who had not. only prosecuted relentlessly, but persecuted with all the powers of the law', those who attempted to majn'.ain what they considered their rights against him. Openly announcing his intent to ruin certain resident owners, he set about his ends through process of law by which he did not live to benefit. They found him dead on the roadway which he hjid made private, thereby compelling a neighbouring lumberman to make a circuit so long that his timber became practically unmarketable; shot from ambush by a murderer who left no clue. William Rockefeller left his place the day after the murder and left in haste, it is s"aid. Since then, so Brandon people tell me. several bullets have been shot into the Rockefeller buildings during the owner's absence. Even if this be true, and it is denied, it might well be accidental in a region where there is so much hunting with rilles which carry several miles. People there are in that neighbourhood who would Im- glad to have Rockefeller believe himself in danger of Dexter’s fate. But the Standard Oil millionaire, unless he should employ methods ns ruthless as Dexter’s (which he has not yet done), is not likely to arouse the quality of vindictivenes which speeds the assassin’s bullet. Anyway, his own people, who seem <1 voted to his interests, are a. constant safeguard.