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Show pi NOTJpFElLEII m : chGsed 0Great acis of Timber-Smted H States Government Draped. f(l . ft I AiSh d', Eve-yAnff comes to 51 ' i - ,ay ng. B0CS- Don,t del,ld your- Mi i Snf . : r yo" wnnt anything If IflSlP d,oes Frederick Woverhaeuscr i ,Frederk Wwhaeiwor of St! Paul. PP -Minn., though comparatively little fnn0,hn' is 'lrobttWy the richSst man In t ho world, not barring John D SSSf 1 leIi',uW !u has been generally credited with that distinction. Woy-erhneusor Woy-erhneusor js a man of extremely moderate mod-erate testes, and thus credonce can ijiik Pacetl in tho claim that he has li '' T1"0 monev than a million men of IfllJ? Hani tastes and sires could 7y Bpend in a hundred years. J j It is worthy of note that the rich- ,j eBt man In the world started with no nlS" 1 CRPIta1' He was born In 1S34 in south- rq2J I eru Gormany. and came to this coun- LIWi 1 try ln,1SG2 accompanied by his moth- g3l il or and sister. They wont directly to XWl 8 nock Island. "1., where Woverhaeuscr igjl . found employment in a sawmill. In V3 6lx mnths he was the manager of .3 the plant. When the owners wanted OjFj.;: to sell they accepted the notes of SB M -bo young German, together with fl : thoso of the man who later became H ' , "Weycrhacuser's brother-in-law, P. C. m ' A. Donckman. jJfijli While the mill was being worked mt ; Weyerhaeuser explored tho timber L1WH ;, lands of Wisconsin, and there he saw H j; his future. In a few years Weycr- H haeuser and Denckman had saved 1 enough money to buv a large tract of irHl ,and for a sot1' The' bought more 'J; land, built additional sawmills, and a JEM ' few years later found themselves on a; the high road to fortune. In 1S72 Weyerhaeuser was elected 5 president of tho Mississippi River p Boom and Logging company, which K2 has remained the governing" body of Ki al-h!s known transactions. Then 5rl ' "'erhaeuser made up his mind that IHh or;e partner was not enough, so ho , began forming secret partnerships j! now believed to total 1.000 His cen- ; tral company bought all the booms uqh i on the river, contracted to do all the ta i logging and driving, and began to ap- mm : portion out logs to various mills along 'Jg 1 the banks and lo fix the price of the BR t logs each season. 2)J( Then came the master stroke, since Mi declared to have been the duping of Kit i the United States government by the HI Northern Pacific railroad, of which ntel . Duril5?a,hUSer,W?B thG h,mber aSnt. During the closing session of con- monfIn 1897 an aPParontly innocent measure was passed with case This measure provided that any settlor or oner of a tract of land "covered by an unperfected claim or by a patent "light relinquish the tract -without cost to himself and select in its stead any tract of vacant land of equal area open to settlement. Tho moment this bill was enacted the Northern Pacific railroad began exchanging a million and a half acros of land granted it as an aid in earlier times by tho government and running along its right-of-way for rich timber tim-ber lands In Washington and Oregon Congress repealed the act in 1911, but It was too late. . The Northern Pacific railroad and 'other companies and railroads which ! had taken advantage of the act, in turn sold out their holdings to the Wcv-orhaeuser Wcv-orhaeuser syndicate, at what was said to be au average price of $G an acre. A few years later Weyerhaeuser is said to have disposed of some of this land at a profit of 2.000 per cent. Through this deal Weyerhaousor added ad-ded to his holdings at an Insignificant cost over -1,000,000 acres of tho finest timber land In the world. With this and the previously acquired lands as a mighty fulcrum, he has since beon able to wrench 30,000,000 acros of land from other hands. |