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Show I'J Five Brothers, Al! Milliohaires, Work at Butchers' Block I TO L - LOUlULL (i?(GHT) - 39 CONFUSING WITH DATCHELOfe (LEFT) JY77 i Staunton, Illinois, Men, Vastly Wealthy ?k i Through Discovery of Great Gas Deposits, r Can't Keep Up With Their Earnings, but They Still Wield the Cleaver as in Days When Less Successful. 1' 0 F yu s Dto a meat sbp In H ' Staunton, 111., on Saturday to buy a 75-cent roa3t or a nickel's Worth of liver (depending on how touch you are fooling the H. C. L.). one of four whllc-aproncd men behind the l marble counters will wait on you j and you would never suspect' he is I worth a cool million dollars, no matter which one wields the cleaver. And if you go six blocks east arid one block south, you will come to a , smaller meat shop, and here, too, a white-aproned butcher, whose fortune . Is also in seven figures, is handling j the meat and saw and weighing out vi -Jfer Bteaks and hops nine hours a day. i In fact, you cannot buy meat any- . 1 vT where in Staunton, 111., without having m a milliontlre butcher fill your needs. 39 J "The Miller Brothers," owners of the tpi 1 two Staunton meat shops, arc mlllion- V ft aires all five of them. . Yet they continue to run the two I butcher shops left them by their fa- 2 t ther, August Miller, who killed the HjH j first beef in Staunton sixty years ago Tffij J and who made a comfortable fortune out p it. , . 1-- ffiM ruT trie MiTTcr T)rfr,Miii;i fcu , 1-1 i. . mw Va4JMock..Thclr Ivl their millions over a "'""Jvi rjgj thrifty father put his savings tn3iH (3 little knowing that beneath his fertile fc acres were gas deposits which now are jjM tapped by the richest wells of "the Staunton district" and which would I make his five sons mliiionjIll-B; I Just how rich the Miller brothers arc to become depends on what furtner richness In natural gas Is found kk other wells, which are sunk on ' iV thousands of acres that they either PS own outright or ha'e leases on. T It was Henry Miller, oldest, of the ' brothers, and now in active cbar - their gas properties, who .first dlscov ered gas In the Staunton d,srIct' i Nearly twenty years ago he dream ed that there was oil In the font I his father's farm. He Is not a snper !; stltlous man, but that was one dream be did believe In. But o . one sh ' the belief with him. .Ho alKCQ . it continually, but no one encoura cd him. Finally he decided to drill for I 01 He spent more than ?15,000 in drlll- 1 ing, struck three "dry holes, i-J if probably should have been tlB"a M but he wasn't. He still bad faith in '' dream, r Ml Used "Water Witch" Twig, i f V Finally he decided to obtain the 'JKiF- -l'Ices of a roan in St Louis who baa ' ' IB' 1 water wltch"-a peach twig. which he claimed he could locate nature's na-ture's hidden treasures'. So he came to St. Louis and got the man and the "witch." The "witch" indicated a spot and Henry Miller drilled. No matter what the average person thinks about it, no matter how much the idea is laughed at, the fact remains that they struck oil not in paying quantities, but oil, nevertheless. But It looked good, and Miller put In expensive' oil-pumping machinery. This machinery is now practically abandoned, aban-doned, because it is not profltabble. They still pump and sell some oil, however. By this time Henry Miller was considered con-sidered more or less a "false prophet." He had spent a great deal of money almost all he had. But he clung to his dream and drilled again. But this time the drill, instead Qf piercing an underground river of oil, rammed its way through the dome of the big gas field, and with a roar that would make a boiler factory sound like the whispers of spring zephyrs, liie first gas "well In the Staunton district dis-trict "came in." Staunton went wild. People flocked there from miles dlg-Jant. dlg-Jant. Leases were grabbed here and there, but most of the land had been quietly leased by Miller and his brothers broth-ers Henry had been paying 1 an tore on some of It for several years. Miller ceased to bo "a man with a notion;" he became a prophet with a great deal of honor in his own country. coun-try. The Miller brothers set to work drilling more wells. They own all but three of the twenty-five producing gas, wells In the Staunton district. -The wells have a capacity of 175-000,000 175-000,000 cubic feet of gas a day. Most of the wells are "plugged." their closed-up pipes showing about head-high head-high in the midst of corn fields little dots hero and there, with untold wealth pressing upward from tho depths. Already Staunton, Edwardsville and Colllnsville arc being suppllod with natural gas from tho Miller gas wells. Pipes are laid to East St. Louis and It will bo only a matter of time until East St. L011I3 will bo supplied. Supply Is Conserved. ' While there is plenty of gas to pipe to St. Louis and supply the fourth city for somo time, it is considered wise to use only 10 per cent of the capacity of a well for fear that It will bo ex- hausled. OXj?Q LEFT TO F?IGHT. JALDET2T MILLED, MILLETS HENW MILLET?. LOUIS" MILLED. AT WCfckMN OKE.OFjrHErREAT. MAWET6?. P . " ' I The Miller brothers this summer will drill on other properties, and Henry Miller believes ho will find a new field believes it just, as firmly as he believed be-lieved In his first dream many years ago. A reporter visited the Miller oil wells and went Inside "the meter houses," where two meters are quietly ticking off their little song of dollars with, every tick the Miller brothers' fortune is swelled. They are selling their gas under contract to the Cahokia Gas Company, receiving so much per cubic foot as a royal ty. Just what this royalty Is ihoy did not care to say, but it is said in Staunton that It amounts to about 6.000 a week. It will be more when East SL Louis !s being supplied and other wells are connectea. And If another field should be discovered dis-covered and other large centers sup-'-piled well, the Miller brothers will probably continue to don their white aprons and sell steaks and chops.- Tho reporter accompanied Henry Miller to the field while a new well was being drilled. The drill has just reached gas sand, and every minute min-ute they were waiting for the welcomed wel-comed roar of the gas released from underground, where it had been stored no one knows how long. Henry Miller sat squatting on the ground, his eyes ever on tho long rope rf M ,1..:it i -1 1 ... ' uiiu db u unurucu ana inumpcti up and down on Its way to further wealth. If grew dark, and to drill at night so close to the gas strata is an exceedingly dangerous business. But tho next day the well "came in," with a capacity of 25,000,000 cubic fccS a day one of the richest in the field. Louis, Albert, Otto, Hflnry and William Wil-liam are tho five Miller brothers. Only Otto and William are constantly on the meat blocks. Otto, who is one of the biggest stockholders in one of the Staunton banks, and who Is accredited a local financier of much judgment and Insight, In-sight, runs the smaller of the shops and works every day. William Miller Is tho manager of the larger shop, but nearly every day some of the brothers take their turn behind tjie counter, and on Saturday they all don their white aprons, and wait on trade. On Saturday even Henry Hen-ry Miller forgets the existence of gas properties, which engross his other days and says: "A 25-cent roast? Yes, madam, 'tho vLOUI MILLER BEIXTE A 'CLOSED WELL. THE DIQGE5T IN THE.5TAUNTOM FIELD. higher cost of living makes it pretty hard. Thank you. Fine day, Isn't it? Come again." But it is no eccentric1 miser trait that makes tho Miller brothers work in their meat shops Each owns a fine automobile, each has an elegant home. It Is simply that the gas properties do not take their time, and they like the work. The butcher business is the work they have been raised to do. "Will we ever sell the shops?" said Henry Miller, in answer to a question. "Oh, possibly, sometime, but not now. It's a good business." |