The river press. [volume] (Fort Benton, Mont.) 1880-current, 1888-01-04

will give the company frst-class title to
that much land at cost, am told of 50
per acre or S15,300 1t is said that the
Park Hotel has run behind $4,000 since
it started, and that to keep it from closing
up the ToWnsite Company advanced $780,
900 on mortgage, covering furniture and
everything else. Allowing that this is
true, and that they will pay at some future
day $4,000 more for a bridge, we find
$4,000 plus the cost of say a score of
desert, homestead and pre-emption claims
that were contracted for, to be the amount
put in,-call it 100000. as an outside
figure. Doubtless this amount has already
been taken out of the scheme for lots sold
The point I would illustrate is this: The
holders Of Townsite stock have got velvet,
they hold that which has cost them moth
ing. There was no sentiment about this,
it was sharp business deal. These out
side men have now what might be called
lighting" interest. II the scheme fails
they lose nothing, if it succeeds all we'll
and good they make much. But how
about this good money that must go to
fight the Campbell and Matkin contests,
and those to come over the Phil. Gibson
homestead, the Frank Pottle, the Edger-
ton, the Collins and Hanson war over the
Thurston desert, the Wolf Bros, the
John Little affair, the Carr Carter, and
the Lord knows how many more that will
arise. A chief justice of Montana said to
a friend of mine, recently, while sitting on
the piazza of the Park Hotel, "You see all
of those claim shacks Well, it is my
opionion that in hardly a case has the
spirit of the law been complied with. If
those lands ever become Of sufficient value
they will be contested, and there will be
no end of litigation"
Perhaps the stockholders are anticipa-
ting much enjoyment over the row, and
then perhaps they would just as soon not
get into it at ALL There are two ways
open to the company in which to get
around the miserably slack and bungling
methods which their Montana managers
have employed to ''get possession" of such
lands as they did not buy with scrip. One
is, that now being employed of perpetra-
ting gigantic bluff, and answering
charges by calling people liars, ETC., and
trying to carry witnesses, land agents and
everyone else, IN high-handed and bull
doing manner. The other and the best is to
drop all contested cases and send no more
good money after bad. We are told that
in five years Great Falls will be the lar
gest city in Montana, will be the capital
of the state,-Will have innumerable mills
and factories. Seventeen hundred acres
of land in the very heart of such city is
all any corporation should ask to own.
Give some one else chance and your
chances to become a city will be greatly
enhanced. The time will come when the
community in which my name is now be-
ing coupled with all the dirt and SANDER
that foul mouthed hirelings can invent,
will say that the advice I now give was
good, and that / was much more of a
friend to their best interests than the land
sharks who would ride on their necks.
But oh ye shades of other days, awake
to witness touching scene. A wond'-
rous revolution has our Townsite worked.
Jerry Collins and H. P. Rolfe have fallen
upon each others necks, and now mingle
their salt tears of sympat by over the hav-
oc produced by the work of that lost and
wicked soul-the
EDITOR OF THE MONTANA WooL GROVER
Almost PeriShed.