Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1892-10-25
REPUBLICAN RECORD
a BITTER ARRANGEMENT OF COM
MISSIONER RAuM's METHODS.

A Notorious Land Speculation and Ger
tain Gypsum Mime Transaetion-whsre
Did the Money Paid by Helpless PEN
sion oHacs Employees Go:
i It has been said that the scandals of
the Raum regime ran nearly the whole
4 gamtit of possibilities. The greater part
i of them grew directly out of the Raum
family's desire to, get money without
earning it and in devious ways. ~
It was for money considerations that
Raum gotlhis daugh ghterointo two govern
ment posts at once. contrary to law, and
tried to get her through a. ayloophole of
the statute into u remunerative place in
/ the;civil service without the civil service
examination that all others must pass
u thing which would have cheated some
capable and law abiding person out of
the place and pay! lail h7 AttAa
1twas for the sake of money that John
Raum exploited his relationship to the
commissioner by way of advertising his
business as a pension attorney. 1t was
for the sake of gain, that he seems to
have been, allowed illegitmate knowl-
edge of what the pension Office records
contained s'a 10 @
1t was for gain to his family that the
.
ice for his other son to occupy. 1t was
for money that Green B. Raum, Jr.,
levied tribute upon the earnings of his
subordinates and sold appointments for
bribes, as the civil service commissioners
have declared that the evidence justifes
them in charging, and as the congress
sional committee in its report says
"there can be no reasonable doubt that
i he did. .8 @
In the Lemon case Raum gave Lemon
as alleged security block of stock in a
certain gypsum mining company of
which he was president. This stock
happened to be-, as the committee re-
ported, "of no particular value" because
Raums company did not own the prop
erty it represented, and because the
mining value of that property was of
very doubtful existence. But, whatever
1 its worth, the stock appears not to have
belonged to Raum, but to the company.
Yet Raum pledged it for $4,000 and
put the money into quite another specu-
lation Of his own in which the company
that owned the stock had no interest
whatever.
! The transaction was so foreign in its
methods to the ordinary accepted way
of doing business that one of the min
ing company stockholders remarked to
Raum that he ''didn't think there was
much difference between that and en-
bezzlement," an opinion in which many
business men will perhaps share.
This gypsum mine was one of the
speculations which Raum undertook to
promote from the pension Office and
chiefly at government expense. With
one Buckley he had become possessed of
H.
western Virginia alleged to be gypsum
bearing. The company, of which he
was president and factotum, seems never
really to have owned the lands. 1t had
contracts of purchase merely, on which
it had paid an insignificant amount,
partly in "stock" of the company I'm
der these contracts the company was
bound to pay the full purchase price
800, 000-within specified time or for
felt not only the land, but all that might
have been paid upon it. plt' foF@a-
This vague, inchQate. title to. unpaid
for lands of uncertain value seems to
have been the only property Mr.. Raur's
company" possessed. Yet lie capital
lied this at$2 ,0O0, 900 and tried to work
off the. stock on that basis. ,..
According to the testimony of Buckley,
who first got possession of the claim thus
capitalized, and who was nominally made
secretary of the company, Raum adroit-
4 ly managed to get the whole thing into
his own hands and to keep it there. The
secretary swore that he had never been
able to see the stockbook but once; that
he had never succeeded in getting his
own stock issued even to fulfill q con-
tract Of delivery for a part of it to Colo
mel w. w. Dudley, Of ttblocks Of five"
celebrity; that Raum evaded the fulfill
ment of the contract by reason of the
fact that the attorney who drew it omit
ted to name in it date for RauIns full
fllment of his part of it; in short, that
Raum got possession of everything per-
tanning to tho company and did what he
pleased with it regardless of the rights
of everybody else.
The one occasion on which the secre-
tary had been permitted to see the stock
book seems to have been when Raum
wanted some stock issued-prespmably
for delivery to Lemon-and found it
necessary to have the secretary's sigma
ture to the certificates. Then, accord
ing to Secretary Buckey's testimony, he
sent for him to sign the papers, but upon
pretense Of having mislaid his memo
randa had him sign the certificate in
blank so that the secretary never knew
how much OF the stock Raum issued.
There is no reason to suppose that
Raum imposed upon Lemon in giving
him this stock as security for his $12,-
600. Lemon was not a man to be thus
takenin. He neither knew nor cared
anything about the value of the stock.
He had other recompense for his outlay
But if, as Buckley says, Raum confessed
1 to him the stock given to Lemon be-
4 lionged to the company. the transaction,
in its relations to the company, was Of q
;. character which the courts are accus-
TONED to take cognizance of IN a way
not agreeable to the person concerned.
As the stock was s'of no particular
value" at 'the time of its issue, and as
what value it had went out of it soon
afterward by the foreclosure of the CON
tracts and the forfeiture of the shadowy
. rights that constituted the company's 8
only assets, nobody seems to have cared
to subject Raum's dealing with the
! stock to legal question. The whole en-
terprise seems to have been of that kind
which honorable men Of business reso-
lntely decline to have any connection
9 with-the !.'hcads i win, tails you lose"
sort Of speculation.
Another of Raum's peculiar ventures
: was the Charlton Heights speculation
Charlton Heights is a village of twenty
r aio1it 1nTisea near WASHINGTON Raum