The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-05-27

being the village blacksmith, and of
course that would fit him out for the
treasuryship of great business corpor-
alton. These three men undertook to
start in mercantile business by leas-
ing four story building-stocking it
with 100000 worth of goods and, prac-
tically speaking, without dollar.
You will ask, swell, how did they do
it? [ will answer by saying that
it took whole lot of nerve, plentifully
interspersed with transactions that
would hardly stand in a court of JUS
tice. In the first place they formed
corporation with an 'authoriZed" capi-
tai of 100000. Then they went to
some of those counties in northwestern
Nebraska where three-fourths of the
people have long since deserted the
country because the soil is so poor
that wire grass will not grow on it;
they went to the county treasurer and
got tax title to these lands which
amounted to about twelve and a half
cents per acre. Then they came back
to the city and transferred these tax
titles to the corporation" at a valua-
tion of say twenty-five dollars per acre
or even half that amount taking in
lieu of these tax titles "capital stock of
the business corporation Thus they
are able to say to the commercial world
that they have paid up capital of
$4,000 and upon this representation
they are able to obtain line Of credit.
They could just as easily have made
the whole 100000 "paid up" but their
object in not doing so was that they
wanted to keep $4,000 to let some man
have who had good hard cash to invest
against worthless lands with a much
inflated valuation-and do you know
that these three sharpers were just
smart enough to catch the sucker
who jumped at the chance to put up
$4,000 in exchange for the same
amount of capital stock in their wild
cat skin game. That is what they did,
and they did it easy, their only regret
was that they issued so much stock to
themselves in exchange for tax titles.
They did not know that the country
was so full of chumps.
Some one, no doubt, is going to ask
how they could get title to the lands
at so low cost. Well, if you could see
that country once it would all be ex.
planned. There is part of Western
Nebraska-and Kansas too-for which
no man with the least bit of Judgment
would give over one dollar for whole
section. People have tried to till and
cultivate it but it is of no go. Irriga-
ton and all sorts of schemes have been
tried but nothing can be raised on it.
Anybody can get 100000 acres of it by
paying the taxes on it one year; and he
need not pay any more for ten years to
follow. The people who have tried to
make homes out there lived in sod
houses because any other kind would
blow away. In the spring of the year
the wind begins to blow from the south
and it never ceases until it has blown
about two feet of the soil completely
away and scattered 1t all over North
and South Dakota, between the Mis-
souri, river and the Black Hills. In the
fall the wind blows it all back again.
Thus it migrates spring and fall like
wild geese.
One man out in that country had the
nerve to build fence around his house
one winter and the next spring the
wind blew the dirt all away and the
fence fell over. 1t is the only country
on earth where the wind can blow the
post holes out of the ground; but it
does it there. Of course you will be
interested in knowing the kind of suc-
cess these three men made in business.
They succeeded in getting each one of
them home worth $4,000 or $4,000
and handsomely furnished. This they
did by voting to themselves salaries as
"officers" not quite equal to the salary
of the mayor of Greater New York but
pretty near it. They succeeded in get
ting over 100000 in debt for merchan-
disc and as they had what is known as
a department store, they kept every