The record-union., 1897-08-15

appoint should De called a dollar, every
gun would be worth $4,000, so that
the whole of Buffers Battery would
increase the wealth of Hamilton Coun-
ty by $4,000, or S42 per capita. TT
is true said Jimmy, that the guns
don't belong to the county, but to Andy
Dunlap and his boy and the Sacan-
daga River Lumber Company of Fort
Edward, who have claimed half the
brass because the guns were found on
their land, but they will spend the
money and there will be plenty of work
for everybody. Thus shall the infinite
resources of our glorious country be
developed. Thus shall we cease to be
ground beneath the iron heel of the
oppressor To-day if we borrow dol
lar of a man we have to pay him a
dollar back. If we hire man to work
for US at $40 a month there is no way
to get out of it but by paying him,
paying him dollars which have cost
us something. We are tired of sub
mitting to these burdens which oppress
us; we beg no more; we petition no
more; we defy them; we are the hardy
pioneers who brave all the dangers Of
the wilderness and make the desert
blossom as the rose. We pioneers
away out here, rearing our children
near to natures heart where they can
mingle their voices with the voices of
the birds, out here where we have
erected schoolhouses for the education
of our young and cemeteries where
sleep the ashes of our dead, we deserve
to have as cheap and abundant money
as any people in this State"
Some of the Supervisors thought it
might be well to consult with Fulton
County, where Hamilton County bought
its clothing and sold its venison, but
the Boy Orator scorned him. rs not"
said Jimmy, in a loud and impressive
tone, is not this the greatest county,
but one or two in the State Of New
York? Why should We be slaves to the
greed of Broadalbin and Batcheller-
vile? I would be presumptious indeed
to present myself against the distin-
guished gentlemen to whom you have
listened if this were but a measuring
of ability, but this is not a contest
among persons. The humblest citizen
in all the land, when clad in the ar
NOR of righteous cause, is stronger
than all the whole hosts of error that
they can bring. I come to speak to you
in defense of a cause as holy as the
cause of liberty, the cause Of the Sa-
candaga River Lumber Company. From
Indian Lake to MorehouseVille let there
rise the glorious response. To such das-
tards as dare to lay a limit to the
power of the Hamiltonian people to do
what they please Independently of all
other peoples, I hurl their cowardice
and lack of patriotism back into their
faces. You shall not sacrifice Andy
Dunning and the Sacandaga River Lum-
Der Company on an altar of green
backs"
And so the Supervisors of the seven
towns of Hamilton County voted with
only one dissenting voice that Will
liam Peterson, the blacksmith at Wells,
should get die and should coin into
g. dollar every ounce of brass brought
to him at the ratio of is to /, sixteen
ounces to one pound, without waiting
for the consent of any other county,
and that if the County Judge attempt
ed to help anybody whose contract
called for other dollars, they would fire
him out and elect a new County Judge.
The single negative vote was cast by
The wave Of prosperity came with a
rush. The Sacandaga River Lumber
Company paid it's back taxes for two
years, $7S0-nearly fifty pounds of old
brass. Andy Dunlap and all his friends
had a perpetually splendid time at Jake
Jones hotel; and the Black River Lum-
Der Company, although they hadn't
found any guns, bought up some second
hand brass bedsteads from an auction
and built a new dam on the outlet of
South Canada Lake. 1t took twenty
men month to build the dam, and
the company paid good wages-every
man had three pounds of brass to carry
home. The summer boarders at the
large hotels found it out, too, and sent
for their friends. Soon there was such
a rush for rooms as had never been
known. Each boarder would bring an
old candlestick or stair rod in his va
lise and pay his board for a week. The
countrymen who brought berries and
trout and venison to the hotels got good
prices now and milk was quoted at
10 cents a quart-a. whole ounce of
brass for ten quarts. Levey, the tin
peddler, no longer came up the river
with a wagon of cotton stuffs and tin
ware and went back with his pockets
full of money. He got a lot of old
castings in the railroad shop, had them
minted on his way, and went back with
a wagon load of tubs of butter and nice
little cheeses and deer skins, and a
COW and two or three horses towing
behind. The Sacandaga, River Lumber
Company announced that they would
cut twice as many logs as usual and
would spend two guns in wages if it
should be necessary, so that every
body had lots of work. And real estate
began to boom just as the Boy Orator
had promised. There was a fine site
for a tannery on Coleman's Creek in
Chinatown, but the year before Sam
Coleman had asked $500 for the water
power and twenty acres, and the Glow
ersville tanner who wanted the place
had stuck at $3.50. But now, when the
tanner heard of Hamilton County's
free-coinage boom, he drove back again
as fast as his horse could trot with a
lot of door knobs from a hardware
store, and came right up to Sans fig
ures and paid him in cash just as quick
as he could get the door knobs through
the mint, and sent to New York for
some brass ingots and spent them all
in putting up q fine building and hir-
ing hides drawn from the railroad, and
told the boys to bring in all the bark
they could get-he'd take it all, and
was written up in the Adirondack
Populist" as Hamilton County's Pros
perity-A Great Influx of Foreign Capt.
tall
And what lots of engagements the
guides had that falli How the deer
had to scampef! In st. Lawrence and
in Franklin Counties there were few