The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-07-27
THE BASEBALL PLAYER WHO BECAME A KING
The Country Whose Rubber Lands J. P. Morgan Proposes to Develop EnclOuded with Romance
 and EnCruSted With Blood.


 rubber production of the district of Acre in South America is prosaic and com menplace enough to pass with para graph nowadays in this age of ambitious trade. Possibly only those interested would be likely to even remember the the fact after reading it. Yet that an- Aouncement in one breath links matter of-fact American financiers with a TO- nance that is as wild as any that ever drew its shining wool through the pages of the history of the Middle Ages.
 For Acre, Is, or rather was, a King dom of Ruritania.
 How many persons know where Acre is? Many maps do not even show it's name. It lies in great triangle made by tho rpeting boundaries of Brazil. >livia and Peru. In it are thousands of square miles of rubber forests-no one knows how many thousands; thousands of squar miles of jungle-no one knows how many; thousands of miles of river and no one has ascended; and savages that are can- nibals.
 From the borders of civilization in South America itself. the journey into Acre is not one of days, but of months. Three governments squabble more or less constantly over it's possession. But in actuality the hand of no government has been strong or far reaching enough to rule it, except systematically and with little success.
 But out of this unknown land there drifted the news one day about three years ago that a new republic had been born to the Americans-the Republic Of Acre. Later came an announcement that a diplomatic representative of the new sister would start soon to introduce him self in Washington. Then followed silence, broken once or twice with scraps of news of fabulous wealth in rubber and rare woods.
 And then the Republic of Acre went uYs in smoke.
 Who has not read Kiplings 'The Man Who Would be King?" That mans com- rade came back after, many adventures and told the story of the kingship and the Bloody Ending. The Man Who Would be King of Acre still has to tell his story. He was a dreamer. too. And, he. too. builded his kingdom with his two bare hands.
 But what a Kingdom he built and how gallantly and roysteringly he lord ed it for while! Three armies went into the field against him before he yielded. Three nations temporarily sank their own differences to crush him and his new bern power, and yet he might nave defed them victoriously. But, like the heroes of Kipling's story, he and his fellow Kings of Acre had within them the clements that worked for their own undoing.
 A Man Who Became King.
 The King of Acre was a Mexican. In the City of Mexico he earned a precari- ous living as a baseball player. Base ball was not lucrative in itself, and rumor says that he was not good ball tosser anyway. So he ''loked around NNv. lE,A.y It led him down the isthmus and finally into Bolivia. Providence only knows py what chance of fortune he happened to hear of the wild district lying in that mountain-splft and river-cut triangle.
 At that time Bolivia and Brazil had both fallen into temporary state of restfulness over Acre. Latin republics do things feverishly when they do them, and when there was action in Acre, or, rather. on the outermost boundaries of it, there was a good deal. Sometimes Bolivia would "mass" her troops there, sometimes Brazil would police the district, and again at times Peru would remember that she, too claimed part of the country, and then there would be fierce goings on with tremendous shootings and shoutings, and, happily, little boodshed, as is the way of fighting south of us.
 But when the ex-basebalI player hap per ed to drop in during the course of his Hooking" thero was neutrality. Nobody appeared to care who owned Acre, or If 1t was owned at all.
 Ther the Man Who Would be King got his idea.
 He pondered it for brief period. Be- fore long he sought comrades and held conferences with them. Birds of feather were they all-birds from Punta of the world birds from Alaska. birds Arenas, in the southern jumping off place from Lisbon and Cadiz and London and Paris. And every man jack of them Was down on his luck" and ready to better 1t by any venture. desperate or otherwise.
 Adventures of their stamp rarely have the gift, and still more rarely the inciina- tion, to tell their deeds. It Is a great pity For if ever one of those men who went into Acre could tell the world what befell them in that voyage up unknown rivers and through unknown country, th at would be a story worth the telling.
 For these men were penniless or nearly 20. Some of them were ragged. They were poorly armed and were glad enough to be equipped with weapons at all. They had before them hundreds of miles of forest, through many miles Of whlch the way had to be tunneled painfully with nachetes, so rank was the tropical foli- age luxuriant with uncounted centuries of undisturbed growth. Fevers steamd out of the wet ground nights Ever their way was saluted by crashtngs Of great trees, for in those woods trees stand it'll they fall from decay. And where there are millions of trees, as through all the country Of the Amazon and Its tributa- ries, there are hundreds of trees that fall every day.
 SaVageS beSet their way. Sickness, hunger, wild beasts threatened them.
 But for all that, there came the news at last that the Republic of Acre had been proclaimed.
 The Republic Flourishes.
 And it was no mere pirate or filibJs- tering republic. A rip-roaring time they had, the men. cut of from all the world carrying in their own daring hands the law and it's enforcement But with 1t all they tried to build empire as empires are builded today. partly with rife and sword but mostly with barter and ledger. Rubber began to pour out, carried down the broad rivers to the coast and reaching the ships. For a long while none of the more or less go-lucky g,overnments around them perceived what 1,as going on. So 1t happened that be- fore wear was ended American business men were buying rubber and woods from these Kings of Ruritania without know ing that the money that they paid fer it went to enrich as romantic a band as ever cut it's way tn fortune
 stilI if is sad commentary on the rough path that is prepared In this wofid for the righteous that the very iact that the Kings of Acre sought to increase their aubstAnce by honest trade should have