The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-10-05

gagged in it's promotion convinced him
there was a fortune in the new bust
ness. To prove his sincerity he offered
the young man the superintendent OF
a large block of South American tele-
phone territory. ;; It may be recalled
that a few years before this, in 1881,
Prof. Bell had first exhibited his per-
fected commercial machine IN LONDON,
where it was. called an interesting.
Yankee invention, but considered moth
ing beyond a scientific toy.
Contrary to the views of aStute Lon
don financiers, there were plenty of
men wild enough and reckless enough
to plunge into telephones, and at the
time Mr.. Jones was offered control OF
South American territory half dozen
companies were already in the field
south of, the equator.
But Mr.. Jones was Wide-aWake
American, Of engaging personality and
pleasant, persuasive. manner, gentle
manly in his bearing and a man of
business experience and legal knowl-
edge-just the man for such position
as wassoffered him.
He began we'll considered cam
paign for business, organized a thor
oughly American system, soon firmly
established, and became president of
the East Coast Telephone company of
South America, with offices in Buenos
iAyres and London. He was also mana
ger and director of other companies,
which had become involved, and he
reorganized and harmonized conflicting
interests, consolidated systemS-in
short, put them on a paying basis. His
field of operations extended over a vast
area of country, as wide as the con-
tinent, including the eastern and west
ern coasts of South America.
Such in brief, is an outline of a ca
reer of twenty years with fortune and
independence, and now in comparative
wealth Mr.. Jones is to build a monu-
mental residence on Bare Mountain,
whose rocky peak stands sentinel high
above his native town. It is a COM
handing site for a mansion or palace,
overlooking the landscape afar. From
its stately towers, when the house is
completed, the tvieW should extend
from the Catskills to the Berkshires
and beyond-a vast stretch of the love-
Hest panorama ,of mountains, forests,
villages, farms and towns, sweeping
from. the Hudson, sixty miles away,
to the dark outlines of the lower ranges
of the Green Mountains.
Another reason of congratulations
for the return Of Mr.. Jones to his ma
tive town with his fortune is thus
stated:
The cotton trust, now in control of
the Greenwood mills, is moving the
looms to Alabama. These mills have
been the chief industry Of the town
for twenty years-extending half a
mile along the Pennington river, with
Improvements involving a fortune, a
steel bridge spanning the stream, a
great dam and system of water power,
with saw and planning mills for making
packing cases, with acres of spinning
and weaving plant-all this is to be
closed, and it will be hard blow to
the town. Already the colony of fac
tory hands has departed.
The people of Litchfeld county are
proud of its history and the man it has
produced. among them Henry Ward
Beecher, the Yales who founded Yale
college, and Coils P. Huntington, the
Pacific railroad builder, who never
forgot his Connecticut training, and
was satisfied with bread and milk, with
baked apples for luncheon Mr.
Sprague, the electric elevator inventor
and capitalist, is another native, and
here lived the ancestors of Clara Louise
Kellogg Strakoseh.