Newport weekly independent., 1903-11-13
News of the World

| Hodge has ordered the expulsion of iall members convicted in connection with boodling.
 Y A dispatch from Chicago states that western railroads threaten to Rcut down operating expenses ond reduce their pay rolls by at least 10 per cent.
 The sausage department of the Chicago packing houses have been shut down owing to a walkout of the sausage makers, who demand an increase in wages.
 Santos Dumont, the Brazilian ae1onaut, announces that he has completed the balloon in which he will, contest for the aeronaut prize at the St. Louis exposition.
 Canadian statesmen are so dis pleased over the decision in the Alaskan boundary dispute that an effort may be made to secure inde- pendence from Great Britain. John Wormest, farmer of near Ponti;c, H., suddenly became violently insane and his wife who 1 was alone with him, became so fright aned that she dropped dead.
 Fire at Paducah, Ky, which started in the wholesale store of MT. Ii ingston, destroyed a num- Der of other large establishments. The loss is placed at half a mil lion.
 That "a man high in the counsels of wealthy business men of the country and member of one of the leading law firms of the west could fool his associates and keep his clients in ignorance of the most gross rascality toward them for years, seems preposterous, but that such is fact has just been brought to light by the exposure of James l.. Blair, until few days ago at torney for the worlds fair board. Not only recognized as one of the mos$ brilliant attorneys in the west Blar, whose wife was president of the lady board of managers of the SLs ASuis worlds fair, moved in thrEost select social circles and ma Ytained palatial home in an aristocratic suburb to St. Louis. l The exposure of Blair is due to fhmes T. Roberts, who at one time fas connected with the law firm of 1 Pair < Seddon. While checking l Ip some book of the firm Roberts discovc~d some minor dis crepancies. By calling attention to those matters Roberts gained the enmity of Blair, who without ap- parent cause, began to hamper Rob- erts in his position and finally forced him to resign. In the mean time, however, Roberts made a thorough investigation of the meth ods adopted by Blair to defraud his clients, and a few days ago ap- peared before the grand jury and narrated how the crooked attorney is alleged to have secured nearly | half a million dollars from Phila- delphia bankers by inducing them to accept bogus deeds of trust as genuine and by misappropriating trust funds ot | widows and orphan children. The aggregate amount of his alleged crooked dealings was given as $403,- 1 300. Of this amount $340,00O was said to have been taken by him from Dick Bros. & Co.,, bankers, of | Philadelphia, Pa, for whom he act ed as loan agent, and $63,300 is alleged to have been taken from the
 Blow trust estate, for which he acted as trustees. Among those de frauded by Blair was his own cous- in, Herbert Wadsworth, a wealthy
 New Yorker. When Roberts first
 warned Judge Seddon, Blair's law
 partner, of his dishonesty, Judge
 Seddon would not believe him and
 refused to inquire into the matter
 Later Roberts produced the evi-
 dence, and Judge Seddon was as
 greatly surprised as the neonle who