Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-09-27
Lawson Shows
Up ritz Heinze

up Fritz Heinze in his true light,
there can be but little doubt. In
brief he tells the Montana thinking
people nothing new, but his story as
published in Everybody's, is inter
esting because of being told by one
of the gang of high finance and stock
juggling:
These Montana standards are
clear enough in the case of young
mining engineer named Fritz
Augustus Heinze who, some time
previous to our advent in Butte,
arrived there looking for a job. OF
magnificent physique, ardent, bold,
ambitious, a graduate of the Col
umbia School of Mines, Heinze
hired out at meager salary to the
Boston crowd who controlled the
Boston & Montana and Butte &
Boston mines, and began to make
the ACQUAINTANCE of the community
in which he was destined to play SO
ominous a role.
The man was a perfect fit for the
8-cornored hole he found awaiting
him in this western Coney Island.
He had ability akin to genius of the
order that wins eminence in bunco
and confidence operations; bound
lessly ambitious, inordinately ego
tistic, he was totally devoid of
moral perception, and, utterly heed
less of the consequences of his ac-
tons, there was nothing he dared
not attempt. Heinze had been but
a short time in Butte before he had
acquired throughout the state a
reputation for absolute fearlessness.
Among the keepers of gambling hells
and barrooms he was reckoned a
prince of good fellows. Seven
nights in the week he could drink
under the table every man among
the licentious company that frequet-
ed these gilded establishments, and
then sit in at faro game whose
proprietor had never been known to
put limit and make him quit.
As soon as Heinze found himself
at odds with the Boston crowd (this
was before our advent into the cop
per field mind you) he proceeded
to place himself on two vantage
points. Here Lawson luridly des-
cribes the apex question and fol-
lows with a thoroughly Lawsonesque
history of the Butte mining fight.
Returning to the New York end
of the story, he says
AT the inception of Heinze's
campaign it was bruited around
State street that the one way to end
the incursions of the young engi-
neer was to purchase from him the
property he had acquired for a song,
and the sum of So, 900, 900 was men
toned as the price he intended to
exact for his rights" The Boston
people refused to be blackmailed,
and thus began that warfare which
has astonished the world by its
fierceness, cruelty and obstruction
of property, which has made Mon
tana justice a by-word and dragged
her governmental institutions in the
mire. Because of it the state has
been divided into two parties, and
judges and lawyers, state officers
and United States senators have
been bought and sold as openly as
beer over Butte bar Already the
fighting has cost the contending
parties sIa, 900, 900 and, at writing
there seems little prospect of peace.
1t was this vile mess we found on
our hands when we took over the
control of the two great Boston
companies. Our predecessors had
had so much fighting that they were
relieved to have STANDARD Oil"
take up their burden; but Heinze,
nothing daunted by the the names
of Rodgers and Rockefeller. let il