The Dickinson press., 1911-08-12
MERRY Up TO his OLD TRICKS
MORE HOT AIR RAILROADS

c. F. Merry, who has just finished a
term in the Adams county Jail at Het-
finger for d%efrauding Dr.. Johns out of
500 on n of his paper railroad
schemes, is at it again and recently
swooped down on Beach, as the follow
ing article from Editor w. W. Tonsley in
dicates 1.-The Advance about two weeks
ago had a letter, purporting to have
been written at New England, stating
that certain parties were interested in
putting through a railroad from :"Black
Hills through Baker and ''either
through Wibaux or Beach (nicely done
effort to set US Going, wasn't it?) and
that these parties would probably be
at Beach within a few days trying tt a.
waken interest in the project. This
was a very simple and rather promising
news item, fully signed (thoush by a par
ty unknown to us) and might have at
tracted our attention as subject matter
for a very nice boom article on the pro-
s%pectively increasing prominence of the
community. but caution got the better
of us and we declined to boost
Just after our issue of last week a
portly and fairly prepossessing GENTLE
man called at the Advance Office and
wanted some printing done 1t turned out
to be printing for a railroad (not yet
organized but soliciting subscriptions
of stock. The work was to be in the
nature of subscription blanks, notes,
etc., of which the proposed customers
seemed to have a pretty fair supply al
ready on hand. The bump of caution a.
gain overcame The Advances desire for
easy money, and the requisite excuses
were made to warrant Withholding the
bid. Then the editor fell into conversa-
;tion with the party and learned his
name: Merry.
There may be those in this section to
whom the name of Merry C. F. Merry
is not we'll known but it is we'll though
not favorably known to those who have
been residents of North Dakota for any
considerable time. In not a few local.
tiles there are farmers and business
men who have given several hundred
dollars for what they know of that magi-
cal name. Merry is a name to conjure
by. but not to c~onjure with. 1t has
been mixed with shady transactions and
never with reputable ones for the last
fifteen or twenty years. 1t has nearly
always been connected with the pro-
motion of alleged railway schemes
schemes which have never had the
slightest approach to fruition. The
man has repeatedly been in Jail or a
fugitive of justice. and seems to escape
the p%enitentiary only by his oily suavity
or perhaps by the Intervention of pos
;sibly interested friends.
Periodically while he lives and en-
joys his liberty he will swoop down up
on your community and sell some unsus-
Decting farmer or business man a
bunch of railroad stock that won't be
worth the paper or which the fictitious
''stock appears" There seems to be no
way of abatinf the nuisance, not with
standing the fact that most people were
''onto him. long, long ago. The Ad-
vance states this without qualification OF
reserve. If Brother Merry wants ia
have us arrested for libeling him it will
be as nice a piece of ADVERTISING as We
can ask for-and will prove useful in
>acquainting a few thousand more people
with the nefarious character of his
business practices. In the meantime
when you see a man coming with 6
bite on a paper railroad scheme take
"a chance on its being Merry and let him
alone"