The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-06-26
SHELBY M HEART OF PEACEFUL AND QUIET DISTRICT
Pessimistic Citizens Doubt That Fight Can Draw
 10000
By WESTBRROK PEGLER Leased Wire to The AAge-Herald.)

By WESTBRROK PEGLER
 Geased Wire to The AAge-HeraId)
 SHELBY, Mont, June 25.-Scat- tered over the real estate which is very widespread in this part of the country there are many true sons of toll who do not believe that any two forty-second cousins of that unpopular institution can draw 40,- 900 other distant relatives of work to this place on July 4. but here in walk up into Main street and on through it to the storied open spaces, there dwell such optimists as little Sully Harris of Mulberry Bend New York city, who hold fast to their first belief that the flower of dicious proportion of Shelby mois- ture, will produce enough dough of a rich consistency.
 The composure of the people, homesteading along the route to Shelby in North Dakota and east ern Montana, transcends the sub lime apathy at brisket of beef on butchers block. Indeed. there lives at Gallatin, a cluster of shan ties and sod-huts, slumped In drab dejection in the lee of a butte about 20 miles from here, a hay, grain and dry goods merchant who asked without shame when approached on
 the subject of the Dempsey Gibbons fight:
 Couple O fellows afightin' on the Fourth of July? What are they awaitin' fer?"
 Purse Guaranteed.
 For time there were indications in this rain-soaked and disillusioned COW camp that they were waiting forever. But Fred Searles of Great Falls, the new treasurer of Shelby's contribution n of An1priC1'S great fortunes. which is to say, Jack Dempsey's, now claims that. the third, final and most fugitive hun dred thousand dollars of Dempsey's guaranteed purse has been recruited and will be placed under Dempsey's order some days before July ?, which is the financial dead line of the enterprise.
 The ticket agent who is handling | the sale of the show in Minneapolis only 10 miles as the old crow flies from Tom Gibbons home in St. Paul, reported that he had sold only four as late as Sunday and even this
 deliberate rush of trade was slacken- ing off. On the other hand, the promoters in their little office on Shelby's own Broadway. claim that they know the Great Northern has received enough applications from Minneapolis to run a special train Finacials Troubles.
 The inexperience of the first promoters and their failure to present themselves in the aromatic presence of Dempsey's manager, Jack Kearns, with the second hundred thousand at the moment agreed upon, apparently gave rise to doubts that Dempsey ever would shed the tosseau from
 his torso in a Shelby ring. In con- sequence, some cancellations have ar
 
 mock at Shelby's need of reserva- tions and cash. As many of Shelbys citizens, In father of local loyalty, have placed themselves In hook to contribute to the first and second miscellaneous, the desire for reserva- tions and the concomitant coin amounts to an overwhelming passion. From the northern counties of Montana where the tumbleweed falls all over itself in a senseless tumult of eXuberance over no discernible cause for joy. and where abandoned shanties of forgotten homesteaders stare with vacant windows at the
 tourists on the trains, Shelby ex- poets hardly any trade at all. The price of a $50 ticket to a fight which probably will not go more
 than five rounds, represents to those
 who are sticking 1t out on the dreary
 prairies the price of years main
 
 of those ghost towns with only a
 few people remaining to sit up few
 years with the wrath of the camp,
 for these places spring into life.
 make their noise and. in not infre-
 quent cases. expire in a few years. But at present Shelby believes there Is oil in the hills and the owners of adjacent quarter sections are try ing to sell sagebrush land by city lots on the outskirts.
 And then there is this prohibition affair of which Shelby has an em- barrassing plethora. Shelby claims, and perhaps with truth, that until this prize fight put the name of the place in the papers, man couldn't hope to find a tougher little town to have good time in than Shelby. Gals, they was, and dance halls and wide open bars and faro, but the night before the first visitors stepped from the comfort of No. 6 on the Great Northern into the vicious knee-deep real estate of the main drag. the state prohibition officers walked Into the place and told the
 bartenders that the selling of liquor was in violation of some law or ether.
 We'll, the bartenders said tho law was nonsense on the face Of 1t De- cause even a congressman should be able to sec that you can't make any dough in the saloon racket by giving the stuff away. But as concession to this law, they reduced the price until they were almost giving it away. And naturally business hopped until Friday night when the prohibitioners came again and they pinched a joint called the Days of Forty Nine" which made 1t neces- sary for some of the leading citizens to get out of bed and fetch the rem nants of their wealth to spring these bartenders out of the canister on hail