WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 52, 25 November 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By T.D.H.)

It is complained that the Civic League rushes headlong into decisions without stopping to think first.—lt sounds as if it was infected with the City Council w-y of doing things.

An American schoolboy is using the proceeds from a book he has written to complete his education.—“ Punch” suggests that many grown-up novelists might follow this admirable example.

It is not often that Cabinet Ministers are tried in the law courts on charges of fraud while in office, and the news will doubtless soon be full of details of what Mr. Fall, formerly United States Secretary of the Interior, did and didn’t do in the oil deals which he and Mr.Edward L. Dolieny were engaged. Mr. Doheny last year declared that he had been landed in his present mess simply because it had been represented to him that the United States was likely to have a War on in the Pacific in 1921, and he hopped in and helped along a new supply of oil to make a success of th- feared war. High officials in the navy, he says, had appealed to him to help, and now all he gets for his trouble is to be lined up for trial on a charge of trying to swindle the Government. However, there is another side to the story than that provided by this oil magnate.

Mr. Doheny has seen a lot of ups and downs. He was “broke” at forty, but later on, when his pockets were full, he was very free with _ his money. He lent Mr. Fall a little money to oblige him on one occasion a few years back: a suit-case full of it, in fact, crammed with dollar bills. Mr. Doheny didn’t know how much was in it exactly—somewhere about £20,000, he thought. "It was no more of a sacrifice for me to let Mr. Fall have 100,000 dollars,” said Mr. Doheny, “that it is for some men to part with ten or fifteen dollars..” . •

Born in Wisconsin, Mr. Doheny moved out. to New Mexico early in life, and took on a job as a school teacher. According to one of his biographers, Mr. Doheny got his first finger-tip hold on a bank account and a start toward success when he was living “dead broke” in a little hotel on the outskirts of Los Angeles. He was sitting on the porch one morning and noticed a wagon-load of brownish earth creak past the place. He took a handful of the earth and found it tarry and greasy. “What is this?” he asked the negro driver of the wagon. “Breer!” he answered, the negro’s crude way of saying “brea,” the Spanish word for pitch. “Where does it come from?” Doheny demanded. “Near Westlake Park.”

. . ♦ Mr. Dolienv jumped on a street-car, hurried to the place, and found the spot where the pitch was being dug. Examining, he found it contained a. tarry substance which, mixed with the soil made a product that was being used in place of- coal by many small manufacturing plants. Mr* Doheny crumbled the dirt between his fingers and figured rapidly. He had hunted for gold, and he had hunted for silver but oil was entirely out of his line ’ Still, it seemed to him that the tarrv liquid in the dirt that was m his 'hand bore the same relation to the oil that possibly was below the surface as resin on the outside of a tree does to the sap that lies beneath the bark. He rushed to an old partner in countless fortune hunts that have proved futile, Mr. Charles Canfield, and told him of.his discovery. Canfield believed in it even more than did. Dohenv, and he and Doheny went back to Los Angeles, Canfield not having been in California at the time of Doheny’s discovery. #

After that the rise to wealth of these two gentlemen was rapid. Mr. Canfield died a millionaire. Mr. Doheny spread his activities from California to Mexico, then all over the world after he became able to talk in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of nickels and dimes and quarters. In Mexico, for instance, he is, or was recently in command of companies that own some 1,400,000 acres of land on the east coast. He is » baron whose possessions make those of tiie gentlemen of feudal day appear insignificant. He is said to have spent millions of dollars on surface improvements in Mexico alone. He has shipped so much ‘‘black gold out of the territory that he has made Tampico the second 'port on this continent in value of exports. Over his vast area in Mexico spread miles upon miles of pipelines privately built wagon roads, railroad’tracks, nests of mouste s ; .^ O ’'f g M tanks, refineries with a capacity of million barrels, trucks, tank-cars, caterpillar tractors, mule-teams, pumpingstations qnd roughly omit homes workers.

Everybody-is writing i" en £iL s , flavs—except Sir Rennell Rodd—and Dr I C. H. Beaumont, late ships doc?oron the Atlantic liner Majestic has done his little dash Among. the distinguished people who Presided at the ship’s concerts organised by the : author was Mr. Andrew Carnegie. HIS ?P peal,” says Dr. Beaumont,- alwa ?. s .. b *‘ can with the remarks that no millionaire could be happy, that claims were bogus ones bU ‘ Jeallv a Seamen’s Orphans’ Fund was reaßy deserving one. I confess aii therefore, for a handsome donation. All T cot however, on one occasion was a ten-shilling gold piece, and on another two one dollar bills. It has since been explained to me that those who think and give in millions rarely £ »,.pr—carrv anv loose cash, un an other occasion,' when we were talking about doctors in general, he compla>ned to me that a c° nsa ’^ t X^, e he .x o t been charged was a bit steep. * £ e an,’ I relied; ‘it ought to have been ten times more. You forget, Mr. Gar nerie what an exalted personage he "as attending.’. The compliment seemed to please him.’’ Mrs. West: The Briggses have a wonderful new car. , , , , Mr. West: Why wonderful? “It’s paid for!” CULTURE OF TRAVEL. So! You are back from Europe, Mr. Green! , . Tell me, what storied marvels met vour eyes? What age-old spires and battlements that rise . , , t „□ Defying time ? And what far-famed demense , Where destiny was made? What coloured towns . Hemming the southern sea tn jewelfringes ? What ancient glass whose radiance still Forgotten kings beneath forgotten crowns ?

Ah, yon are back from 'Europe, Mr. Green I . , . Tell ns of what you’ve seen, ay, that you shall— . . You saw a fist-fight in a lans bar. In Rome vou saw a novel motor-car, And Venice? Why, in Venice yon have seen , A dead cat floating in the Grand (.anal. —Morris Bishop.