OIL KING AND PUBLICAN.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9165, 8 June 1908, Page 7

OIL KING AND PUBLICAN.

A TITANIC STRUGGLE

New York, April 16,

Mr Rockefeller, the multi-million-aire, and Mr John I'Melin, a publican, have locked »hands in a Titanic struggle. The oil king has a splendid country property at Rocantico Hills, State of New York, upon which he has spent vast sums on enlargements and improvements. The only eyesore is Mr Melin’s ramshackle beer-house, near one of the big entrances, where it is about as appropriate as a thatched barn would be |in Park Lane. Admittedly, Mr Rockefeller, who is somewhat aesthetic in his old age, wants to raze Mr Melin’s grogshop, but the owner is a stubborn Swede, and absolutely refuses to agree to terms. Mr Melin was interviewed to-day. He says he acts upon principle, as an American citizen, and that he is passionately devoted to his little bit of property. ;“I want,” he declared, “my one-storey public-house to stand after me as a monument to the humble rum-seller who wouldn’t sell out to the world’s richest man.” Mr Melin alleges that Rockefeller, despairing* •of buying him out, set detectives?;to work in the hope of convicting him under the licensing laws, but signally failed. Mr|Melin says he is all the more determined to fight to the end because his mercenary neighbours suggest that he does not care a rap for the old public-house, and is merely holding out for an exorbitant price. Anyway, the incident is considered of sufficient national importance by the American newspapers to-day to warrant the publication of Mr Rockefeller’s and Mr Melin’s photographs side by side, and“also pictures of tbe-millionaire’s home contrasted with the Swede’s humble grog-shop. 1 “Do you know k£r personally?” a reporter asked. “ Certainly, ’ ’ replied Mr Meliu. “Ho Is a gentleman; but because be trlveady owns 5000 of the Focantico Hills and is putting up a £600,000 “castle, that is no reason why I should sell to this money-lord. lam a gentleman, too; and all my customers who come for their daily grog are gentlemen. They can’t afford a castle, like Mr Rockefeller, but lam happy because this little old place is the one sore thorn in John D. ’a side. It is a moneymaker. The newspaper advertising I get fighting him brings trade.”