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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
power and timber lands for $1,275,000. The eompany had been
incorporated for that amount and we reorganized it, making the
capital stock $1,230,000, as that amount could be more easily
divided up with the stockholders. We paid the selling com-
pany $275,000 cash and bonded the new company for $1,000,-
000, payable in five or ten years, the bonds drawing 5% per
annum. They could be sold at so low a rate because the prin-
cipal stockholders guaranteed them. The Logging company
continued to operate the mill until it burned down, and it then
built a larger and better one, in which we cut some years as
high as eighty millions of feet. With the proceeds of the lum-
ber and the timber from the lands we met the interest and
paid the bonds as fast as they were due. In fact, we were able
to pay them faster, but the parties holding them preferred to
draw their interest. The proceeds from that purchase paid the
bonds and the stockholders have received, in dividends, from
the operations of the mill, and the property sold, between five
and six millions of dollars. The property is still valuable-and
the book value of the stock I feel is worth par now. During all
of this time I was active in the management of both the Chip-
pewa Logging Company and the Chippewa Lumber & Boom
Company-a director (and am still vice president of the Chip-
pewa Lumber & Boom Company). By reason of that purchase
and our becoming stockholders in the Chippewa Logging Com-
pany we were able to take out logs enough to stock our mills,
but those who did not have stock in the company were, as the
saying is, "not in it." Had we not joined with the Mississippi
men in the organization of the Chippewa Logging Company
neither Chippewa Falls nor Eau Claire would have amount-
ed to very much. Our ownership in the property contributed
advantages to Chippewa Falls as well as to Eau Claire, and
both cities have become thriving and prosperous. Had we not
taken the course we did the chances are we would have been
obliged to move our mills to points on the Mississippi and tak-
en our logs from Beef Slough; so the merchants and other
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