The Electric Sugar Co. And Mrs. Friend

The Argus readers will well remember the bursting of the Electric Sugar Ileüningcciuï'uuy bubblc about tbiee years ago, which resulted in the arrest of Olive E. Friend, Mr. and Mrs. Win. E. Howard and the Halsteads, all of Milan, charged with defrauding the coinpany out of a large sum of money. The whole party was placed in jail here and a strong flght was made by their attorney to prevent them from beiug taken to New York for trial on these charges, but without avail and the entire party was taken to New York, where Howard was convicted and sentenced to Sing Sing, and the others were held in prison for over a year and then discharged without trial. At the time of the explosión of the frauda attachments were issuedagainst the property of Mrs. Friend at Milan in two suits, one by the Electric Sugar Refining compauy and the other by Messrs. Cotterill and Robertson, the president and secretary of the company. The claim was made by the company that this property of Mrs. Friend's was purchased with funds obtained from the company byfraud, and they sued to recover. The flrst of these suits came up for trial in the circuit court on Monday and is still in progress. It has developed considerable insight into the operations of the Onee famous company. J. U. Robertson, treasurer, is here in the interestsof the company, with G. P. Wheeler, of New York, and C. R. Whitman, of this city, as attorneys. Mrs. Friend is represented by A. ,1. Sawyer and J. C. Knowlton. The attorneys ou both sides are fighting the case as hard as possible. Many of the contracts were signed by Cotterill and Robertson individually, not as offleers, and one of the claims of the defense was that the plaintiff couldnot recover on these contracts. The court admitted them all, however, and from the number of objections taken to the rulings, the supreme court will undoubtedly have a chance to pass on the case, no matter which side is successful in this court. It will take several days yet to complete the trial. The witnesses introduced by the plaintiff were Mr. and Mrs. Fuller Dexter, of Milan, the former having been employed as watchman of the factory, and J. U. Robertson Wie treasurer of the company. The testimony of the later shovved the inside and outside workings of this peculiar business, lic related that after he became a ruember of the company, he went to Friend's house to witness ademonstration, but was met with long explanations instead, and was given pareéis containing relined rugar, which the Friends claiined to have been made at different tiaies from raw sugar within two hours t electricity. They claimed that the coat of reflning was but eighty cents a toni Robertson-afterwards went to England to interest English capitalists and the Friends canie over later and explained matters to tliese capitalists. Robertson then agreed to furnish Friend with $50,000 which he afterwards paid. A few months later he met the friends again in New York and demanded an explanation of the delays, a row resulting instead. Friend wanted more money to finish the machines and $10,000 more was advanced. This same program was repeated a few months later and Friend asked $23,000 for machinery and $15,000 for extras and damages. Ootterill and Kobertson then agreed to give them $45,000, which was afterwards paid, the money being raised in England by the sale of stock. After Friend's death, Mrs. Friend agreed to sell her stock and secret to Cotterill and Robertson for $2-50,000, after she had made demonstrations. Several sncti demoHstnitions were madeby Iloward, in all 168 barrels of fine sugar coming down the spouts on the third floor where the party st. None rt t he party were allowed to go to tb above. The eonipany clnin; j o h. , . uaid the Friends ín all $105,00) and to have inVested $90,000 more for machinen', rent, expenses and salaries. On Jan. 2nd, 1889, Cotterill and Robertson demanded access to the secret rooms of the janitor, and were flnally admitted. Ou the fourth floor were found several sets of sieves which were operated by shafting. Spouts led from each of these sets to the room below where they were allowed to witness the demonstrations. In the room on the top floor boxes were found, behind which were piled all the bags of raw sugar which the eompany had furnished to be reflned, not a bag missing. Boxes were also found which had contained a quantity of fine sugar. A couple of days later, the "strong" room, containing the wonderful machine, was broken into. The invention consisted of a crusher for breaking up sugar that had been in lumps, and nothing else. A shute led to the sieves below to which the sugar was carried and separated. Sugar of the character that had been packed in the boxes in the other room was found sticking to the crusher. There was nothing about the building for refining sugar, as the term is usually accepted. One of the claims which the defence will set up is that no pretentions were made of refining raw sugar, that the term "raw sugar" does not appear in any of the contracts, and in fact that Robertson and the others tried to introduce it in some of the contracts but that the Friends refused to sign it for thisreason. Another claim will be that the Electric Sugar Refining Company has not paid any of this money - that it was paid by Cotterill and Robertson individually and contracts are to be introduced to prove these assertions. The contract between the parties, as read in court, was an iron ciad document which left almost everything to the discretion of the Friends and the wonder of those who heard it read was that any sane man of wealth would siirii li is name to such a document. There have been numerous warm p;iss;iges between the counsel and the court and at times it appeared as though some of the attorneys would be called upon to contribute the county funds.