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The Desert Rat never touched his for tune. At once, the American Smelting & Refining Co. asked a retrial, and 18 months passed before it was denied. Carson, ill in a San Francisco hospital, again reached the front pages: "No, I will not be a philanthropist. It would only create an other army of grafters. Perhaps I will raise trees. Even if I'm rich now, I don't believe any woman is going to get me" In March, 1927, while the case was on appeal, he became the fifth husband of Mrs. Hersee Gross. At the Fairmont Hotel. San Francisco, he "wasn't so stuck on the highfalutin suite of rooms." But the Desert Rat was temporarily in funds.
It was the mighty Anaconda itself which carried the Carson case, last August, to the U. S. Supreme Court. Chief Counsel Charles Evans Hughes argued earnestly that side-charging furnaces had been used before the Desert Rat won his patents. Dubious, the Magna Copper Co. of Ari zona did not wait for the decision, settled last fortnight with Carson's backers for $75,000 and an arrangement for future use of the patents. And last week, the Supreme Court briefly denied Anaconda's petition. Holding the battle at length won. the Carson Investment Co. announced that only the labor of accounting separated the Desert Rat from his vast fortune.
Thorn Clark. Montana copper wars, kindled 50 years ago, are not extinguished. Bitter enemy of Anaconda is short, florid William A. Clark Jr., son of the late, short florid Senator who was the most colorful of the copper kings. Last summer. Ana conda bought the Clark interests in Mon tana for some $6,000,000. Included was the Butte Miner, personal organ of young; Clark. But Anaconda could not buy Clark's silence. He sent for a complete newspaper plant, founded the Montana Free Press (TIME, Sept. 3). Anaconda merged the Miner with the Butte edition of the Anaconda Standard to form the Montana Standard. In 96-point headlines, flaming red and frankly unrestrained, Free Press and Standard, Clark and Anaconda, war over Montana politics.
The battle for the governorship was the chief issue, last week, between the two factions. Clark is supporting Republican Wellington D. Rankin. Anaconda aids the campaign for re-election of Governor John E. Erickson, Democrat. Clark's Free Press exulted, last week, when Candidate Rankin spurned the "Aid of a Kept Press as Kiss of Death." Anaconda's Standard headlined: MUNCHAUSEN A PILLAR OF TRUTH COMPARED TO CLARK. Listed in the story were 6 "major, frenzied, malicious Clark lies." The sixth was "the statement made daily by the Clark newspaper that it is devoted solely to the interests of the people of Montana."