The Guthrie Daily Leader

HE CLAIMS MISREPRESENTATION

Attorney General West has made public a lengthy letter addressed to A. F. Vandeventer of Bartlesville, a member of the first legislature, in which he takes occasion to defend, or rather explain, his position with relation to the oil interests of the state. Mr. West says he has been "outrageously and maliciously misrepresented." He calls the attention of the oil men to the low rate on shipments that he has secured for them. Touching on his injunction suit against the Prairie Oil and Gas Company to restrain the corporation from building a pipe line into the state, Mr. West says he filed the proceedings at the instigation of the governor and suggests that the matter be finally determined by a test case in the supreme court. As a matter of policy, in his opinion, no harm would be done in laying pipes on public highways with due care and if the supreme court does not hold it to be a nuisance. Mr West assures the oil men, through Mr. Vandeventer, that he will make no objections.

The proposition is up to the district courts, states Mr West, whose rulings are binding on the attorney general's department until reversed. He says the failure of the Prairie people to domesticate is a clash with the will of the people.