Word: biltz
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Until the last controversy-lighted weeks, not one in 20 inhabitants of Nevada had ever heard of their state's self-made, baronial-minded Mr. Big, a go-getting New Englander named Norman Biltz. A Norman Biltz, it is true, was known along the Humboldt River as a big buyer of ranches. A fellow of the same name was remembered as a big real-estate operator around Lake Tahoe. A good many people in Reno were familiar with a Biltz too-a stocky, blue-eyed fellow with iron-grey hair, a Hollywood jacket and Humphrey Bogart gestures who didn...
Even last week, when Tyro Politico Tom Mechling cried over the radio that Biltz gouged him in the clinches in his unsuccessful Senate race with Republican George ("Molly") Malone, a good many Nevadans just didn't quite follow him. When Mechling charged that Biltz was a sinister political boss, who held the state in a "Gestapo-like grip" and stifled the state's press, most were just flabbergasted. Nevada seems like the last place in the world any self-respecting political boss would enter the bossing business...
...whole place, rocks, rattlesnakes, Gila monsters and all, and its total population comes to 167,000 souls, only a few more than Bridgeport, Conn. It has only three industries-ranching, mining and the care and feeding of tourists. But arid Nevada has bloomed like a garden for Norman Biltz...
Because he collects ranches much as other rich men collect securities or old masters, Norman Biltz is one of Nevada's biggest land owners. He has 43,000 acres in the fertile Humboldt River country and federal grazing rights on a million acres more. He owns 11,000 subsidiary acres in California. His 14,000 cattle make him one of the state's biggest stockmen. His S-Bar-B, Quilici-Biltz and Nevada Nile ranches make him one of its biggest crop producers. And restless Entrepreneur Biltz keeps his fingers in dozens of other likely financial enterprises, from...
...political grip is neither Gestapo-like nor especially sinister, but he quietly exercises a kind of all-embracing, behind-the-scenes influence which has largely vanished from more-complicated areas of the country. Though Biltz is a Republican, crusty old Democratic Senator Pat Mc-Carran communes with him from Washington almost daily by long-distance telephone. Nevada's bumbling G.O.P. Senator Malone is beholden to him. And Biltz hand-picked Nevada's Governor Charles Russell. As a result, Nevada's big gamblers (who are also big campaign contributors) listen when Biltz whispers, for the gover nor appoints...