One of the worst features of this bad case, one which will astonish and set the intelligent reader to thinking, will be found in the fact that these Commissioners, whose feelings seem blunted by avarice, again employed the man G. W. Stickney, and in defiance of law, and I was going to say decency itself, paid him the salary of a Commissioner. This of itself should condemn them as unfit for their high trust.
George W. Stickney, the man who brought so much scandal and disgrace on the bank, again employed and paid the salary of a Commissioner! Shame! What service this man could render, except explaining his own irregularities, I am unable to discover.
The Hon. Beverly Douglas, in his report to Congress more than two years ago, showed us exactly what manner of man this Stickney was. He also showed us, in language not to be mistaken, how shamefully Stickney had abused his trust. He showed us that Stickney had not only allowed his friends to raid on the bank’s funds, but was himself a debtor to it in a very considerable amount; also that he was responsible for the large and very bad loans made to what was known as the Washington Ring.[3]
I can only account for Stickney’s employment by the Commissioners on the theory that the old Washington Ring is still active in controlling the bank’s officials, and that the Commissioners are more in sympathy with the men who defrauded the bank, than the men and women who were the victims of the fraud. In the face of all this the Commissioners tell us again they have “no knowledge of any improper use of the funds of the company to which reference is made in the preamble of the resolution” (Mr. Muller’s) “of the House of Representatives.”
Why, gentlemen Commissioners, this Stickney business has been the scandal of the town for months, and it is your fault that you have been deaf to it.
Now mark this strange admission. In a side note on page 87 of the report made in response to Mr. Muller’s resolution, the Commissioners say, “Balance due from him (Stickney) as late Actuary Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, being paid by services.” The reader will admit that this is a new, if not entirely novel, method of allowing a delinquent official to discharge his indebtedness to a bank for the savings of the poor.
THE COMMISSIONERS.
These gentlemen ask us to give them credit for, after more than two years, paying a dividend of 10 per cent., (making 30 per cent. in all,) and affect to regret that they could not, indeed had not the means to make it ten more. And yet they admit the fact that their “expense account,” in three years, reaches the enormous sum of $179,437.20; $62,536.22 of this was for their own salaries and the salaries of clerks, and $23,008.92 for fees paid to favorite lawyers. In other words, eighty-five thousand and five hundred and forty-five dollars and fourteen cents ($85,545.14) went into their own, and the pockets of the type of lawyers I have described in another part of this work. Well might Mr. Beverly Douglas exclaim: “The Commissioners regard what there is left of this sad wreck as a legacy for the benefit of themselves and their retainers.” That the money is fast disappearing into their own pockets, and that in two or three years more there will be but very little of it left for the washers and the scrubbers, the very poor and the very ignorant, who were so cruelly robbed, we here have ample proof.
A glance over the salary list referred to will show with what heartless regularity these well-paid Commissioners came up to the bank’s counter on the last day of each month and drew their salary. I here insert a few specimens: