How many millions of dollars have the common people lost by the rascality of dishonest bank officers? How many times have we seen frantic crowds of men and women gather about the door of some busted bank—men sick at heart because of sudden ruin, women screaming in terror because robbed of every dollar they had on earth?
Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr. Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.”
There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself the comfortable name of the Provident Savings Bank. Trusting common people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks in ten years!
Frank Bigelow robbed the First National Bank of Milwaukee, of $1,450,000.
He was President of the American Bankers’ Association.
He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately, systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had trusted him.
The banker who stole $1,400,000; and a man who stole a turkey and a duck.
The Law went through the form of giving this million dollar thief a sentence of seven years. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to steal trust funds again.