So it is all along the line.
Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman who snatches food for her starving children.
Woe to the bad men who steal during ten years, one hundred thousand dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a penal servitude of over two thousand years.
But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced.
During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen more than twelve million dollars from the depositors.
How many of these rascals have been tried and convicted?
Less than half a dozen.
Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’ Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and stole fourteen hundred thousand dollars of Trust funds.
Nominal sentence, seven years.