The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-09-23

THE LATEST BANK DEFALcATIoN.-T bankers
and bankers clerks are never weary of giving
work for the police reporters. Rose-colored
romances, which begin with fast horse nights
spent over the gambling table, or in feasts
where Venus and Bacchus alternately reign,
palatial mansions in arstocratic quarters of The
city, heavy purchases on account of Madame at
Tiffany's Blacks and Stewards; and, in the end,
bit of paper addressed to the keeper of the
City Prison. and snug apartment in the Tombs.
These are what Wall street insists upon giving
us two or three times year. Not that bank
defalcatons occur so seldom. On the con-
trary, the subalterns in the banks being
as rule, the relatives or prot6ges Of the chief
officers, half their robberies are hushed ND.
Some one pays the shot, and the prodiga clerk
is permitted to journey, with the best Of refe-
rences," to Australia, California or some other
benighted country where the banks do specie
business entirely, and where the facilities for
"speculations" are comparatively meagre.
The story of the latest banking operation
presents no original features. II is, in fact, the
old narrative over again. A young man is
placed ina responsible situation in a city bank,
at salary of one thousand dollars per annum.
Not yet thirty years old, this man has succeeded
in robbing the bank of over sixty thousand
dollars and that in the most clumsy way. The
chief victim is the father of the defaulter. The
latter, it appears, kept two establishments
one legal domicil, and the other gilded
cage He owns fast horses, gambled, bought
lottery tickets, and INDUCED largely in dia-
monds and other costly jewelry.
There are several causes which bring about
such occurrences as that above mentioned
The chiesest of these is temptation. young
man in bank has every inducement to 90
wrong. The manner of conducting the business
is so loose that defaulter may cover up his
tracks for years. Bank officers are proyerbially
stupid as to what takes place directly under
their noses, and they are as obstinate as they
are thick-headed A short time since detec-
tive police officer informed the President of a
city bank that one of his tellers was losing
nightly great deal of money at the gambling
table. The officer was twice snubbed, and told
that the bank understood its own business.
Finally il was ascertained that the gambling
teller was defaulter to the tune of fifty thou
sand dollars and over. The astute officers were
SO thoroughly ashamed Of themselves that they
would not employ in working up the case the
detective who had given the first information,
but gave the job to another person. We can
recall as many as halfa-dozen recent cases
"a 10 hot
salaries of less than fifteen hundred per annum,
have for long periods lived at the rate of ten
times that amount, without exciting the slight
est suspicion on the part of their employers
who have been blind to what every one else
could see very plainly.
1t is not unnatural that young men, thrown
into the society of wealthy spendthrifts, and
anxious to compete with them, should succumb
to this temptation; and it is not at all remarkable
that cunning women should select such men
as their special victims. 1t is strange, however,
that the defaulter should not reflect before the
fatal first step that costs ALL and remember that
detection, however slow in coming is almost
inevitable, and that stolen pleasures are always
dear at the price which one must pay for them
one day or another.
And, as we write, there comes from ST. Louis
a hard fact to point our moral. One George
o. Anterior, teller in the Southern Bank of
Missouri, has been convicted of embezzling the
funds Of the bank to the extent of forty
thousand dollars, and sentenced to five years
imprisonment in the pententiary. That is
worth dozen homilies to the fast young men
Of Wall street.
TANaaSY HAIIc-GoNG! COING! GoNE--We