The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1875-08-19
From The PhiIa. Times.
The Defalcation Epidemic.


story Of some fresh defalcation in public
or private trust, and the multitude of
business failures often present the most
painful exhibitions of perhdy in the
dealings oil men with each other, What
we thoughtlessly call an epidemic is so
but in name, for 1t is only the logical
result of long tolerated vicious system
OF business that is now just rlpening its
harvest of disaster and shame. 1t is not
because people have suddenly become
dishonest, but because the necessities of
the times make it impossible longer to
hide dishonesty, and throws upon the
surface of society the hideous sores that
have gradually reached toward the
vitals until the pollution can no longer
be concealed. No section of the country,
no class of citizens have escaped th i
crime. 1t has stained the pulpit and
the altar, the inner temples of political
power, the sanctuaries of our corporate
trusts, the private business circles
where men meet face to face, and in all
it has planted its sin and wrought its
desolation. Our daily columns are
scarcely complete without this seasons
ing for the readers of the worlds pass
iug lessons, and distrust comes with its
horrid spectres to paralyze confidence
and business. Who or what will next
receive the blow is the inquiry Of every
one who must trust his fellow iu the
transactions of life. and often the mos
innocent are borne down by unspoker
and unjust suspicion, while the mos
guilty command the confidence of those
who sooner or later must be theil
victims.
Men are no better and no worse now
than thew howe L~~- r. 500 pas,
Occasions may be more favorable to the
growth of fraud, but men are neithe,
more nor less than men, whether Of
this or any other age of our civilization
In tides of severe exactions, when pro-
figacy is shunned because its retribu,
tion is patent to all, we find honesty
hand in hand with economy; but when
speculation sweeps tidal wave over any
people its evils linger after its currents
have receded to their Legitimate chan.
nels again. Fifteen years ago the peo,
pie OF this country were unsettled in all
their business rules by the unnatural
revolutions of gigantic civil war.
While it developed the sublimest attri
butes OF sacrifice and patriotism, it also
quickened cupidiity and speculation to
a food-tide. Money was superabundant
because the government itself was di.
rectly or indirectly, the great market
for the products of our industries, and
the steady and often rapid growth Of
values bewildered men with the measure
OF their profits. Fortune, usually SO
tickle and taithless to her wooers, Law
ishes her favors upon all classes, and
the Generalization that surrenders
patient, productive industry for the
thrift of edy...speculation, psrmeated
every artery of trade and almost every
class of men. Extravaganza, ever the
handmaid Of easily acquired wealth
grew into monstrous proportions and
power, and just as profigacy widened
and deepened, honesty and fair-dealing
were dwarfed and crippled, Venturers
were comparatively safe for profits were
reasonably certain, and the tempest had
an easy task to make men appropriate
what they did not own because the
ability to restore, by soma turn of for
tune was;noti doubted. The rich made
vulgar display of their riches, and their
subordinates caught the contagion Of
their masters. To speculate, to display,
to swell the throug of preteuders in
social life, and to win the fame of the
clever and successful, controlled the
currents of ambition, and who of those
started on such a plan could take pause
at the proper moment and save them
selves? At last the season for reckon
ing has come, and how many are utterly
unprepared for it the wortd will not
know until the bottom of depression
shall have been reached, and prosperity
is founded again upon the ruins of
speculative madness. Many defalca-
tions were made apparent when the
tide OF reduction in values set in, and
many more have struggled from day to
day and month to month, usually in
volving themselves deeper with each
effort to retrieve themselves, and are
now completing the circle of our bust