Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-07-27

! companies even in the restricted measures
that 1 have mentioned, and it would be much
better for all concerned if they would not
! allow themselves to be used as fgureheads.
| They would escape the annoyances to which
| they are exposed in case of disaster, and the
| public would not be deceived.
STOCKHOLDERS TO BLAME.
Stockholders, on their part, are to blame
| in not inquiring more closely than they do
| into the manner in which their money is
used. They look at the list of directors and
officers, and glance more or less carelessly at
| the reports of the cOmpany's doings when
such reports are made, and then they coIs
tent themselves with cashing their dividend
] checks as they receive them and waiting for
| more.
know that it will be said that if direc-
| tors can be kept in the dark by the execu-
| tive officers of a company it is still less
easy for a simple stockholder to find out
that truth, and do not dispute it, But
where there is will there is way, and no
| honest officer of company will refuse to a
stockholder such information of a general
character as will enable him to Judge
whether or not he had better continue to
hold his stock. Evasion and silence are
sometimes more eloquent than words, and
the rule ''when in doubt win the trick is
as good in regard to stock investments as it
Is in whist.
NO DANGER OF ARREST.
On the whole fancy that the directors of
she American Loan and Trust Company, ex-
cepting those who may have been guilty of
actual fraud and connivance in transactions
which were fraudulent on their face, have
nothing to fear from the vengeance of the
law. If they have acted in good faith in
clecting the company's officers, and have
not abused their positions to obtain loans
for themselves upon palpably inadequate
security, their constituents, it seems to me,
are without cause of action against them.
In this respect they are luckier than were
the directors of the famous South Sea Com
pany, which f1ourished and failed at the
beginning of the last century, and whose
career will forever be a monument of human
folly. So terrible and widespread was the
ruin which followed the bursting of that
bubble and so influential were the sufferers
by the catastrophe, that Parliament took
upon itself to punish its supposed authors,
and in default of other victims proceeded
against the company's directors. No law
could be found to reach them, and therefore
one was made for the occasion. Among
the supposed culprits was the grandfather
of the historian Gibbon, who, with pardon
able indignation. tells us in his memoirs:
A VIOLATION OF LIBERTY
A bill of pains and penalties was intro
duced, a retroactive statute to punish the
offenses which did not exist at the time they
were committed. Such a pernicious viola
tion of liberty and law can be excused only
by the most imperious necessity; nor could
it be defended on this occasion by the plea
of impending danger or useful example.
The Legislature restrained the persons of
the directors, imposed an exorbitant security
for their appearance, and marked their
characters with a previous note of ignominy.
They were compelled to deliver upon oath
the strict value of their estates and were
disabled from making any transfer or aliena-
ton of any part of their property.
Again in a bill of pains and penalties it Is
the common right of every subject to be
heard by his counsel at the bar; they prayed
to be heard; their prayer was refused, and
their oppressoTs, who required no evidence,
would listen to no defense. The result was
that all were condemned, absent and un-
heard, in arbitrary fines and forfeitures
which swept away the greatest part of their
substance.
The proceeds of this confscation amount
ed to 60, 600, 900, out of which dividend of
80 per cent was paid to the company's stock |
holders. This was the way in which our
dealt with the directors of un-
fortunate corporations. We have grown |
more humane, though, perhaps, we are no |
wiser than they were.