The San Francisco call., 1898-11-02
THE WRECK OF THE PACIFIC BANK.

yHEN the panic of 1893 was laying waste com
 \XI mercial institutions, throwing railways into
 \ the hands of receivers, closing the doors oi private banks, tumbling national banks into insol- vcncy and laying the cold hand of lost confidence upon every industry California stood the with remarkable courage and unquenched hope. There were few minor bank failures, which paid out in liouidation and are now so forgotten that no one can recall them.
 Only one significant bank failure occurred, and that was such a gigantic crash, such widespread ruin ard involved many thousands of people i'll able to bear their losses that the history of its investigation of the attempts liqudate the affairs involved, made up tragedy that was so long on the boards that it will be remembered for years, and the misery it brought to thousands will long cry out for ven geance upon the guilty.
 The ramihcations of this failure of the Pacific Bank the ntrigues which preceded it, covering the wide distance between the organization of savings bank and the corruption of Legislature to create county in the wild hope of infusing lite into dead and moribund ventures, all make up story of sutpassng interest. It involves political anbition inrigues with women excursions into pseudo litera ture attempts control school boards, the seeking of alliance with the reputable principles of moral form the effort to serve the devil in the livery of heaven the engagement of the honorable profession of the law do justice but to deny it, all to the common end of betrayal of confidence and robbery of the innocent and unsuspecting.
 The commercial and financial interest ot California requires that the story should be told to the end that the world may see how few there were in our State capable of making such wreck, and that the wreck itself was not caused by any weak or evil con ditions in our business methods ahd should cast no suspicion upon our sound financial institutions. The Call has introduced this story in a simple statement of the The tale will follow as told III the leters checks memoranda, records receipts and exchanges of confidence, made by the consplrators themselves
 We present it in the interest of business morality and as warning to others who may be seeking financial confidence betray 1t for their profit that their sins will find them out and that past success in silencing a newspaper by letting it share in the robbery cannot prevent final exposure
 We do this also in the interest of about I3ooo de- pcsitors whose savings stolen by conspirators in the hope that this revelation put them in the way of partial recovery of their losses.
 All this is not done for the purposes of newspaper sensation It is done in judicial temper, act of justice not only to the despoed but to the despol :ers and in this spirit will be exposed to the last ot and little of evidence furnished by the reeking record made by the guilty themselves and not by us
 The ground to be covered may be estimated when we say that its publication in columns will re- quire many days, and every scrap of 1t is original document created by the parties to the crime, with other text than is required to properly head and give it chronological connection.