Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-01-30
WnITAKER WRIGHT
 AND HIS METHODS
British Financial Promoter De-
 nied They Were Unlawful.
OLAssED HIMSELF WITH MORGAN.

Famous swindler Was Proud of Be-
 ing I'm the Same Rank With Noted
 American Financfers What He
 Thought of Our Great Industrial CombinatiOns--His American Coun-
 sells View of His Conviction.
 What happened to me might happen any day to the men who stand at the head of any of the great American in- dustrial combinations, said the late Whitaker Wright, the British promoter and fnancier, to James Creelman last March, at the time of his arrest in New York, says the New York World. "Take the United States Steel corpora ton, with it's hundreds of millions of stock. Suppose that the greatest en- terprise in the world should fail and it's stock shrink $5Oo,OO0,O0O in value Would the people who lost their money then have J. Pierpont Morgan arrest ed? Would he be to blame because they bought watered stock at more than it. was worth? rst
 'It is fortunate for directors of Amer ican trusts that they are not under the companies laws of England. You could not float your industrials in London. It would be impossible to organize com panies there on the lines followed in America. The laws would prevent it. There is no difference between what did in England and what your indus trial companies are doing in America" ]"
 Of all "get rich quick swindlers that have brought disaster to thousands Whitaker Wright was easily the great est of his kind. He always denied that his methods were unlawful and prfded himself on being in the same class as J. Pierpont Morgan and Charles M. Schwab as financial promoter.
 He was born in Cheshire, England, in 1S46. His parents, who were in com- fortable circumstances, gave him a good education, and he qualified as an expert mining engineer and showed spe- cial aptitude as chemist. In 1867, after his fathers death, he came to America and was employed in mines in the west as an assayer. He removed to New York in 1880 with fortune ob- tained as mining prospector.
 He returned to England in 1889 and conducted financial operations on such a vast scale as to earn for him the reputation of a Monte Christo. His lavish expenditures dazzled the British public, and he was regarded for a time as the greatest financial genius of the age. He organized company after company. He formed the London and Globe Finance corporation, linn ited, to take over the various securities of mining corporations in which he was interested. In December, 1900, this corporation failed and carried ruin to many homes in Great Britain and crippled several prominent business houses. Many members of the London stock exchange were ruined by the fail ure. Thirteen banking and brokerage firms failed as a result of the collapse of his company.
 Wright came to America again in March, 1903, and on March IA was ar rested as he was leaving the boat. He had booked as M. Andreoni. The ar rest was made on criminal charge in connection with the conduct of the London and Globe Finance corpora ton, limited. Extradition proceedings resulted in his starting back to Eng land in the custody of two English de- tecives.
 q am very deeply shocked by the tragic death following so closely his conviction,' said Samuel Untermyer, who was his counsel during his fight against extradition, "and cannot help thinking him entirely victim of mis- fortune. His conviction under the cir cumstances is a good illustration of the difference in the criminal law of Great Britain and the United States Eng land and Germany hold those responsi- ble for the conduct of corporations to a much stricter accountability than we do. E.5 ''ES s@yS
 ''Mr. Wright would not have been convicted in America. Many men who now hold their heads high in the finan- cial district of this city (New York; would be panic stricken if the same laws that govern finance in Great Britain were suddenly to apply. here. If such laws did obtain. investors here would be much safer"
 o