Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1904-10-14
Rich MEN WHO GROW POOR.

hICn MEN WHU 6hUW rum.
For several months the people of
Davenport have been wrestling with
the wreck of a rich mans fortune. :.
+. Smith, a few years ago retired
from a law partnership taking
quarter of a million of dollars with
him as his share of some profitable
deals that his firm had managed. He
became prominent in local finance.
Recently he was found short in trust
funds he was handling and as dis
closures developed it was found that
fully $125, OG0 of trust monies belonging
to widows. women and children, had
disappeared. From a fortune of $780,
900 to a shortage of $125,O00 was the
years, and the only account that can
be given for his losses is that he sank
SAC, 900 trying to publish the Davenport
Republican and $4,000 more in a
ready print adjunct to this business.
1t is probable that his losses in both
ventures were greater than these fig
ures, but there must have been other
causes.
In a measure, the career of Smith
is an old, old story. How many men
in every community have gone from af-
fluence to poverty in a twenty year
period! AS one recalls the history OF
his town, all too many fine residences
and brick blocks loom up as head
stones at the graves Of departed for
tunes. Turn the pages of any local
history and the rich men of twenty
years ago are poor today, while the
wealthy men today were either school
boys then, or were working hard at
subordinate vocations in business life.
What does this mean? The men
who lost what they had gained coula
not have been wholly incompetent, or
else how could they have made the
money they did? Old Phillip Armour,
used to say that "any man could make
a million, but it takes a wise one to
keep IT." but this is not altogether
true. Every man cannot make
million, for millions of them are try
ing it without success, but it is most
evidently true that of those who can
make money only few OF the eX-
ceptionally wise ones can keep it.
The trouble seems to be that men
who make money easily can never
make enough to satisfy them and in
stead of investing what they have
made in some safe and secure form OF
property, they must keep on gambling
with fate, as it We're, in the more
hazardous forms Of investment, seek
ing to pile millions upon millions. On
he had made his first great strike,
invested a cool million in annuity life
insurance policies, which guaranteed
to him the income from $1,000,0G0 so
long as he or any of his heirs should
live, no matter what happened to his
future operations in wheat. Prosper
ity unseats men. Having made money
they grow vain in their confidence and
invest with the blind faith that their
Judgment can never err. Then hay
ing gotten into a losing deal their
pride causes them to bear their losses
without fiinching lest the public learn
that Smith, the infallible financier,
had been burnt" Whatever be the
weakness In human nature that causes
it, old man Armour's proverb is too
often true as the career Of this Dav-
export Smith has shown or as any
man can see who will compare the
names Of the occupants of the $4,000
to $4,000 residences in his town with
the names Of the men who built them
a decade ago.