The Saint Paul globe., 1905-04-26
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 1905
A FORM OF MADNESS

The terrific crash involving Mr.. Big
Glow, formerly president of the First
National bank of Milwaukee, in a de-
faIcation of $1,5OO,0O0 is one of those
incidents that can scarcely be explain
ed on any other basis than a belief in
the mans insanity. BY this we do not
mean that he was irresponsible, or that
he should not pay to the utmost the
penalty of his act. What we do mean
is that an idea. a passion, a mania had
taken such hold upon him that it OBJ
scured everything else and dethroned
both reason and conscience
We are familiar with the man who
gets into bad company, acquires bad
habits loads UP with debts incurred for
various forms of dissipation and steals
money to continue the qualification of
his appetites. Here was a man, appar-
emily of irreproachable habits, a man
of large wealth and high standing in
the community, who deliberately plung-
ed himself into the deepest pit that
waited. He sacrificed fortune, reputa-
tion, personal comfort, and is today a
disgraced criminal waiting only the
formal proceedings that consign him
to prison cell. He did not even at
tempt to escape the consequences of his
act. but made a clean breast of it and
gave himself up.
1t is cases like this which show us
that they are right who claim that the
passion for gambling is the most ir-
resistible of all those to which human
ity is subject. This man squandered
the great sums that he stole in specula-
ton. He began in the usual way by
using small sums of the banks money
for dealings in stocks. Then he plung-
ed IN the wheat market, and ever as his
losses increased he drew more and more
heavily from the money confided to his
care. When at last he saw that restitu-
ton had become impossible, he aban-
doned the game and made his confess
sion.
Now there can be no other explana-
ton of this than such a possession by
the mania for gambling as amounts to
virtual insanity. This man did not
need more money. He had all that any,
one could enjoy. He had a fine home.
all the comforts and luxuries that rea-
son could ask, and additions to his
wealth could give him nothing really
worth having. Yet he branehed out,
became a, promoter, speculated in this
that men commonly hold most dear
for a success which, if it came, could
bring to him nothing but a few useless
millions. Even in our day of big meas
ures and reckless extravaganza, the
sight of a man who actually has $780,
600 of his own to turn over to his cred
itors destroying his career and his rep
utation and making himself a common
thief in the hope that he might make
more money is one for the madhouse.,
He who writes the history of our
time in some later and saner age will
lind its most inexplicable feature in this
desire TO add million to million, to heap
up riches which none shall gather. Rea-
son can appreciate the desire of a man
to accumulate competence wholly ad-
eqCate to his comfort for life and that
of those whom he leaves behind him.
Reason can account for the constant
and laborious activity of men engaged
in great enterprises that bring great
fortunes. Here it is not the money, but
the doing of great things, the working
out of a plan. the forcing of events that