Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1908-04-28

their looting that, when valiant
president utters a protest against
them, the colossal. yet self-assured,
righteous malefactorS compel the un-
whiting sympathy Of much of the bus
mess world by what virtually amounts
to the plea that unless they, the said
malefactors, are permitted to keep
their feet in the trough, there must be
panics and planetary disturbances. AS
| If we, the most lenient people on
earth-a natural-born race Of "come-
ons," as every shady promoter, every
man with a scheme, every bucket
shop broker, every wiretapper, book
maker and shell-game operator in the
whole country knows-needs any fur
ther instructions in the gentle art Of
how to be held up gracefully and
smilingly, how to turn the other cheek
and to encourage our defrauders by
letting them go scot-free and scathe-
LESS!
| The man who is let off. 1 wonder
if the people realize to what tremen-
dously, and to what viciously, wide
extent he is let off.
| Take New York, where the money
is and where the predatory band
focks at it's thickest Nearly every
| day one sees headlines parading the
sickenng fact that a trusted manager
has embeZzled so many thousands of
dollars or the officer of bank or
other institution has misappropriated
so many hundreds Of thousands, or,
what is just as felonious and more de-
grading in its effect, that a man Of
"high finance" has put through a
shady bond issue on a real or paper
to make two or more shares grow
where one grew before, and thereby
garnered millions. How many of these
| men are convicted and sent to prison?
The great mass of them get off. and
nearly all, with occasional exceptions
are still doing business at the old
stand
Il fear that the tendency not to
prosecute is growing" admitted the
officer of one of the big New York
surety companies to me the other day.
"Of course, this is dead against our
own office principles: but, where the
amount of our bond is made good,
what can we do against capitalistic
clamor that the case be dropped?
There are many men in high positions
of trust in this city today whom no
surety company would dream Of bond
ing. How are they bonded? By pri-
vate individuals of great wealth with
whom they have direct business deal
ings, and who, for their own peculiar
reasons, are willing to take the risk.
Wherever it is possible we don't wait
for man to become dishonest before
we strike him off our list.
I'VE always regard the son of very
rich parents with special distrust. We
watch him carefully and, as soon as he
exhibits sporting tendencies, which
most of them do sooner or later, we
eliminate him. We will have no hard
drinkers, no gamblers. We do not pre-
fer men who belong to dozens of clubs
or fraternities, nor good fellows gen.
orally. Such man is not a good risk.
Very often the more friends he has
the weaker he is morally. He relies
upon them to help him out Of trou-
BILE. He rallies them to his aid
to make up a deficit. That kind of
thing is bad for us. Our policy,
which should be the public policy, is
to prosecute; and misguided friends
and relations often make it hard for
us by helping such a man, and really,
though they don't seem to know it,
they are compounding g. felony.
What proportion of defaulters get
into public print? A small one-not
thirty per cent. What proportion of
public defaulters go to prison? Not
ten per cent Even where man Is
prosecuted for embeZzlement, the ten
dency of the jury is to let him off. The
yearly losses of all bonding companies
would be much smaller if there were
more prosecutions Besides, we want
to see the malefactors in Jail because
they deserve it, But too many of
them are let Off"
The Big Thief Too Often Escapes.
In New York, as is shown by the
records of District Attorney Jerome's
office, the big thief nearly always goes
free OF 3274 cases of grand larceny
under which head come the embez-
zlements-in the years 1905 and 1906,
there were only three cases of conVic-
ton in which the sum named in the
records was fifty thousand dollars or
over. The great mass of other con-
victions was for the stealing of sums
ranging from one hundred dollars to
one thousand dollars. Your big thief,
even where the law lays its hands up
on him, gets Off; your little thief Is
likely to go to Jail. But even the little
offenders chances are good-better
than two to one. For Of 11,037 cases
of grand larceny reported by the CHIEF
clerk of the district attorney of New
York for the seven years ended De-
cember 81, 1906, there were 6,637
cases acquitted, discharged or dismiss
ed, and there were only 4,4OO convic-
tions. The fact that there have been
few more convictions for embezzle-
ment in 1907 than in the previous year
in nearly all the large cities, is merely
the result of there having been much
greater number of embezzlements,
and does not mark a growing tenden-
cy to prosecute, as some misinformed
writer's seem to think. Any person
who speaks with full knowledge of the
situation will say that there is no such
tendency, save in the cases of bood-
ling public officers, and those of the
trust officials who have been fined for
receiving railroad rebates.
How many presidents of trust COM
panies who have loaned millions of
their depositors' money to themselves
are now languishing in prison cells?
And here it is we'll to note the sign
ificant fact that not three months af