Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1908-11-08
SWIFT LIFE
BRINGS RUN
Great White
Way Breaks
Banks
High Finance Result of Ex.
trdvdgdnt Living.

travdgant Living.
New York, Nov. New York
is to blame for it." Gray-whiskered,
gray-haired, gray-eyed, gray-clad, a
slender man leaned back in his chair
with his hands behind his head and
smiled alertly. Such is a first i'm
preston of Edward p Moxey, whose
official title is Expert Bank Exami-
ner for the United States Department
of Justice" and such were his words
in speaking of the epidemic of bank
defalcations.
Mr.. Moxey is engaged at present
in unraveling in court the devious
financial operations of Charles w.
Morse, erstwhile ice king and bank
magnate. Mr.. Moxey has performed
a similar duty in connection with
the Irregularities of thirty-nine other
bankers, and he is credited with land
ing every one of them in the peni-
tentiary, barring one or two who got
stay of proceedings after being
declared guilty. His opinions of the
causes which lead bankers are
therefore entitled to consideration.
BIames Great White Way
You mean the Broadway, New
York; was asked
81 mean the Broadway New York,
he answered quietly. Il mean the
gorgeous hotels and restaurants, the
bars, the gambling-houses the N.Y.
fhn1tnpc h0 oJ
ment houses, the turning of night in
to day. l mean the flood of money
in New York upon which this life
is borne along, the craving for vast
incomes by which alone such life
can be lived.
To say that even bare majority
of the tens of thousands of men who
nightly swell the crowd of amuse-
ment-crazed spenders who live in
$4,000 apartments, and whose tour
ing cars congest the streets, are do
ing this with money which is honest
ly theirs is absurd. They are not
earning this money; they are either
Juggling this money from others, or
they are gambling with their own.
Sees Queer Bookkeeping
when you can go into restaurant
at o'clock in the morning and be-
hold $4,000 worth of women's gowns at
the tables and $4,000 worth of food
in process of consumption something
IS wrong. And when you observe half |
million dollars worth of automobile |
es waiting to take this one supper |
crowd to their homes-or elsewhere |
you may be sure that there is |
queer bookkeeping somewhere
1t is not this sort of life in New
York, but in a more sinister way, |
the sight and example of it, which |
is bringing about a degradation of |
the sense of common honesty through |
out the country That fine American |
asset, the New England conscience. |
has become an object Of jest. And, |
as l said, New York is to blame |
AS in all other matters theatrical, !
literary and artistic, the other cities /
and towns take their cue from New
York. AS New York lives, so they
all wish to live. Today in towns as
small as $4,000 population there are
springing up all-night grillrooms with |
Hungarian orchestras, wherein the |
young business men of these COM
munities must foregather if they are
local smart set.
"The young banker or business man
in the smaller community comes to |
New York. He is taken IN hand by |
his business acquaintances here and |
shown about the town His hosts |
spend money in a scale which dazzles |
him. They taken him to luxurious |
hotels and cafes, where they and the |
head walters know each other by |
name and where he is introduced to |
scale of living fit only for men of |
millions.
HE wonders how his friends man |
age to share in this prodigality, and |
bit by bit he finds ont They tell him |
funny stories of transactions which, |
reduced to a proper financial analy |
sis, are defalcations pure and simple |
or, at best plain gambling. Every
body does it, they say; it's part OF
the game and back to his home |
town goes the young banker, filled |
with dreams of sudden wealth and all |
the gay life that goes with it.
f-DelusiOn Common
Too often this person starts to
lead the gay life before he has got |
the sudden wealth. Ihe life he has |
seen, the methods he has learned are
destroying his sense of property He |
is somehow getting it into his head |
that money placed in his keeping |
is sort of common property, that so
long as he can keep his books look |
ing technically right he may juggle |
with it 70: the benefit of his own |
personal pocket He really comes to !,
believe, seriously, that this is so.
Whatever the cause, there are cy-
cles of honesty and cycles of dis
honesty, and the present is a cycle |
of dishonesty, with its cause in mod |
ern standards OF enjoyable living.
'And let me make my opinion en-
phatic that the xaxity with which the
criminal laws of our courts
are enforced has much to
do with encouraging bank
defalcation.