Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1909-10-07
METHoDIsM IN A MAZE.


For a promoter of various en-
terprises to obtain the funds of a
bank on the security OF unmarked
able bonds of his own enterprises,
at the risk OF the interests of the
bank, Is not proper and legitimate
banking and the entries on the
books OF the bank as loans and in
vestments do not conceal the fraud
thus perpetrated upon the bank
Judge Humphrey, for the United
States court of appeals in the John
r. Walsh case.
The above principle in law which has
now been established by two courts
altho 1t might seem automatic and the
plainest of common sense to the aver
age mind will have to be reviewed by
the supreme court of the nation before
finality. It is an example of how easily
wrong doing becomes lost to sight
when 1t travels the maze of modern
finance, for it was one of the great
financiers OF the nation, Secretary
Shaw, who, from the office of the
United States treasury, declared that
MIR. Walsh had done no wrong, being
only guilty of misfortune.
In older and simpler times If money
was left in trust and was used by the
trustee for private speculation such use
was called embezzlement and it is so
today in all of our simpler transactions.
Fiction and romance are replete with
the plots of thieving guardians who
seek to apply the trust funds of their
wards to their own personal profit and
many a shark contract is written in
everyday business to take advantage of
laws for embezzlement when agents
fail to return full consideration for the
goods entrusted to them. In the sim
pier form OF transactions between in
dividuals we still hold unrelentingly TO
the old code of calling 1t embezzle-
ment when trust funds are used for
private gain.
But as soon as we introduce the
stock corporation our moral philosophy
becomes hazy. We forget that money
deposited in a bank Is the same old
transaction of trusting a trustee. The
bank being a stock corporation takes
on personality distinct from the pres
ident who controls it. What may have
been trusteeship on the part of the
bank involves no such responsibility on
the president, We argue. because he is
another person. And then, even if ii
did, when the president orders the Of
fcers of his bank to turn its funds over
to stock corporations in which he is a
large stakeholder he misapplies no
funds, it is argued, because these cor
porations are distinct persons who re-
ceive the money. And so it goes.
Modern finance can obscure the
moral vision even of the most prom-
nent Methodist at a national lay con-
vention. Walsh was a modern finan-
cier He probably never did stea
chickens. The money he took was used
no finance big deals, to build railroads
and the like and il was undoubtedly
true, as his lawyers argued, that he die
not intend to rob anybody. He merely
used the money entrusted to him anc
sometimes cashiers do the same thins
when specializing on the board of trade
However. it does not require the DELHI
Grafton of four courts to detect theil
fraud. If one is caught he goes tt
prison almost without trial because hi:
transaction has been simple enough fol
us all to understand. II is when thirt
and fourth persons created in their per.
sonality by statute. step in that ole
fashioned embezzlement nerges int
high finance and gathers defense ever
from those of the strictest creeds.