The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-01-01

for the benefit of heirs and legatees. Among the
estates managed by trust companies are those emf
nent jurists nanciers, bankers capitalists and men
who have left large fortunes. The same care and
precautions with which the great estates looked
after is directed to the rapidly increasing number of
small estates which are being turned to these
institutions. The same reasons which induce the
man of large means to have trust company APP
pointed as executor and administrator of his estate
to guard his family against waste or mismanage-
ment after his death appeal with equal, if not
greater force, to the man who has only few
thousands or the proceeds of life insurance to keep
his widow and children from poverty.
There have been many important develop
ments of late to show that there is general
awakening throughout the country that the trust
company is the only logical and safest custodian
of estates and trust funds. This sentiment is
largely due to the many disclosures which appear
in public print describing the looting of estates,
mismanagement, incompetence and application of
trust funds in speculation, where such property and
funds have been placed in the sole custody of
individual who is surrounded and yields to tempta-
ton.
An examination of probate court records in
several of the largest cities of the country revealed
the melancholy fact that many hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of property, securities and funds
belonging to estates and which have been placed in
the hands of so-called CONFIDENTIAL or family adj
visors as executors and administrators have been
lost through needless litigation, incompetent man.
agement defalcation. In most instances the
records of such losses do not to public notice
1t is only when some tragic circumstances attend
a betrayal of trust that the newspapers give an
inkling of the true conditions Several weeks ago
the New York papers contained details of the COM
plete ooting of the estate of the late Roscoe Conk
lin by an individual executor. Several days after
this was made public, there were accounts of the
suicide of prominent citizen, who resided in one
of the fashionable suburbs of Philadelphia, who
had wasted the proceeds of numerous estates valued
at 100000 In Pittsburg there were no less than
four men in prison at the time awaiting trial
on criminal charges of having appropriated trust
funds for their own use.
When such well-known men as the late Chief
Justice Fuller, of the United States Supreme Court
Senator Stephen Ell<ins Marshall Field, P. A. B.
Widener, and many others the roll of the de-
parted make wills in which they instruct trust COM
panes to manage and preserve their estates for the
welfare of their families it easy TO comprehend
why the trust companies have been so successful.
An exhaustive investigation covering trust COM
panes in all the States during the past fifteen
years, affords the remarkable result that there
have been only three trust company failures dur
ing that time where trust property and funds were
involved In of these cases the receivers have
paid off all such trust claims in full and in the
other two failures the liquidation of assets has