Jasper County Democrat, Volume 7, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1905 — BONDSMEN WANT RELIEF. [ARTICLE]

BONDSMEN WANT RELIEF.

Legislature Asked to Relieve Treasurer Nichols From Loss of County Funds in McCoy Bank.

A petition is being circulated by County Treasurer Nichols praying the legislature to relieve him of all loss of county funds deposited in the McCoy sheepskin bank and saddle the loss on the taxpayers. This move ought by every sense of right and justice to be defeated, and counter petitions should be circulated at once and in every nook and corner of the county. The circumstances surrounding this loss are such that the treasurer and his bondsmen should stand the loss. Nichols was nominated and first elected by McCoy influence, the McCoys holding second mortgages for thousands of dollars on his real estate, and when the bank closed its doors the records in the recorder’s office and the report of the trustee of the McCoys showed an indebtedness of Nichols to the McCoys of thousands of dollars, and that he was also overdrawn on his personal account some sl,200. When Nichols was first elected he had trouble in giving a bond, and the matter was finally fixed up by the three banks here going on the bond, an understanding, no doubt, having been arrived at regarding the use of the county funds by these banks. It is generally believed and understood that the interest on the county funds deposited iu the McCoy bank was being used by Nichols and applied by the bank in paying his personal indebtedness to them. When the bank closed its doors —or since the truth has come out, rather—it was found that some $23,000 of county money was in this rotten concern. No statement of the amount deposited in the other banks has ever been made public, but considering Nichols’ obligations to the McCoys is it not to be inferred that most of the county funds were deposited there? Also, were they not deposited there for Nichols’ own private gaiu and to enable Tom McCoy to buy fast horses, steam launches, et cetera? Another point, the other banks

here knew the condition of the McCoy bank for sometime before it closed, and the writer heard one of the bankers who is on this bond say that he knew “the McCoys (their bank) had been losing their credit for a year or more.” It is not in evidence that these bankers who were on Nichols’ bond lost a dollar by the McCoy failure. Knowing the condition of the bank, as they acknowledge they did, and being on the bond of the county treasurer, why did they not look out for the interests of the taxpayers of the county by seeing to it that the $23,000 deposited there by the treasurer was either gotten out or fully secured before the crash came? The amount involved in this matter is nearly one-half the county taxes raised here in one year, and if this additional burden is to be placed on the shoulders of an already over-taxed people it will be adding insult to injury. It cannot be urged that the county treasurer had no other place to deposit the county funds but the McCoy bank, or in any bank, for that matter. There were four other banks in the county and there is also a vault in our expensive new court house with safes, etc., for the protection of public funds, and the fact that there was so large a sum in the McCoy bank proves conclusively that it was there for the purpose set out elsewhere in this article. The Democrat has none but the best of feeling, personally, towards each and all of the bondsmen of Nichols, but it owes a duty to the people of the county, its patrons and supporters, that it does not hesitate to perform, and it feels that it would be remiss in such duty did it not oppose the saddling of this loss on the taxpayers of the county. Active work will defeat the proposed measure, we believe, and no time should be lost in getting counter petitions started all over the county, or the bill for the proposed measure was introduced in the legislature Tuesday by Representative Wilson.