Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1906 — AMUSING DENIALS. [ARTICLE]

AMUSING DENIALS.

It is all very well now —they talked very different a few years ago—for the republican politicians and ward-heelers here who have lived off the McCoys—or the bank depositors, rather—and the taxpayers of Jasper county for a score or more of years, to refer to “Tom” as “lunk-head,” etc., and deny that he or “Old Mac” had any influence in their campaigns; to deny that they nominated and elected “Doc" Nichols to get square with him, etc., but the people know very well that the statements made by W. H. Blodgett, the Indianapolis News’ correspondent in bis reports of the trial, are essentially correct. The McCoys were political bankers in the fullest sense of the word, and the writer personally knows that they did take great interest in electing public officials who would have public funds to deposit, and esifecially in the election of Nichols as treasurer of Jasper county. All this blow and bluster, denial and calling Blodgett h liar, will not alter facts in the least.

Uncle John Makeever told the writer of a certain republican that “Old Mac” wanted elected to county office some twenty years ago, and came to him (Mr. Makeever) and talked about it. The latter told “Old Mac” that the man was not fit for the office, had made a failure of managing his own business, etc. To this “Mac” replied: “I don’t care a ; we want him; we can ‘use’ him ” And

the man was elected and no donbt the McCoys “need” him. The McCoys have run the republican political machine in Jasper county for many years, and it was necessary to get their consent in many instances before any republican ventured to ask for the nomination for office.

In reading the testimony of the McCoy bank victims, wherein they tell of efforts made to draw money from the bank weeks and months before it failed, and were begged by “Tom” and his man Walter White, to let it remain there, or were put off with drafts on some other city bank where the McCoys had no deposits; of drafts issued that came back protested to business men as early as Dec. 1903; of Tom’s frequent running of an afternoon to business men who carried accounts there, and asking them for what currency they had, as “the bank had failed to get a remittance of several thousand dollars from Lafayette,” or some other place, and was short of cash to run through the day; all this, it would seem, should have warned those who had this sort of experience with the bank that it was mighty shaky, and instead of continuing to do business with an institution of that sort and telling others they thought "it was all right,” they should have gotten out and stayed out. As we have before remarked, the “Fool Killer” has evidently been neglecting his business in Rensselaer for a long time.

--The Indianapolis News, in a lengthy editorial on~the McCoy bank wrecking trial, closes with the following: We all need to realize that even private banking is a public business, and as such must be strictly regulated and controlled. And we should also insist that a banker shall be a banker and nothing else. He has no business to be meddling in politics, no business to incur political obligations or to confer political favors. If he gets the public deposits in the ordinary course of business, and without buying them with bonds furnished to the men that make the deposits, no one will complain. But to support for nomination and election a man in order to get his deposit, to furnish him a bond in return for his deposits, and to interfere in polities in any wayall this is something that must not be tolerated. The political bankers must go. And private banks must be brought under rigid control. Only so shall we be safe. The McCoys are tine specimens of the political banker. And their failure furnishes as conclusive an argument as could be asked for the enactment of a law for the regulation of private banking.