Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1912 — STILL DOING BUSINESS. [ARTICLE]

STILL DOING BUSINESS.

Swindler Purtelle’s Checks “Come Back” On Logansport People. According to the Logansport Journal, which is urging the people of Cass tp., to go a little slow and investigate before voting a $50,000 subsidy to Eugene Purtelle, the swindling railroad promotor, Pur telle has been getting in his work in Logansport and has perhaps contracted numerous bills there in addition to giving some worthless checks. The Journal says: A feature which would tend to support the demand for cautious proceeding and further investigation developed yesterday in local banking circles where it was learned that four checks, given by Eugene Purtdlle promotor of the proposed road, were returned protested from the bank at Lowell, Ind., on which they were issued. These checks were issued to local people by the promotor and were placed in a local bank. When returned protested the local people were notified and took up the checks.

It ireally is almost past comprehension that in this day and age any man can go ahead and swindle innocent people in the way that Purtelle has done and escape the penitentiary. It would seem that bur _ officers are very derelict in their duty in not doing something in this matter. There are at least two cases in our own circuit count where PurtelLle has given his worthless checks for cash, to say, nothing of the many he has given for labor, and The Democrat believes Prosecutor Longwell owes it to the people swindled and to the public at large to get busy and set the machinery of the law in motion. The parties swindled, it seems, £ think it better to let matters go than to spend their time and money to prosecute these cases. But there is a duty to the public that, can not weli be avoided by the prosecuting attorney when his attention is called to such infractions as this, and, for the protection of others, he should not delay.