Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1877 — The Savings Bank Failure in Chicago. [ARTICLE]

The Savings Bank Failure in Chicago.

Thi worst news the Time* has been calleaupon to communicate to its readers since the panic of four years ago, is the fact tint the State Savings Institution has failed.! This calamity has been expected for sone weeks, but it will be none the less disastrous to the thousands whose fortunes ae thus swept away, for, while waiting for the apparently inevitable crash, Aey have been powerless to protect themseres in any degree frem its consequences! The “sixty days rule” tied the hands ol depositors and left them completely a the mercy of the managers. The institutidi, whose career is now closed, was organized twenty years ago, and for the greater part of the intervening period its management commanded . the full confidence of the communly. In 1872 Mr. D. D. Spencer obtained a large interest in the concern, ind very soon afterward the gentlemen Who had till then controlled it found means of disposing of their interests. Spencer secured $270,000 worth of the stock, while the bank itself owned $200,000, and only a paltry $30,000 remained lor the persons who nominally filled the directory and the executive offices. The exact extent of the legal responsibility of these persons for the course of criminal mismanagement upon which the bank then entered, and which has led directly to the present catastrophe, remains to be ascertained. About their moral responsibility there is apparently no room for question. It was their business to know, if they did not, what their President was doing with the funds which the public entrusted to their keeping. These funds were in almost every instance the hard-earned savings of the poor; the provision made through continual self-denial for the inevitable r ‘rainy day.” They represented the bread of the widow, the fatherless, the aged and infirm. The hopes of tens of thousands were bound up in the little sums which, accumulated dollar by dollar, and poured into the treasury of this bank, swelled the grand total of its deposits, as shown by a hasty glance over the books yesterday, to $2,931,756. The owners of this sum number, perhaps, twelve thousand. Probably there are not a hundred of them who w!fi not suffer serious inconvenience from the failure of the bank. Doubtless there are thousands of them who will suffer inexpressible hardships from it. Their money has been squandered in wild speculations; sunk beyond recovery in reckless ventures; buried in real estate for which there is no market, and from which there is no hope of realizing more than a fraction of the investment. The bank made an assignment, yesterday, to Mr. Abner Taylor, who will proceed to ascertain and realize the value of the assets as soon as practicable. There are no means at present of making an estimate as to the percentage of the dividends which may be ultimately made.— Chicago Time* , Aug. 29.