AN AMAZING CAREER

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 149, 23 December 1908, Page 10

AN AMAZING CAREER

In one respect Mr. Morse may be considered fortunate, as he had rendei-' ed himself liable in all to 325 years' imprisonment. Little more than a year figo, Mi*. Cnarles Wyman Morse, whose organisation of the Ice Trust and the extortions of that Trust had already brought him into notice, was described by the Ne«v York Press as "master of eighty-one steamships and thirteen banks." "It would be idle," one journal said, "for anybody to attempt to estimate tha wealth ot Mr. Morse. In the financial district he is rated all the way from £3,000,000 to £8,000,000." Mr. Morse, who is now fifty-two years old, started life in the mysterious position of "candy-boy" on an American coastal steamer. He was freely spoken of as "har'l hit" during the financial panic of last autumn, when the National Bank oi North America, of which he was president, stopped payment. Later Mr. i

Morse's mansion in Fifth-avenue was seized for debt. Early in February, at the very moment when the affairs that led to the wreck of the bank were being examined, Mr. Morso suddenly vanished. A wireless message from the Daily Mail found him on the liner Campania. He replied immediately, declaring that he was not a fugitive from justice, but was taking a holiday. Landing a1;a 1 ; Liverpool, he spent a holiday of precisely four hours, and then sailed again for New York to face the charges against him. His trial revealed an amazins; system of dummy loans, by which he made good his speculative losses at the expenr.e of the bank. The most piquant evidence was to the effect that he borrowed from the National Bank vt North America the money with which he purchased a controlling interest in that institution. A <prl stenographer, it was also shown, had authority to issue loans to clients and to act for Mr. Morse in ''keeping his bank account j good." I