Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 874, 30 November 1888, Page 9

Broadbrim’s New York Letter.

Never before in my memory has confidence been so thoroughly shaken as it has been in the last six weeks. Banks, savings institutions, trust companies, insurance companies and mercantile houses of every kind are overhauling their ledgers, examining their securities, looking after mortgages and loans. The tried service of a life which was once an indorsement of character, avails no longer, for, unfortunately, the worst defalcations and robberies that havo taken place in the last twenty-five years have not been by novices and tyros, but by men of tried experience,— many of.them brought up from boyhood in th 6 institutions which they robbed. It seems inconceivable that. a man like Bedell, capable of conducting the most intricate business of one of the most distinguished law 'firms in the city, should have gone cn robbing, year after year, for the pleasure of playing policy, and when he sums up his losses he finds that he has actually gambled away at this miserable, low game, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. I could understand it .if it was faro, or poker, or horse racing, or seven up, or any thing-but policy. That is a game only patronised by the lowest and meanest elass of vagabonds. It is a great game with ignorant negroes who dream out lucky numbers and then go their pile on saddles and gigs ; bnt their gambling is confined to twenty.five cents, or at most a dollar at a stake, and they go blindly on year after year. But why talk of ignorance ; here was this shrewd old lawyer, a hardfisted old skinflint, dry as a bone, he gambles away a big fortune of other people’s money and end 3 his days in States Prison. For sixteen years he had sat daily in the company of the ablest lawyers in New York ; Sunday never found him absent from his pew ; he would have choked at his dinner if he did not say grace before meat, and yet he was a thief, and the meanest kind of a thief, foir it was not to keep him from starvation, his salary being seven thousand five hundred dollars a year, with splendid opportunities for honest speculation. It is no nse trying to think of it. . I give it up ; it’s a mystery as unfathomable as that of the sphinx. Foster’s case was different. - He stole exactly as Bedell stole, by forging mortgages and pocketing the money. As far a 3 we heard he got away with one hundred and ninety-eight thousand dollars. Now here is another case. Foster was the son of a rich father who gave hini every advantage as far a 3 education is concerned. He grew up a man about town ; a clubman and a firstnighter ; fond of a scrapping match, loving a horse race; and exceedingly attached to the opposite ser, His devotion, however, never induced him to give any particular female a permanent mortgage on his property, but he always appears to have kept quite a number of them about in his handsome bachelor establishment. His father and his brother, both reputable business men, knew very well that the red-headed girl who passed as his niece was not his niece ; yet these reputable people appear to have connived at the fraud, for there is no evidence that there was the slightest remonstrance from either of them. While his law partner knew of his loose domestic life,' he never thought that Foster was a robber, and now he is prostrated with grief at the discovery of a state of affairs that he should have known long before. The cashier of Southmayd. & Choate, though in nowise implicated- in Bedell’s orime, unable to withstand the shame of the disgraceful association with such a miserable thief, deliberately took his life. Expert accountants are in great demand. Every firm wants its books overhauled by an outsider. I heard' of an instance last week where a bank gave an expert a thousand dollars for ten days’ work. If any one thinks we are poor in New York ha should have boon in the Tax Collector’s on Monday when the sum reached was about seven or eight millions of dollars. One cheok from the New York Central R.R. amounted to four hundred thousand dollars : one for one hundred and seventy-five, and several for one hundred thousand dollars. We spend here each year, for public expenses and public robbers, over forty millions of dollars. What service oan any man render the city that should entitle him >o one hundred thousand dollars a year? Yet that is what the Sheriff claims, and when election

day comes around he is expected to plank dpwn his check for twenty or twenty-five thousand. All offices seem to be framed with especial reference to election day. The latest robber is Jonas H. Goodman, a lawyer, who turns out to be a very Badman. He not only stole from his neighbours, but he stole from his wife and children. He swindled his sisters, his cousins and his aunts. No game was too small for him, from a child’s money-bank to a church contribution box. Gambling was his bete noir, and by hook or by crook ho got away with nearly two hundred thousand dollars. In his capacity of trustee he squandered the estates of widows and orphans and ruined them. If ho is in Canada, loan only say that Cana da ba3 a big load of sin to answer for. Quite a sensation was created here on Monday night by the production in dramatic form of Amelia Rives’ novel of • The Quick and the Dead.’ In regard to Miss Rives’ sensational story, which has given her a marked place in the literary world, there seems to be all sorts of opinions. Many professed to be shocked by it. They think that suoh a story written by a man would have been bad ; buq. by a woman it is simply shocking, and the dramatization produced at the Fifth Avenue Theatre by Miss Clayton, a clever actress, has by no means reconciled the critics to the work. It is true that the oritics are not always safe guides as to what pleasea the popular taste, but from the rise of the curtain to the fall, it was evident that those present, who had read ‘The Quick and the Dead,’ had been disappointed in the story, and were disgusted with the play. And now why should encouragement be given by the public to this class of literature. It is true there are plenty of people who will read it, but the mental appetite that enjoys it is depraved. Some of the critics say that it is but a step from Rives’ romance to Zola’s wickedness and tilth ; not that Miss Rives has actually taken that step in ‘ The Quick and the Dead,’ but there is the constant fear that she will. When good society was taken into the interior of a high toned French bagnio thirty years ago, and romantic young women went into hysterics over the woes of Armand and Camille, we made a fatal step in our society drama, the aftermath of which was ‘ La Tosca,’ and other plays of like character, the golden plating of -which served to glorify the sin which it Bhould have, condemned and trampled under foot. It is to the credit of the community that ‘ The Quick and the Dead ’ is not a success, and if it shall serve as a warning to Miss Rives and those who cultivate that class of literature, that the taste of the people of the United States is not yet sunk to the base level of the Mabille or the Chateau Rouge—the lesson will not have been in vain.

If you wanted to see stirring life you should have dropped into the Produce Exchange last week. Sweet peace seldom dwells there during business hours, for these brokers are a noisy set of fellows, and they like to hear the sound of their own voices, especially when pitched at high C. Well, they had a magnificent chance on Wednesday last when the cyclone struck the wheat pit. For months wheat has been dragging along, a drug in the market that nobody dared to touch. Old Hutch’s corner on September wheat set Bulls and Bears to thinking; October opened lively, Tuesday the dry bones began to shake, and by Wednesday the storm broke. The Bears were stampeded early in the day; they hunted their holes and climbed the trees, but the furious and triumphant Bulls tossed them right and left; when the falling shadows left them victors on a hard fought field with not a live bear in sight. We are suddenly awakened from a dream of security, and it now looks as if the price of flour might be doubled this winter, and if so, God help the poor. With coal raised and wheat raised and other things rising in sympathy, what will become of them? Above the roar of the wheat pit the yell of the election clans. The blaze of torches, the rattle of drums, the bray of horns remind us that the end hath not yet come. The fight waxes hotter every day. The evil effects of our wild speculation crops ont every day in the desperate suicides that tell the final ending of ruined lives. During the past week five. All of these men held good position in society and for a time fortune ran fair with them, but reaching out too wildly in the desire to become suddenly rich, disaster came and they had not the courage to meet poverty. One cut his throat; another blew out his brain® ; a third went into his room, shut np all the doors and windows, and turned on the gas ; the fourth took rat poison, and the fifth morphine. Two more trusted cashiers are gone to Canada, and the bank robber O’Connor, or whatever his name is, has jumped right out of the court room surrounded by officers and escaped. Harding, or O’Connor, is no ordinary thief. The man who walks into a bank in’open daylight and grabs a fortune ought to be looked after. He was only caught after a desperate chase and struggle, and now he is gone. Ten officers were in the court, all of them were paid to watoh Harding, but he slipped through their fingers, and now it looks as though we would not catch him again. Inspector Byrnes Is swearing mad, but the thief is gone and that is the end of it. Truly yours, Broadbrim.