It would be a rare case
in which a clerk who valued his situation would refuse to take a few
shares in an enterprise which the head of the firm was fathering. Of
course, such occurrences are the exceptions, but there are plenty of
houses not far from Wall Street where the partners know that their
clerks and messengers are "playing the market," and exert not the
slightest influence to stop them. When these men find that they and
their customers, and not the clerks and messengers, are paying the loss
accounts of the latter, they are very much distressed, and tell the
District Attorney, with regret, that only by sending such wicked and
treacherous persons to State's prison can similar dishonesty be
prevented.
Not long ago the writer became acquainted with a young man who, as loan
clerk in a trust company, had misappropriated a large amount of
securities and had pleaded guilty to the crime of grand larceny in the
first degree. He was awaiting sentence, and in connection therewith it
became necessary to examine into the conditions prevailing generally in
the financial district. His story is already public property, for the
case attracted wide attention in the daily press; but, inasmuch as the
writer's object is to point a moral rather than adorn a tale, the
culprit's name and the name of the company with which he was connected
need not be given.
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