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note of the Johnson character in all the years he has been in the public eye. Today that aggressiveness is gone. Today the mayor is saying nothing, he is suffering in silence so far as the public knows, but that he is suffering no one who catches a glimpse of his face doubts for a minute. It was a bitter moment for Johnson when he was compelled to go to the banks composing Cleveland's clearing house, the very interests which he has been fighting and which have been fighting him for years, and ask that they take charge of his Depositors' Savings and Trust company. Events have been crowding upon Tom L. Johnson with lightning-like rapidity in the last three or four weeks. First there came the rejection of the street railway franchise at the referendum election, October 22, which meant the end, for the present at least, of his municipal ownership idea for street railways and other public utilities. This was followed in short order by the placing of Johnson's Municipal Traction company in the hands of receivers, and today marked the passage from his control of his bank. The Depositors' Savings and Trust company, organized by Johnson two years ago, and which since that time has been closely identified with Johnson's street railway enterprise, was solvent. The trouble was that Johnson himself, not a practical banker, had reached a stone wall over which he did not know how to clamber. Ever since the defeat of Johnson at the referendum election there had been a steady run on the bank. Bankers have no word of criticism for the way in which the Depositors' Savings and Trust company had been managed. The depositors will be paid in full. The stockholders. many of whom are city employes and who bought their stock at 125, will be losers on their investment. Johnson, of course, will be the heaviest loser.
