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# BAD BUSINESS. The past two weeks have not been exactly what the gold standard orators promised as a result of the election of Major McKinley President and the triumph of "honest money" principles. On the contrary, the developments show that the financial condition of the country is not gilt-edged by any means, and there is a feeling of uneasiness in the business world and a spreading belief that the gold standard is not all that its friends tried to prove it. The record of broken banks is a startling one. We have heretofore referred to the failures of some of the oldest and largest banking institutions in Chicago. St. Paul, Minnesota, has also passed through a panic from the same cause. Last Saturday three State banks went under, and Monday of this week the Germania, the Allemania and the West Side banks in that city failed, and runs were made on other banks. The excitement has been allayed, but the situation is critical there. Saturday there was a bank failure at Fargo, N. D., Omaha, Neb., and Denver, Col. The Commercial National Bank of Roanoke, Va., has also gone to the wall, and others in the same list the past two weeks are the Merchants' National at Devil's Lake, N. D., the Calumet at Chicago, one at Superior and one at West Superior, Wis., the Atlas National of Chicago, and the Farmers' Trust at Sioux City, Iowa. Many manufacturing and business concerns in various parts of the country have also collapsed, among them being the failure of Isaac Prager & Son, of Parkersburg, this State, whose liabilities will run up into the hundreds of thousands. One of the distressing features of the present situation is the number of suicides of bank officials, men who, feeling disgraced by the failure of their banks, or in remorse at their own wrong-doing, having taken their own lives. Richard Cornelius, cashier of the National Farmers' and Planters' Bank of Baltimore, was on Monday found to be a defaulter to the amount of over $40,000, and when he saw he could no longer hide his crime he went out and drowned himself. He was regarded as one of the most upright men in Baltimore. The bank is solid and well able to stand the loss. Last Saturday Henry Husted, cashier of the National Bank of Liberty, Ind., hanged himself. The same day W. A. Hammond, cashier of the collapsed National Bank of Illinois, drowned himself in Lake Michigan at Chicago. Otto Grosmandorff, another banking official affected by the same failure, blew his brains out with a pistol. President-elect McKinley is no more to be blamed for these failure and the consequent troubles than Mr. Bryan would have been had he been elected. Nor is the Republican party any more responsible for dishonest bank officials than the Democratic party. Yet these occurrences point unmistakably to the truth of the assertions of the free silver advocates that there is something wrong with the financial system of the country, and it will be hard to persuade the people that the gold standard is the panacea for our monetary and commercial evils. In a speech some time ago Senator Stewart said "the gold standard is driving unnumbered people to poverty, despair, degradation and suicide." He spoke like a prophet.
