Article Text
It is known that one of the bank owners was in Indiana a short time after the failure of the Cicero bank, but what he was doing there or what he accomplished is not known. But it is known that Metcalf had mortaged his new home for $1,500 and on that mortgage he had paid $500. When he left he turned back to the McKinney bank the stock he owned in the concern, and also handed over to the bank the property he built on which there was a $1,000 unpaid mortgage. After Metcalf left McKinney, an expert accountant was employed to go over his books. Owners of the bank say the accounts were badly mixed and jumbled up so that it was impossible to tell anything about them. The expert straightened out the books and the bank owners say that Metcalf's accounts were correct. There was no shortage and jumbled condition of the accounts was the result of carelessness, the bank owners said. That is as far as the bank owners will go. There are two mysteries connected with R. H. Metcalf leaving here. One is how he happened to hook up with the Hinshaw crowd and the other is how he got the money to buy the Cicero bank. The first one has been solved. He told the bank owners that he had an uncle in Indiana who suggested to him that he had a good opportunity to buy a going bank at Cicero. But he did not give the name or location of the uncle. However, it seems that Stanley McIntosh, pretty well known throughout Indiana, and who is now at Mishawaka, had much to do with Metcalf taking a plunge into Indiana finances. McIntosh was born and reared at McKinney and knew Metcalf. The story as related here is that E. M. Hinshaw was searching around for some one who would like to buy a nice little bank at Cicero, Ind., and McIntosh suggested Metcalf as a good man to run the bank. The details of the deal are not known here. As to where Metcalf got the money to buy the bank no one seems to know. As far as can be learned he had no ready money with which to buy the Indiana bank, and diligent aquiry of many citizens here failed to elicit any information on that point. They all said they did not know unless he bought the bank with the Metcalf and Beck paper which was found in the bank when the receiver took charge. However, the people here do not seem to have lost confidence in R. H. Metcalf. The general opinion is that he was trimmed by the Indiana crowd and that if he has done anything wrong it was done in a desperate effort to save the Indiana bank. He will have plenty of backing from this place in the criminal charge that was filed against him in Indiana, and numerous letters have gone from this locality assuring him of the trust that is still imposed in him. I did not find any one however, who had made offer of financial assistance. The arrest of Metcalf came as a great shock to this locality and the general expression was that Metcalf was not smart nough to cope with the Indiana crowd and that he had been trimmed by the bunch around Cicero and Noblesville. People think that Metcalf was all right, wading close to the shore in the financial stream, but when he got out into the current, he was not a strong enough swimmer. Another question that is asked here is how it happened that the Indianapolis bank examiners did not know that the $14,000 of Metcalf paper was not good and if the signatures to the Beck paper were genuine? One of Metcalf's brothers was here and gave the people of McKinney the information that the depositors of the Cicero bank would lose about $60,000. On March 1, 1914, the deposits in the Cicero bank were $153,210.45. When the bank failed the deposits were as follows: Commercial deposits $66,99.38 Savings deposits 23,304.38 Certificates of deposits 12,114.10 Total deposits $102,417.68 This shows a falling off in deposits of $50,927.77 and the people down here are wondering why that much of a decrease in deposits in a little more than a year did not attract the attention of the Indianapolis bank examiners.