Article Text
One of the most deplorable features connected with the failure of the bank of Ellis is the fact that the majority of the depositors were poor and in many instances have lost their all. The amount of their deposits represents their entire savings laid by for a rainy day. When a business man fails honorably, as many do, he is entitled to and usually receives, the sympathy of his friends and neighbors; but in this case, taking the most charitable view possible, the scorn and righteous indignation, of the community, is all that Mr. Colby has a right to expect. He didn't fail in a day; the suspension was not caused by a panic, nor by circumstances which he could not control. He must have known and did know, for months and perhaps for years that the bank was insolvent, and yet, in the face of these facts, he continued to receive the deposits of hard-working, honest citizens, knowing that he could not return them. If a man should steal a few dollars worth of coal, to keep his family from absolute suffering, he would doubtless be incarcerated in the penitentiary for one or more years. But there was some justification for that crime, and the offender is an angel as compared with the man who will premeditatedly and deliberately encourage poor men and women to entrust him with their hard-earned savings, so that he may make a wholesale scoop of it all. There should be no sentimentalism indulged in for crimes of this character. an example is called for and it should be speedily given. No difference what may have been his position with reference to society or to the commercial world; this only makes his conduct the less justifiable, the more inexcusable.
