The entire Jerome Clock Company transaction is both complicated and obscure. The only sources of information concerning it are Barnum’s own statements in his autobiography, on the one hand, and Chauncey Jerome’s statements in his autobiography on the other. Neither deserves to be believed, if we consider the weight of the evidence offered. Barnum shouted fraud loudly and accused Chauncey Jerome personally. Jerome wrote that he knew nothing about the transactions, that he was retired at the time, although he owned stock in the company, and that all the financial dealings with Barnum were conducted by the secretary of the Jerome Clock Company, who was making desperate but sincere efforts to retrieve the company’s fortunes. It is likely that both men were either swindled or deceived by some one who thought that, eventually, everything would be all right. And, what made Barnum even angrier, the company had never even removed its more than seven hundred workmen to East Bridgeport! II As soon as Barnum’s failure was announced, there was an almost universal cry of “I told you so!” He was called an adventurer, a swindler, and a fraud by persons and papers who but a short time before had hailed him as a genius. His autobiography, which had been published only a year before the bankruptcy, in so far as it admitted many deceits and much humbug, did Barnum great harm in public opinion when he went into bankruptcy. Especially were the newspapers anxious to point the obvious moral, since it was at them Barnum had laughed in his autobiography, for, while professing to admire newspapers and their editors, Barnum’s book showed by the facts of his career that his deceptions were made possible by either the innocence or the ignorance of editors. James Gordon Bennett, especially, seized the opportunity with avidity, and the _Herald_ for March 17, 1856, contained this editorial: “THE FALL OF BARNUM--The author of that book glorifying himself as a millionaire from the arts and appliances of obtaining money upon false pretenses, is, according to his own statements in court, completely crushed out. All the profits of all his Fejee Mermaids, all his woolly horses, Greenland whales, Joice Heths, negroes turning white, Tom Thumbs, and monsters and impostures of all kinds, including the reported $70,000 received by the copyright of that book, are all swept away, Hindoo palace, elephants, and all, by the late invincible showman’s remorseless assignees. It is a case eminently adapted to ‘point a moral or adorn a tale.’” The tale was adorned with much morality, preached against him from the pulpit, and preached to him in private. Barnum later said that he was able to endure all the abuse with equanimity, but that it always made him furious to read moral strictures about himself in which were mentioned the “instability of ill-gotten gains.”