This from a former army officer and a gentleman, who subsequently states that he has no idea what became of the funds, but “cannot think of any other explanation.” “Hell-hole” and the “Stock Exchange” constitute a good repast; the headline artist contributes his quota to the feast, and so a portion of the public that feeds on this meat arises from the table with the satisfying conviction that another awful indictment has been leveled at the Exchange, notwithstanding an utter absence of proof or evidence of any kind tending to show that the delinquent trustee had lost a dollar in Wall Street. And suppose he did so lose it, what then? Is the Stock Exchange or any other market-place a “hell-hole” merely because a thief whom nobody suspects squanders his money there? Suppose he had spent it in automobiles, or in real-estate speculations, or in campaign contributions, or in foreign missions, would the same amiable characterization apply? Another familiar instance of making Wall Street the scapegoat is seen in the “explanations” of defaulting bank clerks. “When a young bank employee,” says a financial journal, “with a wife and two children in Flatbush, and a salary of something less than $2000 a year, takes to entertaining angels, more or less unawares, in the Great White Way, and matching his trained financial mind against ‘bankers’ of another kind, he always blames Wall Street when the inevitable smash comes. He has been ‘speculating in stocks,’ he says. He thinks, and a great many people equally silly agree with him, that he thereby shifts the blame for his extravagance and folly to other shoulders. Entirely well-meaning people, without the slightest conception of the real purposes for which the financial centre of a nation exists, say: ‘Here is another indictment against sinful Wall Street. Let us kiss away the tears of this misguided young man, who now promises to be good.’ They never think of asking the misguided young man to show documentary evidence of his losses, which of course every broker must necessarily provide, and must keep in duplicate as a matter of record.”[46] A police officer whose salary has never exceeded $3000 a year is arrested, and it is shown that he possesses a fortune of $100,000. Where did he get it? Why, he made it in the course of nine months of remarkably successful speculation in Wall Street, and one of his henchmen, too stupid to know that everybody in Wall Street keeps a set of books, promptly came forward to endorse this explanation. Proofs were sought by the authorities, and the lie was, of course, exposed, but the readiness with which the frugal officer sought to fall back upon this hoary explanation shows that it is a permanent fixture of the crook’s property-room, and that in the stage-setting for his sordid accumulations there must be the familiar Wall Street background.