Yet when an infamous scoundrel like John R. Walsh of Chicago converts to his use the millions of money held in his banks, Leslie Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury, hastens into print to say that it was all right; Mr. Walsh had done no more “than other bankers do.” There was a Savings Bank in the holy town of Boston, Mass. It gave itself the comfortable name of the _Provident_ Savings Bank. Trusting common people put $200,000 of their money into it. Thieves on the inside stole the money. At one swoop, this particular bank robbed the people of twice as much as the whole of rascaldom had got from the Associated banks _in ten years_! Frank Bigelow robbed the First National Bank of Milwaukee, of $1,450,000. _He was President of the American Bankers’ Association._ He not only looted the bank, but falsified its books. He did not commit the crime upon impulse or sudden temptation. He did it deliberately, systematically, colluding with his cashier to plunder the fools who had trusted him. [Illustration: The banker who stole $1,400,000; and a man who stole a turkey and a duck.] _The Law_ went through the form of giving this million dollar thief _a sentence of seven years_. His penalty is a sham; his “punishment” a mockery. He will be “detained” in comfortable quarters a few months; his health will then “fail”; he will then be pardoned, and will be ready to steal trust funds again. So it is all along the line. Woe to the hungry tramp who steals bread to eat. Woe to the ragged woman who snatches food for her starving children. Woe to the bad men who steal _during ten years_, one hundred thousand dollars from the Members of the American Bankers’ Association. These five or six hundred bad men will be sentenced, in the aggregate, to a penal servitude of over two thousand years. But let the President of the Bankers’ Association steal one million and four hundred thousand dollars from the men and women who trusted him with their money, and the highly-connected thief gets off with a nominal punishment and a seven-year term which will never be enforced. During the last twelve months, dishonest bank officers have stolen _more than twelve million dollars_ from the depositors. How many of these rascals have been tried and convicted? Less than half a dozen. Yes; Frank Bigelow, sometime President of the American Bankers’ Association, laid careful plans, in collusion with his cashier, and _stole fourteen hundred thousand_ dollars of _Trust funds_. Nominal sentence, seven years. John Shannon, of Ohio, at about the same time, _stole a turkey and a duck_; and John Shannon is now serving out in the Ohio penitentiary _a penal sentence of five years_! John Shannon, my jo, John! Why _didn’t_ you wear a silk hat, and steal a million dollars _from the inside_ of a bank? _Wayland’s Mistake_ One of the most interesting and powerful men of this generation is J. A. Wayland. He is a pioneer Socialist.