THE CHICAGO ‘BAJSTK.E'R
Founded in 1898
Volume xxvii	CHICAGO, AUGUST 28, 1909	Number 9
Fowler’s Open Letter to Speaker Cannon
and the people not getting what they want is bosh. I have always followed that and the principles of my party. When representatives attack me they are attacking their party and the great majority of the house.”
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The Trust Company Section
The principal speakers at the trust company section meeting at the Chicago convention will be Vice-President James S. Sherman; D. S. Remsen of New York on “Post-mortem Administration of Wealth,” and E. T. Perine of New York on “Trust Company Resources.” The fact all of the speakers come from one state probably can be accounted for in some way.
Regular reports will be made by Oliver C. Fuller of Milwaukee for the executive council, and by Lynn H. Dinkins of New Orleans for the committee on protective laws. Edwin A. Potter will welcome the bankers to Chicago, and President A. A. Jackson, of Detroit, will reply in connection with his annual address.
The following subjects have been selected as of interest to the section, and it is hoped that they may promote active discussion by the members present, who are urged to speak freely upon them:
I.	"Limitations of the Functions of a Trust Company.”
II.	“Duties and Responsibilities of Trustees under Corporate Mortgages.”
III.	“Value and Responsibility of a Safe Deposit Department.”
IV.	“Mortgages as Investments for Savings Funds of a Trust Company.”
General discussion of such other topics as may be proposed.
A roll-call of states, to be answered by the vice-presidents of the section in brief reports of the conditions concerning trust companies as existing in their several states will follow.
The election and installation of officers and unfinished business will conclude the session.
Kansas Group Meetings
Six groups of the Kansas Bankers Association will hold their meetings in the month of November, 1909. The following are the dates and places of such meetings:
Group Six, Pratt, Tuesday, November 9th; Group Five, McPherson, Wednesday, November 10th; Group Four, Junction City, Thursday, November nth; Group One, Kansas City, Tuesday, November 16th; Group Three, Pittsburg, Wednesday, November 17th; Group Two, Osage City, Thursday, November 18th. The above notice was sent out by Secretary Bowman.
Defaulting Cashier Sentenced
Raleigh, N. C., Aug 26.—George A. Kimball, defaulting cashier of the Southern Pines Citizens' Banking and Trust Company, arraigned at Carthage on charge of embezzlement and falsifying books pleaded guilty and was sentenced to the penitentiary for three years. He will begin his sentence at once.
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The First National of Neillsville, Wis., with a capital of $50,000, has been incorporated by Charles Cornelius, R. F. McMillan, Joe Marsh, S. M. Marsh and G. E. Crothers.
these losses would have lain at their door if they had failed to pass it—as the matter now stands, they lie at your door. *	*	*
“This is your record upon our financial and currency legislation. I challenge you to find a single living man with so rotten a one. It is a record of ignorance or political cowardice or a disgraceful hybrid of the two. And yet, sir, you assume to dictate the financial and currency legislation of a civilized country.
Ignorance and Prejudice
“Do you suppose, sir, that I did not appreciate fully the probable consequence of my act when 1 undertook to play my part in securing this reform (appointment of a calendar day for introducing bills) ? Do you suppose that I was not aware of your ignorance, prejudice, inordinate conceit, favoritism, putrid preferences, and that, like all such characters possessing absolute power, malice is the mainspring of your every action under such circumstances?
"It seems, from all that can be learned with reference to the conference on the Payne bill, that you, with every member’s political head in your basket of favors, shuttle-cocked through the halls of congress, trying to secure the passage of the Aldrich bill and disfiguring so far as you could the Payne bill, with the exception of a few schedules.
"How did it happen that Mr. Aldrich assented to a larger representation on the part of the house than the senate if he was fighting for the senate bill and you were fighting for the house bill? In other words, did you not enter into a conspiracy with Mr. Aldrich to pack the conferees on the part of the house for the express purpose of adopting the senate bill?
“I have gone into these details to lay bare your miserable, contemptible, false pretense, and to expose your duplicity, treachery, and perfidy to that legislative body over which you preside, whose bill you were bound to defend and not to destroy.
"The Republican platform was based upon the position taken by our presidential candidate long-before the convention met, and his subsequent position upon tariff revision downward was in perfect harmony with the platform on which he stood. Is it possible that you and Senator Aid-rich entered into a conspiracy to secure the adoption of the senate bill for the purpose of discrediting the President by repudiating his pledges and the platform of the Republican party?”
Cannon Not Ready to Reply
Speaker Cannon is on the warpath, tie says fur will fly when the house convenes in December, even though he will not reply at this time to the Fowler attack. When in Chicago last Saturday he said:
“When congress convenes I intend to call a friend of mine to the chair and take the floor, and speak as long as I am allowed. Some people who profess to be Republicans will get the severest castigation that they ever heard. Some of these people who are ranting about the present tariff bill supported and helped frame the Dingley bill. Their present rampage is hypocrisy. Some of the men who talk of legislation being stifled will have their records shown up at my hands.
“Your old Uncle Joseph is going to talk in language that anybody can understand, and I promise that for virility it will rank as a masterpiece. All this talk about legislation being stifled
Elizabeth. N. J., Aug. 23.—Representative Charles N. Fowler, recently deposed as chairman of the committee on banking and currency, made public his promised open letter to Speaker Cannon to-day. Fie announced several days ago that the contents of the letter would be of national importance, and would go to the root ol the trouble which resulted in the attempt of the "insurgents” to defeat the speaker for re-election. Mr. Fowler was modest, as politicians who saw advance copies of the letter learned to-day, for the communication is by far the most vigorous and comprehensive attack on Cannonism that Iris yet appeared.
Mr. Fowler does not hesitate to call a spa'e a spade. In language that would make Senator Tillman envious, he lays charge after charge at the door of the speaker, winding up by declaring him a national menace that must be removed if Republican government is to continue in the United States.
Mr. Fowler charges Speaker Cannon with being responsible for two׳-thirds of the national losses in the panic of 1907, through his defeat of the bankers’ bill providing for a system of credit currency. He declares that the speaker conspired with Senator Aldrich to discredit the President and defeat the Payne tariff bill. He warns the American people against Mr. Cannon’s plan “to make American banking and commerce the football of our politics, precisely as our productive industries are to-day, by the establishment of a central bank.
Tariff Tilt Challenge
“I challenge you,” he writes of the tariff controversy, “to cite in all our political history a more dishonorable and disreputable piece of business unless, perchance, you cite something in your own career of which the people are not yet advised.”
And finally; “As you are aware, we now have a government by edict, so completely have you absorbed and usurped all power, legislative as well as political. You have succeeded in Russianizing the House of Representatives. But you will be the last of the political Bourbons, and the conditions which made such a creature as you possible will end with the Sixty-first Congress.”
In taking up the subject of the credit currency-bill prepared by a commission of fifteen bankers in the fall of 1906, he writes:
“After the bill had been reported by the banking and currency committee to the house, I went to you as was'necessary, disgraceful as the necessity may seem under the circumstances, to ask whether I could call up the bill for consideration, telling you we were facing a financial crisis, that something should be done to meet it, and that this bill had been drawn for that specific purpose.
Lays Blame for Panic
“You literally hooted the idea of a panic, and inquired, 'What does this showing in Wall Street amount to? The country don't care what happens to those speculators. Everything is all right out West and around Danville. The country don’t need any legislation. Then, I don’t take any? stock in your asset currency.’ As usual, your ignorance and prejudice were all-sufficient then.
“But the panic came, as every man who had any intelligence on this subject knew it would. And one-half to two-thirds of all our losses I charge to you personally, because if the bankers' bill had passed the house and gone to the senate