The Perils of Corporate Investments
THE eagerness with which men in these latter days grasp after anything that promises big financial returns, especially in corporate investments, is something marvelous. We need only to cite the late craze, in which it was proposed to extract gold from sea water. And so shrewdly was the matter handled that nearly two million dollars was actually paid into the corporation, only to have the manager coolly pocket the million dollars, and leave the country. The papers lately recorded the fact that two of the principal factors in the late National Cordage Company have gone into bankruptcy, with "liabilities, twelve million dollars; assets, nothing." And this only calls to mind painful memories of the vast number of innocent investors who were ruined in the collapse of that wonderful trust. But the curious part of all this is that corporate methods are such that those who are responsible for these gigantic swindles are rarely brought to justice; while the smallest theft, even of a loaf of bread to save life, is severely punished. "Justice standeth afar off; . . . and equity can not enter."—Review and Herald.