The Daily News of October 10th has the following:"Some sadly interesting facts and figures are obtained by analysing the list of partners of the unfortunate establishments. In Glasgow and the immediate suburbs there are, out of a total of 1272 registered partners, 292 shareholders, who are possessed of, including £153,536 in the bank's own name, 439,240 stock. Unfortunate trustees and executors are many, numbering no fewer than 184, and the amount of stock for which they are responsible is £132,822, while there are 31 holding over £1000. There are 25 widows, having £8376 stock, which with the exception of one lot of £2100 is mostly in £100 holdings. Clergymen are represented to the extent of 33 proprietors and their proportion reaches 19,970 stock, the highest being £4000. Altogether there are 360 women registered in the last list, and the total amount of stock opposite their names is £103,560; there are only 95 shareholders having under £100 stock; over that amount and not exceeding 1000, 240."

And in the same paper of October 12th :

"Heartrending incidents are told of the poorer partners in the lapsed bank. Widows have had their all lost in the sunken ship, and small shopkeepers who had invested in the stock for their old age are almost paupers. Doctors had almost retired from practice because they thought they had a competency in the interest of their stock, but have now in their advanced years to resume active practice. Ruin. if not absolute beggary, is the only prospect of many, and it is for them that substantial assistance must be given."

Again in the same paper of October 15th :

"It appears that this bank had in connection with their Glasgow cross branch a savings bank with no fewer than 699 depositors, consisting principally of working-class people residing in the east-end of the city."

And in the same paper of October 16th:

"All who have held shares within a year before the commencement of the winding-up are liable to be called upon to contribute to deficiencies existing at the time their names were taken off the books."

The Times of October 19th:

"The sum of the whole matter is that the bank has lost on a moderate, and probably favourable estimate, £6,200,000, i.e., the whole

of the paid-up capital and reserve funds, together with fully £5,000,000 besides.

"That is a most disastrous statement for the unhappy shareholders, and we need hardly say that a loss of such magnitude could never have fallen on them but for reckless mismanagement to begin with, and deliberate and long continued fraud practised to hide that mismanagement. The story set forth in the report now published is one of the most disgraceful in the history of banking. Accounts have been deliberately falsified, securities entered at fictitious values, bad debts taken as good assets, and the very gold, which ought to have been held under the Act of 1845 against the note issue, deliberately squandered to the extent of over £300,000. The Government has been deceived by false returns, the shareholder by 'cooked' balancesheets, and everything done, in short, that a perverse ingenuity could think of to conceal the bankrupt condition of the bank until it became a national calamity."

The Times of October 23rd has a report of the meeting of shareholders, held in the City Hall, Glasgow, on the 22nd. In Mr. Robert Young's speech, I notice the following

"Why, sir! it is hardly possible to speak quietly with reference to such tremendous defalcations. That sum of £5,000,000 we, the shareholders, are now called upon to make good. What the ultimate result may be I cannot tell. The deficiency is overwhelming, and the prospect appalling. It means to many-very many-of the shareholders ruin and misery, and to all poverty, privation and suffering; our money, perhaps our all, we must lose."

**

"We have believed in reports and balance-sheets which have been false, fictitious, and misleading; but we hope, although we have lost money, we have not yet lost our personal honour."

As regards the West of England and South Wales Bank, which failed soon after the City of Glasgow Bank, the Daily Telegraph said :

"Such a calamity happening to a bank having its branches in nearly every district, agricultural and commercial, throughout the West of England and South Wales, must entail much suffering and, in some cases, utter ruin to hundreds of families, and by no one will the disaster

be more acutely felt than by the class of shareholders coming under the head of widows and spinsters, of whom there are between 700 and Soo on the share list, which also includes 403 tradesmen, 143 professional men, 449 gentlemen, 144 farmers and yeomen, 32 clerks, 41 merchants, 30 bankers, 27 clergymen, 19 schoolmasters, 27 butlers and valets, and five labourers."

The Caledonian Bank was brought to ruin by the fall of the City of Glasgow Bank-it had four shares in the City of Glasgow Bank registered in its own name, and as the shares were unlimited the liability crushed it.

About this period a report was issued of the evidence taken before a Royal Commission on the Stock Exchange in which it was shown that the total of loans to foreign States taken in London amounted to £614,228,300. Of these loans all obligations were fulfilled only on £81,828,500; on 175,160,100 there was a partial default and on £157,239.700 there was a total default or about 5411 per cent. of the whole amount. A total loss on foreign loans of 1571 millions sterling!!!

Sudden ruin, homes wrecked, helpless women and orphans driven to face the world with empty pockets; aged gentlemen and gentlewomen having to abandon their comfortable homes and end their days as paupers in workhouses, are facts which should make men reflect. A Scotch newspaper published a poem on the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank, in which was the following

verse :

66

Pity us, God! Must our little things go?

All-even our mother's things cherished with care?

Must we leave the old home-the one home that we know?
But not for the Poorhouse-O surely not there?

Could they not wait a while? We will not keep them long
We could live on so little, too, cheerful and brave,
But to leave the old house, where old memories throng,
For the Poorhouse! O rather the peace of the grave!
Pity us, pity, O God!"

The mass of facts this chapter records should cause capitalists to pause before they put all their money into Stock Exchange securities. They should remember that for at least a portion of their wealth, investments in broad acres should be made, because if giving a little more trouble they are tangible and in the long run safe, considering the increasing commerce, wealth and population of the limited area forming Great Britain.

C. F. DowSETT.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

LOSSES BY STOCK EXCHANGE INVESTMENTS.

(No. 1.)

BY E. J. GIBBS, M.A.

THE Course of events during the past year should provide once more a serious warning to investors who are inclined to neglect real property, and to devote themselves entirely to purchases on the Stock Exchange. I propose to show in this paper how heavy and disastrous has been the recent fall in many of the securities usually quoted, including stocks and the shares in limited companies. For this purpose I compare the prices of 30th June, 1890 and 30th June, 1891-the last complete half-year before the writing of this paper and I afterwards add some notice of the great losses in Foreign Stocks during the last quarter of a century.

Let us take first Foreign Stocks for the year ending 30th June, 1891.