530 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



full confidence of his fellow citizens. Jones had made an assignment, 

 but immediately re-entered on business on a greater scale, only to 

 become more deeply involved. Mrs. Smith was a woman with con- 

 siderable means. Smith himself was dependent solely on his salary. 

 This was reasonably large, but hardly enough for a man of his tastes. 



Jones owed Smith's bank $35,000 in short term notes, and Smith 

 had instructions from his head office not to add to this loan. Jones 

 drew a note of $2,500 for one year in favor of Mrs. Smith, and Smith, 

 after obtaining his wife's endorsement on the note, sold it at its face 

 value in cash to Brown. At the end of the year Smith redeemed the 

 note by paying Brown the $2,500 with interest. A year after this 

 payment, however, Jones made a second assignment, at fifty cents on 

 the dollar; then he sued Smith for the $2,500 with interest. In the 

 brief interval of a few weeks between the entering of the suit and the 

 trial of the case, the head office of the bank promoted Smith to the 

 managership of a much larger and more important branch. At the 

 trial the merchant asserted under oath that the banker got the note 

 from him by threats that otherwise he would use his influence to 

 have the head office refuse an extension of the notes of $35,000 and 

 thus force Jones again into bankruptcy; and in fact that the only 

 value given by Smith for the $2,500 note in favor of Smith's wife was 

 $700 of oil stock which Jones took very unwillingly because it was 

 depreciating rapidly in value, the stock being worth at the time only 

 $450 in cash, and some months later nothing. 



The banker, also under oath, asserted that Jones appealed to him 

 so urgently for money that he wished to help him if at all possible. 

 Being forbidden to increase the bank's loan, he tried to raise the money 

 elsewhere. He found that Brown was willing to advance $2,500 on 

 Jones's note, if it was endorsed by Mrs. Smith. He took Jones's 

 note, with Mrs. Smith's endorsement, to Brown whom he requested 

 to give the $2,500 in currency instead of by cheque. Subsequently, 

 in his own office, he gave Jones, the two being alone at the time, 

 $1,800 in currency and the $700 in oil stock. If the merchant had 

 sold this stock at once for $450, all that he would have given for the 

 use of Mrs. Smith's name was $250, an amount which the banker 

 declared was not excessive, considering the risk, in the then condition 

 of Jones's business, that she might be called upon to pay the whole 

 note when due, and might ultimately lose a good part of the $2,500. 

 The banker said that he got the money from Brown in currency in 

 order to give Jones the $1,800 without cheques or other papers showing 

 such a payment on the books of the bank, for he anticipated that the 

 bank's inspector, if he happened to notice the transaction, would 

 object to his having contributed to an increase of Jones' liabilities 



