136 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



An anecdote illustrates the point of view of the 

 Bank Commissioner. I can vouch for the truth of 

 it. A man was indicted by the Grand Jury for 

 embezzlement. At the trial it was abundantly 

 shown that he had misappropriated money held in 

 trust by him. But the verdict of the jury was Not 

 Guilty. A friend of mine remonstrated with the 

 foreman. " Oh, yes," said that gentleman, " he took 

 the money sure enough, but, you see, the poor devil 

 did n't take much." 



Let us return to the Banks. Nearly all the wise 

 men of the West are bankers, or connected with 

 banks, because it is (or was) obvious to them that 

 it is safer to play with other folks' money than 

 with your own. It seemed to these gentlemen, 

 who possessed all the qualities necessary to suc- 

 cess save second sight, that land had a certain 

 definite value, a value easily to be determined by 

 the experts in their employ. As a matter of fact, 

 land, like any other commodity, is worth what it 

 will fetch, neither more nor less. Accordingly, in 

 defiance of the principles of banking, large sums 

 were loaned upon real estate, sums tied up for a 

 term of years. During the great boom, hardly a 

 bank in the West refused money to its regular 

 customers when the security of a first mortgage 

 was offered in exchange, and so it came to pass 

 that when the boom collapsed, when bad prices 

 and dry years confronted the mortgagors, when 

 principal and interest became overdue and delin- 

 quent, hundreds of thousands of acres fell into 

 the hands of the banks, who were in consequence 

 forced to either sell them or farm them, both 



