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something that happened ten years after the other events that I told you about when he used his fortune to prevent a panic and to keep business stabilized. You may wonder why I am saying so much about Marshall Field, but to me he is a dictionary of good business principles and we ca.. afford to saturate ourselves in them. We can afford to study his operations a great deal and take plenty of time to let it soak into us. What I told you about how he prevented a painic during the world's fair applies in some measure to a condition right here in Bingham county at the present time. This other story that I am going to tell you is a little different but it applies to a set of circumstances that confront somebody in Bingham county right now. Thoughtful persons will see the connection and will draw a lesson from it and apply it to their business transactions, to their own advantage and the advantage of their fellow men in the county. # Walsh Bank Failure About the beginning of the present century John R. Walsh was the president of the First National bank of Chicago. It was a very strong bank and Mr. Walsh was a big man in business. He conceived a plan to build a connecting line with the Chicago & Central Illinois railroad to tap the coal mines of Central Illinois and taking a direct short cut into Chicago. It was a good enterprise, a bold stroke and was capable of releiving some of the other roads of their burdens of freight, and quickening the delivery of coal into Chicago. Mr. Walsh thought he could build the road and he went about it with his private fortune. When his own money was used up he used the bank's money, loaning it to himself and his railroad company. In doing this he violated the banking laws more severely than the Anderson bank at Idaho Falls violated the banking laws when it loaned upwards of a hundred thousand dollars to A. J. Stanger, who went about buying sheep and writing checks on the Anderson bank when he had no money to his credit. It was against the law for the Anderson bank to loan more than $40,000 to any one man. It was a violation of the laws for Mr. Walsh to take money out of the First National Bank of Cnicago to back his railroad enterprise. Before the road was completed Mr. walsh and the bank were in so deep that they were financially embarrassed and had to give an accounting and 'fess up. If Mr. Walsh had succeeded with his enterprise he would have come thru all right and he would have been considered a great man. # Big Bank Failure Mr. Walsh failed and the bank failed for many millions. Big failures like this are what start financial panics. When one firm cannot pay, another firm depending on them canot pay and many other firms depending on them fail, and so the damage goes on down the line until everybody connected wtih it fails. Then all the firms depending on these firms are embarrassed, they cannot pay their employes and their various other obligations, work stops pay checks do not come any longer, families go hungry, and there is a condition which we call a panic. # Consternation Among Bankers The First National Bank of Chicago was such a large bank, such a financial pillar for all the other banks in the city, that they called a meeting to see what could be done. It was a terrible surprise to find that this man walsh had goth in so deep and was involved in criminal charges. It was a terrible shock to all the other bankers to find that what was supposed to be one of the best banks in town was involved in failure and that involved them and they too, might fail. All of the enterprises depending on their own banks might fail and as they considered the matter there seemed to be no end to the failures that were likely to follow. These men sat in conference all day and all night trying to plan some way to prevent the failure. This tremendous amount of debts was no obligation of theirs and it was a criminal affair. The men responsible for it could not pay and it was not their own debt to pay, so they spent a great deal of time going over the matter to see how it all came about. But after they had been in conference twenty-four hours they were still confronted with the fact that the firm had failed and that unless something was done pretty quick, other firms would fail
