During a depressed time

When would you guess that 69% of bank failures were due to fraudulent management, granting loans in excess of the legal limit and other injudicious acts? 2008? No, in truth,1865 & 1911. In 2008 the bank failures had the additional burden of over-bearing government diktats.

A great man, Thomas Mellon (father of Andrew who lived to age 95)was honored after his death by a County Bar Association because he held "to the old-fashioned doctrine that honesty and common sense were as essential in the administration of public as of private trusts." And Judge Mellon's life demonstrated the wide "range and richness of his humanity." Yes, those days and those men are gone forever.

I especially relish the words of German immigrant, Richard Bartholdt(who would eventually become a 12-term Republican Congressman from Missouri), at a Fourth of July celebration in 1893. He said that America is where the "only aristocracy is the royalty of heart, the only imperialism the natural cast of brain. This is why when others boast of national achievement, the American just points to the flag and bluntly says to all the world, 'Match this if you can, the peerless story of human freedom, of intellectual progress, of great-hearted, broad-minded developoment told in the mystic wedlock of the Stars and Stripes."

1893 indeed! 2001 in disgrace.