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Show Even li.s thirst for glory may have Its direful after effects. iloi Physical Endurance of Taft Is Extraordinary. IS DUE TO HIS TEMPERAMENT Beautiful Lawn Party at the White House for International Red Cross Delegates Plan of Comptroller Comptroll-er Murray to Check Bank Defalcations. By GEORGE CLINTON. Washington. President Taft has been through some strenuous campaigning cam-paigning this year. He has made not only political addresses, but certainly B0 or more speeches on occasions non-political. non-political. Mr. Taft is an extraordinarily extraordinar-ily big man physically, and yet the Btrain of hard work does not seem to teli upon him as it does upon other men who carry much less weight. Friends of the president ascribe his continued good condition to his buoyant buoy-ant disposition. In other words, his temperament stands him a friend during dur-ing his hard work. There have been one or two lawn parties at the White House this year, and before the spring season closes there probably will be on or two more. At one party the guests of honor hon-or were the visiting delegates to the International Red Cross convention. The president and Mrs. Taft, standing under the trees on the south lawn of the White House, received distinguished distin-guished guests from all over the world. The president had just returned re-turned from a week's campaigning and was to leave again at midnight, but he stood the three hours' "social siege" as if he had been resting instead of working. Physically the president of the United States is a wonder to that part of mankind which gets a chance-to chance-to see him. At the Red Cross Reception. The lawn parties at the White House are the most picturesque social events of the year in Washington. It Is not probable that those who do not actually view the scene can realize the extraordinary beauty of the grounds of the White House in May and June. There are many trees, much shrubbery shrub-bery and in some places a profusion of flowers. At the back is the house itself, a fine specimen of colonial architecture, architec-ture, pure white and impressive, with each of its great pillars adding a line of beauty. The day of the reception on the lawn given for the Red Cross people was perfect. The thermometer was at 70, and the sun was in a cloudless cloud-less sky. The ladies all wore white, while the men, or most of them, for it was largely an official reception, were In uniform, many of them being in the picturesque garbs of the Latin-American countries and Europe and the countries of the far east. Present at that reception, unknown to most of the guests and bearing herself her-self with extreme diffidence, was a woman who had just returned from fjhina. She has been connected for rears with a school maintained by the Protestant Episcopal church in the heart of the flowery kingdom. When ;ivil war broke out in China recently and the Young Chinese started on their crusade, the woman who was a guest at the White House reception left off her teaching in the college and went into the field as a volunteer Red Cross nurse. She had many hard experiences, ex-periences, but not as hard as it was expected that she would have. China ordinarily is not considered thoroughly thorough-ly civilized, but even in the midst of the madness of civil strife it was round that both factions of the Chinese Chi-nese observed the Red Cross regulations regula-tions as implicitly as would the countries coun-tries of the west. the clearing house, as the cashiel never saw the contents of the clearins house letters and simply posted the totals of the letters on the cash book The general ledger and the general cash book were kept by the cashier In order to make the total amount ol deposits in the individual ledger agree with the amount shown by the gen era ledger. Coleman resorted to false debit entries (plugs') and the reduction reduc-tion of balances when carrying for ward accounts. Within five years Col-eman looted the bank of more than $200,000 and he is now serving a Ions term in the state prison. The directors direc-tors noticed the reduction of the deposits de-posits in the bank, but attributed It tc competition. The defalcation was not discovered until the books were examined ex-amined by the auditors of the Harvard Trust company, to which concern the directors had agreed to sell out. Henry M. Hearing, cashier of the Albion Al-bion National bank of Albion, Mich., is serving a term in prison. A search of the cashier's desk, after the closing of the bank, disclosed leaves removed from the loose leaf individual and savings sav-ings depositors' ledgers carrying credit cred-it balances aggregating S1S5.317.41. which of course represented a shortage short-age in each of an equal amount. This method of "covering" had been in vogue since the bank began business. The cashier stated to the examiner that he found no difficulty at all in deceiving the directors. The bills receivable re-ceivable were added by him on an adding add-ing machine; the list wa's checked with the notes of the directors, hut at no time, the cashier stated, did the directors check the total of the adding add-ing machine list with the general ledger. The assistant cashier stated that practically all of the manufacturing manufactur-ing customers' notes owned by the bank were forgeries. Not Balanced for Three Years. Earl Stannard. bookkeeper of a mv tional bank at Pomona, Cal., Is under arrest on the charge of abstracting more than $150,000 of the funds of the bank. One of his methods it is alleged al-leged was that employed by Coleman of extracting the clearing items from the morning mall before they were seen by the cashier or others and destroying all items in favbr of an oil company in which he was interested. interest-ed. Of the fifty-six pages of inactive accounts, thirty-six, it is charged, were falsified for a total of more than $100,-000. $100,-000. Not for over three years had the active and inactive ledgers been footed foot-ed and balanced on the same day. F. T. Arnold, cashier of the First National bank of New Berlin, N. Y., is awaiting trial because of an estimated esti-mated shortage of about $150,000 in the deposit account. He is charged with issuing certificates of deposit which he failed to register, or if registered regis-tered the entries were for a lower amount than the face of the certificate certifi-cate called for. It is understood that no one but Arnold was allowed to make any entries in the certificate of deposit register, which is wholly in his handwriting and presents many evidences of erasures and changes in figures. It is said he concealed his work in several other ways. Insect Quarantine Bill. Representative Simmons of -.New York on behalf of the committee on agriculture has reported favorably favor-ably a bill to enable the secretary secre-tary of agriculture to establish quarantine quar-antine districts or plant diseases and insect pests and to regulate the importation im-portation of nursery stock and other plant products. Mr. Simmons says that under our present laws the United Unit-ed States has become a dumping ground for diseased and insect infested infest-ed plants. If the Simmons bill is passed the United States will be able to retaliate upon Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Ger-many, Holland, Switzerland and Turkey, Tur-key, all of which countries absolutely prohibit the entry from the United States of all nursery stock and admit ad-mit fruit only when the most rigid examination ex-amination shows freedom from infestation. in-festation. It is said that if the Simmons bill had been made a law some years ago the historic elms of Cambridge, Mass., might still be standing, including the great elm, which is still standing but is almost dead, under which George Washington took command of the Continental Con-tinental army of the Revolution. It was the elm-bark beetle which was the chief agent in the destruction of the Washington elm and the other elms of Massachusetts. This beetle slipped in from Europe unchallenged and unmolested. There was no quarantine quar-antine to keep the pest out and as a result splendid old trees are now being be-ing chopped down to be used for fire wood. Pests Come Prom Europe. The authorities in the department of agriculture have figured it up all very carefully, and have come to the conclusion that, more than half of the important insect pests of fruits and farm crops are of foreign origin, and that they now occasion a tax of nearly half a billion dollars annually. It has been reckoned, for example, that the San Jose scale, introduced into this country trom north China, and enbr-r-otiently carried into every ptate in i!:c i Union, has already cost the orchard-! orchard-! isrs $."0,000,000. and is adding to this sum at the rate of $3,000,000 a year, this annual charge coming from the expense of soraying operations and from the shrinkage in quantity and value of the first yield. Another recently re-cently introduced foreign insect pest is the alfalfa leaf weevil, whose rav ages in the great alfalfa regions of Utah are so well known. No quarantine law. however good, can now repair the damage to property prop-erty which these pests have wrought, but the future can be safe-guarded, and the Simmons bill, it is believed: will go a long way toward accomplish, in this end. To Stop Bank Defalcations. Comptroller of the Currency Lawrence Law-rence O. Murray has made a study of some of the methods by which banks occasionally are de-Irauded de-Irauded by their employes.. He has had a number ofS specific cases put before him and as a result of his investigations in-vestigations he thinks that such unfortunate un-fortunate occurrences as these and many that have preceded them may be avoided in Ahe future if the national banks will' co-operate with his office in the plan which he has just suggested suggest-ed to them. This is nothing more nor less than the simple device of sending to his office a carbon copy of the semiannual semi-annual report made by the examining committee of the board of directors of each bank the report which states in black and white what the directors think of their own bank. When Mr. Murray assumed office about 3.000, or between 30 and 40 per cent of the national banks, had no bylaws by-laws and therefore made no provision for examining committees. They now-all now-all have adopted by-laws suggested by the comptroller and are fitted out with regularly appointed examining committees. When carbon copies of the reports are sent to the comptroller a study will he made of them which will be supplementary to the study made in the bank. In this way it is dp-lieved dp-lieved that the depositors and stockholders stock-holders wdll have a double check against loss from defalcation and forger-. Some Specimen Cases. Here are some of the cases which moved the comptroller of the currency to act: George W. Coleman, bookkeeper of the National City bank of Cambridge, Mass., kept a small personal account on the individual ledger. He would "kite" his own checks through a Boston Bos-ton curb broker and abstract them from the mail as they came back from |