Conscience hath a thousand tongues
An elderly man, John R. Walsh, is being assailed from all sides by people who have been defrauded by his misappropriation of funds from their savings and investments. Caption: Cursed by those whose savings he has squandered and whose trust he has betrayed.
Comments and Context
John R. Walsh, an Irish immigrant active in Chicago, is at the center of this Carl Hassmann cartoon. Typically dramatic and apocalyptic, his portrayal such that he might be considered one of American history’s notable villains. Yet he is barely remembered, and might be categorized as an entrepreneur who continually struggled and mismanaged his multitude of dreams.
Around the time of the cartoon, three Chicago banks founded by Walsh had failed. According to Walsh and his family, the businessman covered all losses, with no detriment to depositors; Puck, and the courts, disagreed. Walsh was sentenced to a lengthy sentence in Leavenworth, chiefly for the crime of “borrowing” funds from his own banks. The 1907 financial panic ended his ability to shuffle accounts. Before that, Walsh invested in a small railroad, which also failed. He had built the line in order to make his Indiana mines profitable; they also failed. (Subsequent owners profited from their deposits of limestone.) Walsh’s initial businesses in America were the Western News chain of newsstands, which he sold at a loss to an Eastern syndicate, and the Chicago Herald newspaper, which after his management merged with the Times and William Randolph Hearst’s American.
