rk. This
they did within the last two years. The published lists of directors
will enable you to identify these institutions. Now the savings bank is
a place to which money travels to be taken care of; and if the bank has
the public confidence, people put their money in it freely at low rates
of interest, and the managers use the funds in whatever way they please.
In the Ring savings banks there are on deposit to-day, at nominal rates
of interest, many millions of dollars. It is believed that into these
banks the Ring have taken the city's obligations and converted them into
money, which has been sent flowing into the various channels of wasteful
administration, out of which they have drawn into their pockets millions
on millions. The craft of this contrivance was profound. It wholly
avoided the difficulty of raising money on the unlawful and excessive
issues of city and county bonds, and took out of public sight
transactions which, if pressed upon the national banks, would have
provoked comment and resistance, and have precipitated the explosion
which has shaken the country. I think that among the assets of the
savings banks of this city, county and State will be found not far from
$50,000,000 of city and county debt taken for permanent investment. For
the first time in the history of iniquity has the bank for the saving of
the wages of labor been expressly organized as a part of a system of
robbery; and for the first time in the history of felony have the workmen
and workwomen, and the orphans and the children of a great city
unwittingly cashed the obligations issued by a gang of thieves and
plunderers."

Having made themselves secure, as they believed, the Ring laughed at the
idea of punishment, if detected. They not only controlled the elections,
but they also controlled the administration of justice. The courts were
filled with their creatures, and were so distorted from the purposes of
the law and the ends of justice, that no friend of the Ring had any cause
to fear punishment at their hands, however great his crime. The majority
of the crimes committed in the city were the acts of the adherents of the
Ring, but they escaped punishment, as a rule, except when a sacrifice to
public opinion was demanded. If the criminal happened to be a politician
possessing any influence among the disreputable classes, he was sure of
acquittal. The magistrate before whom he was tried, dared not convict
him, for fear of