The Milwaukee Leader

Tacks for Dawes

"This is a campaign," said Candidate Dawes in his acceptance speech, "of brass tacks—not bombast. The discussion of facts and truth is demanded." Exactly so.

We agree with the sulphurous general so heartily that we wish he would take a little of his own advice. We are still waiting to hear him reply, in a good brass-tacks way, to the charges made by Donald Richberg in The New Republic of July 9, 1924. Mr. Richberg there revealed facts and truth about a past action of General Dawes which urgently requires explanation, to say the least. He showed that on Oct. 21, 1912, the Central Trust Company of Illinois of which the general was president, made a temporary and highly irregular loan to William Lorimer, the one-time United States senator of unsavory reputation. This loan of $1,250,000 was made for the purpose of permitting Lorimer to exhibit it to the state bank examiner as being the property of the La Salle Street Trust & Savings bank, then in process of formation. The bank examiner was deceived, the charter issued, and the money returned to the Dawes bank. Presently the new Lorimer organization went smash, and thousands of innocent stockholders suffered heavy loss. The receiver regarded the Dawes institution as being sufficiently implicated to justify bringing suit against it; and its reply was that the loan had been made by General Dawes and his brother, the cashier, solely on their own responsibility. After a 10-year battle in the courts it has been decided that the Dawes bank is legally liable to the Lorimer stockholders in a sum of more than $150,000. We submit it to our readers whether a man with such an action in his record is fit to be vice-president of the United States.

How about a few brass tacks on the subject of the Lorimer loan, General Dawes? - The New Republic