Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/550

 It will be noticed that to the list of names in the letter there is the significant afifix of et cetera.

It appears from the correspondence of the association, passages from which I shall presently submit, that the general term even included Phalen, which was not divulged in the list referred to, although he was president of the association! Who else is included in the term et cetera? They may be upon the bench; they may be in the halls of Congress; they may be in positions of seeming respectability; they may be any and everywhere. The country is left to imagine the extent of the conspiracy, with enough known to stimulate the desire to know more.

The plot is concerted in the city of New York, the great city for the speculative and dramatic enterprises of trade. The curtain rises there, and we find the dramatis personæ, as far as revealed in the bills, in Judge Watrous, Reynolds, Lake, Klemm, Williams, and McMillen. It will be instructive of the plot to pass in review the public characters of some of the actors.

J. N. Reynolds, a New York politician, who appears to be an active manager of the affairs of the company, is the individual of that name who was charged with receiving from Lawrence, Stone & Co., a compensation of $1,500 for lobbying a tariff scheme in Congress.

Joseph L. Williams is an ex-member of Congress from Tennessee; was a witness in behalf of Judge Watrous, in the investigation made in 1852 into the judge's official conduct as to the very frauds in which it now appears he was a confederate; and has resided during the past and present sessions of Congress in this city, where he has been actively defending Judge Watrous.

Of Messrs. Lake and Klemm, and of their mode of transacting business, we find some curious accounts in one of the numbers of "De Bow's Review," in the year 1848. (See October and November numbers, pp. 262, 263, treating of the connection of these gentlemen with the bubble banking system.)

The article tells us that — "Mr. J. S. Lake was formerly canal commissioner, and became the largest stockholder in the Bank of Wooster [Ohio], an institution never in good repute, and which was on the point of failing three years ago, together with the Norwalk and Sandusky banks, in connection with the exploded bubble called the bank of St. Clair, Michigan. The capital of the Wooster Bank was $249,450; of that there stood in Mr. Lake's name $171,900. Mr. Lake then moved to New York, and commenced business as a broker under the firm of J. S. Lake & Co., in Wall street. The Co. was his son-in-law, O. Klemm, who was doing business in Cleveland under the firm of O. Klemm & Co., the Co. being J. S. Lake, in New York. Klemm was also cashier of the bank. Those gentlemen performed all the business of the bank; that is to say, Mr. Klemm purchased with its means eastern drafts, and sent them to Lake for collection. Lake making his returns occasionally, the other directors knowing but little of the transactions. With the large amount of the means derived from the Wooster Bank, Lake & Co. speculated in produce, on which they acknowledged a loss of $150,000, and they started three other Ohio banks, besides buying the Mineral Bank of Maryland and a bank in Texas." "Here, then, Lake & Co. had borrowed of the public on small notes through four banking machines, one laying the foundation of the others, $936,398."

Mr. Lake's banking operations were extended to Texas, under circumstances