EFFECTS OF THE GLASGOW BANK SWINDLE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue XIV, 31 March 1879, Page 4

EFFECTS OF THE GLASGOW BANK SWINDLE.

The effects of the failure upon trade may be estimated from the fact (says an Edinburgh correspondent) that, in addition to the stoppage of large cotton factories in Lancashire, the iron works of Messrs Henderson, Dymock, and Co., Glasgow ; the spinning mills of Mr 0. G. Miller, Dundee; several building yards, brickworks, &c , have closed their doors, while many pits iv Ayrshire are ua wrought. Reduction of wages is taking place on all hands. Tbs Dalkeith and Shotta ironworkers have had to submit to a reduction of ten per cent., the Clyde shipbuilders to 7£ per cent., the Leith masons to id pet hour ; and the Kilsyth miners to 7d. per day. Everywhere in Scotland the ramificacationa and results of this gigantic fraud are being felt. In Glasgow and Edinburgh every kind of business is at a compleie standstill. Every paper-maker on the Esk is heavily involved. Mr Graig, one of the largest shareholders of the bank, offered the liquidators £200,090 to be free of all further liability, and had the money declined. Mr Charles Cowan, ei-M.P. for the city of Edinburgh, has written to the local papers to say that in his old age he is not only "impoverished," but " ruined." While not a single Glasgow lawyer holds a City of Glasgow Bank share, no fewer than twelve well-known Edinburgh lawyers are shareholders to a large amount, and one of them has gone out of his mind, and has had to be removed to an asylum. Some twenty Free Cnurch ministers, and several United Preabyteriaa and Independent minfetera— among the last the eminent Dr. Pulsford, of Glasgow, have lost in the crash tbeir all. The Free Church of Scotland is likely to be a serious sufferer by the calamity ; and it is painful to have to add that nearly all the directors' were Iree Church elders, one of them (Mr Lewis Potter) having actually built a church at Hamilton with £5000 of the bank's money ! Mr Potter, was so strict a Sabbatarian that be refused to road Monday's newspapers because they were printed on Sunday. Much sympathy is felt in Edinburgh for one of the directors (Ms Stewart) who resides here, because he joined the directors only some six months ago, and was the only one among tkem who bad not borrowed money from the bank.