The Collapse of a Grain Empire
After a massive embezzlement scheme depleted thousands of bushels, a local warehouse company is forced into liquidation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
According to an agreement entered into by farmers who had wheat stored in the Shawnee warehouse and the stockholders of the company, the people who had grain in store which cannot now be accounted for—except through the peculations of W. H. Clifford, the managing agent, and his alleged accomplices—are to be paid 27 cents a bushel for their wheat. In order to settle these claims, amounting to between $6000 and $7000 at this reduced price, the Shawnee Warehouse Company agreed to sell the warehouse at auction. This was done last Saturday, the Pacific Coast Elevator Company buying it in at $2105. When this was done, it was still found necessary to levy an assessment of $60 a share on the 108 shares of warehouse stock in order to meet the claims. The par value of the stock is $20 a share, and it had always been a paying investment until this year, when the big steal of 17,400 bushels of grain was disclosed. It is now a costly wreck to the holders of stock.
“The big steal of 17,400 bushels of grain was disclosed. It is now a costly wreck to the holders of stock.”
This story of grain warehouse embezzlement highlights the vulnerability of farmers in an era of loosely regulated agricultural cooperatives. Similar to contemporary disputes over cooperative mismanagement or corporate bankruptcy, the individual stockholders were forced to pay the price for management's criminal hubris.
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