By Ben Dixon MacNeill
Raleigh News and Observer
“Don’t we get anything back we put in it?” a pitifully bent old man inquires of a lawyer almost every week when he comes to town from the place that is no longer his though he clings to it with the unreasoning tenacity of an old man’s attachment to the lands for which and on which he has toiled for more than three score years. Tidings of liquidation of one of the companies that despoiled him brought him again to make inquiry last week.
“They said if the company was ever broke up we would get back exactly what we put in it—can I get my place now? I have lived there 83 years—” and with a flicker of the old flame in his eyes—“I am going to live there 17 more.”
Hope flickers up again in the heart of Old Man Hines Scarboro, once the richest man in the upper end of Wake county, now broken and old and homeless, with lawful claim upon anything but a refuge in the county home. The Fisheries Products Co., one of the companies that brought ruin upon his old age, brought him destitution and want in the place of plenty and gnawing harassment in the place of the peace that is the birthright of the old who have labored honestly.
Three North Carolina lawyers went to New York not many weeks ago in pursuit of the head of this Fisheries Products Co., demanding direct statements to searching questions about the management of the properties of the company. These lawyers, aroused by th ep itiful story of their clients, went unpaid.
This Thomas H. Hayes, the president of the company, a sleek, suave and engaging man of the type that you see in certain quarters of the financial district of the metropolis, the smart-man-about toiwn, who knows where to take strangers that they may behold the wonders of a vast, and in places, wicked city, the opulent patron of head waiters whose friendship is had for prodigal generosity, was the most gracious and generous toward these Tar Heel lawyers.
So generous, indeed that it was almost never possible to find time, in the nights that lasted until daybreak or the days that were interrupted with luncheons and convivial hospitality, to get at the business that took them to New York. Altogether the cost of many hundreds of shares of Fisheries Products Co. stock must have been consumed by this generous gentleman, until it became almost embarrassing to press the matter of business.
Will there be anything left for Old Man Hines Scarboro? Will there be anything left for the 3,000 farmers in the two Carolinas who invested upwards of $10 million in the Fisheries Products Company? Could it be that it was the earnings of Old Man Scarboro’s 83 years that went to the deviation of the Tar Heel lawyer when he went to New York for a deposition?
Technically and theoretically, possibly not, although there has as yet been no definite effort on the part of the responsible officials to determine it. But actually, this old Wake count farmer, and thousands like him, who five years ago were comfortably established, are destitute, and the president of the company into which they paid their money is living in apparent opulence, and apart from the scene of his business, claiming the protection of a judge in a distant state from the processes of civil courts in the State where he is chartered to do business.
But for the indulgence that is due of 83 years, the Wake county farmer would not have a roof over his head. The courts have been inexorable with him, declared him a bankrupt, stripped him of his home and his lands. The humblest parian among the stock salesmen would not give him a second gland, though five years ago they swarmed about him, flattered him, promised him vast riches and independent beyond the fanciful dreams of his first yuth.
In almost every county in eastern North Carolina the story of this old man is repeated with variation in detail only. Here and there are a few scattered cases where spoilation was stopped win vigorously pressed suits charging fraud and misrepresentation. Many of them brought confessions from the officers of the company, usually in return of the notes given for payment on stock, minus deductions for agent’s commissions. This sort of compromise has saved some of them, but the bulk of them have nothing.
The one hope of the bent old man who comes as often as his feeble limbs will ring him to inquire of his lawyer, seems to be the liquidation of the company in a North Carolina court. He has nothing, the 3,000 have nothing, save the sympathy their privation brings them, with which to fight the thing at long range. Otherwise he will go down to a grave that cannot be far off, with that pitiful query on his lips—“Don’t we get back what we put in it?”
From the editorial page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Oct. 11, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1924-10-11/ed-1/seq-4/
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