MISMANAGEMENT AND OTHER TROUBLES 61 
or its depositors. Most of the inefficient officials, 
it seems, were Negroes; most of the dishonest 
ones were white. There was a belief, often ex- 
pressed after the failure of the bank, that when 
a white cashier had embezzled the funds and 
involved the accounts of a branch, a Negro offi- 
cial would be put in his place to serve as a 
scapegoat when exposure came. 
The white clergymen who were cashiers proved 
to be quite unable to withstand the temptations 
offered by the presence of the cash in the vaults. 
Purvis, one of the trustees, afterwards asserted, 
“The cashiers at most of the branches were a set 
of scoundrels and thieves—and made no bones 
about it—but they were all pious men, and some 
of them were ministers. The cashier at Jackson- 
ville was a minister and today he has a large 
Sunday school; almost all of them are ministers.” 
Cashier Hamilton at Lexington, Kentucky, a 
graduate of Oberlin, was also a preacher and a 
Sunday school superintendent. He did not steal 
from the bank itself, but from the depositors by 
drawing out on forged checks the money of those 
who seldom came in with their pass books. 
Several of the cashiers endeavored to build up 
a banking business for whites as well as for 
blacks, planning ultimately to turn their branch 
banks into regular banks, state or national. 
Charges were made that Rev. Philip D. Cory, 
cashier at Atlanta, discouraged Negro depositors 
in order to secure white ones; that he wanted a 
“white man’s” bank. On this account the Ne- 
groes were opposed to him and the Atlanta 
branch did not thrive. Finally, in 1874, he was