Mr. Walker was highly prosperous and fully able to meet any note he put out.
So the notes were indorsed, and for the time being that was the end of the matter. But soon the banker and manufacturer came with other notes and then others. McKinley supposed that some of the later notes were drawn up to pay those first made, but in this he was sadly mistaken. He trusted the friend of his boyhood implicitly.
In the middle of February, 1893, came the startling announcement that R. L. Walker had made an assignment. The news came to the governor while he was preparing to leave home to attend a banquet of the Ohio Society in New York City.
"It cannot be possible," he told his wife. "I must look into this at once." And he immediately telegraphed his regrets to those holding the banquet. Then he took the first train for Youngstown.
Here his worst fears were realized. As matters were investigated, the Walker failure grew and grew, until it was known that the liabilities were about $200,000. The assets were less than half that sum.
