Scandal at Kansas Normal School: The Case Against E. P. Bancroft by: Rick Brainard Date: 08/24/04
“Many other questions have presented and discussed by council with great ability. We have endeavored to notice those matters, which struck us as most important and difficult. We have examined the others, and see nothing, which would seem to us to justify a reversal. Indeed, reading the story of the defendant’s acts and conduct as told by himself, his dereliction of duty presents a crime which no smoothness of words or politeness of language can obliterate or cancel. The judgment will be affirmed.” (1) Thus ends the Supreme Court of Kansas’ opinion in the embezzlement case of E.P. Bancroft. This case proved to the people of Kansas that even in the mid west the corruption of the Gilded Age
was present. The regents were not doing their job of staying well informed of the progress of land sales by Bancroft was the lesson of this case. In 1863, the Kansas State Legislature founded Emporia State University as a School for training teachers. The school received sixty sections of saline lands for its maintenance and upkeep from the state. These lands were salt springs located in Saline, Cloud, Republic, and Mitchell counties of Kansas. The school would reimburse the State’s loan of ten thousand dollars through the sale or lease of these lands. (2)
The saline lands, granted by the Kansas legislature on 7 March 1863, are located west of Emporia Kansas. The purpose of the land grant was to derive income from the sale, lease or rent. The board was required to invest the income in stocks of the United States, the state of Kansas, or other reliable stocks. The legislature could determine the placement of the investment provided it was at no less than six percent annum upon the par value of the stocks. The Normal schools support and maintenance came from this perpetual fund. (3)
On 2 October 1865, the Emporia News ran this advertisement for the first time, “60 sections of state Normal School lands, located on the Republican, Solomon and Saline Rivers – good lands, timber, water and stone; will be sold on ten years time.” –E.P. Bancroft (real estate agent, Emporia)(4) Ten years later on 8 March 1878, the first report of embezzlement came into light in the Emporia News. The admitted culprit was one E.P. Bancroft, real estate agent and one-time Board of Regents member for the Normal school. This man had honorably served the state and the city would fall to the temptation of money.
The story although incredible, but true proved to the people of Kansas that one man entrusted with many duties stopped the checks and balances system of American government by preventing such a thing from happening. For this system had broken down because of the bad management of the board in general and Bancroft in particular. The Saline land's scandal had a definite impact upon the State Normal School. The overall lesson learned was that one man with many positions in the same job means inadequate checks and balances. Part 2 Part 3 |
