Morse, C. W.

Morse, C. W. (Charles Wyman) (1856–1933) entrepreneur, swindler; born in Bath, Maine. He left the ice business in Maine for New York City (1897) where he built an ice monopoly and doubled the price of ice. Resulting litigation revealed stock deals involving the Tammany Hall leaders and the mayor. Morse got out of the ice business $12 million richer and moved into shipping. By 1907 he was so close to a monopoly in East Coast shipping that President Theodore Roosevelt intervened. His involvement in banking became the focus of the panic of 1907 and resulted in his being sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraudulent bookkeeping. Calling himself merely a scapegoat, he got out of prison after two years (1910–12) by deceiving doctors into believing he had only weeks to live, and acquiring a pardon from President Taft. He returned to shipping, again attempting to build a monopoly, and garnered U.S. ship building contracts during World War I. In 1922 he was investigated for war fraud by the Harding administration, but was indicted for mail fraud in another case. In 1925 a civil suit against his Virginia Shipbuilding Company resulted in a $11.5 million judgment for the United States. In the mail fraud case he was found too ill to stand trial and in 1926 was placed under guardianship as incompetent to handle his own affairs.