Taxes: Bitter Victory

After eleven months of embarrassing headlines and two courtroom trials—the first of which ended in a hung jury—Manhattan Broker J. (for James) Truman Bidwell, 59, former chairman of the board of governors of the New York Stock Exchange, was last week acquitted of income tax evasion.

There were many in Wall Street who thought that Bidwell had been made a victim. The charges that the Government brought against Bidwell last February accused him and his wife of two major offenses: 1) deliberate failure to report $15,500 in capital gains from stock transactions in...