1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

AN ASSISTANT bank cashier,
who was a lover of horses,
was Indicted in February of this
year for stealing more than one million
dollars from the bank that employed
him. Obviously he was a thief
who deserved to be prosecuted, but
what about the employee in a department
store, a factory or office
who carries away merchandise from
his place of work? Is that not also
thievery?
Strange as it may seem, a growing nwnber
of employees do not think they are
stealing when they walk off With company
merchandise. They think of themselves as
-honest people who would never dream of
burglarizing a store or a home. They would
not countenance shoplifting. Yet they
think nb-thing of carrying home from their
place of work manufactured products without
paying for them. Is there any real difference
between taking merchandise or
money that belongs to a corporation and
burglarizing a private home, perhaps a
home of a company executive?
In 1958 the president of an American
firm satd that his employees were taking
home goods that were worth two and a
balf million dollars. Such noncash items
nulke up 75 to 80 percent of all items that
employees in the United States steal from
their employers. 'The practice is carried
on &0 extensively that American business
is losing two billion dollars a year. This
stealing is done, not by professional criminals,
but by common people who, to all
outward appearances, are honest, upright
pillars of their communities. What is
wrong with their mdral standards that
they can justify such thievery?
Employee dishonesty has manifested itself
in many countries. In the Netherlands
an official was arrested for embezzling
about $56,000 while ne was
chancellor of the· Dutch joint mission to
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the North Atlantic Treaty OrganIzation.
In the Soviet Union three store managers,
two warehouse managers and the chief of
the shoe department of a children's department
store were jailed for embezzling $62,-
000 worth of shoes. In Yugoslavia the arrest
of employees for thievery has become
commonplace; all over the country managers
and officials of commerclal enterprises
have been hauled off to jail. So the
employee dishonesty existing in the United
States is. not peculiar to that country.
Crippling Effect
As a Ufe-destroying disease works unseen
within a human body, sappin&: vital
energies until the body dies, 10 dishonest:
employees sap the vital strength ot the
business that provides them their livell-
AWAKEl