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. The Saturday evening post. h, highly placed, highlymoral and respectable men. It is easy enough to under-stand the peculations of the underpaid, the thieving ofthe poor and starving. A thousand tables of statistics,thousands of years of observation attest the power of needover human probity. But just why men, often the mostrespected and deeply trusted in their communities, shouldloot banks, trusts and treasuries is a recondite question towhich no general answer can be given. That such men do commit great crimes against thepublic and the private purse needs no proof. Anyone witha competent me
. The Saturday evening post. h, highly placed, highlymoral and respectable men. It is easy enough to under-stand the peculations of the underpaid, the thieving ofthe poor and starving. A thousand tables of statistics,thousands of years of observation attest the power of needover human probity. But just why men, often the mostrespected and deeply trusted in their communities, shouldloot banks, trusts and treasuries is a recondite question towhich no general answer can be given. That such men do commit great crimes against thepublic and the private purse needs no proof. Anyone witha competent memory may run down the list of men whohave been caught at the looting of financial houses and discover scores of names thatwere, locally at least, eminentin their day. Millionaires,politicians, captains of in-dustry are among them. In some cases sheer ambi-tion led these men to scrambled and aimedtoo high, scaled forbiddenpeaks, stumbled uponpebbles and crashedinto the abyss. Butoverreaching ex-plains only a part of. He Wti i tin Ji mateurGeologist and SpentHit Spare Time Pros*poctlng The Hunter Now Decided to Watch the House, ButThere Was Not the Slightest Cover Within Three orFour Hundred Yards the dishonesty of the aloof. Indeed, there are cases whichbaffle all interpretation, unless their crimes be explainedas was that of Herostratus, who burned down the templeof Diana at Ephesus to immortalize himself by an unbe-lievable deed. The Greeks sentenced this rash young manto be forgotten and his name forbidden. Let us likewiseforget the colossal plunderers of financial houses. Theircrimes are, after all, infrequent and important only be-cause of their size and notoriety. No Trustworthy Figures on Peculations IN AN earlier article I discussed embezzlement in general,devoting myself to the commonplace stealing from em-ployers and communities. I pointed out then that perhapsone hundred million dollars was lost through defalcationlast year, mainly because of the vast number
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