OCR Text |
Show Are You Another Straight Crook? 'Non-Criminal' Crime Is Big Moral Problem 11 ANY "GOOD" AMERICANS have long since entered the vast shadowland of "non-criminal criminality." crimi-nality." In Coronet, author Peter Nelson scores the growing tendency for "easy money" and the "something for nothing" attitude which, he says, is ripping our moral fabric to shreds. As examples of the "non-criminal criminality" which is on the increase, in-crease, he cites the examples of "padding" the expense account, the parking ticket fixer, the citizen who gets the chance to make his insurance insur-ance company pay for some repairs on his house and earns a few dollars dol-lars to boot. "Although the crime bill in America Amer-ica for frauds, burglaries, embezzlements embez-zlements and similar crimes runs to $7,000,000,000 annually," Nelson writes, "there can be no doubt that petty swindles are astronomically higher." Nelson's article quotes the complaints com-plaints of a warehouse supervisor who revealed that his men annually annual-ly take home thousands of dollars in valuable tools, clothing and merchandise. mer-chandise. "They'd quit if I told them they were stealing," said the supervisor, " 'From who?' they'd ask me. All they know is that they work for some big mysterious corporation cor-poration and it's no money out of anybody's pocket." The proprietor of an expehsive eastern restaurant complained that his well-to-do customers take home silevrware and dishes. His employees em-ployees appropriate slabs of bacon, pounds of butter, expensive cuts ol steaks and other foods. "Once I put detectives at the doors," he said, "but they threatened to boycott the place. When the workers found out, they almost went on strike." |