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Show Pay Schemer to "Keep Credit Good" It has been said that it would well repay a man with a criminal mind to spend the first thirty years of his life In building up a reputation for absolute Integrity and straight dealing, deal-ing, in order to make great coups iMer on. "The ablest men that ever were," wrote Bacon, no mean authority on commercial morality, "have had all an openness and frankness of dealing, deal-ing, and a name of certainty and yeraclty; but then they were like horses well managed, for they could tell passing well when to stop or turn ; and at such times when they thought the case required dissimulation, dissimula-tion, If they then used It, it came to pass that the former opinion spread abroad, of their good faith and clearness of dealing, made them almost unsuspected." This ls a quotation which would not be out of place on Ivar Kreu-ger's Kreu-ger's tombstone. The secrel of his success, the secret of the world-wide confidence which he enjoyed, was that he was never caught telling a lie. No one was ever able to prove that he told an untruth. His word appeared to be his bond, with the result that he could make what now seem to be the most unlikely assurances and be implicitly implicit-ly believed. Eacon said such men would be "almost unsuspected." Kreuger carried it a stage further. He was completely unsuspected. T. G. Barman in the Atlantic Monthly. |
