It would seem that it would not be a
difficult or complicated matter to employ a doorkeeper, who did not have
access himself, to stand at the door of the vault and check off all
securities removed therefrom or returned thereto. An officer of the bank
should personally see that the loans earned up to the cage in the
morning were properly returned to the vaults at night and secured with a
time lock. Such a precaution would not cost the Stockholders a tenth of
one per cent. in dividends.
It is a trite saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure. But this is as true, in the case of financial institutions at
least, from the point of view of the employe as of the company. It is an
ingenious expedient to insure one's self with a "fidelity corporation"
against the possible defalcations of one's servants, and doubtless
certain risks can only be covered in some such fashion. These methods
are eminently proper so far as they go, but they, unfortunately, do not
serve the public purpose of protecting the weak from undue and
unnecessary temptation. Banks and trust companies are prone to rely on
the fact that most peculations are easily detected and severely
punished, but the public interest demands that all business, State,
municipal and private, should be so conducted that dishonesty may not
only be punished, but prevented.
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