Newspapers / Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / Oct. 15, 1937, edition 1 / Page 13
Part of Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
a !u/ WOMEN STEAL Mrs. Helen Harper, who was sen tenced to from three to six years for forgery in the embezzlement of $57,- 000 from the lumber company for which she worked. Her husband tried to serve her prison term for her. By Madelin Blitzstein ALL men are not honest. And women have been known to steal. So a Baltimore bonding firm decided recently to study what differences, if any, there are be tween motives of male and female em bezzlers. Are women more altruistic in their thievery? Or do men steal for a less selfish purpose? Are men more likely to be taken in by a confederate? Or do the women fall more easily and quickly when ap proached by a would-be partner in crime? Do the women, the men, or both, em bezzle in order to satisfy an apparently overpowering desire to drink, gamble and speculate? These and many other questions are answered in the results of a unique study of 400 women embezzlers. This survey has just been completed under the auspices of the statisticians of the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company of Baltimore. It is the sec ond study to be published by the com pany on the subject within recent months. The first took up the case histories of 1001 embezzlers listed in the claim files of the company; among these 1001 thieves were 963 men and 38 women. The new survey was prompted by the increasingly important role which is be ing played by the American woman in business, for there are three times as many female clericaj workers in this country todav as there were in 1910. Os these 400 ladies who stole either money or property from their employ ers, the biggest culprit was a woman who took $250,000. and the second larg est was a city treasurer who made off with $145,000. All 400 of them stole a total of sl,- 293,201.49; they were divided into five major occupational classes: women em ployed in mercantile establishments, numbering 239, and making off with an average of $2,830.11; those employed in banks, 41 altogether, taking an average of $6,637.98; those employed in post offices, a total of 35, stealing about $1,429.72 apiece; women who worked for fraternal societies, 63 in all, obtain ing each for herself $658.21 as an av erage; and the 22 women holding public office who made off with an average of more than SII,OOO. Jr ,/ 7& \ jg/r;'• fS The women embezzlers who if w were employed in banka 1 took an average amount of KM* $6637. TN order to get as much of a cross •*- section of female embezzlers as pos sible, and thus obtain the most scien tific conclusions, the company used cases which were scattered over 42 states, Canada and Europe, included 191 married Women, 139 single women, 44 widows, and 26 women either di vorced or separated from their hus bands. None of the 400, as far as the statisticians know, had a college edu cation; the ages ranged from 19 upward all the way to 78. but averaged 35 Vt years; and the period of employment ranged from a woman who took S7OO the day after she got her job to a fe male embezzler who absconded with a lot of money after working for the same employer for 47 years. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the study is the fact that it disclosed that 179, almost half of the women, committed the embezzlement for the benefit of others, if not altogether, at least in part. Thus the Baltimore bond ing firm feels safe in stating that women are far more altruistic and far less selfish in their thefts than are men. A typical case of such altruism is No. 203710, who had been financial secre tary for a fraternal society in lowa. She had a grade school education and was married; her home conditions were poor, and she stole $144.70 in order to buy her husband, who had lost his leg, an artificial limb. Almost as remarkable is the conclu sion that “poor character" had very lit tle to do with the embezzlements; only 26 cases out of the whole 400 had this reason given. The study found that none of the women was lacking in in telligence, that they knew their -work and performed it creditably, and that they wc re, on the average, women who had hell their positions for five years at a go id level of salary. It is also surprising to find that in only 28 cases out of the 400 are “pleas ure and dissipation” given as the gov erning cause of the theft; in the cases of the 963 men previously studied, this accounted for a far larger percentage, for the men embezzled in many in stances in order to have the wherewith al for drinking, gambling and other frivolities. Even “clothes and extrava gance” brought ruin to only 15 women, of whom 13 were unmarried. And an other difference between men and women embezzlers is that the women of this profession are much more likely to be taken in by a confederate than are their brothers. “It seems fair to repeat,” states the report, “that employes, men and wom en, up to the point where they dip into the till, are honest. They consider that they are not stealing but that they are borrowing for a real or fancied need and intend to pay it back. record of the 400 would indi cate that women are more prone to share with others the proceeds of their dishonesty, that collusion w'ith other employes is more prevalent among them, and that they abscond more frequently. “Family living expenses accounted for 81 of the embezzlements and living in excess of income accounted for 105. In 179 instances others rather than the embezzler alone benefited from the act; Not an embezzler bat a swindler was clever Cassie Chadwick who, posiog as the daughter of Andrew Carnegie, hoodwinked conserva tive bankers in Ohio, New York and Massachusetts for more than a million dollars. among such beneficiaries, for instance, were 18 husbands out of work, 28 ir responsible or dominating husbands, 21 men other than husbands, and 11 other relatives. “In the cases of collusion, the women usually worked with men; these were usually single women. Absconding was surprisingly prevalent; one in ten fled. Eleven absconding wives took their hus bands along.” The largest single operation covered in the study concerned a 37-year-old woman who had been secretary and treasurer for an investment banking concern in Oklahoma for eight years. She was married and earned S4OO a month. The average wage for all the 400 women, by the way, was $97 a month. This woman had entire charge of running the office and her employers had complete faith in her; she had worked in the same position for eight years. Her husband earned SSOOO a year. The company went into bank ruptcy when her defalcation was dis covered. She immediately hired an able criminal lawyer and refused to talk. It was known that she had used the money entirely for speculation and to purchase property; she embezzled a quarter of a million dollars. She was convicted and sent to prison.
Zebulon Record (Zebulon, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 15, 1937, edition 1
13
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75