Q. What is the employer to do when an employee of his is addicted to
stealing and is not amenable to correction whether it is by way of
entreaty or the cane?
A.
It may well be that the others too are addicts though they may not
be found out. Observation would show that we are all thieves, the
difference being that most of us are tolerant towards ourselves and
intolerant towards those that are found out and are not of the
ordinary run. What is man, if he is not a thief, who openly charges
as much as he can for the goods he sells? If the reply be that the
buyer is a willing dupe, it begs the question. In reality the buyer
is helpless rather than willing. The stealing referred to is one of
the symptoms of a deep-seated disease of society. It is symptomatic
of the eternal strife between the moneyed few and the many paupers.
Therefore, my advice to the employer will be to remove all
temptations in the way of the thief, to treat him as if he was his
own brother and, when he refuses to yield to any treatment, however
humanitarian it may be, to ask him to go his way. Let the employer
always ask himself whether he would treat his own brother in the
same way at the given stage.
Panchgani,
14-7-'46
Harijan, 21-7-1946