Galoots and Gentle Grafters
BLUM, ALBERT A.
Galoots and Gentle Grafters The Operators. By Frank Gibney. Harper. 284 pp. $3.95. Reviewed by Albert A. Blum Assistant Professor of Social Science, Michigan State University GALOOTS ARE...
...It is a needy antidote to those who think corruption exists only in the labor movement or among members of "lower classes" and who would ignore corruption in business, or gray-flannel immorality, as having ended in the 19th century with the death of the robber barons...
...Gibney describes the stinking smell of corruption but he does not really suggest how we might get rid of the noxious odors...
...One prong would be the Government, where the appropriate agencies should be given more effective laws—but more important, money—to insure that those who are breaking or evading the law are likely to be caught and stopped...
...Before picking up Gibney's book, all but the self-righteous ought to take off their halos and quietly put them aside, for somewhere in this book will be something the reader has done, or at some time wished he had done...
...Sam Abelman, in The Last Angry Man...
...Everyone can blame society for his individual corruption...
...Although one can say that society is responsible, it is the individual who does the immoral or illegal act...
...And parents are so busy taking their kids to zoos, museums, theaters, picnics, or saying that their child is getting rid of his aggressions and hostilities and is therefore quite healthy when he punches another boy who is not looking, that one cannot hope that they would have the time to deal with ethics...
...Gibney (and others) are still around, and equally angry...
...If Gibney's book shocks us into a desire to make the ubiquitous operator less present in all aspects of American life, then a two-pronged attack is at least necessary...
...A galoot is "a guy who thinks the world owes him a living...
...Robber barons still live today, as this book well demonstrates, despite all the articles on ethics and management that flood the Harvard Business Review...
...He was not the "last angry man...
...Thus, if we don't submit honest income tax returns, it is not because we do not want to, but it is because everyone else is doing it...
...Both are Frank Gibney's "operators...
...Reviewed by Albert A. Blum Assistant Professor of Social Science, Michigan State University GALOOTS ARE EVERYWHERE, complained Dr...
...The operator is at home in our society...
...We are embarrassed to discuss ethics with our young people...
...Sam Abelman might have been after his bitter fight with the world's galoots...
...School teachers rarely have their pupils try to evaluate the difference between right and wrong...
...If we leave the blame at society's doorstep, we somehow absolve ourselves of responsibility and even of the need for any action...
...Even our most bitter critics of whatever they mean by conformity in American life, are no doubt conformists about evading income taxes...
...Gibney, a writer for popular magazines, has difficulty in defining exactly what an operator is: He is someone who operates both within and without the law: he "thrives on moral, not to say legal sleight-of-hand": he is, and this is why the term is so difficult to define, nearly every man...
...Abelman's galoot is O. Henry's "gentle grafter" ("whenever he saw someone else with a dollar in his hand, he took it as a personal grudge if he couldn't take it...
...We make up the "genial society" that not only permits corruption but practices it...
...Religions (particularly their schools) usually do not teach ethics...
...He is part of our genial society—how much a part, Frank Gibney makes quite clear, but though we may be depressed after reading his book, we can at least be comforted, as perhaps Dr...
...But as indicated before, Gibney demonstrates that robber barons are not just a few businessmen trying to move ahead, but nearly all of us...
...It is true that the book focusses most of its attention on the more obvious forms of shady activities: misleading advertisements, consumer fraud schemes, improper medical claims, stock-market operations, con men, income tax evasions and graft...
...they teach ritual...
...And yet it is on these institutions—government, religion, education and family—that our society's ethical basis rests...
...And if he doesn't have it handed to him on a silver platter, he goes after it at someone else's expense...
...they are too busy themselves trying to decide whether Admiral Hyman Rickover or John Dewey is right or wrong—without reading either...
...But the other area of attack is with the individual...
Vol. 43 • October 1960 • No. 38
