"
In dealing with Heike the individual (or Morse or any other individual),
it is necessary to emphasize the social aspects of his case. The moral
of the Heike case, as has been well said, is "how easy it is for a man
in modern corporate organization to drift into wrongdoing." The
moral restraints are loosened in the case of a man like Heike by
the insulation of himself from the sordid details of crime, through
industrially coerced intervening agents. Professor Ross has made the
penetrating observation that "distance disinfects dividends"; it also
weakens individual responsibility, particularly on the part of the very
managers of large business, who should feel it most acutely. One of the
officers of the Department of Justice who conducted the suit, and who
inclined to the side of mercy in the matter, nevertheless writes: "Heike
is a beautiful illustration of mental and moral obscuration in the
business life of an otherwise valuable member of society. Heike had
an ample share in the guidance of the affairs of the American Sugar
Company, and we are apt to have a foreshortened picture of his
responsibility, because he operated from the easy coign of vantage of
executive remoteness.
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