that he never made any money.

 

Then people sold him a couple of cash registers, and his store went to profit

immediately. He promptly closed the store and went into the cash register

business, creating what became the mighty National Cash Register Company, one of

the glories of its time. “Repeat behavior that works” is a behavioral guide that

really succeeded for Patterson, after he applied one added twist. And so did

high moral cognition. An eccentric, inveterate do-gooder (except when destroying

competitors, all of which he regarded as would-be patent thieves), Patterson,

like Carnegie, pretty well gave away all his money to charity before he died,

always pointing out that “shrouds have no pockets.” So great was the

contribution of Patterson’s cash register to civilization, and so effectively

did he improve the cash register and spread its use, that in the end, he

probably deserved the epitaph chosen for the Roman poet Horace: “I did not

completely die.”

 

The strong tendency of employees to rationalize bad conduct in order to get

rewards requires many antidotes in addition to the good cash control promoted by

Patterson. Perhaps the most important of these antidotes is use of sound

accounting theory and practice. This was seldom better demonstrated than at

Westinghouse, which had a subsidiary that made loans having no connection to the

rest of Westinghouse’s businesses. The officers of Westinghouse, perhaps

influenced by envy of General Electric, wanted to expand profits from loans to

outsiders. Under Westinghouse’s accounting practice, provisions for future

credit losses on these loans depended largely on the past credit experience of