In 1948, when it was still a new concept, Alva Johnston wrote a three-part series on the polygraph and Leonarde Keeler, one of its chief developers. He noted that Keeler and other scientists

don’t like the name “lie detector.” The detection of lies is incidental; primarily, the machine measures emotion. The emotion which it usually registers is fear—fear of exposure and punishment. But the term “lie detector” is here to stay.

And to confirm that last statement, Johnston titled his series, “The Magic of the Lie Detector.” Keeler would have been disappointed by that choice of words. (He must have winced at “magic.”) He knew the limits of his device. But he also knew the polygraph could help in criminal investigations because of the popular misconception that the polygraph could, indeed, recognize any lie.

The most striking thing about the detector is the way that it induces confessions. The majority of suspects and of lying witnesses seem to think that the only logical thing to do is to confess when the detector trips them up. According to the figures of the Chicago Police Detection Laboratory, 75 per cent of those registering deception on the machine confess later.

The polygraph is far from accurate. Personal reactions between suspects vary widely. Any conclusion by an examiner involves subjective interpretation. But even with its limited reliability, the polygraph gave researchers enough information to indicate Americans were less honest than generally assumed. As early as 1931, Keeler was shocked to see how widespread theft and deception was among bank employees. He had been asked to administer polygraph tests to 54 staff members at a bank where $1600 had gone missing.

To his astonishment, twelve of them gave guilty reactions. Nine of them confessed. Horrified, the bank president fire all twelve.

He then sent all candidates for the vacancies to be tested on the lie detector. At this point Keeler got a second and worse shock. Sixty-two per cent of the applicants were found to have stolen from previous employers.

Thousands of employees and applicants have been examined on the lie detector since that time. The average of 62 per cent of dishonesty remains fairly constant for groups in a position to take small sums without great immediate danger of being caught. The percentage is higher in chain stores, where small items can be pilfered without much risk. General lie-detector experiences indicate that a considerable majority of the population will commit petty thefts when the opportunities are frequent and tempting.

The polygraph, already a fixture in pop culture, was the subject of this informative 1944 Post article, "The Magic Lie Detector."

That discouraging 62% was probably accurate, and has stayed fairly constant. In 2010, the National Retail Foundation reported that store and small businesses annually lose $33 billion in theft —60% committed by employees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claims 75% of employees steal from work, most of them repeatedly.

Back in the 1930s and ’40s, before hidden cameras and electronic inventory control, businesses had only a few defenses against employee crime. They repeatedly hired Keeler to tell them how honest their employees were. Again and again, Keeler found petty pilfering, cheating, and deception. But when he tested employees at a summer resort in Northern Michigan, he was startled to find complete honesty among one profession.

It wasn’t the bartenders.

The machine indicated that eleven of the twelve bartenders were guilty of irregularities. They confessed. They had pocketed money that should have gone into the cash register, had short-changed customers and had smuggled out occasional flasks for their own use.

It wasn’t the waiters or cleaning crew.

other employees confessed [to having] stolen from bedrooms, cheated guests, tapped tills and raided hotel supplies.

The island of honesty was found among the gamblers who ran the card and dice tables in the hotel’s casino.

All the gamblers ran 100-per-cent records of honesty. The boss gambler explained the matter to Keeler. Honesty was a part of the technical equipment… The professional staff had to put on their consciences every night, as actors put on their make-up. This particular joint did not cater to the sucker trade. Its customers were sophisticated, big-money players. If there was any cheating going on, they were sure to discover it. The staff couldn’t afford to be anything but scrupulously upright, since a single piece of crookedness might ruin the establishment. They couldn’t get along without honesty, no matter how much they hated it.

The number of cheats may be disheartening—at least for the 40% of American employees who never lie or steal. But there is one last discovery that Keeler made in his examinations that offer a slim piece of encouragement.

The lie detector acts as a mechanical conscience. A man who has been tripped up by it knows that he can be tripped up again if he makes another false move.

Getting caught on the lie detector is a sort of moral vaccination, a shot of integrity in the arm. Sir William Osler said that nothing promoted, longevity so much as the early discovery of a trace of organic disease. In the same way, nothing seems to promote honesty so much as the early discovery of a trace of larceny.

In one large retail chain which lost $1,400,000 a year through employee thefts Keeler discovered that 76 per cent of the personnel had been taking property of the company. On re-examination a year later, only 3 per cent of the thieves were found to have repeated. This did not mean, according to Keeler, that the other 97 per cent had got religion or been morally revolutionized, but that they could not bear the humiliation of being detected.

So maybe, with enough detection, there’s still hope for dishonest workers.

Post script: I found this detail from Johnston’s article interesting, if true:

Women usually put up a much better fight against the lie detector than men. They lie more skillfully and stick to a lie with greater resolution. As Keeler analyzes his experiences, it is not that a woman is naturally more dishonest than a man, but that, as a rule, she is a more determined character.

Hard Truths: How The Polygraph Saw Americans The Saturday Evening Post

The national monuments of America carry a wealth of meaning. Visitors get a powerful sense of connection when they visit, or just see, the Lincoln Memorial, the Alamo, or the Iwo Jima memorial. But no monument carries more symbolic meaning than the Statue of Liberty. Yet she, too, had to accumulate meaning over many years.

When she was unveiled in 1886, “Liberty Enlightening The World” was a remarkable feat of engineering, and a powerful testament to the historic ties between France and the United States. But her future was uncertain. She survived by working as a tourist attraction and, more importantly, a light house.

She started to seriously represent the spirit of freedom as she became the first thing that the flood of post-1886 immigrants saw in the new world: America’s great, silent sentinel, rising up in the western waters.

For many GIs in the world wars, she was the last, memorable glimpse of the states. She became a powerful, almost haunting image of home and all it stood for. Seeing her again would be their assurance that they’d made it home.

Blake Ehrlich visited Miss Liberty for an article he wrote in 1948. There, he struck up a conversation with another tourist — a young Japanese-American veteran.

'Lighted by a system of incandescent and mercury vapor lamps, the torch is a beacon to approaching ships. Here a workman replaces a wind-smashed bulb.' - from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' - January 17, 1948

“First visit to the statue?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I was here yesterday too. I’ve only got three days. Got to get back tomorrow.”

He was from Milwaukee, a student at Marquette. His outfit had been shipped to the New York zone for overseas embarkation.

“I thought that would be my chance to see the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t get out of camp into New York before we sailed, though, and when we shipped out, it was from down the bay somewhere, or maybe Brooklyn. Anyhow, there was a blackout and it was night, and we were kept below decks. Just didn’t have a chance.

“Well, when we got orders to come home from the ETO (European Theater of Operations), I thought sure this time I’d see the Statue of Liberty. I was really excited; it would have meant more this time. Because, you know, whether you’ve seen the statue or not, overseas you never forget about her. But the Army landed us at Norfolk. Then separation center and home and school. But I finally made it. I’ve had a good long look.”

I told him his story might be good for this article, and I asked his name.

“It’s Joe,” he said, and grinned. “Just put me down as Joe.”

During this visit, Ehrlich was dismayed at the condition of the island and the statue. It had been named a National Monument in 1924, but had been poorly maintained. The island was overgrown and cluttered with refuse from previous military use.

'Anna McManus removing lipsticked initials from the interior of the statue. A cage recently erected around the spiral stairway forestalls many scribbling initials.'- from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' January 17, 1948

A visit to the statue may disappoint you today. Of the two acres not forbidden to the public, almost all the area is occupied by the base of the statue. What it doesn’t stand on, you can. The cluttered remainder of the island will continue to spoil the scene until $1,000,000 can be found to finish the plan.

There’s no indication that this particular $1,000,000, or any part of it, will be forthcoming from an economy-pledged Congress, which slashed the National Park budget by three fifths this year. If this were a commercial enterprise, improvement could be financed with profits, for earnings derived from concession licenses and elevator fares generally exceed its $65,000 share of the Park Service fund. But the Government maintains it isn’t in the business of making profits, and all collected moneys go to the Treasury’s General Fund, instead of reverting to the Park Service.

The service has scheduled the improvements in $5000 units, but since the cost of one unit is almost enough to pay unemployment benefits to five veterans for a year, the Government has remained unmoved by the embarrassed pleas of the statue’s superintendent.

The statue continued to get by with basic maintenance, but she was showing her age. Then, in 1983, a $62 million campaign was launched to give the her a major renovation. Over the next three years, workers cleaned the statue’s copper skin, replaced the torch flame, and removed the original metal ribs, replacing them with Teflon-coated pieces of stainless steel.

What is true for the Statue of Liberty is true for the Principle of Liberty. It is only after years of neglect, and the prospect of disaster, that Americans take action and preserve what they can never replace.

Post Script

Has there ever been a love-hate relationship like that between America and France?

We were blood brothers during the Revolutionary War, when they gave us the arms, money, training, and ships we needed to win our independence. But within 20 years, we were considering declaring war on them. Then, in 1812, they were our ally again. Then they were trying to establish an empire in Mexico, and we were trying to steal their global markets.

The world wars came, along with the American complaint “We liberated France and they’re not grateful enough.” (In fact, we only waged war when we felt Germany threatened us. America might never have raised a single rifle if the goal was simply to liberate France.)

The acrimony continues today. France, it seems, is an easy country for some Americans to dislike. It’s stubbornly foreign. Its people refuse to speak English. Its government won’t join in our wars. They’re arrogant. And they don’t like us, for some reason.

This weekend, if you think about “Liberty Enlightening The World,” remember that its concept, design, and creation all came from France. The statue was the tribute of the people of France, who wanted to proclaim their solidarity with the American republic and their admiration for the bloody cost we paid to end slavery.

France and America will always have differences. The Statue of Liberty, though, will endure.

Read “The Lady We Can’t Afford to Forget” [PDF].

Learning to Appreciate Liberty The Saturday Evening Post