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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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jewelry
business—is highly important. The jeweler realizes it. No matter how
jewelry men may disagree among themselves, or seek to outdo the other
in obtaining customers, their conduct with the public usually is above
reproach. A "reliable jeweler" usually is just that.
Foremost
in promoting jewelry retail ethics is Mr. Robert M. Shipley, President
of the Gemological Institute of America. This organization, together
with its affiliate, the American Gem Society, is doing much to educate
the jeweler and to place him on a high professional plane. Leaders of
the profession are enrolled in the American Gem Society, and what is
set forth here about the organization is a summary of its own statement
of aims privately circulated among jewelers. It should be of interest
not merely to the people of the trade (although they should know all
about it) but to the public, for it will enable the diamond-buying
people of the country to know what efforts have been made to protect
them from the unscrupulous and the unethical.
There
was a time when, if a man was a jeweler, he was accepted without
question by his community as being an honest man and—if he were well
established—as possessing all available knowledge regarding his
merchandise. He approached a professional status in the eyes of the
community; his statements were accepted without question; and he liked
to think of the jewelry trade as a profession.
But
recent decades have wrought such drastic changes in merchandising
practice, according to the American Gem Society, that the name
"jeweler" is being increasingly used by men who possess neither the
former ethics nor the former knowledge of their merchandise. To restore
even more than their former status to those jewelers who still wished
to maintain a reputation for strict integrity and for possession
(162)
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