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MURDER IS HER HOBBY

A gentle 77-year-old. dowager is New England’s top criminologist and the creator of Harvard’s famous “nutshell studies” of unexplained death.

By John N. Makris

MRS. FRANCES LEE, who is a captain in the New Hampshire State Police and the only woman in the United States to hold such an active rank, has become, as a result of an unusual and non-paying hobby, a pioneer in the application of medical science to crime detection.

Her amazing series of model crime settings, which Mrs. Lee builds with the aid of a carpenter at her Littleton, N. H., estate, are housed in a special room at Harvard University’s Department of Legal Medicine, which she founded and endowed and which is the first and only one of its kind in North America.

Resembling shadow boxes, the models are built into the walls and are illuminated under glass in the darkened room. Above each model is furnished such general information as the “investiga- tor” would probably obtain before determining the nature of death.

The “investigators” who attend Harvard’s seminars in homicide are medical examiners, pathologists, coroners, city and town police officers, and state police. Mrs. Lee’s models serve to instruct them in the niceties of observation.

Mrs. Lee takes anywhere from three to four months to complete each model. The crimes selected for the groups are based on true cases, though various aspects are cleverly disguised so as to prevent the well-informed investigator from guessing the solution.

Mrs. Lee’s crime nutshells, say veteran officers who have viewed them, really take the place of actual experience. She goes to unbelievable lengths to achieve effects. She builds barns, houses, every kind of setting—and fur- nishes them with lifelike, third-dimension realism. She uses special lights and special magnifying lenses on her glasses while working on the models, handling dental and watchmaker’s tools like an expert.

Mrs. Lee even has to scale down her needle and thread and the size of her stitches when fashioning sweaters, lace work on dresses, chair backs, doilies, bedding, or when knitting the stockings worn by the female figures in her models. The knitting needles she uses, each smaller than a common pin, are the tiny ones used by Belgian women in lacemaking.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about her models is that the doors actually open, bureau drawers open, window shades roll up, stove lids lift, books open and have printed pages, and costumes are complete even to underwear. In one of the miniature settings is a state trooper who is only five inches tall. The whistle hanging around his neck can be blown. The pencil in his hand is made from the point of a toothpick but, incredibly, it has lead in it.

A door, no larger than a postage stamp, shows a bullet hole in the screen. Like everything else in Mrs. Lee’s amazing models, the bullet hole is exactly in scale. On the floor in a model kitchen is a miniature red wooden mousetrap. It works.

Mrs. Lee wants no distracting “phony-ness” in her details.

“Nutshell studies,” explains Mrs. Lee, “are not presented as crimes to be solved. They are, rather, designed as exercises in observation and evaluating indirect evidence, especially that which may have medical importance. Through ignorance, in many cases, important evidence has been destroyed.”

To emphasize such ignorance in detection, one of Mrs. Lee’s models shows two rooms that are apparently identical. One of the rooms shows how it was 80 minutes after a police officer has entered it. The cop has committed more than 30 major errors, plus a score of minor ones.

Each nutshell crime model is also a distinctive period setting. There is a country living room of the present day with miniatures of the New York Times and the Littleton Courier on the floor by a vacant armchair pulled up before a fireplace. The mastheads of the newspapers are perfectly reproduced. A tiny ashtray on a table no larger in circumference than the eraser of a pencil is filled with diminutive cigarette butts.

One of her models depicts a barn hanging. The lumber used to build this barn came from a 200-year-old barn on her Littleton estate that had been blown down during a bad storm. She had her carpenter slice the wood paper-thin, take off the inside and the outside, throw away the middle and put them together again, sandwich fashion, to retain their authenticity.

The farm tools displayed in this model, no longer than a common pin, are perfectly fashioned. The saw is razor-sharp and will draw blood if handled improperly. The ox yoke in the barn is a soft, weathered blue that comes only with time and exposure to the elements. Carrying out her lifelike effects further in this particular model, Mrs. Lee covered the ceiling of the barn with actual cobwebs and dust and saw to it that the corpse hanging from the beam really turned.

The wallpaper in many of her models is perfectly reproduced and it often takes a whole roll to paper one of her miniature rooms. A divan has real springs and a mattress.

Mrs. Lee’s father was John Jacob Glessner, a vice-president and director of the International Harvester Company. This, and other affluent connections, should explain how Mrs. Lee can spend so much on her special hobby. Quite early in life she acquired a taste for things in miniature, began making models of such groups as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the famous Flonzaly quartet. Her interest in legal medicine and crime detection developed through her friendship with Dr. George Burgess Magrath, a Harvard classmate of her brother who came to be New England’s foremost medical examiner. Since approaching President Lowell of Harvard many years ago about starting the University’s department of legal medicine Mrs. Lee has given the department nearly half a million dollars besides uncountable time and devotion to her tiny tableaux of unexplained death that sharpen the observation power of serious students of crime. •

Portable Auto Jail Houses Fugitive

A NEW style in portable “hoosegows” was set by an Oklahoma police official when he built a steel cage on the back of his passenger auto. The “jail” was used to bring back a fugitive who had escaped from the McAlester, Okla., prison. He had been recaptured by Pittsburgh, Pa., police.

Alex Watson, transfer agent of the prison, drove 1,000 miles to bring back the prisoner. The “jail” was made by ripping off the lid of the luggage compartment of a regular coupe automobile and screwing down an sill-welded steel cage. An awning protected the prisoner from the sun, and a cushion provided the interior “comforts” of the jail. The prisoner was released from the cage for brief exercise periods throughout the trip.

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Confessions of a Car Thief

By No. 75149

State Prison of Southern Michigan When the manuscript of this story arrived at the editorial offices of Ml, it created something of a stir. While it warned car owners of the danger of theft and even described specific ways to avoid theft, there was the possibility that some twisted minds might be able to use it as a sort of primer for crime. Well, after careful consideration and some strategic deletions, the editors have decided that the good this story can do far outweighs any possible harm. So, here it is—-advice to car owners from a guy who got caught.

IT wasn’t too good as opportunities go— but here was a chance to make a fast $50. The shiny Cadillac was parked in the front driveway of a home in a newly settled area. The porch light that bathed the car in a soft yellowish glow revealed that the windows were open and on the seat lay an expensive camera, a ladies’ purse and a man’s top-coat.

A thief, not satisfied with just these items, entered the car and callously dismantled the radio. The clock, special rear-view mirror, cigarette lighter and compass were also deftly taken.

Was he caught? No. Because the owner was too busy enjoying himself at a party less than 30 feet away.

An isolated instance? Not at all—it happens every day. There were almost 200,000 thefts of cars last year and over a million cases of larceny, many involving thefts from cars. I am as much surprised as anyone to read those figures and I’m an ex-car thief myself. This is big business, breaking into cars and stealing your belongings.

A fellow inmate once told me that cars were the stepping stones to crime. As an example, just walk around for a short while. You’re bound to find several cars that not only have the windows open or the doors unlocked but have something of value carelessly left in plain view on the seat. The streets of America present a veritable Shangri-La for the car thief and pilferer.

Once, in my criminal days, a group of us banded together to increase our income from crime. We held bull sessions and talked over ways to overcome the obstacles we met.

Jimmy, a nice looking lad from a good neighborhood, had a new gimmick—new to him anyway. “We’ve just been taking the milk that’s easy to get,” he said. “These will help us to get some of the cream that’s locked up.”

He held up two innocuous tools. They looked like screw drivers to me but somehow they were different. Both were thin and flat, yet they were well tempered and strong. I noticed that as I handled them. The first had a spade-shaped blade on the end. It was used to pry open the wing ventilator and to press in the lock release button at the same time, if the car had one. The other had a curved hook on its end. “You use this to lift up the handle after the button’s pushed in,” Jimmy said. “From then on, it’s a cinch—just reach in and open the door.” So, I saw that an innocent screw driver can lead a Jekyll-Hyde existence. .

The gang was getting wise. Already they had learned the value of watching for cars with vents closed but not locked. They knew enough to look for a small crack that let air in to ventilate a locked car and the lock button that stood high on the window indicating the door was unlocked.

Al remarked one night that a salesman, who worked for an electrical appliance store, never closed his garage doors. The boys went out and scouted that particular neighborhood. The next day’s papers reported that the salesman had lost $250 worth of appliances. Three other car owners had lost radios, heaters and other accessories and personal items from their automobiles.

Jimmy told about one of the jobs. “The garage doors were open just like you guys said but the jerk had locked the car. I thought I was stumped until I noticed the back window was rolled down about half an inch. So, I just took the wire and opened the door from the inside. The guy must have been on a picnic. There was a bunch of stuff in there—a portable radio, too. What a beaut.” He held it up for our inspection.

The wire was an old wire coat hanger, straightened out with a circular loop at one end and a sort of handle formed by the wire at the other. I asked Jimmy what he would have done if the door handle had to be pressed down instead of lifted up to open the door. “That’s easy,” he replied. “I would have put the loop around the window crank and then rolled the window down by manipulating the wire.”

The car thief has his art down to a science now. A new gadget that seems to be coming into popular use is made from a six-volt door buzzer. It looks like a gun but has a thin steel plate extending about two inches straight out from its box-like handle. Above this plate is a very strong, thin steel wire which is vibrated by the buzzer. Inserted into the door lock and operated by dry cells carried either in the pocket or in a brief case, the tumblers of the lock rapidly vibrate up and down and a gradual turning pressure is exerted through the narrow steel plate. It is only a matter of a few short moments and most locks will give in to the confused juggling of their tumblers.

Every day, perplexed-looking car owners walk into police stations. “I don’t see how anyone could have stolen the car. It was locked and I have the keys right here,” they say dangling a key case in evidence. How was the car stolen? Well, there are several ways it could have been accomplished.

Starting a car engine without the keys really isn’t difficult. In fact, the manufacturers are making it easier year by year. Paper clips, jumper wires and entire units containing a coil and the necessary wiring are used. The method is found in elementary electricity— all that is needed is the simple completion of a circuit.

The ignition system of your car draws its current from the battery but it does so in a roundabout way. The ignition circuit carries the current from the battery to the starter connection, then to the ammeter on the dash and from the ammeter to the ignition switch. When the switch is in the on position, the current flows to the primary connector on the coil. Any connections which will introduce current between the coil and the ignition switch will complete a circuit and the engine will run.

Some of the newer cars have complicated switches with the starter being operated only when the key is turned past a certain point. Or they have the starter button wired to the ignition switch and the starters will not work unless the ignition is turned on (at least, that’s what it says in the service manuals). A paper clip solves the problem. There are few car thieves who do not know the paper clip’s utility. But Figure 5 on page 60 does describe a way to make it quite a bit more difficult for them.

The jumper wire is simply a piece of wire about three feet long which has electrical clamps at both ends to facilitate quickly clamping it to a terminal. One end of the jumper is fastened to the primary connector on the coil, the other end may be connected to any one of several places under the hood which will supply the necessary current. The battery connections on either the voltage regulator or horn relay, the terminal on either the starter or solenoid or the hot side of the battery itself will do this. A simple snapping of the two clamps and the circuit is complete.

One day I was talking to a fellow down at a garage who told me he wasn’t worried about jumper wires—his car had an armored cable which ran from the ignition switch to the coil and ended in a cover cap on the coil which could not be removed. So I asked him how he thought a mechanic removed the coil to test or replace it. Well, the thief does it the same way—with a thin knife blade which is inserted under the lip of the cover cap and then moved around the circumference of the coil until the small spring which locks the cap in place is released. This operation takes less time than a minute for the car thief. Then, a simple turn to the left and a lift upward removes the cap leaving the prized primary connector exposed.

Some car thieves have told me they prefer to carry their own coils with them. They use high-tension coils which deliver a hot spark and are equipped with strong clips fastened to their case to clamp them on the engine or body, two wires with quick action clamps and a long, high-tension cable to deliver the current to the distributor cap.

Possibly right now a thief is casting covetous glances at your car. What can you do to stop him? Well, the main deterrent to a thief is attraction of attention to his deed. Burglar alarms employing raucous automobile horns are detailed in Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 on page 60. Care should be taken not to overload the ignition or lighting circuits by using horns with too high amperage drains.

I do not advise the use of the horns found on Chrysler-made cars, either dual or single, since they now drain 30 amps each and prior to 1948 they had a drain of 20 to 27 amps. It is very important that you select a low drain horn since in three of the alarm systems the current passes through the ammeter before going to the horn. Excessive current flow will damage that instrument or blow a fuse, nullifying the effectiveness of the alarm.

When purchasing the wire used to connect the various switches and horns, specify 12-gauge exterior duty accessory wire. You should be able to assemble a very suitable alarm to protect your car for $5 or less.

You car owners of America must realize the temptation which you place before thieves whenever your car is left unattended. If each one of you will take all the precautions you possibly can to prevent car theft and pilferage, you’ll not only be protecting your own property but also helping some weak-willed potential thief resist the lure of easy crime. •

Rapid-Fire Gun Spreads Gas over Riot Area

Machine guns that can flood a wide area with tear gas or nauseating gas in a few seconds are the latest recruits to law-enforcement staffs. Forty or fifty feet from the muzzle, the stream of powder has become a cloud of blinding or sickening gas, and the rapid-fire gun can distribute this along a broad front, effectively putting down a riot. The powder shell follows a formula developed by a former army officer. One machine gun shoots twenty-five millimeter gas shells from a round of eighteen that revolves automatically with each pull of the trigger. Another fires a round of twenty-four twelve-gauge shells, and there is a revolver type of light alloy with chambers for five twelve-gauge shells. This is conveniently carried in a holster. The gas is effective a few feet away, yet is declared to have no permanent harmful effect. Only at close range is there danger of powder burns.

Tear Gas Trap for Cash Registers

A NEW device used to spread tear gas has been invented for cash. registers. It is called a “money trap” and discharges a dense cloud of gas into the thief’s face when he tries to rifle the till.

Formed and painted to duplicate a dollar bill, the box-like compartment fits snugly into the cash drawer. Upon its face is a clamp under which the regular bills are placed. When these are removed, the tension on a spring loosens, allowing a lever to snap up and release the gas. It shoots out in a steady spray through an elongated slit on the face of the trap near the right hand corner. The victim is overcome and easily captured by the police.

In use, the “gas trap” is set each night before the proprietor retires. It also proves serviceable during the day, since it will blind a hold-up man.

Reading Modern Mechanix, you’d either think that the word “impossible” meant “unlikely” or that people were way better at designing things than they really were.

French Prison Makes Riots Impossible

A MODEL prison has been built at Fresnes, near Paris, France, where it would be virtually impossible for convicts to plot and execute a riot such as the recent one in the Colorado state penitentiary at Canon City which was the most terrible of several recent uprisings in American prisons.

Whenever French convicts make their rare emergence from solitary confinement in the Fresnes prison they are forced to wear masks or hoods which cover their faces. The hoods permit them to breathe freely and to watch their feet for marching but prevent any possible view of fellow prisoners. In this way the convicts are prevented from recognizing former convict pals and others in confinement for stealthy plotting of jail deliveries or riots. The French prisoners are kept in padded cells and exercised in individual pens. Their work is brought to them in their cells, individual work benches being provided.

This French system contrasts vividly with the American system of providing music, movies, radio entertainment and the like for the entertainment of law violators.

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HOW E-Z MONEY CAN K-O YOU!

Cut-throat moneylenders, charging up to 1000% interest, drive cornered debtors into crime . . .

BY GENE TAYLOR

“DO YOU NEED CASH?” the bright neons ask with a cold glare. “It’s E-Z!”

You can get money in the most unlikely places today, but you’d better beware, brother!

You’re buying trouble with that “personalized small loan” whether you get it over or under the counter. You were broke when you started after it. But you may end up with broken limbs, or even dead in the gutter!

Maybe you’ve been unusually lucky and the day you need a loan is still to come. But, whatever the exact time, odds are you will borrow money at intervals throughout your life!

The blunt truth is that millions of Americans are in the hands of ruthless moneyleaders, paying far too much for loans — because they have to borrow but don’t know where and how.

Those neons and newspaper ads tell you the money tree is just around the the corner. All you have to do is shake it a bit and you get the dough you need.

There are over 8,000 banks specializing in small personal loans. The number of small-loan companies (up to $500 a throw) has increased 72 per cent since 1940 and today has risen to over 8500. In addition, there are innumerable shady operators “ready to help” at a moment’s notice.

Help, indeed! Despite the cool dig- nity of the banks and the occasional decency of a handful of ethical loan companies, moneylending is a cutthroat racket — as Harry Binder of Astoria, New York, could tell you if he were still around.

But Harry Binder is dead!

He cut his own throat — first figuratively when he borrowed money; and then literally, with an old-fashioned razor — when he could no longer pay even the interest a Shylock demanded LIVING ON CREDIT The true-life story of Harry Binder reads like a melodrama with a gruesome ending. It’s the story of something that is happening every day all over the country to thousands of nice people and it could happen to you!

A thick curtain of silence protects these vicious racketeers; “tight money’ and the public’s ignorance is spawning thousands of these free-lancing moneylenders who operate in the sewers of this nation’s complex economic system.

They are called loan sharks!

The name is an insult — to the sharks!

See what such a leech did to Harry Binder!

Harry was one of the millions of Americans who live well but way beyond their means — largely on credit.

Their cockeyed economic existence makes old Ben Franklin turn somersaults in his grave.

These people make good money in salaries and wages. But no matter how much they make they can’t pay the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. They’re in debt up to their necks!

Harry Binder was living on the installment plan — various credit companies actually owned everything he had: his house, furniture, car, appliances, TV set, even his spits and false teeth.

His wife was expecting a third baby, Harry still owed the obstetrician $60 on their first and $110 on their second child.

DEATH SETTLES DEBTS Harry Binder was a walking collateral. In the middle of it, his aged mother got sick. The old lady wasn’t covered by any health insurance and Spender needed cash to meet the additional expense.

He needed two hundred bucks!

He already had a loan on his insurance policy and owed money at his bank. His relatives and friends had no ready money to help him. The additional $200 became a real headache.

Harry worked in Long Island City at one of those firms which make infrared broilers. One day in the shop he confided his plight to a fellow worker. The man told Harry: “I know a guy who could help you!”

He took Harry to a bar on Amsterdam Avenue in midtown Manhattan and introduced him to a dapper, fat little man with a swarthy complexion and a pair of shifty eyes who showed up for the date in a flashy Cadillac convertible.

A deal was made. Harry got his $200, but not quite. He agreed to repay the loan within a month and, in the meantime, he had to pay an interest at the rate of $2 — per day!

The man deducted the first week’s interest from the principal and handed Harry $186.

At the end of the four weeks, Harry had no money to repay the loan. The moneylender was annoyed.

“I need the dough,” he said in his heavily accented English: “Whatsa matter? I need the dough! You’ll have to pay a penalty!”

“Okay,” Harry said. “How much?”

“Five bucks a day till the principal is paid!”

Harry Binder tried to reason with the man, but it didn’t do him any good. “You pay,” the fat guy warned, “or else!”

In this business “or else” means trouble: denunciation at the debtor’s place of work, stones thrown through his windows, molestation of his kids, anonymous calls to his wife, and worse — brutal violence.

After a few weeks, on an original loan of $200, Harry owed the shark a total of $732. Each week his indebtedness increased by $49.

In the end, Harry Binder paid with his life for what he couldn’t pay in money. He disposed of the debt by slashing his throat.

That is one way of settling these leaping debts.

A 23-year-old New York elevator operator named Edward J. Polakowski settled it another way. He harpooned the shark!

He was earning $85 a week, but needed $150 in a lump sum early this year to pay an insurance premium and buy a new suit. He grew up in an area of New York infested with loan sharks. He knew his way around. He borrowed the money from one James Francis Malloy, one of the financial wizards who operate out of shabby West Side bars.

After he had made five weekly payments of $23 each, Ed Polakowski discovered that each $23 represented only interest! He hadn’t reduced the loan principal at all!

Ed persuaded his sister to co-sign a legitimate loan of $300 from a New York bank and last May, he went to Malloy to repay the whole thing. But Malloy told him his debt had ballooned to $550. The shark warned Ed that he’d better keep paying that interest or he would get his limbs broken!

Ed Polakowski had enough. He ambushed Malloy one night, killed him, put his body in a trunk, and addressed it to California via Railroad Express. Polakowski was as inept at murder as he was at borrowing. Malloy’s putrid corpse betrayed him and Ed was quickly caught. The outcome of this experiment in usury is that Malloy is dead and Polakowski is in prison, maybe for the rest of his useful life.

The mess the wretched Binder and the miserable Polakowski made of their lives should be a warning to the countless hundreds of thousands of other fools who are in the clutches of loan sharks now or who are tempted to turn to them. It’s a timely warning!

For the grim fact is that all of a sudden loan sharks are busting out all over the country like a rash. Said one banker: “We don’t know whether it’s a reflection of high living costs, an indication of general unrest, or what. But we’re all terribly concerned about it.”

GANGSTERS DOUBLE AS SHARKS The loan sharks represent a hidden national menace. They are the source of more vicious crimes than passion or human frailties like drinking or gambling. In recent months, banks have been robbed and babies kidnaped by desperate men who have become do-or-die criminals, even murderers, to meet the insatiable demands of the loan sharks who held them in a relentless vise.

Who are these leeches and what makes them tick?

The shadowy character Ed Polakowski killed wasn’t quite typical of the professional moneylender. A house-painter from Philadelphia, a bitter and lonely man, Malloy became a “six-for-five man.” He had a morbid obsession about making a “cool million.”

He started out with $2500, but never really amounted to anything, despite the 1000 per cent interest rate he charged his hapless clients. At the time of his sudden death, Malloy’s bank account contained $250 and a diamond ring he once bought for a gal who jilted him.

Regular loan sharks, these parasites of the last resort, are actually gangsters with every characteristic of the fraternity from cauliflower ears to sawed-off machine guns. Many are actively engaged in some criminal activity and do loan-sharking as a profitable sideline, to compound their illegitimate earnings.

In Harlem, the biggest numbers racketeers double as loan sharks. In Dallas, Texas, several minions of the notorious Benny Binion are eking out a good living by loaning money at 1040 per cent. In midtown New York, a racketeer whose main line is shaking down garages also thrives as a moneylender with rates ranging from 350 to 800 per cent.

STOP SHORT OF MURDER He’s the aristocrat of the profession. He never appears in any of his transactions. He operates with “dealers” and collects with ex-members of the Mafia. There is plenty of rough stuff in the wake of those seasoned collectors.

The New York police estimate that a substantial portion of Manhattan violence short of homicide — muggings and stabbings — is attributable to them. These are the “dunning notes” the sharks send out. They are careful to stop short of murder, however. After all, they don’t want to kill off the geese that lay the golden eggs.

Unorganized, unlicensed and unscrupulous, loan sharks are lone wolves. They operate singly, with out-of-the-pocket loans. They hang out in shady bars, seedy barber shops and crummy cigarette stores, waiting for touts to bring in the customers.

The basic idea is never to let a borrower repay the principal, but keep him on a chain by extracting stifling interest from him that exhausts his financial resources.

In Alabama and Mississippi, loan sharking is a means for bringing about modern form of peonage. Money is loaned to a worker to tie him down. As long as he owes money, he cannot move out of town and isn’t even permitted to leave his job. The runaway debtor is today as common a figure in the South as the runaway slave once was.

In the wake of the frightful Polakowski scandal, a prominent New York financial writer pointed out that Ed could have gotten the money he needed from other, more legitimate sources without mortgaging his body and sou) to Malloy the Shark.

In fact, however, most of the “legitimate sources” are also loan sharks in a real sense, except that they are licensed and have, a respectable front. Because of the absence of effective Federal curbs and the laxity of State legislation these legit loan sharks flourish everywhere, and especially in the twelve states which have no pertinent legislation. They put a glass of respectability on usury, but they are loan sharks in all but name.

Texas is among the worst! The Dallas Better Business Bureau warned against the spurious moneylenders when it found rates as high as 1,131 per cent, with the average 271 per cent.

But Texas is unregulated and deuces are wild. Things are a little better in the regulated states. The usual interest rate allowed the legit small loan companies is an average of 3 per cent per month on the unpaid balance, or 36 per cent a year. The licensed moneylender is no Good Samaritan and he’s the first to concede it.

“I get by,” one of them told this TOP SECRET reporter. “What the hell, it’s a business! It’s an institution! America is built on credit, and we are doing our part.”

DETOUR TO PAWNBROKER Big profits on small loans attract plenty of newcomers to the business. In a single year 510 new firms joined the already swollen national small loan field. There are now 186 in Manhattan alone. The biggest, the “international” Household Finance Corporation, now has over 800 branches, in forty states.

It was held up by the above-mentioned financial writer as one of the few ethical loan companies. According to her, if Ed Polakowski had borrowed the $150 he needed from HFC instead of that louse Malloy, for a year, his monthly payments would have come to $14.50 all told, instead of $23 a week just for interest. His interest for the whole year would have been $24.72 against the $23 he had to pay Malloy for just one single week.

A $500 loan (the maximum) with HFC, to be repaid in twenty-four months, costs $125 or about 25 percent of the borrowed principal. In a sense it is an unsatisfactory loan and by normal banking standards, the HFC is a glorified “loan shark” despite its smooth front. The same $150 for which HFC would charge a rate of $24.72 interest a year would have cost Ed Polakowski only $6.38 over the same period at a bank. The $500 loan which cost more than $125 at HFC, costs only about $30 at a bank.

Still, the 860 branches of HFC are crowded, as are the other small loan companies. Last year more than 8000 moneylenders in thirty-eight states peeled off $3 billion to ten million customers, at monthly rates ranging from 2 per cent in Massachusetts to 31/2 per cent in Arizona, New Mexico and Florida. What does this mean?

It means that at least ten million Americans are in the clutches of loan sharks (legitimate or not), using $3,000,000,000 of their money and paying them an annual $1,000,000,000 A detour on the way to the loan shark is a trip to the pawnbroker. This is widely regarded as the least desirable of the legitimate sources, often as bad as an underground loan shark You must turn over your asset to the pawnbroker during the life of the loan. Ordinarily, he’ll lend you only 60 per cent of the auction value of your possession, and he charges from $24 to $120 on a $100 loan for 12 months Let’s see how this operates in the case of a $100 typewriter pawned with broker in mid-Manhattan. Its auction value being about $40, the pawnbroker gives a maximum of $25 on it. There is a flat 50 cent charge for some obscure purposes of “protection,” $4.50 interest for the first six months and $3 for the rest — a total of $8, or 35 per cent of the vastly reduced loan-value of the pawned article And yet, because of their liberal loan policies and flexible human relations, small-loan companies and pawnbrokers are necessary evils, available in dire emergencies — at a price.

Loan sharks are different! They feed on ignorance, despair, stupidity and fear. They exist mainly because so many Americans simply fail to realize the true nature of the racket.

Think of Harry Binder and Ed Polakowski! Think twice before you approach these despicable creatures, no matter how badly you need dough.

You’re flirting with ruin or death when you borrow money from a shark!

Battery Flashlight Gives Positive Gun Sight in Darkness

A GUN sight for night firing, which may be attached to any revolver or pistol, has recently been patented and will soon be marketed by Ray Helm of Chicago, Ill.

The device, which has been especially designed for night police duty, consists of six small powerful condensers, an electric bulb, a special reflector, and a switch to make contact with small batteries.

When the gun is aimed and the switch pressed by the thumb of the gun hand the light indicates where the bullet will strike. The light carries for 250 feet and reflects on the target a light round spot about the size of a baseball at the point where the bullet will hit.

The sight is accurate up to its full range on large calibre arms, as the point blank range, for which no allowance need be made for gravity, is usually about this distance. On smaller arms it would be necessary to aim the light a few inches above the point for which the bullet is intended.

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HOW POLICE CAMERAS REVEAL Hidden Crime Clews

By GROVER C. MUELLER

DUSK was closing down on a midwestern city when a black roadster rolled to a stop on a deserted side street. A man wearing a slouch hat stepped out, looked up and down the street, and then slipped to the rear of a neighboring store. In one hand he carried a small box wrapped in newspapers. A moment later, he returned and drove hurriedly away.

Thirty minutes passed. Then, like a clap of thunder magnified a thousand times, a blast shook the business district. The end of the store was blown to kindling. Windows for a block around shattered into fragments. The box had held a time bomb filled with high explosives. Fortunately, the intended victim had stepped to the front of his store and escaped without a scratch.

All night long, detectives combed the ruins looking for clews. They photographed the debris. They made casts of footprints found back of the store. They recorded the marks left by tires on the side street. Most important of all, they retrieved fragments of the box which had held the bomb. One piece contained a finger hold characteristic of chalk boxes used in public schools. This was a valuable clew. But it was another fragment which provided the astonishing piece of evidence that solved the crime.

Under a magnifying glass, one of the detectives noticed what appeared to be faint printing on the piece of wood. He hurried to the photographic laboratory at police headquarters. Here, the expert in charge of the crime-fighting cameras slipped a filter over his lens, adjusted photoflood lamps to throw a strong side lighting on the wood, and snapped the picture.

Detectives crowded around him as he lifted the dripping negative from the developing bath. On it, faint but legible, was printing from a newspaper. The explosion had forced the wood against the paper so violently that an impression of the printing was left on the box fragment. It proved to be part of an item published in a paper in a neighboring city only twelve hours before the blast. This clew led directly to a known enemy of the storekeeper, a school janitor in that city. Confronted by detectives, he confessed his crime.

This amazing instance is but one of many in which photography has played a leading role in solving major crimes. The scientific sleuth of today is depending more and more upon the round, gleaming eye of the camera to search out hidden clews. He has gone photographic, and is using everything from huge color-movie outfits to miniature cameras, from highly magnified enlargements to candid snapshots, to trail and convict his man.

Only a few days ago, in New York City, a camera which “saw” something invisible to human eyes led to the conviction of a murderer. A week before, radio cars had raced to an outlying tavern in response to an emergency call. They found a man stabbed to death. The assailant had made his escape. When a suspect was being questioned at police headquarters, a week later, the photographer who had just “mugged” him noticed a peculiar thing about the picture. The faint outlines of a stain appeared on the freshly laundered shirt the man was wearing. Questioned about it, the suspect became confused, gave conflicting statements, and finally broke down. During the struggle with the victim, his shirt had been stained with blood. It had been washed out, but the faint, remaining discoloration, unnoticed by the eye, had been recorded by the supersensitive panchromatic film in the camera.

In another instance, the same type of film revealed an overlooked bloodstain on a carpet. In examining a room where a murder was thought to have been committed, detectives shot pictures from different angles for later reference. When they studied the developed films, they discovered the outlines of the stain. Although the carpet had been washed carefully, the discoloration was apparent to the camera.

Such films, sensitive to red as well as to other colors, are a boon to the crime fighters. Old types of film were “colorblind” to red. Recently, a new photographic emulsion, said to be four times as fast as that (Continued on page Ilk) used on previous films, has been made available to photographers. With such films and the fast lenses now available, a detective can take pictures which are fully exposed, and yet stop all action even on dark or rainy days or in comparatively dim interiors. It adds greatly to his chances of getting his man—on film.

THE latest color films are also playing a part in convicting the guilty. Not long ago, a jury was sitting on a case in which a child had been beaten atrociously. Conviction was quick after colored movies were admitted to the evidence. They revealed the discolored flesh where the little girl had been struck again and again.

But the camera is as quick to free the innocent as it is to convict the guilty. Take one striking instance reported from a western state.

A woman was on trial for the murder of her husband. Her story was that he came home drunk and threatened her with a revolver. During the struggle on the front lawn, she swore, the gun went off accidentally and he was killed. The district attorney, however, maintained that she shot him as he came up the walk, firing from inside the house through a screen door. The whole case hinged on proving or disproving this latter statement.

The trial reached its climax when defense attorneys handed the jury a sheaf of photographs. Each was the picture of a bullet. All except one had crisscrossing marks in the lead. Time after time, the bullets had been fired through screens into oak boards. In spite of the fact that the wood is far harder than a human body, the recovered bullets always retained the imprint of the wire mesh. Yet, the photograph of the fatal bullet showed no such markings. The camera, more clearly than hours of talking, proved that the lead which killed the victim could not have been fired through the screen door. The case for the prosecution collapsed; the woman was given her freedom.

THE whole science of forensic ballistics, or tracing bullets to the guns that fired them, is based on taking pictures through comparison microscopes. In many other ways, the camera records in permanent form the findings of the different sciences applied to criminology. It records fingerprints, scars and wounds, the position of footprints, teeth marks, forgeries, mutilated documents, and other pieces of evidence which aid in the solution of crimes.

Recently, newsreels have helped identify rioters, and fast cameras have snapped “repeaters” at the polls. One of the latest applications of photography to police work is the assembling of large albums of pictures, showing hundreds of known pickpockets, footpads, and other underworld characters who follow fairs and conventions. By familiarizing themselves with the faces of these undesirables, the local police in a city where an exposition or convention is to be held can increase their chances of nabbing criminals before they can get into action.

Trapping insurance racketeers is another phase of the camera work of modern detectives. One example will illustrate the methods used.

IN Maryland, a mason took out a large I accident-insurance policy. Only a few weeks later, he reported he had had a bad fall and had injured his right arm so severely he was no longer able to work. Company physicians examined him. Beyond a few minor bruises, they could find nothing wrong. However, the laborer insisted he could bend his elbow only with extreme pain and demanded the payments called for in the policy.

This was the situation when a camera detective, employed by the company, reached the town in which the mason lived. For days, he shadowed the quarry with his miniature outfit slung in its ever-ready case. Always, in public, the laborer’s arm remained as stiff as a steel shaft. Early one Sunday morning, however, the injured man appeared in his back yard with a heavy hammer and began pounding down a row of bean poles, unaware that a hidden camera was recording him at work, bending his right elbow without effort at each lift of the hammer. That one set of pictures nipped his attempted fraud in the bud and saved the insurance company hundreds of dollars.

Telephoto lenses, which permit the recording of such pictures from a distance, have been used effectively in several cases. They give close-up views while permitting the photographer to snap the pictures from a distant hideout.

EVEN aerial cameras, pointing down from the sky, are being enlisted in the scientific war on crime. Some months ago, a silver-winged plane zigzagged back and forth across Long Island Sound while the aerial camera it carried snapped picture after picture. It was recording “submarine” shots in search of a vital clew in a kidnap case. The resulting negatives recorded objects lying many feet below the surface of the water. Although this sky hunt failed to reveal the body of the victim, the unusual procedure opens up new possibilities for rapid searches of the kind. Photographs taken from an altitude often reveal valuable clews not evident to the ground observer.

Occasionally, luck as well as foresight plays a part in solving crimes by photography. When a policeman was making his rounds in the park of a large eastern city, not long ago, he discovered a girl slumped on a bench, one arm hanging limply, a revolver resting on the ground below the lifeless hand. It had all the appearances of a routine case of suicide.

And so it remained until the police photographer developed the negatives of pictures he had taken at the spot. In the slanting rays of the early morning sun, a faint covering of dew stood out clearly on the bench. And, on the seat next to the girl, there were revealed sharp outlines in the dew that proved beyond doubt that some one had been sitting there shortly before the policeman had arrived. Detectives abandoned their suicide theory and turned to a check-up of the girl’s acquaintances. As a result of this hunt, the murderer was identified, captured, and brought to trial.

IN Rio de Janeiro, an Englishman was accused of the murder of a Brazilian acquaintance with whom he had quarreled violently a few days before. On the day of the victim’s death, their differences apparently had been patched up and the two went sailing together in a small boat in the harbor of the city. When the boat returned to its mooring, the Brazilian was dead. He had been killed, the Englishman said, by a fall from the masthead to the deck.

Police, however, noted that a heavy oar was missing from the boat’s regular equipment. Medical experts testified that death resulted from a blow on the head which could easily have been administered by the oar. Details of the quarrel were aired in court and the case looked hopeless for the Englishman until defense attorneys introduced one of the most remarkable pieces of evidence ever produced in court. It was an enlargement from a casual snapshot made by a tourist.

On the day of the Brazilian’s death, a cruise ship had steamed into the harbor at Rio. One of the passengers, impressed by the view, snapped the picture with his camera. When the film was developed and enlarged, it contained positive evidence that the Englishman’s story was true and insured his acquittal. For the film revealed a dark blotch on the sail of a boat which, by sheer chance, had been within the camera’s range. The enlargement proved that the dark spot was the body of a man falling from the masthead past the white sail to the deck!

THUS, by chance and by design, the camera is playing a vital part in furthering justice. It is a powerful new weapon in the hands of the police, a weapon which is being used for new tasks from month to month, a weapon the underworld does not know how to fight. Every criminal who hides his face from the piercing eye of a camera, pays tribute to its worth as a potent aid on the side of law and order.

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CONEY ISLAND — Which Way’s the Ocean?

BY MURRAY ROBINSON – ILLUSTRATED BY LOWELL HESS.

They call this beach The Poor Man’s Riviera, but on any hot Sunday substitute Bedlam-by-the-Sea. It’s also the only known habitat of certain species yet unclassified by science—like the knish bootlegger THE defendant in Coney Island Magistrates’ Court one muggy midsummer morning was a squat, balding man in a sport shirt. He listened impatiently as the charge against him was read: A startled policeman had found him on the jammed beach fetchingly attired in a woman’s ofF-the-shoulder dress, and had given him a summons for “causing a crowd to collect.”

“How do you plead?” asked the bridgeman, a court attendant who acts as liaison between judge and public. At that, the defendant leaped hoarsely into legal battle with four fighting words that are heard every day of the week at the seaside tribunal: “Guilty with an explanation.”

Magistrate Charles E. Ramsgate peered down at him from the bench. “All right,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

“I put on a dress, it was my wife’s,” the defendant explained, “because people shouldn’t see.”

“Shouldn’t see what?” the court prompted patiently.

“People shouldn’t see,” the defendant said, “I am taking off my bathing suit and putting on my pants under the dress. My suit was all wet.”

“So is your explanation,” the court said severely. “You have just admitted you were changing your clothes on the beach—and that’s another violation.”

The defendant fell into a clinch. “All right,” he said hastily, “so I just put on my wife’s dress for fun, and . . .”

“Five dollars,” the court said.

Thus, in typically piquant fashion, began another day in the enchanting history of Coney Island Magistrates’ Court, a tiny tribunal serving a resort which will have been visited by 40.000,000 persons from all over the world between May and October of this year, according to the estimate of its chamber of commerce.

On any hot Sunday, July Fourth or Labor Day, some 1,500,000 men, women, and children swarm all over the beach, boardwalk and amusement areas of The Poor Man’s Riviera. The New York City Park Department, which operates the beach and boardwalk, covering 7,000,000 square feet of sand and board, says every visitor to its domain on such days has just nine square feet of ground to call his own, figuring the crowd at around 750,000. The other 750,000 visitors to the Island jam Surf Avenue, the Bowery and the resort’s side streets.

Numbered among these visitors is a host of summer roomers who annually descend on the Island (which isn’t really an island, but a peninsula; a tidal creek separating it from Brooklyn was filled in years ago). The population leaps from a wintertime 95,000 to a summertime 250,000, through rentals of flats, bungalows, apartments, hotels and furnished rooms. And in Coney Island, even the roomers have roomers.

But it’s the antlike swarming on the beach and boardwalk—running up against a seemingly endless list of “Don’ts” promulgated by the Park Department—that furnishes most of the quaint business of the seaside court.

For instance, another guilty-with-an-explanation case enlivened the proceedings a few days after the man with his wife’s dress made his plea. A woman earned a summons cum laude by washing her little daughter and two bathing suits in a drinking fountain on the beach. This is frowned upon.

“Guilty with an explanation,” she chirped.

“All right. I’m listening,” the court said resignedly.

“I washed my little girl,” the defendant said, “because she was dirty, and I washed the bathing suits because they was full of sand.”

“Very good,” was the verdict. “Ten dollars.”

The court is hidden away on a dingy side street and is virtually unknown to the fun seekers who throng Surf Avenue, the Island’s ancient main stem, a few hundred feet away. Yet to a handful of cognoscenti who have discovered its charm, it rates as a Coney Island attraction on a par with Steeplechase Park, the three-mile beach, the 80-foot-wide boardwalk, salt-water taffy, the Cyclone and Thunderbolt thrill rides, the carrousels, Lane’s Irish House, Professor James Bostwick (“The Man You Will Eventually Ask”), Nathan’s frankfurters, and the World in Wax, where somebody is always stealing the fancy pants off Bing Crosby.

Coney Island Court is one flight up in a faded tan brick-and-sandstone building which has come to be known as the Little Brown Jug at Coney Island. Downstairs in the sixty-year-old edifice is the 60th Precinct police station. It also has four king-sized detention pens, and a large back room used to entertain the children who forever are getting lost at the Island.

In the long ago, the upstairs court, which has 160 seats, saw some pretty tough customers—like the late Frankie Yale, Brooklyn hood, who made his court debut as a punk nabbed for busting up a Surf Avenue poolroom with billiard balls.

But in 1936, according to Chief Clerk Matthew M. Fitzgerald, the court’s grimmer cases, including felonies, were transferred elsewhere. Now it specializes in more flavorsome matters, such as beach and boardwalk violations, tenant-landlord squabbles and neighborhood feuds.

Between 13,000 and 18,000 cases, depending on the weather, humidity and other unpredictable factors, pass through the court every year. Most of them are summer complaints of various kinds. Lawyers are comparatively rare before its bench, and most of its litigants do their own arguing. They are usually well versed in the three R’s—retort, rhetoric and rationalization— and generally try to make regular federal cases out of trivialities. Occasionally, friends and relatives come before the bar to toss in a few opinions. It is all very informal, since no one is sworn in unless a trial pops up, which is seldom. And some of the customers, making their bow before the bench, figure that something fancy is expected, which they deliver.

Candy Store Owner as Lawyer In this latter category was a Coney Island candy store owner who got out a summons for a lady customer. They had become involved in argument and she had splashed him right in the eyeglasses with a rich chocolate drink called an egg cream.

When his case was called, the complainant cleared his throat and began in a heavy, dignified voice: “The party of the first part, that’s her over there, comes into the store of the party of the second part, that’s me, and the party of the first part gives the party of the second part a clop in the eyeglasses with this here egg cream; so .. .”

The judge shook off a numbing fascination, held up his hand, and said: “Please, please. Talk like a candy store owner, not a lawyer.”

Because of the nature of its cases, Coney Island Magistrates’ Court furnishes a unique insight into the manners, customs and boiling points of the myriads who live, or come to play, in The Poor Man’s Riviera. A tolerant, understanding attitude on the part of the regular magistrate is helpful in keeping the little court from turning into a bedlam. But it’s hard for a newcomer.

A judge unfamiliar with the Coney Island spirit snapped, after a bunch of neighbor cases one morning: “People come in here just to improve their neighbors’ manners. I know my duty when a crime has been committed, but I can’t make ladies and gentlemen out of people who aren’t.”

On the other hand. Magistrate Ramsgate, who has presided in the upstairs courtroom for five summers with only brief breathers, recently summed up his views on handling the resort’s cases this way: “When you come to the Island, you’re in a different world. Values change. You have to bear that in mind when you’re judging people here.”

Captain Edward F. Fagan, who has been in charge of the station house on the lower floor of the’ Little Brown Jug since last March, agrees with Magistrate Ramsgate. Captain Fagan, who is forty-three years old and looks completely unlike a policeman, made a brilliant record as head of the New York City Police Laboratory before he went to the Island.

“I wanted to study people instead of clues,” he says, “and this is the place for it.”

Recently he went walking, in sport shirt and slacks, along Coney Island’s Bowery, a miniature carnival midway which is barred to vehicles. One of the Guess Boys, a phony crew who offer to guess your weight, name, occupation, age or anything else as long as you pay them in advance, tapped the captain on the arm.

“How about it, Mac?” the Guess Boy smirked. “I can guess your job.”

“Listen, you mug,” Captain Fagan said. “If you could guess my job, you wouldn’t have stopped me.”

Captain Fagan has a squad of 12 patrolmen in plain clothes, led by Sergeant Charles De Leo, plus a force of five policewomen, to hand out summonses for beach and boardwalk violations. These are called police summonses and like the court summonses obtained by warlike residents of the Island and two other Brooklyn precincts, are returnable in Coney Island Court.

In the seething beach crowds not penetrated by the handful of summons men, 92 lifeguards, eight guard lieutenants and six chiefs keep order as best they can, under the supervision of Charles Haverty of the Park Department. Their first duty is to keep their eyes on the water, which has its own complement of screwballs. But their whistles tweet-tweet almost constantly to warn the more flagrant rule breakers around them in the sand.

The vast majority of police summonses are issued on the beach, which is not so surprising if you’ve ever seen Coney Island on a broiling Sunday in August.

Chief lifeguard Marty Alma, in charge of three of the busiest of the 22 bays, or beach divisions, says the crowds are sometimes so dense that nappers in the middle of the sand get up dazedly and ask, “Which way’s the ocean?”

The way to get living space on the Coney Island Beach, experts say, is to get there early, pick out a spot, and grab it with a hook slide. You can’t go in standing up, because if you do, that’s all the space you’ll get, and it won’t be the nine square feet you’re entitled to. Every kid at Coney knows you take up more room lying down than standing up.

Family groups have a big edge in the competition for Lebensraum because everyone in the family sprawls out as soon as the old man gives the signal to hit the sand. Besides, each member carries something—a blanket, bags of food, folding chairs—with which to establish a land claim. Loners who don’t know the ropes often find themselves standing for hours in the blazing sun, hemmed in by happy, chomping families reclining at their banquets like ancient Romans. The loners can’t even sit down.

Whispering to the Wrong Girl Fights have been started because a lovesick swain thought he was whispering endearingly into the ear of his girl, only to discover he was talking into the ear of the girl next to her, and her boy friend don’t like it. That’s how closely the sand sardines are packed.

Peppered throughout the more well-behaved members of the throng are such prime regulation-busters as ballplayers, and the muscleheads who build human pyramids and go, “Hup!” before sailing through the air. Then there are the lover boys whose idea of courtship is to keep tossing their beloveds into the heavily populated surf. And the comics who think it’s fun to bury strangers’ clothes in the sand.

Add to these the canasta and klabash addicts with double orders of middle-age spread; the amateur musicians, including the players of bongo drums, castanets, guitars, tambourines; the adagio and tarantella dancers, and the wrestlers who often wind up mashing the hard-boiled eggs of an inoffensive family picnic group.

The lifeguard sits amidst this scene of chaos and tries to preserve some semblance of order. It isn’t easy.

Some of the problems are recurrent ones, like the dunkers and the pants-losers. The dunkers are a group of well-upholstered old ladies who take their dips daily between 8:00 and 9 a.m. Their name comes from the peculiar nature of their water exercises: They stand in water a couple of feet deep, hold hands, and bend in unison at the knees until they’re in a half-sitting position; then up again, down again. They do this with great dignity in slow rhythm. Only the lower rear portions of their voluminous bathing suits ever get wet.

Chief Alma, a handsome twenty-eight-year-old wintertime trumpet player and band leader, rates the dunkers among his favorite beach people. They need his assistance only occasionally, when a heavy wave knocks one of them off her feet. Unable to rise, she waits patiently until the lifeguard helps her up (the guards call these “bathtub cases,” because that’s about how deep the water is), then gratefully resumes her dunking with the other girls.

Lost-Pants Problem Is Solved The pants-losers are a mystery to the lifeguards, who don’t understand how they do it. Alma encountered his first case of this sort a few years ago; he heard a man calling for help from the water about 250 feet out, and swam out to see what the trbuble was.

“I lost my pants, that’s what’s the trouble,” the man said crossly. “How’m 1 gonna get in without no pants?”

Alma swam back in and returned with an extra pair of trunks for this victim of a cruel, watery fate. Ever since. Alma has worn a spare—and twice more he has been called on to save face for a pants-loser. Other lifeguards have had the same experience, but none can explain why.

That isn’t the only puzzle that confronts the guards. Alma reports, for example, that some of his constituents seem constitutionally incapable of calling a lifeguard a lifeguard. They call him “Mr. Life Preserver,” “Mr. Life Snatcher,” “Mr. Life Grabber,” or “Mr. Life Snapper.”

All the Coney Island lifeguards are familiar with an old gent known as Doc, who wears a straw hat and a towel draped across his skinny shoulders. In the belt of his bathing suit, like bullets in a cartridge belt, he carries a supply of paper-wrapped candies. It is his pleasure to seek out as many lifeguards as are on duty and present a candy to each one. He then bows, tips his skimmer, and scuttles off.

Besides these regulars, other singular individuals show up from time to time. Looking around one day, Alma saw sand flying furiously out of a hole in the beach. He looked down into it and spied a little man digging diligently. The pit was deeper than the man was. “What do you think you’re doing down there?” Alma shouted into the hole, shipping a mouthful of sand.

“I’m trying to strike water,” was the muffled reply.

Alma reached down and yanked out the well-digger. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the ocean.

Well-diggers and candy-givers are a relief from the real pests, like the ballplayers. About one third of the 1,000 summonses Sergeant De Leo and his men issued last June went to these sand-lot athletes.

One defendant in Coney Island Magistrates’ Court on a ballplaying rap said: “I was only getting a little extracise. I didn’t hurt nobody.”

“No,” the court agreed, “but the next time, you’re liable to step on some poor old lady’s nose.”

“It sometimes seems.” says Mario Bigongiari, court interpreter and cashier, “that there are more ballplayers on our beach than there are in all organized baseball.”

Besides being warned about ballplaying. bathers are cautioned not to go strolling along the boardwalk in a bathing suit. This heinous infraction usually brings the “guilty-with-an-explanation” defense when the rule breakers are brought to court.

One defendant offered Magistrate Rams-gate this explanation: “It was this way, Your Honor. I lost my little boy. He has bright red hair. I couldn’t see him while I was on the beach, so I figure I’ll go up on the boardwalk and look down from there. His hair is so red, I couldn’t miss him.”

The judge respected the novelty of this excuse and suspended sentence.

Naturally, if appearing on the boardwalk in a swim suit is an offense, appearing un- der it without one is worse, and bathers who undress under that promenade rate high among the recipients of summonses.

One day recently, one of Captain Fagan’s men came upon a woman changing from street clothes to a bathing suit under the boardwalk. To his blushing embarrassment, he spotted her when she had on neither. He gave her a summons and she snapped: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for looking.”

But the cops’ most persistent annoyers are the illegal peddlers who sneakily infest every part of the 110 acres of beach.

“The ice-cream peddlers do all right,” Sergeant De Leo says. “They pay 35 cents a dozen for their junk and sell it for 15 cents each. They make as high as $50 a day —if we don’t nab them.”

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one when it comes to catching the illegal vendors, whether they sell ice cream or knishes, which are square, weighty pastries filled with potatoes and spices. They are highly fancied by Coney Island sun bathers.

“The trouble is,” Sergeant De Leo explains, “that the peddlers usually wear bathing suits and go barefooted. We wear shoes and street clothes. We start chasing the bums and they outrun us. Meanwhile, the crowd on the beach is pulling for the peddlers. They holler, ‘Why don’t you go arrest burglars?’ It hurts your morale.

“Then, if you manage to get close to the peddler, he gives you the works. Throws his carton of ice cream right at your dogs and you trip and fall flat on your face while the crowd cheers.”

Peddlers of knishes, when pursued to the water’s edge, have been known to put their baskets of goodies on the pilings that stud the water at intervals, and float away on the waves. When the cops depart, they retrieve their knishes, unless the tide got them first. No knish-peddler has ever dared take his wares into the briny with him. “He would sink to the bottom of the sea at once,” a cop once explained. “A basketful of knishes could anchor Big Mo.”

Sergeant De Leo recently discovered a new type knish-peddler—a knish-bootleg-ger. “This guy,” he declares, “was going around the beach whispering to the people. He had a little pad in his hand and a pencil. He was taking orders for knishes and promising early delivery. He’d bring back a few at a time and slip them to his customers.”

Like most of the others who are brought in to face Magistrate Ramsgate, the illegal peddlers are seldom at a loss for an explanation. “Some guy,” one said recently, “sold me space on the beach and told me it was okay.”

“Congratulations,” the judge said dryly. “They’re selling the Brooklyn Bridge again, and you’ve bought it.”

Two warrant officers are attached to Coney Island Magistrates’ Court to bring in bashful parties who ignore summonses. One is George Dillon, a huge, moonfaced man with a gentle smile. His partner is Charles Barlow, who succeeded Henry Frumkin, Dillon’s old partner, when Frum-kin retired last June.

Dillon and Frumkin were a most effective team. Once, when they asked an obstinate Coney Islander to please come along like the summons said, the man said no and held on to a picket fence in his yard. “When we got him out of the yard,” Dillon recalls modestly, “he was still holding a picket.”

The court summons cases in the Little Brown Jug—featuring tenant against landlord and neighbor against neighbor—have a heady seaside flavor all their own. Court attaches agree that no other court in New York can match their savor.

For example, there was the celebrated Ham-and-Cheese Case which recently went before Magistrate Ramsgate. The complainant was a faded, truculent blonde; the defendant, an old lady with birdlike eyes.

“She’s my landlady,” the complainant said. “She took away the ice cube trays from my refrigerator. I wanna have them back. Make her gimme.”

“Sure,” the defendant conceded, “I take them away. She ruin them. She make with ham-and-chis’.”

“You had no business,” the judge re- “I counted four,” said the court.

“It isn’t four people, it’s eight,” the landlady said, “and they go to the beach; then they come back and they all take a bath.”

“Dismissed,” was the verdict.

Some complainants are virtual regulars in the Little Brown Jug. They consider it an achievement to have more than one case going at a time.

Recently, a chubby woman sought a summons for a neighbor because she said the latter slapped her daughter. “You look familiar,” Magistrate Ramsgate said.

“Sure,” the chubby one said happily. “1 got another one going here about my landlady, she’s a mean one, and how she wouldn’t let anybody come to my flat for my daughter’s graduation party and so now I got in my house turkey sandwiches up to the ceiling.”

“I remember,” the judge said. “No summons in the slapping case. One to a customer.”

Magistrate Ramsgate presided over a lulu a few years ago. There were two property owners in this case. Call them Lewis and Clark. Clark had erected a clothesline pole that Lewis chopped down, claiming it was on his property. But in doing so, Lewis chopped it so that it fell on his own garage, ruining the roof.

Thereupon, pole-builder Clark got out a summons for Lewis, charging the ruin of his clothes pole, and pole-chopper Lewis got out a summons for Clark, claiming that Clark’s pole had ruined his garage roof.

The court suggested they shake hands and forget the whole business. But they would have none of his peacemaking, so he packed them off to Municipal Court, where they sued each other heartily.

proached the complainant, “keeping ham and cheese in the trays. The smell stays.”

“No,” the defendant said. “She don’t put ham-and-chis’ in the trays. She wantsa get the cube out, so she hit them with ham-and chis’.”

“Ooh, what a liar,” the blonde said. “I never used a hammer and chisel on her old trays in my life.”

“All right, ladies,” warned Melvin Haw-ley, the bridgeman. “Do not start a cat fight in this august courtroom.” He glared at the ladies with all the sternness of a retired bosun’s mate, which he is.

The judge stirred impatiently. “The trays are only 33 cents each,” he said to the blonde. “You can buy a couple. Dismissed.”

“Another thing,” the complainant said. “The handle on my refrigerator is busted. Make her fix it.”

The judge sighed. “Will you do something for me?” he asked the landlady. “Fix the handle—for me?”

“Judge,” the landlady beamed, “for you I do anything. Where you live? 1 gonna send a man to fix you door handle.”

“Never mind,” the court said. “Tell them to go home. Melvin.”

Many, of the tenant-landlord beefs revolve around the subject of hot water.

“It’s only me and my wife,” one tenant complained piteously. “We rent a room for the summer from this woman. We want to take a bath, but there’s no hot water.”

The judge, hep to the ways of summer roomers, asked: “Any friends visiting you?”

“Nobody,” said the tenant fervently, “except maybe a cousin, and my wife’s brother-in-law stops in, and I think his wife, and my brother’s boy, he’s just home from the Army. A couple people.”

For Putting in Her Two Cents Some of the sensitive ladies of Coney Island take neighbors into court on charges which are nebulous, to say the least. A few weeks ago. a woman had her neighbor up before the court bench for annoying her.

“What does she do?” asked Magistrate Anthony E. Maglio, presiding for the day.

“When I’m talking to a friend,” she explained, “she is all the time putting in her two cents.”

“Yes, but what does she do?”

“She just puts in her two cents,” was the dogged reply. “All the time.”

Magistrate Maglio, who, like Ramsgate, is a Coney Island student from away back, realized he had reached a dead end.

“Madam,” he sternly told the defendant, “you better stop putting in your two cents, or it will run into money. Now both of you go home.”

Whenever members of the Coney Island set blow a gasket, the Little Brown Jug seems to be their safety valve. There was the dignified housewife who slapped a summons on her next-door neighbor because, she charged, “he turned the hose on me from top to bottom.”

“I should waste water on her with the shortage and all,” he sneered. “I am watering my petoonies. and she has to come out and stick her nose in.”

“This man hit my child alongside the ear with his hedge shears,” another woman complained.

“So what?” the defendant countered reasonably. “They wasn’t sharp.”

There are two schools of thought on what makes Coney Islanders wear out the wooden stairs of the Little Brown Jug in a never-ending quest for “satisfaction.” Some court observers blame it on a high percentage of “Full Mooners” among the thousands of summons seekers.

“Court attendants all over know about the Full Mooners,” Chief Clerk Fitzgerald says. “They are people who get the urge to take somebody to court whenever there’s a full moon. Don’t laugh. Full Mooners are a fact.”

But Phil Levinson, a court stenographer who frequently works the Coney Island court, entertains a different theory.

“The salt air,” he says, “has something to do with it.” the end

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EXPOSING The STAMP Counterfeiters

Collectors with money to spend find counterfeiters ready to meet demand for all “copies” needed.

by James N. Miller

SECRET SERVICE sleuths, working on a private tip-off, recently achieved a sensational “snatch” in New York City. In an out-of-the-way office, on a back street, they located headquarters of a gang dealing in counterfeit and stolen stamps. Elaborate manufacturing paraphernalia was seized, including engraving gadgets, perforation machines, coloring apparatus and various kinds of gum.

Federal officials, after a laboratory study of some of the newly made stamps, of the current two-cent variety, declared they were about the best ever faked. Had it not been for the vigilance of Uncle Sam’s undercover men, the nation might now be flooded with the spurious stickers.

Almost simultaneously with this important discovery, police in Barcelona, Spain, arrested two gangs dealing extensively in bogus postage stamps. They had been imitating the widely used Spanish 30-centime issue so adeptly that the government found it necessary to withdraw the real stamps from use and to manufacture, in their place, a new kind of engraved variety.

Just how widespread is the counterfeiting of stamps, not only of the “rare” issues but of the current varieties? And what protection, if any, has the average collector against illegal imitations? These questions may now be answered, for readers of Modern Mechanix by two outstanding world authorities: H. A. Robinette, Washington dealer, and L. Stewart Barr, collector and resident of the nation’s capital. In days gone by, dealers did not want to own a single counterfeit. But Mr. Robinette has developed his collection of bogus varieties to one of the largest in the world, so he can have a measuring stick for good and bad stamps offered for sale either to himself or his friends.

As for Mr. Barr, he has spent a considerable portion of his past twelve years of extensive travel in studying counterfeit stamps in every section of the world. Today he probably knows as much about bogus European varieties as any American.

First of all, Mr. Robinette points out a revolutionary development in philatelic circles: Not long ago the Treasury Department decided that it is legal to illustrate the stamps of dead governments. In other words, the postal issues of all defunct nations or states may now be reproduced without risk of conflict with the law.

“Approximately 130 stamp-issuing nations and colonies of the past are affected, including: the German Empire, the Russian Empire, the former kingdom of Hungary, Portugal and Spain, the Spanish regimes in Cuba and the Philippines prior to 1898, and the erstwhile empires of Brazil and Mexico.

“As most collectors already know, there is a strict American law forbidding the illustrating of all stamps of present-day national governments. Certainly the ruling is a good one. It has prevented the manufacture of counterfeits which would have flooded the philatelic markets and hurt philately as a recreation, a cultural study and a business.

“However, now that the statute has been liberalized by the Treasury Department, collectors will have to be on guard against frauds and fakes as never before in a generation.”

Japanese stamps are counterfeited most prolifically of any in the world, Mr. Robinette says. Particularly is this true of the early issues, of the period between 1871 and 1875, when most of the Nipponese stamps were ornamented with dragons and chrysanthemums. Today the finest genuine varieties of this group catalogue up to $100 apiece.

Numerically speaking, Swiss counterfeits run a pretty close second to the Japanese fakes, claims Robinette. Next in order come stamps of the early Italian and German states. These nations, in case you don’t recall offhand, once were divided into various states—before the turn of the century—and stamps in those days were issued usually by the states and not by the national government. Saxony, as a German state, for instance, started issuing stamps about 1860 and most of the fine counterfeits of Saxony issues, in the world today, were made between 1860 and 1870.

What American stamps have been counterfeited mostly? The 1894 and 1917 two-cent varieties, Mr. Robinette says. Both of these illegal issues were made specifically to defraud the United States government, rather than to bamboozle collectors. Secret Service sleuths located both agencies making these fakes and quickly put them out of business.

The bogus ’94 two-cent stamp was red in color with a profile of George Washington on its face. Thousands were foisted upon the unsuspecting American people, Mr. Robinette recalls. Careful study of some of these fakes convinces him that they were imitated first by means of a clever photographic process and later engraved. This was likewise the case, he believes, with the 1917 two-cent counterfeits.

Confederate stamps have been widely imitated, Mr. Robinette says. “The best counterfeit I know about is the little five-cent blue Jefferson, issue of 1862. Genuine copies today catalogue at only 30 cents. The surest way for the average collector to identify the fraudulent variety is by comparing the sizes of the real stamp and the suspected one. The fake, in nine cases out of ten, will prove to be a trifle smaller.”

Oddly enough, the largest-scale counterfeiting business Mr. Robinette ever heard about was conducted in a semi-legitimate way. In other words, the “big shot” involved admitted, yes, even advertised, that he was making fakes, but said he was doing so because many collectors liked to include a number of good fakes in their collections. He was a Swiss with headquarters in Berne. He had the finest types of stamp-making equipment, including printing presses, perforating machines, color processes and all varieties of gum. He was almost a genius in his line and claimed that he could imitate practically every one of the early European stamps. When did he operate? Way back in the period roughly between 1870 and 1880.

This amazing individual made other peculiar assertions. He claimed he manufactured “phonies” mainly for the sheer fun of it and made very little profit. However, he did a tremendous business and sold to thousands of people all over the world. Always he insisted he never sold a single counterfeit with the deliberate intent to deceive. Maybe not. But scores of shyster dealers obtained some of his finest specimens, directly or indirectly, and cashed in handsomely on them. Today no one seems to know whether or not Swiss authorities ever actually clamped down on his activities.

Do you know what a surcharge is? Even the rankest novice collector can tell you. In stamp circles it usually means that the official manufacturing agency changes the country of issue by means of an “overprint,” which is some fairly simple identifying mark such as the marking of the face of the stamp with a name or a numeral.

Another form of surcharge involves, in similar fashion, a change in the regulation postal rate. This might mean, for instance, a 2-1/2-cent overprint on a 5-cent stamp. On the other hand, a surcharge might involve a change in the type of postal service. There are, for example, special surcharges used for making special deliveries out of ordinary stamps, or for some particular revenue purpose.

There’s a tremendous field in counterfeit surcharges, according to Mr. Robinette, of the so-called French Colonial “provisionals.” The fakers make a practice of buying, at extremely low rates, a number of the genuine French stamps, which are fairly common, by the way; whereupon they imitate the rare surcharges. For the expert this is easy, since the early surcharges were printed on the face of a stamp in very crude fashion, or else merely stamped on by hand.

All the French colonial governments surcharge their stamps by putting the word Obock on a freshly made sticker. The counterfeiters do the same thing, Robinette says, and oftentimes it’s next to impossible to detect the fraud, so expert are the fakers in their illegal art.

Many of the early French Colonials have a high catalogue value today, notably the so-called Martinque and Madagascar varieties. For instance, the famous “Majungo” issue of Madagascar—1895 to 1896—list at from $50 to $600 apiece. Their surcharges have been widely and beautifully imitated.

Mr. Robinette has noted many fakes of the famous 1834 issue of the so-called “Bull’s Eye” of Brazil. These are the first general issue stamps known in the Western Hemisphere. They are engraved stamps, are black in color and have enormous letters on their faces, which fact accounts for their unusual nickname. “Bull’s Eyes” were made in three values only: 30, 60 and 90 reis. Some of them today rate a high catalogue value. The 90-cent ones list at $150 uncancelled, and $40 cancelled. Most of the other Brazil varieties are considerably cheaper on the collector’s market.

Can an expert dealer be fooled? Not very easily, Mr. Robinette claims. He could be most readily taken in, he admits, with an especially fine imitation of the so-called No. 1 Saxony, an early German Colonial. This is a lovely stamp, red in color, bearing the large numeral 3 in a square. There are innumerable fakes of this on the market, printed almost precisely like the original. The best test for determining them is to note carefully the exact structure of the corner ornaments. There are numerous slight distinctions between the real and the false which the eye can be trained to detect very quickly.

At first thought the repairing of stamps might not be regarded as a crooked procedure. Nevertheless it is being done on a large scale, and with a deliberate intent to deceive, particularly in Europe, Mr. L. Stewart Barr says. In France such sharpers are especially clever and in Austria there are at least 20 specialists who do nothing but “fix up” stamps. Mr. Barr explains: “As is well known, certain rare stamps in perfect condition will command enormous prices. But if they happen to have a slight tear or thin spot their worth will skid down to perhaps one-tenth of the catalogue value. No wonder, then, that the best of the repair crooks do a flourishing business. They maintain a regular working arrangement with shyster dealers.

“In every sense of the term the repair charlatans are real artists. They know the composition of paper to a precise degree. In the case of a job where a hole or thin spot is to be disguised they are able to add a tiny bit of paper in such fashion that the unaided eye finds it next to impossible to detect the fraud. A true stamp connoisseur, however, can locate the deception immediately by simply dipping the suspected stamp in benzine, whereupon in most cases the added portion will stand out in sharp delineation from the main body of the stamp.

“Similar results may be achieved by carefully examining the stamp under a fine quartz lens. In such case the observer should experience no trouble in distinguishing the tiny outline of the foreign paper added during the repair process.”

Despite all the philatelic fakes now on the American collector’s market, Messrs. Robinette and Barr conclude: “To combat successfully most of the illicit maneuvers of the stamp racketeers, the average collector needs a sincere love of collecting, an alert eye and a willingness to work hard at his chosen hobby.”

A few things I noticed:
1. obviously being gay is a disorder.
2. they didn’t say if the prisoners were actually given any choice about their operations.
3. what did they do to the kids?
4. This quote
“It points also to the more illuminating truth that if the grandparents, or even the parents, of these men had been given proper medical and surgical treatment for their own glandular abnormalities, their children and their grandchildren would not have offended society…”
sounds like Lamarckism. Though according to Wikipedia that theory seems to be making a comeback.
5. Apparently you can tell a criminal by their face. From the pictures in the article that seems to mean “Foreign Looking”.

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Crooks Cured by Surgeons Knife

Here for the first time is the amazing story of how criminals in San Quentin prison, California, are made honest by giving them healthy glands.

By H. H. DUNN

THE surgeon’s knife and the laboratory test tube have entered the campaign against crime. Experimental researches, carried on over a number of years and beginning to show results in control and reform institutions this summer, indicate that criminal tendencies may be eradicated, development of the criminal averted, and the established criminal restored to normal by medical and surgical treatment.

Most of the work which has resulted in this astounding discovery has been done in schools for “backward,” or “wayward, children in San Francisco, and among the inmates of San Quentin prison in California. Looking into the causes of criminal behavior, Dr. Ralph A. Reynolds, of San Francisco, has opened a door which apparently leads not only to the prevention of crime, but to the reformation of the adult criminal. Confirmation of the value of the method of treatment of criminal tendency by surgery and medicine awaits the test of time, but in the five years so far devoted to this work results have been achieved which indicate that the surgeon may take the place of the policeman, the physician that of the judge, and that civilization will prevent rather than punish crime.

In the course of these experiments, it was found that a very high percentage of the inmates of the prison were suffering from some abnormal condition of the endocrine or “internally secreting” glands, which empty directly into the blood stream. It was learned that perpetrators of crimes of violence showed disturbance of the thyroid, the twin gland in the front of the neck which regulates growth, while forgers and similar criminals against property were found to have abnormal conditions in the pituitary. This is a pear-shaped body about the size of a bean, lying at the base of the brain. Perverts and degenerates hid certain derangements of the sexual glands under apparently normal exteriors.

Working with Dr. L. L. Stanley, San Quentin prison physician, Doctor Reynolds found that beneficial results were obtained, both in physical condition and mental outlook, when the glandular derangements of these prisoners were corrected. Approximately sixty were so treated by operation and by administration of gland extracts. Not one failed to respond to the treatment.

THESE results with adults in the penitentiary led to two conclusions, the most important that have been made in the scientific study of crime: First, that the so-called “criminal instinct” may be removed from the minds of men, and women, by the study and treatment of the endocrine-gland systems, in childhood or later.

Second, that potential criminality may be eliminated by the treatment of these glands in youth, whenever and wherever children are found to be suffering from such abnormal conditions.

In other words, it now seems not only possible, but highly probable, that malsecretion (that is, a secretion which is too large or too small, or chemically unbalanced) of some gland is responsible for the greater part of the crime in the world.

“We are beginning to accept the fact that the criminal is not essentially ‘bad’,” said Dr. Reynolds, “but that he merely is a person who shows a departure from what society has established as the ‘normal.’ There is a growing belief among scientists that, in dealing with criminals, too much attention is paid to the mind and the emotions, and too little to the sources from, which the mind and the emotions arise, and by which they are controlled.

“On the reasonable assumption that these sources exist in the functions of the body itself, and more specifically in the chemical functions of the body, the next logical step is to find the mechanism which controls the body’s chemical activities.

“Evidence is that this mechanism exists in the endocrine glands—the glands of internal secretion, also known as the ‘ductless’ glands, because their cells secrete directly into little blood vessels in the glands, without the aid of ducts. In connection with this reasoning, it appears quite obvious than any unbalanced condition of the chemistry of the body will lead to various and varying forms of unbalance in the mental and emotional outlook, and in the conduct (i. e., behavior) of the person involved.

THE work at San Quentin, of which more later, leads logically to a study of the field from which all criminals are drawn—our children. It would be tremendously more advantageous to society to prevent the development of the criminal, than to reform him after he is developed. Aside from the saving to humanity, the economic value to civilization of the salvaging of young lives, and the conversion of young minds to useful occupations, cannot be estimated.

“My work has taken me into the medical direction if two institutions, involving about 200 children. In virtually every ‘backward’ or ‘wayward’ child, boy or girl, I have been able to see a physical departure from normal. In many that as yet are neither backward nor wayward, I see evidence of the future development of abnormal conditions in the gland system. There is the child of low, often moronic, mind, who can do good work with his hands, but not with his brain. He is mistrained, and, because his mind does not respond to the training given him, he is called a ‘dumb-bell’ or worse. He goes out into the world unprepared to earn what the world calls an ‘honest living.’ He is drawn into a ‘gang.’ He is involved in a hold-up, or a gang-fight. The law gets him, and he— with an antisocial inclination in his subnormal mind—becomes a criminal.

“Such a child should be discovered; his ancestry traced; his physical and mental history recorded; the cause of his mental condition found. He may not be—in fact, he often is not—an obvious ‘gland case,’ but in many, many instances he will be found possessed of an abnormal thyroid or pituitary gland, and back of him will lie a history of ancestors similarly affected.

“Now, many children who show visible endocrine disturbances have pleasant types of minds, never brilliant, often below normal; but usually best described as ‘fat and good-natured.’ Their obesity or extreme fatness can be reduced by the correction of their glandular disturbances, and with such reduction comes an increase in industry and ambition. The moronic mind cannot be improved, but it can be given a sound body, and it can be given the training for work with the hands which will enable its possessor to win and maintain an honest place in society.

“What we must learn about children is why one becomes a criminal and another does not. Then we must treat the subnormal child—by medicine or by surgery—to restore the chemical balance of the body. This done, we must prepare him, or her, to earn an adequate living, so that the economic incentive to crime—as well as the mental receptivity to criminal ideas— may be removed. By so doing, we shall prevent crime. Indeed, we are so preventing it, in the schools mentioned.

“It seems to me essential, as the first step in this program, that orphanages and other schools containing numbers of children whose heredity and early environment may have been unsatisfactory should segregate the problem-children for study and treatment. Certainly, children so cared for could not be harmed, while the opportunity for their improvement is tremendous.

“THERE can be no question that in the majority of instances, malsecretion of some one or more of the endocrine glands is responsible for the commission of crime. To return to the experimental work at San Quentin prison, we have traced certain criminal activities directly to certain glands.

“The treatment of these glands has resulted, in many instances, in marked mental and physical improvement of the criminal, and, moreover, in what bears every evidence of being the elimination of the tendency to commit crime.

“THE principle involved is the restoration of normal mentality through establishment of chemical stability in the body by the treatment of the gland, or glands, involved.

“Some time ago, with the cooperation of Doctor Stanley, I undertook to carry through to conclusion a series of studies and treatments of prisoners showing gland disorders. Among these were men with enlargement of the thyroid gland, the very fat, the very thin, the very tall, the very short, those having abnormal hair distribution and growth, and some with subnormal sex glands.

“The thyroid group was divided into three classes: “First, those having an excessive growth of the normal cells of the thyroid gland, resulting in a highly active, ‘nervous,’ and emotionally unstable mentality. This condition is known as ‘hyper plasia,’ or overgrowth.

“The second class consisted of those having tumorous or lumpy growths of foreign tissue within the thyroid gland. This growth secretes a poisonous substance into the blood stream, resulting in great excitability, emotional instability, increased bodily activity, and, frequently, periods of depression. This condition is known as ‘adenoma.’ ” In the third group were gathered those with ‘colloid goiter;’ that is, an abnormal growth of the thyroid gland, caused by a deposit of supposedly inert material in the gland tissue. As a rule, this condition does not present obvious external symptoms, but it does produce a tendency to obesity.

“When we referred to the records of the crimes committed by these men, we found that in approximately seventy percent of the cases those in classifications one and two had committed Crimes of violence; that is, murder, assault with intent to kill, manslaughter, or manslaughter from reckless driving.

“EVEN more important than this, we learned that many of these men had records of similar, though lesser, crimes running back to boyhood years. One man showed tendencies to this sort of crime at the age of eight. Had he been given the proper medical and surgical care when a child, his life could have been turned to usefulness, and society would have been saved the labor and expense of protecting itself from his criminal tendency.

Records of these three groups of prisoners in general showed that each suffers from an abnormal stimulation of some sort. It appears to be certain that this instability of their mental processes is due solely to maloperation of the thyroid gland.

“Five of these men, intractable and guilty of frequent attacks on other prisoners, were given treatment by operation. That is, the hyper-plastic or overdeveloped tissue and the adenomas (gland enlargement) were removed. All have shown marked improvement in behavior, their mental stability has increased, their tendency to impulsive action has been reduced, and it is strongly probable that they will leave the prison with minds more in accord with the processes of civilization, and more amenable to its limitations, than they ever have been.

“Another group of prisoners—not thyroid abnormals—was made up of men having a disorder of the pituitary gland, commonly diagnosed as being due to undersecretion of the anterior or forward lobe of this gland. It was learned from the records that more than eighty percent of these cases were ‘sent up’ for crimes of irresponsibility, such as forgery, embezzlement, bad-check passing, and petty theft.

“IT IS interesting to note that not one in this ‘pituitary group’ had committed any crime of violence.

“In daily life, these are the fat, good-natured men; irresponsible, usually living far beyond their means, always in need of money, and so abnormal in endocrinal condition that they follow the paths of least resistance. Yet they are extremely difficult to arouse to a fighting mood, and in their efforts to fulfill their desires, stop far short of violence of any kind.

“We found that, generally speaking, it was possible to modify in a marked degree the personalities of these men, giving them greater seriousness, making them more responsible, and fixing in their minds a stronger sense of their proper attitude toward their fellow men.

“We did this by administering what we found to be the proper combination of pituitary and other glandular extracts, which seem to act as catalyzers, or reagents in the distribution of the introduced pituitary substance.”

Doctor Reynolds and Doctor Stanley also worked with a third group of prisoners, known as the “dys-gonads” (those having badly developed sex glands), involving two divisions, the homosexuals and the undersexed. Most of these are furtive, secretive, unaggressive, harmless men, but here and there arises one who suddenly becomes vicious, without apparent reason. The majority of them are in prison for crimes of perversion, yet there are thousands of persons of similar type in society, hiding their perversions to such an extent that they never have fallen foul of the law.

Treatment of this type by glandular extract produced demonstrable, highly beneficial results, and there is little doubt in the mind of Doctor Reynolds that the pervert and degenerate types may be returned a long way toward normalcy by this artificial restoration of the balance of the sex glands.

Thus, the three departments of crime—acts of violence, attacks on property, and perversion—have been given tests of five years and proved to have their source in unbalanced mentality, produced by abnormalities in the glands of internal secretion. Yet both Doctor Reynolds and Doctor Stanley, pioneers and leaders in this study of glandular criminology, insist that the results obtained be regarded only as “experimental.”

“OF THE prisoners examined, numbering hundreds, eighty-five percent had a definite history of disorder of the endocrine glands in one or both parents,” continued Doctor Reynolds. “Similar abnormal conditions of these glands were found in grandparents, uncles, aunts, sisters, and brothers of these men.

“This points clearly to a powerful hereditary factor at work in disorders of the glands of internal secretion.

“It points also to the more illuminating truth that if the grandparents, or even the parents, of these men had been given proper medical and surgical treatment for their own glandular abnormalities, their children and their grandchildren would not have offended society, and would not now be in prison, burdens on that civilization whose rules they have broken because of the upsetting of their endocrinal gland balance.

“Beyond this somewhat scientific deduction, we are met squarely with the tremendous economic and sociological fact that if we remove the endocrine abnormalities from the children of today, we shall reduce greatly the crimes against the society of tomorrow. If we restore the balance of the thyroid gland in the throat of little Johnny Jones, thereby calming permanently his childish outbursts of temper, we are in a fair way to prevent a murder. If we train wee Billy Smith’s pituitary glands so that he refrains from stealing his neighbor’s apples, we have curbed the malsecretion of the gland which has put other and older men into prison for embezzlement and forgery.

“WE ARE becoming more and more certain that behind every ‘ backward’ and wayward’ child there is a physical reason. Something is wrong with the internal mechanism, the glandular chemistry, of that child’s body. If, through a study of the child’s endocrinal history, and a complete examination of its present condition, we can restore the balance of the gland influence on the child’s mentality, then we can remove what we call, for want of a better term, the ‘tendency to crime.’”

So much for the prevention of crime, for the averting, in youth, of a predisposition toward wrongdoing in later years. We have seen what Doctor Reynolds and Doctor Stanley have accomplished with the adult criminal in San Quentin prison. The logical path along which this work must go is the one of restoring to these men such mental balance that they will realize their responsibilities to themselves, to society, and to civilization. Doctor Reynolds believes that this can be done in many instances, but his demand is for time to observe the result of experimental surgical and medical work done on these prisoners.

Let Doctor Reynolds speak again: “We have with us another and larger group which has been only touched in this study of glandular balance and control. These are the persons who, we say casually, ‘have criminal faces’; scientifically, they are classified as having the stigmata of degeneration. Their facial abnormalities—from the sight of which the layman judges them to be at least potential criminals—are due to disturbances in growth and development. Endocrinologists, specialists in the study and treatment of endocrine glands, have come to look upon them as glandular subjects, inasmuch as virtually always their ancestry reveals a long and involved history of disarrangement of the glands of internal secretion.

“IN THE ancestry of such persons also appear insanity, epilepsy, feeble-mindedness, cataracts early in life, harelip, strabismus (commonly known as cross-eye’), and other defections from the normal, scientifically classified as ‘stigmata.’ Their histories often begin with a parent who, for example, had a pituitary abnormality, from which only other pituitary disarrangements will appear in the children for several generations. Then, quite suddenly, in one of these generations, the offspring will begin to show other defects in development, abnormalities of mind as well as of body.

“Often these ‘degenerations’ are not accompanied by any of the recognizable symptoms of gland disorders, and it is only from their histories that the true causes of their conditions, their physical, mental, and moral aberrations, may be obtained. For this reason medical science has been slow to accept the close relationship which undoubtedly exists between the ‘ man with the criminal face’ and glandular disarrangements.

“If the earlier stages of gland disorder are diagnosed and treated, much can be accomplished, but when the hereditary process has reached the point— several generations later— of pronounced stigmata of degeneration, segregation of these individuals seems to be the only method of eliminating their spread. Low fecundity and early death combine to wipe out this type, if so isolated that new blood cannot be brought in by marriage.

“ALL the types in our penal and corrective institutions, these seem to be the ones whose segregation and confinement is necessary until they die out, in spite of all that has been or can be done for them in the way of effort to restore their mental and physical stability by gland treatment.

“In the near future, large groups of prisoners at San Quentin and other penal institutions are to be classified as to the type of crime committed, and then studied as to the glandular disturbance which preponderates in each group. On the determination of the extent to which criminal tendencies can be reduced by restoration of the endocrine gland balance rests the greatest hope of modern society for the prevention of crime in future generations, and the reformation—or, better, the ‘remaking’— of the criminal in this generation.”

Triple Lens Windshield Camera Spots Traffic Violations
MOUNTED on the windshield, a new triple lens camera, operated without diverting the driver’s eyes from the road, records three distinct views of traffic violations encountered while driving. The camera also records the time and date when used and the film shifts automatically for the next picture.

One of the views taken by the camera is a large one showing the car of the violator in its relationship to other cars, pedestrians, traffic lanes, etc. The smaller views give a close-up of the car from which the license plate number can be ascertained.

The inventor, H. C. Fairchild, of Washington, D. C., proposes adoption of the camera by the police authorities as a means of reducing the flagrant violations of traffic regulations by having volunteer observers mount the cameras on their cars. Photographs could be sent to state motor vehicle bureaus where warnings or fines could be issued.

How Liquor ‘Importers’ Make ‘Old Stuff’ from Alcohol

Product of a “reliable importer” seized in his hotel room, a plant for making “old stuff” from denatured alcohol.

A dry officer shows how denatured alcohol is cut with water and doctored with creosote and burnt sugar, and below, wrapped with straw.

The labeler of original “King George’s Scotch” could not do a better job than the dry officer at work above with captured equipment of bootleggers who fool the public. Carefully checked statistics of federal and state officers reveal that less than one per cent of the “bottled in bond” and “imported” liquor reaching the American consumer is honest in origin. The other 99 per cent is counterfeit, poison of varying degree, the officers declare. The bootleg stuff is made in cheap hotel rooms, cellars, barns, and even pig pens.

CAMERA ON GUN TO TRAP CROOKS

Photographic identification of fleeing criminals may be obtained with a recently perfected camera which is attached to a pistol or rifle and worked by the gun’s trigger. The lens used can work at an opening of F/3.5, which permits the camera to be used in comparatively poor light and at high speed. The small negatives are sharp enough to be enlarged.

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Amateur PICK POCKETS Study in CRIME College

Scaltiel, “master thief” of stage, reveals secrets of light-fingered gentry who operate throughout the world depriving victims of their valuables.

PERHAPS there is no stranger profession than that of Scaltiel, master thief and the smoothest pickpocket of them all, but who is as honest as the day is long, practicing his talents for the entertainment of theater goers and who now reveals the innermost secrets of the schools for the training of pickpockets.

Scaltiel is particularly well known throughout the European capitals and is a favorite entertainer in the Berlin Winter-garden. The story behind this “master thief” who is honest is as strange as his profession. When he was a boy his father was robbed by a pickpocket. The father advertised in a newspaper, begging the return of the money since its loss would spell ruin for his family.

Strangely, the thief read the advertisement and returned the money. The family was overjoyed and Scaltiel, then a boy, thought it would be wonderful to be able to steal and then win the grateful thanks of victims by returning the loot.

He was not afflicted with criminal tendencies or the outcome of his life would have been very different. He would have baffled the police of many cities. He started pilfering articles from his family and returning the articles to them. He was happy when he succeeded in taking some article from them without detection.

Scaltiel realized that he had succeeded in his training when one day a pickpocket stole his cigarette case and Scaltiel “stole” it back again and laughed at the thief. He became so interested in the profession that he met active pickpockets and was taken by them to their hide-out in a dirty rooming house in Berlin.

There, the pickpockets showed him a bell manikin, the chief tutor in the crime college for the light-fingered gentry. Every pocket of the dummy was wired so that the slightest touch would result in the ringing of a bell, showing that the amateur thief was clumsy. To Scaltiel’s amusement, and the amazement of the professional thieves, he succeeded in taking cigarettes from the pockets of the dummy without ringing the bell.

After this test of his skill, Scaltiel decided to display his talents on the stage making an honest living as he had no desire whatever to practice the “art” dishonestly. He constructed his own bell manikin which is pictured herewith and he trains with it daily to retain his delicate touch.

The amateur who thinks that it is easy to take something from another’s pockets without detection has only to try it to find out how difficult it is. There are a whole series of artful tricks used by pickpockets to prevent others than their victims from witnessing their thievery and all of these tricks have been studied by the famous entertainer.

Although the pickpocket is one of the lowliest of thieves he is also one of the most skillful. The pickpockets of the underworld most often work with accomplices to aid in jostling victims and in making away with the loot. The tricks used by the Berlin pickpockets as revealed by Scaltiel are identical with the tricks used by this type of thief throughout the world.

The professional pickpocket generally operates with his left hand while using his right to distract the attention of his victim. This distraction of the victim is one of the most important parts of successful pocket picking. Very often the thief holds a coat or paper in his right hand to shield the left hand which is exploring the pockets of some unsuspecting victim.

Pickpockets as a rule do not choose expensively dressed persons but rather the commonly dressed person, the visitor in the city, near railroad station, in theater crowds, on the street cars. There are numerous ways in which the thieves work according to the opportunities and situations. On a crowded train a watch or wallet is taken from the pocket of a victim who is standing, the pickpocket usually holding up a paper with his right hand while his left hand does the stealing. The loot is often passed to a confederate who leaves the train.

On the streets the pickpockets often work on streetcars or subway stations and stops, wherever there is a crowd. When a man is being jostled in a crowd he is less apt to feel a hand stealing into his pocket or drawing his watch put by the chain. Sometimes a confederate or two of the pickpocket will jostle the intended victim.

A familiar trick is for the pickpocket to stumble and fall to the sidewalk directly in front of his victim. As the thief expects, the victim aids him in regaining his feet and during this contact the pickpocket clings to his victim for support and commits robbery in return for an intended kind act.

Sometimes a thief will go to great lengths to “contact” his victim. He will drop a glove under the seat of some innocent party without being seen. Then the thief will retrieve the glove and offer it to his victim who believes that some polite person has made a mistake. He will speak to the thief, unaware that while he is looking at the thief, the nimble fingers are exploring his pockets or extracting a stick pin or “lifting” a watch. The thief is holding out the glove with his right hand while his left “mit” is at work.

The public is most in danger of being robbed while in a crowd. The theater lines and groups near cloakrooms often harbor pickpockets. Although you may often suspect an innocent party if you are carrying valuables in a crowd beware of the man who holds a newspaper or magazine or has a coat slung over his arm. The pickpocket with a coat over his arm can work easily with one hand shielded by the folds of the garment.

Women who carry their valuables in handbags swung from handles are a constant source of inspiration to pickpockets for even while walking on the street or standing in a streetcar a pickpocket can open the bag, extract the valuables and close the bag without being detected and without much chance of alarming the victim.

The profession of the pickpockets is not by any means limited to men for some of the most skillful of such thieves are women and girls. Often a man will be crowded against a young woman and while he may be embarrassed the girl is not for she may be taking his watch or pocket book. Very often such girls operate with a confederate to whom she will pass her loot. The confederate will then disappear in the crowds.

GUARDING NEW YORK’S BRIDGES

IN THE SHADOW OF BROOKLYN BRIDGE

Because of the impending foreign crises, these guards are always on the watch to prevent meddling.

Ready for Any Contingency

Equipped with rifles and rapid fire guns, the Second Battalion of the New York State naval militia is detailed to the task of keeping cranks and over wrought foreign sympathizers from damaging our traffic links.

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Public Lock-Picker Number One

Police are glad locksmith Barney Zion is on their side. He claims he can open any lock without a key—and constantly proves it.

By Joseph P. Blank

FOR 6000 years, locksmiths have been trying to produce a pick-proof lock. One of these days that marvel may come to pass but before the fortunate inventor can announce his claims his lock will have to confound America’s Public Lock-Picker Number One-—Bernard Zion.

Cigar-chewing Barney Zion, owner of the Majestic Lock Company, claims he can open any lock without a key and cut a key for any lock. Of the country’s 5000 independent locksmiths, a bare 15 or 20 are considered masters of the craft. None will admit the superiority of one man, but several are willing to concede “Barney is good.” And that is really a concession among those master craftsmen.

Barney, however, admits that he’s the best. Agreeing with him are attorneys who have presented his analyses in court, military officials who asked him to train intelligence operators for wartime duty, police detectives who’ve been stumped by burglaries and a hundred people who’ve called his office and said, “I’ve been locked out.”

When the safe of Salant and Salant, New York shirt dealers, was rifled, the police found no clues or evidence of forced entry. They asked Barney to examine the locks. After one close glance at the main door, he pointed to a tiny speck above the keyhole. “That’s a drill hole about twenty-thousandths of an inch in diameter. Beautiful job. They shoved a needle into the hole to hold up the tumblers while they worked on the lock through the keyhole,” Barney said.

The cleverly-jimmied lock bore the same workmanship of several other robberies and the police soon caught up with Fred and William McLaren who confessed to a long series of “beautiful jobs.”

In conjunction with the New York Police Safe and Loft Squad, Barney has worked with police detectives from all parts of the country. His latest case developed out of a bunch of keys found in the pocket of a criminal suspect. The Florida police wanted the keys identified. Barney labeled each one—a master key for a hotel using a specific brand of lock, a house key, a car key and many others. With these leads, the police linked the suspect to definite robberies.

On the occasions when he receives an evening telephone call from a business-house or jewelry shop and a voice says, “I’m locked out and I need help,” he goes to the address, accompanied by Detective William Fife, acting the role of locksmith’s assistant. Fife asks for identification and credentials, and makes certain that a thief isn’t pulling a clever trick.

The ability to recognize the use of any key shown him also guards Barney from playing unwitting accomplice in a robbery. Unless positive about the customer’s credentials he refuses to duplicate master-keys or keys for a safe-deposit box, cash register, hotel room, public locker or post office box.

Although his work with police is marked by the drama of a mystery thriller, it is no more interesting to him than the problem of devising a super master-key for a hotel owner who wanted his key to open every lock in the hotel, but, at the same time, insisted that no key but his own fit the lock to his suite.

One day an executive of a large New York bank telephoned and asked Barney if he could unlock a box. The job had to be done in the bank with certain witnesses present. Barney said he’d try, tossed a few blank keys and a file into his coat pocket and taxied to the bank. In the conference room he saw a beautiful satin-wood box surrounded by a half dozen lawyers.

The box, part of an estate that was being contested, contained unknown valuables and no one knew the whereabouts of the key. After examining the keyhole, Barney selected a blank key and spent five minutes filing indentations. Into the lock slid the key—an easy turn to the right and Barney raised the lid to reveal $27,000 worth of solid 24-karat gold table service.

The seeming wizardry of his lock knowledge is sensational to onlookers. Recently, an actor entertained the notion that he was Houdini’s successor until he clapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrist one evening and found he couldn’t extricate himself, not even with the key. Using a three-inch piece of wire, Barney opened the cuffs in two minutes flat.

This accomplishment doesn’t quite measure up to the performance in the records room of the New York Board of Education where the Board chairman scoffed at the idea that the lock safeguarding valuable records could be opened with anything but the single key in his possession. Casually, Barney borrowed a hairpin, then probed the lock for a few minutes. It opened with a soft click. “It was the first time I’d ever tried that,” he admits. “Never was more surprised in my life.”

Locks, he explains, are composed of dozens of parts, each dependent on the others. No matter how mechanically perfect the construction, there’s always a weak spot. It’s this flaw, unknown to laymen, that provides the magic key.

Barney entered the lock business by climbing the back fence. Until 1930 he had been a salesman for General Service Corporation and two lock manufacturers. While selling key-cutting machines around the country, he discovered the faults of the trade. So, he went into business to help correct them. Knowledge of keys was haphazard, because no schools or technical books existed. The publication of the latter is discouraged by the police on the grounds that such information would supply petty thieves with interesting homework. Furthermore, equipment for cutting keys and re- pairing locks was inadequate. By 1935 he had patented the Lockaid, a lock-opening tool shaped like a child’s toy pistol, but with a thin, steel pin in place of the barrel. By pulling the trigger, the pin flicks the tumblers into opening position. The tool is sold only to police and licensed locksmiths, and each sale is registered.

Barney then turned to key-cutting machinery and perfected several devices that made the work of the locksmith more accurate and less difficult. But his greatest contribution to the trade has been his code books. Each lock has a serial number which refers to the code number of the key. The code number indicates the shape of the key and the variations of its grooves. These code books, held sacred by all manufacturers, are inaccessible to outsiders.

Before Zion went to work, if a locksmith failed to have a specific key for a lock on hand —as happened 99 times out of a 100—he could obtain it only by sending the serial number of the lock to the manufacturer or by the lengthy, complicated process of taking the lock apart and improvising a key. To overcome this handicap Barney collected the keys of all manufacturers, set up his own code books and made them available to all locksmiths.

Today, he is working on a plan for key insurance for automobile owners. If the idea is blessed by automobile manufacturers, a car owner will be able to replace a lost ignition key merely by visiting the shop of any locksmith anywhere in the United States.

A few years ago, former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson asked Barney to make a master key for his country house, town apartment and garages. Instead of carrying a dozen keys, the Secretary wanted a single key to open all doors. Barney surveyed the problem, then regretfully shook his head. The locks were constructed on different principles, making a master key impossible. As far as Barney now knows, Mr. Patterson is still totin’ a bunch of keys.

Barney’s youngest son, eight-year-old Wesley Roger, is gifted with the same precocious talent. The cash box in the Zion office is governed by a combination lock and although never given the combination, the boy can open it with little effort.

Zion explains, “We’ve changed the combination a hundred times, but he’s been able to open that lock ever since he was three.” He beamed with pride, then tenderly warned Wesley Roger not to perform the trick in the presence of strangers. They might get the wrong impression. •

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

Is the Communist conspiracy to conquer America an imminent danger at present? Are subversive elements in this country being held in check?
Asked of: J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI.

YES, Communism today does represent a great danger to America. Our democratic way of life is threatened by a gigantic tyranny which already has engulfed millions of freedom-loving people.

The Communists seek to establish a dictatorship. They would replace freedom, justice and love with tyranny, terror and hatred.

This threat, however, is being met by the determined vigilance of the American people. Using democratic methods, this nation is defending itself against the assaults of the Communist International. As long as law and order reign and citizens have faith in the democratic processes of government, Communism cannot win in this struggle of ideologies.

The FBI, as the governmental agency responsible for the internal security of our country, is keeping close track of Communist machinations. Any person can be of assistance to us in this cause. A citizen having information about subversive activities should contact the closest FBI office immediately.

We can conquer this menace. It is the job of all of us.

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There’s a more serious side to FINGERPRINTing, too. In business, a record can be kept of every employee, for future reference. In crime detection, even unprofessional records of human fingerprints have frequently led to the most startling and romantic solutions and indictments. Doctors and other professionals also find interesting ways of fitting this so-called “entertainment” into their actual vocations. The pleasure, the romance, the scientific lure of FINGER-PRINTER is irresistible. Order your set without delay! THRILLS AHEAD!

What the FINGERPRINTER set contains
Tube of Fingerprint Ink
Polished Impression Glass
Camel Hair Brush
Bottle Black Fingerprint Powder
Bottle White Fingerprint Powder
Ridge Counter Magnifying Glass
Ink Roller
Fingerprint Record Sheets

Sixteen-page illustrated descriptive booklet . . . tells you how professionals record fingerprints.

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245 Greenwich Street, New York, N. Y.

Enclosed find payment of $1.50, for which please RUSH to address below, 1 FINGERPRINT set. (If price of more than one set is enclosed, state how many.)

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Tricks of Short Change Artists

by KENNETH MURRAY

You will be less likely to lose money to the short change artist after you have read Mr. Murray’s interesting expose of the methods employed by crooks.

ARE the con men, the shills and the short-change artists of the old time circus and carnival deserting the field for the more generous one of big business? The present-day short-change artist is entirely modernized with up-to-date methods. Methods have to be up-to-date to make it possible to short-change an experienced bank teller, and that is exactly what they are doing. As a side line to thus robbing banks, odd fives and tens are daily picked up in drug stores, filling stations, etc. Usually the storekeeper first finds it out when counting up at night; the short-change artist is clever!

Recently a middle-aged man walked up to the teller’s window in a small mid-western bank and asked to be given a fifty dollar bill in exchange for bills of smaller denomination. The teller accepted the stack of small bills and gave the man a fifty. On counting the bills, however, the teller discovered and called to the man’s attention the fact that there were ninety-nine dollars; forty-nine in small bills, and a fifty.

The stranger thanked the teller and found a one dollar bill, asking that the pile then be changed for a hundred dollar bill. This the teller did, and the stranger walked away. Immediately another man started talking to the teller, asking change for a ten and directions for reaching a nearby town.

Then the teller “came to.” The bank had been bunked out of fifty dollars, as the first fifty given the stranger had not been returned. The second man had been the “cover-up” to keep the teller’s mind off the transaction and to give the first a chance to get away.

Organized short-changing of filling station attendants is becoming common and it is evident that there are a great many artists engaged in this branch of the business. The tricks are many and varied. One favorite is to offer a twenty in payment of a bill. On getting the change, the stranger will count it over and discover that five or ten dollars are missing. The method is to fold over the five or ten and hold it between two fingers underneath another large bill in one hand, while asking the station attendant to count the change in the other hand. This trick has been the means of cheating a great many oil station men. The loss is seldom discovered until check-up time at night.

Another method of making change appear “short” a bill of any denomination is the use of a clever sleeve attachment. It is merely an elastic running up the coat sleeve; at the end is a spring paper-fastener. The con man merely sends one bill from his change up his sleeve, and the dealer can, of course, see no method of accounting for the loss excepting the most obvious one. that he has made a mistake!

Store clerks, because they handle numbers of bills daily, become careless and are easily deceived by the following trick. The customer shows a twenty dollar bill in paying for a purchase. This he apparently gives to the clerk after making sure that the clerk notices the denomination. In reality a smaller bill, concealed underneath the twenty, changes hands and the clerk gives change for twenty dollars when he has received only a one or a five spot. The clerk usually does not discover his loss until the cash register shows him to be short when the time comes for checking up the day’s receipts at night.

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Outwitting the Plant Smugglers

by James Nevin Miller

IT WAS an ordinary looking package in the hands of an honest-appearing man who stepped from the steamer Charlotte M. Hall onto the Baltimore dock not so long ago.

The parcel had passed the customs officials, and had, apparently, a clear road to its destination anywhere in the United States. Yet it contained destructive agents that bade fair to wreck hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property, and that might have left a trail of poverty and ruined homes throughout a period of many years.

Fortunately the U. S. government has eyes, concealed in unexpected places. This package aroused the suspicion of an inspector of the Plant Quarantine and Control Administration of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. He got possession of it, questioned the owner, opened the parcel, and saved the nation from a loss than can scarcely be calculated.

The passenger who landed that day from the Charlotte M. Hall was a Mississippi planter, returning from a business trip to Brazil. He was a progressive farmer, and his motive—the improvement of his cotton crop —was legitimate enough. But the package contained 59 separate sets of cotton seed, every set infested with living larvae and adults of the dread pink bollworm, the most destructive enemy of cotton in the world. Already it has destroyed the cotton industry of the Hawaiian Islands, and annually inflicts tremendous damage upon the cotton planters of Egypt, Brazil, Mexico—in fact, every great cotton growing country in the world save the United States.

Experts say that if this innocent appearing personal package had not been intercepted through the vigilance of a plant inspector, it would have carried to the heart of Mississippi enough living pink bollworms to have started an invasion of the entire state which might easily have gotten beyond control before discovery.

This incident is only one of the many thousands involving similar interceptions made annually by the inspectors of the Plant Quarantine and Control Board. Their job is to prevent plant and fruit smuggling, innocently intended, or otherwise; and their personnel, while comparatively small numerically speaking, is of the highest caliber. Inspectors are stationed at all principal ports.

Down along the Mexican border the Federal officers have their share and more of adventures, humorous and dangerous. Even some of the old-timers hardly dare put their hands in their pockets while working in certain hard-boiled communities, for fear of being shot at from behind. The license tags of their trucks carry the letters, U. S. D. A., meaning of course, United States Department of Agriculture. But thirsty souls, and there are many along the border, are prone to take a different interpretation—United States Dry-Agent! And lovers of the corn and rye like to take the law in their hands—when in doubt.

And now for some of the tricks of the smugglers! The following side splitting incident took place at the port of New York a few years ago. It seems that a woman arrived from Jamaica, and in her possession was dis- covered a basket containing some plants. They did not meet the current rigid requirements so a plant inspector explained that her plants could not be brought in. The good woman explained that she really wasn’t greatly interested in the plants themselves, but that she was anxious to have the soil for her prize cat to play in—he did so love to frolic about in Jamaica soil.

A tear or so appeared in the official’s eye— for he was a kindly soul. However, it did not remain there long. After being hard-hearted enough to do his duty and advise the dowager that she must return home sans the soil, he gave it the thorough Sherlock Holmes. Hardly had the good woman departed when his astonished, but no longer humanitarian eye, noted two bottles of Jamaica gin buried therein.

Joseph of Biblical fame had a coat of many colors. But the inspectors around Brownsville, Texas, and the notorious Tia Juana district, are still chuckling over the Mexican of many pockets. Some years ago this man came waddling across the border at such a slow rate that he aroused suspicion. To begin with, he was plump, but his avoirdupois seemed to be not altogether of the flesh. And it was not, as examination of his portly person revealed. Inside his coat was an ingeniously devised vest containing many pockets filled with alligator pears. Now, these delicacies are likely to contain an unwanted kind of pest. This “inventor” extraordinary was tried, found guilty, and given a stiff fine for his ambitious efforts to pull a fast one on your Uncle Samuel.

A somewhat similar incident, but of a far more serious nature, took place on the border near El Paso recently. A very dignified gentleman of middle age who claimed to be some sort of a scientist presented his trunk for Federal inspection. Nothing contraband seemed to be on hand until one of the inspectors nonchalantly plunged a hand into a bulky looking pile of the man’s coats and trousers. Encountering numerous hard objects, the inspector made a thorough investigation and found no less than 56 contraband orchid plants. That the offender’s intentions were anything but innocent was revealed by the fact that every one of the plants had been sewed painstakingly into the garments with an obvious intent to deceive. Imagine Mr. Scientist’s embarrassment when he saw his well worked plans go awry, even to the point of earning a substantial fine.

Then there was the case of the American woman who crossed the Mexican border into the United States wearing an extremely full skirt of a type common to certain well known religious sects. Devout looking was this lady, yet there was a certain something about her . demeanor that aroused suspicion, so a lady inspector was instructed to give her a thorough inspection. This brought out the interesting fact that the good woman had tied a huge bag, filled with contraband fruit, around her waist. Which may explain why she chose such full skirts on that eventful day.

But for sheer ingenuity, consider a package lately received by postal inspectors. At first glance it consisted of a number of heavy magazines. But their weight was so out of proportion to their size that the inspector opened the “magazines”. Whereupon he found many bunches of contraband nursery stock, alongside of which a couple of potatoes had been packed in order to afford moisture to the stock.

Other clever ruses of the smugglers are: false bottomed trunks and barrels, besides contraband fruits and plants which have been hidden in partially baked loaves of bread.

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SCIENCE on the Trail of Crime

by Lieut. Col. Calvin Goddard

Director of Chicago’s Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory
as told to JAY EARLE MILLER

On St. Valentine’s Day, 1929, a party of Chicago gangsters, armed with two sub-machine guns, stood seven rivals against the wall of a gang rendezvous and mowed them down. A coroner’s jury was impaneled and as a result of their labors Mr. Bert Mas see, the foreman, brought to Chicago Lieut. Col. Calvin Goddard, a famous expert on forensic ballistics, endowed a scientific crime detection laboratory, and placed Col. Goddard in charge. He tells here of the detective work of this laboratory.

NOT long ago Leonarde Keeler, a member of our Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory staff, stood in a courtroom at Appleton, Wis., with a specially designed instrument, combining a sphygmomanometer, a cardograph and a pneemograph— the whole thing being better known as a “lie detector”—on a table before him while two defendants, charged with bank robbery, volunteered to let him test them while on the stand. Both, protesting their innocence, had previously submitted to his tests, and he had pronounced them innocent.

Judge Theodore Berg denied the request, on legal objections of the state, and, after eye witnesses of the robbery had identified the prisoners, the trial proceeded.

But before the taking of evidence had been completed a prisoner caught in a Minnesota town confessed he was one of the bank robbers and named the second, who was duly apprehended. When the eye witnesses saw the two new prisoners they transferred their identification to them, and the original pair went free.

Another victory for science in crime detection.

The whole story of the application of science in crime detection—except as it applies to fingerprint identification-—is practically a closed book to most American judges, lawyers, police, and juries. Fingerprints won recognition after a hard fight, but the “lie detector” is still frowned on by courts as a violation of the constitutional provision that a man cannot be forced to give evidence against himself.

The principle of the lie detector is quite simple, in fact, in various forms the machine is in daily use by physicians to measure blood pressure. In Keeler’s development of the instrument for the determination of the difference between truth and lies the changes in the subject’s blood pressure and respiration—which always accompany attempted deception—are charted by pens on a strip of moving paper.

The machine is not a third degree device, since it requires the consent and cooperation of the subject, at least to the extent of sitting quietly and holding one arm still. Denied the right to use the testimony of the machine in court, we use the detector as a substitute for the third degree. The suspect is first tested with his back to the machine, and, if the hills and dales of the chart indicate he is lying, he is then turned around and permitted to see the pen pointing out his lies as he repeats them. In seventy-five per cent of the cases where a suspect has watched the pen jump up and draw a peak on the paper every time he tells a lie a confession, which could be used in evidence, has resulted.

The lie detector did get court recognition in a rather amusing way just last week. A Chicago policeman was fined $50 in probate court for the theft of a valuable canary from the estate of a deceased person. With another officer he had been assigned to guard the effects of the wonman, a suicide. The pet canary disappeared and there was a hue and a cry. A few days later a dead canary was found in the house. The officers claimed the bird had escaped, then flew back and dropped dead, but a friend of the owner insisted the dead bird was not the missing one.

The lie detector indicated that one officer knew nothing about the missing bird, but that the other did. On the strength of this, the court ordered the man to pay $50 to the estate.

Chicago is a particularly good center for my own specialty — forensic ballistics, or the legal identification of guns and bullets. While some seventeen other American cities have larger murder ratios than Chicago, few receive the unfortunate publicity in connection with homicides by firearms that Chicago does, due to the gang wars. In the case which brought me to Chicago, the St. Valentine’s day massacre, seventy shells, many bullets and other evidence was found at the scene. Examination under the microscope showed the bullets had been fired from two different guns, for every gun leaves different markings on both shells and bullets. The markings on both bullets and shells showed further that both weapons were Thompson sub-machine guns.

Nearly a year later a man involved in a trivial traffic accident in a Michigan town killed a policeman who attempted to question him, and then fled. In his home an arsenal was found, including two machine guns. We fired test bullets from the weapons, and proved they were the guns used in the St. Valentine’s day affair.

Forensic ballistics is an exact science, and is so recognized by our courts. I have testified in many cases in the past several years, usually starting with a talk to the jury on gun making, showing the impossibility of making two guns which will leave identical marks on shells and bullets.

I think the most interesting case I ever had was one in Newark, N. J., some years ago. There had been a series of burglaries, all committed in the same way, by a man who entered homes while the family was away, breaking in through a basement window.

In one robbery a man and his sister were sitting in a shaded room on the top floor when they heard a noise downstairs. The man went to investigate, was shot, and died later in the hospital.

A week later a woman was found in possession of some jewelry stolen in another of the robbery series. She confessed she had received the stuff from her husband, and also admitted that in the same robbery he had stolen a gun, which he had spent some time in cleaning. On the night of the murder he had gone out with the gun, had returned breathless, with blood on his overcoat, and claimed the police had chased him and he had thrown the weapon away.

The police questioned the owner of the revolver, and he finally recalled having shot one bullet into a flower bed on New Year’s eve two years before. The flower bed was dug up and screened, and the bullet found. With that bullet, and the one taken from, the murdered man, they came to me.

Within a few hours I determined that both bullets had been made by the Peters Cartridge Company, that both were of 38 calibre, that both had been fired from a Smith & Wesson revolver, one from a dirty gun and the other from a gun after it had been cleaned, and that the same gun was used in both cases.

With this evidence, and despite the fact the missing weapon was never found, we obtained a first degree murder conviction.

Our laboratory is a research institution entirely, and, while we are affiliated with Northwestern University, we do not as yet teach methods of crime detection, aside from lectures to police lieutenants, detectives, and assistant state’s attorneys. We are subject to call at any time to investigate any case in Chicago or Cook county, without charge to the government, and also send men frequently to other cities, for which a fee is charged.

The latest addition to our staff is Inspector Ferdinand Watzek, a famous “moulage” expert of twenty years’ service on the detective force of Vienna, Austria. Moulage is the art of preserving exact casts of any object. If a burglar pauses to take a bite from an apple on the sideboard while collecting the family silver, we can reproduce the apple in an exact wax cast, permanently preserving his teeth marks for comparison with teeth casts of suspects. A burglar’s jimmy mark on a door or window can be preserved for comparison, under a microscope, with a jimmy; foot prints cast for future comparison with shoes, or any part of the body, or the entire body, permanently copied. In Europe these life-like casts of murdered persons are often made for future identification, or use in courts. They are so perfectly made and colored it is impossible without close examination to detect them from a real body.

Besides making casts, Watzek also is an expert on finger-printing, identification of handwriting, and the microscopic study of hair, dust, textiles, etc. Dust particles found in the cuff of a suspect’s trousers, on his clothes, or in the wax of his ear has often been sufficient to solve baffling mysteries abroad, and now we are prepared to do the same thing here. We also have our own expert on poisons and chemical analysis, Dr. C. W. Muehlberger, assistant director of the laboratory and former state toxicologist of Wisconsin, where for seven years he made scores of analyses in autopsy cases and obtained numerous convictions.

He is just now introducing in America a chemical test for intoxication which has been used for some time in England. Eye witness testimony about the degree of a person’s state of intoxication or testimony as to the amount of liquor consumed, is seldom satisfactory—the first because witnesses differ, and the second because ability to “carry one’s liquor” varies so widely. In the chemical test a portion of the chemical is mixed with a sample of kidney secretion, and the mixture turns color in proportion to the amount of alcohol in the blood, and therefore circulating to the brain. A man who becomes drunk on one drink, and one who gets equally drunk on a quart, will both show the same amount of alcohol in the blood stream, so this is an exact index of the degree of drunkenness.

In our lie detector we have one instrument which no European police department as yet has, but it will take at least a generation to get scientific crime detection established in America on a footing comparable to that practiced in London, Paris, Lyons, Madrid, Vienna, Rome and other foreign cities, and to get the courts and law makers to recognize the validity of scientific evidence.

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Mechanics of Killing

From the first torture rack to the latest gas chamber, science has transformed the criminal’s execution from a human butchery into a skilled profession.

BY Lester David

WHEN the world was younger, the law’s method of exacting an eye for an eye and a life for a life was crude. Today the mechanics of executions have been made both deadly and scientific.

Not so always! In ancient Rome a condemned man, clad only in a loin cloth, was shoved by his executioner into a large sack. Into the sack also was placed a dog, a rooster and a poisonous snake. The writhing bundle was hurled into a swamp, and the execution had been carried out.

In England, in the Middle Ages, a victim was chained to the stone floor of his cell, and he was forced to lie prone with heavy weights clamped to his back. Each day the jailer brought a slice of moldy bread, a cup of stagnant water, and added another weight. The bread and water got smaller in quantity each day. The weights grew heavier. Finally, the wretch died.

For centuries the unfortunates who incurred the death penalty were broken on the wheel, boiled in pitch, drawn and quartered, impaled on pickets, hurled onto sharp rocks from steep cliffs, burned at the stake, torn to pieces by red-hot pincers or buried alive. Scientific execution has replaced the torture death in the modern democratic state. Today the men who carry out the state’s sentence of death are skilled craftsmen, whose goal is swift, merciful execution by scientific instruments.

Take the science of hanging, which now requires intricate mathematics and hair- split planning for a technically flawless job. A sudden snap must break the neck cleanly; there must be no mutilation or slow strangulation, proof that the execution has been bungled.

In the 17th and early 18th centuries hanging was a crude affair. Someone tossed a rope over the gallows. One end of the rope was hastily knotted in a noose which was slipped around the victim’s neck. Then the man holding the other end of the rope jerked the victim into the air.

Even this was an improvement over a still earlier hanging method. In this case, the condemned man was forced to stand up in a horse cart while the noose was yanked down over his neck. Suddenly the horses were whipped. The man fell off and choked to death as the cart-pulled rope dragged him over the ground.

Not only has the modern state perfected the actual act of hanging, but it has done much to bolster the victim’s morale before execution. Many states have done away with the old-fashioned gibbet which stood menacingly in the prison courtyard. Formerly the prisoner had to walk a long “last mile” and march up the wooden steps to the gallows. Now the victim simply walks a few feet from his cell onto a hidden trapdoor.

The mechanics of hanging calls for close attention to the rope, the noose and the exact distance of the fatal drop through the trap.

If the condemned man twirls or spins at the end of the rope, or if he gurgles, gasps, draws up his knees or convulses in spasms, the hangman has muffed his job, for these indicate that the man is dying of slow strangulation. In this case, he may stay conscious for as long as 20 minutes.

On the other hand, if there is no sound or motion and only a gentle swing on the end of the rope, the criminal has died quickly of a broken neck. And this time the hangman knew his craft.

The rope itself is probably the most important single tool of the hangman’s trade. Hemp is almost universally used. It gives a sharp snap when jerked taut, and it’s this snap which breaks the neck and severs the spinal cord. The hangman must soap-stone his rope and keep it in a cool, dry place to retain its freshness. Most executioners use a 13-foot piece of five-strand, 3/4-in. Italian hemp with ten twists. A fiber rope does not stretch and therefore is never used. Each execution requires a new hemp rope, because the snap lessens markedly after the first hanging. Thus, in the official photographs of the Nuernberg hangings each dead Nazi is shown lying with his own rope around his neck.

The most vital task of the hangman is to calculate the correct “drop.” If the victim falls too far, the rope will cut the neck or even sever it. If he doesn’t drop far enough, the rope merely binds tight about his neck and slowly chokes him to death. (See Table page 52.) In figuring the drop, many factors must be considered— the weight of the victim, the size of his neck, the strength of the muscles and the bones. The hangman makes a minute study of the condemned the day before execution and consults the prison doctor’s records. The hangman may even enter the criminal’s cell to examine him personally.

In Spain the garrote is still the traditional way to execute criminals. It has been greatly improved since its first use in the Middle Ages, however. Formerly, the executioner twisted a cord or bandage around the victim’s neck by means of a garrote or “cudgel” until he strangled. Later, the mechanical collar and other innovations to quicken death were adopted.

The victim now sits upon a post or stool and leans against a heavy stake. Attached to the stake is an iron collar, which the executioner clamps around the victim’s neck. The executioner tightens the collar by turning the heavily weighted levers fastened to a big screw. The collar itself has an upper and a lower ring, and as the screw turns, the upper ring is drawn toward the stake while the lower is pushed away, creating a “scissors” action. If the executioner adjusts the double collar on the victim so that one of the rings presses on one vertebra and the other on an adjoining one, the executioner can turn the screw rapidly and thus dislocate the spinal column. The dislocation kills the criminal immediately.

In another widely used version of the garrote, there is a sharp blade in the rear of the collar. When the executioner turns the screw to tighten the collar, the blade slices into the neck and causes instant death.

Execution by beheading, however, reached its peak, scientifically as well as numerically, with the guillotine during the French Revolution. For swift and sure beheading, the guillotine has never been surpassed.

Although it is commonly believed that the guillotine was born during the revolution in France, the Scots had a similar device almost two centuries before. As in the guillotine, a blade moved in grooves set in an upright frame. Dubbed “The Maiden,” the Scottish device was used for nearly a century before being discarded.

The French machine, suggested by Dr. J. I. Guillotine for the speedy execution of anti-revolutionists, improved upon the crude “Maiden.” This improved model still is used in France today.

The guillotine consists simply of two upright posts, topped by a crossbeam grooved to guide an obliquely bladed knife. The back of this big knife is heavily weighted, and the blade “chops” down swiftly when the executioner releases the pull rope.

Without a guillotine, beheading is one of the most difficult executions to perform. There are many cases on record where the headsman had to make up to adozen strokes before he finally succeeded in beheading his victim.

In England, before beheading was cast aside, the executioner used either a huge two-handed sword or an axe, the head of which was eight inches wide at the blade and about a foot long. Sometimes the condemned man simply knelt and lowered his head, a method the Japs still use. More often, though, a chopping block was added.

This usually was a long piece of timber with foot-high supports at each end. A small log of wood was fastened across the upper end, on which the neck was laid. During Queen Elizabeth’s reign, a low, grooved block was commonly used to hold the victim’s neck in the proper position. The victim lay on the ground with his neck resting on the block. Other types forced the condemned person to kneel while the executioner’s assistant tied victim’s hands to the sides of the block.

As the scientific age began in the twentieth century, a strange thing happened. Humaneness, up till then unknown where the death penalty was concerned, was introduced into executions. Science now sought to make killing more expert for the state and more merciful for the condemned.

After many experiments and tests, the electric chair finally was adopted to replace hanging in most of our states. Here was a way of meeting death that took advantage of man’s new knowledge of electricity. Naturally, there is a lot more to electrocution than merely throwing a switch.

Before the date set by law, the executioner, who must be a trained electrician, gets data on the victim’s exact physique so that the electrodes will fit perfectly. This must be done as close to the day of execution as possible, since condemned men often start shriveling away as they await their doom.

Unlike the hangman’s rope, the electric chair is always the same. It is made of stout oak and has eight straps by which the victim is bound at the chest, the waist, each upper arm and each ankle.

At the death signal, the guards step back. The executioner throws the switch to the maximum voltage, usually 2,000. After five seconds, he decreases the voltage to 1,000 to prevent sparking and unnecessary burning. He holds the current at 1,000 for 30 seconds, then steps it to 2,000. He repeats this alternate increasing and decreasing of the current for four or five successive shocks, and then the doctors examine the body and pronounce the death of the criminal.

Electricity enters the body through two electrodes, one on the head and the other on the right leg. To get perfect conductivity, these parts of the body are shaved, and a sponge soaked in brine is placed between the electrodes and the flesh.

After the electric chair had been in operation for some years, man continued to cast about for even more humane methods. The next major step in the technical progress of killing was the lethal gas chamber, now the legal method of execution in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon and Wyoming.

The gas-chamber victim is bound hand and foot to a straight-backed chair in a sealed chamber, while the official witnesses observe through windows. A two-gallon jar of sulphuric acid and water stands at the side of the chair. At a signal, the executioner cuts a string outside of the chamber and releases about ten one-ounce “eggs” of cyanide of potassium. As the “eggs” plummet into the jar, clouds of death-dealing gas immediately arise.

The victim breathes once, twice.

Man thus has learned to temper justice with both humanity and science. For science, which has given man a far better life than he has ever enjoyed before, also has given a better death to the condemned criminal. •

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Rail Detectives Victors in War on Crime

WHERE are the James boys and the “Bill” Daltons of yesteryear? What has become of the picturesque train robber who, with a gun in each hand and his eyes boring his victims from above a black silk handkerchief, backed away to his pony, Hung the Wells Fargo pouch of gold across his saddle bow, cut loose with a parting volley of bullets, and galloped off across the prairie trails to lead pursuing posses through nights of hard and fruitless riding?

Gone? Not a bit of it! He has changed his game, that’s all. He may have lost his picturesqueness—which any railroad detective will assert he possessed only in fiction—but he has simply turned to new paths in his hopeless struggle against law and order. His pony has been superseded by the automobile. Smooth concrete roads are his prairie trails of today. And his loot is carried away in carload lots by motor truck.

For the masked desperado of other days, a gunman still, has gone to robbing freight trains; not that it is less hazardous, but because it holds out a false lure of greater profit. At a recent meeting of railroad detectives in Chicago, one veteran estimated the railroads in Illinois alone lost approximately $10,000,000 i n merchandise through freight car thefts in 1922. Other officials, however, say this figure is far too high and point out that the losses are constantly decreasing.

One of the greatest factors in cutting down the number of robberies is the railway police—or special agents, as they are better known. Through the organization of squads of “train riders,” picked marksmen, armed with shotguns and rifles, who convoy valuable shipments, thievery is being made too costly to be profitable. Other rifle squads, riding in high powered motor cars, are nightly patrolling the highways that parallel the rights of way. Any of these men, if asked about the days when the Younger band and the Daltons made life miserable for trainmen and passengers in Missouri, will declare the depredations then were insignificant as compared to the problems the railroad police have to meet today.

It was the late William A. Pinkerton, the man most feared by train and bank robbers during the years they terrorized the west, who stripped the Missouri desperadoes of the halo of bravery and the garb of glamor bestowed upon them by the writers of lurid fiction. In an account of the operations of the principal holdup gangs between 1875 and 1907, he pictured them all as a lot of “cowardly assassins,” and so they remain to this day.

Just as a crime wave swept along in the wake of the civil war, so the epidemic of train robberies followed the world war, according to the special agents. History repeats itself. At first the thefts were mostly of silk. Then special guards were placed aboard the trains and the number of these robberies declined. One such recent shipment was valued at $12,000,000. It was carried in forty-six cars and accompanied by twenty-five armed guards. Then prohibition came, and the thieves turned their attention to alcohol and liquor.

This class of robbery reached the peak in 1920 and 1921.

Now all these shipments are heavily guarded until they reach the consignee.

“There hasn’t been a silk robbery in a long time now,” said one veteran, “and we haven’t lost a quart of alcohol in months.”

Just after the war came a series of mail robberies in which the loot ran into millions. Most of these holdups were committed, however, either after the mail sacks had been thrown from the trains or were being carried to the depots. These thefts became so numerous the war department placed armed marines on all mail trains and also on the postal trucks. There hasn’t been a big mail robbery since.

It used to be that most freight car thefts were committed in the yards at the large terminals, but these yards are now efficiently patrolled, 1,800 special police being assigned to duty in the yards of the Chicago district alone. The result is that the majority of robberies occur on the road while the trains are moving. How, the average person asks, can a whole freight car load of stuff be stolen while the train is going- forty miles an hour? Listen to Chief J. Boyle of the Pullman Company’s police force, and a member of many a posse that chased old-time train robbers across Missouri. He describes the modern method of operation as follows: “The thieves are tipped off as to the number of the car and the kind of goods it contains. They hide on it and pry open the door after the train leaves the yards when the darkness hides the thieves from the train crew. The rumble of the wheels drowns out the sound as they begin throwing out the packing cases, cartons, barrels or boxes. The thefts always are committed where a highway parallels the tracks, where their confederates can pick up the loot with motor trucks.”

To stop this practice, roads are using shotgun crews in automobiles to patrol the highways near the tracks. Occasionally these squads come upon the thieves in the act of loading their trucks and the battle is on. The train riders usually ride in empty gondolas so they can watch both sides of the cars. Many a running battle over the lurching tops of box cars is fought between them and the thieving gangs, but the public seldom hears of the incident. A few lines in the newspaper announce that John Jones, a railroad detective, was found shot to death in the so-and-so yards, and that’s the end of it. “Talk about the James boys !” exclaimed L. J. Benson, chief of a force of nearly 3,000 detectives employed on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system. “Some of these freight thieves have got them beaten forty ways. Get into a pistol argument with some of these birds dodging in and out among freight cars on a dark night and you’ll get all the fun you’re looking for.

And I have yet to hear of one of my men going the other way when under fire.”

Another feature of the special agent’s work is the protection of passengers on crack trains from swindlers and gamblers. For instance, a passenger on one of the fast limited trains running between New York and Chicago was approached by a stranger who asked if he played bridge. Responding in the negative, he was informed that but one other member was needed to complete the foursome and that, although bridge was their favorite game, pinochle would be played if he so desired. The passenger refused, but shortly after noticed a young man trailing the inquirer back to a compartment, and later return with a rather discontented look upon his countenance. The two struck up a conversation which ultimately drifted to gambling.

Overhearing the conversation, a gentleman, apparently an ordinary business man, joined in the discussion, and later solicited their co-operation in an endeavor to “get the goods 011″ the two card sharks who occupied the compartment. His credentials proved him to be a railroad detective. After dinner the special agent and one of the passengers adjourned to the club car to enjoy a quiet smoke and a social game of cards. It was not long before two men approached, and one, the individual who had extended the invitation to join his party for a game of bridge or pinochle, suggested that they go back to their compartment and have a little game.

This invitation was accepted, and as the detective started to shuffle the deck of cards with which he had been playing, one of the strangers suggested, “Let’s get a brand new deck.” He rang the porter’s bell, and in a few minutes the game was on. As it progressed, the bids were raised and the winnings of the gamblers increased.

Departing in seemingly good faith, the victims sought the porter. The detective made known his identity, and a rapid succession of questions that form a part of every grilling caused the porter to admit that he had supplied marked cards. The confession was drawn up in writing, signed by the porter, and the two swindlers were arrested at the next stop.

Few people realize that they are purchasing personal property insurance, if it may be termed as such, when buying railway tickets. The detectives, however, also act as a guard against pickpockets and wearing apparel thieves. One tells of a passenger who had fastened a highly valued, diamond stickpin on the underside of his necktie which he, in turn, placed in the pocket of his trousers upon retiring. The next morning it was missing and later was recovered from a pawn dealer.

Assisting county authorities, the special agents also conduct investigations of the causes of the death or injury of employes, patrons and trespassers and help in the promotion of measures for public safety.

In the Chicago district the crossing watchmen on the Pennsylvania railroad help to gather data in a campaign to prevent careless driving by motorists.

Periscope Reveals the Interior of a Locked Bank Vault

THE “Tresoroskop,” a periscope-like device that has just been perfected in Germany is shown in demonstration above. It is especially designed for use in safe deposit vaults, and installed therein will be invisible to occupants of the vaults. It will also be useful to watchmen outside of the walls, who can look through it from the outside and inspect the vault without entering or unlocking the doors.

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Science Outwits Industrial Spies

Priceless Secrets in Steel, Dye, and Chemical Plants of Germany Guarded from Sneak Thieves

AN ELABORATE system of industrial spies, working with almost wartime efficiency, was discovered recently in Germany. In the great steel, dye, and chemical plants of that country, this organized band of informers is attempting to ferret out the closely-guarded trade secrets which give an advantage over competitors. Because of the economic crisis in Germany, these secret manufacturing processes are being more jealously guarded than ever and the factory owners are using the latest scientific aids to stamp out the crooks.

How the spy of industry operates is shown in the remarkable set of photographs on these pages. Gaining entrance to a factory on some pretext, he makes the most of the few moments at his disposal, using all the tools of modern science. If possible, a diminutive camera under his hat or in his buttonhole snaps secret industrial processes. Hasty sketches are made of an intricate machine’s vital parts. He camouflages stolen plans with innocent-looking sketches of landscapes.

To combat him, manufacturers, when they convey valuable trade secrets by letter, use a code known only among themselves. Detectives keep unknown visitors under surveillance with tapped telephone wires, periscopes and microphones.

Teletypewriters and Airplane Cops Trail Eastern Crooks

EASTERN criminals on the “lam” must move faster than ever today if they want to make good their escape for they are being trailed by teletypewriters and airplane police. The Pennsylvania State Police have been provided with tele- typewriters distributed in five zones throughout the state. Alarms and descriptions of crooks as written on the typewriter in the sending office are received throughout the state on electric typewriters just as fast as the sender can write. And in Bergen county, New Jersey, Peter J. Siccardi, chief of the traffic squad, has organized a squad of five flying police officers.

Rum Runners Drag Cargo Under River

WHEN SLED WITH LOAD OF LIQUOR ARRIVES IN POSITION UNDERNEATH WHARF, DIVER DESCENDS AND FASTENS HOISTING CABLE TO CARGO. THE CONTENTS ARE THEN HAULED THROUGH A TRAPDOOR OPENING IN FLOOR OF WAREHOUSE

HAND WINCH SECRETED IN SHED ON CANADIAN SIDE OF RIVER PAYS OUT CABLE. LOADED SLED IS DRAWN OVER BED OF RIVER BY HIDDEN WINCH LOCATED IN WAREHOUSE ON THE DETROIT SIDE OF RIVER AND RUM IS THUS TRANSFERRED UNSEEN.

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The Air Police Patrol

By HUGO GERNSBACK

THE automobile, as a quick get-away instrument in crime, has assumed vast proportions during the past decade. Notorious gangsters and their henchmen are always using high-powered automobiles and, unfortunately, they are often able to outwit local police and state troopers after the crime has been engineered. Very frequently, the license number and a good description of the car is obtained by the police but, as a rule, so much time is lost in distributing such information from Police Headquarters that the criminals can make a clean getaway. Usually, the crime car is abandoned a little later, after the gangsters have changed to another.

It is true that short-wave radio, in connection with police cars, has been able to decrease crime somewhat; but this is true mostly in large cities. Once the fleeing gangsters take to the rural highways, it is usually impossible for the police to overtake them.

A means is here proposed to enable the police to move quickly about, and apprehend, criminals, via airplane. A number of municipalities now have airplanes, and most of them are being equipped with police radio. But it is one thing to notify an airplane that a car is heading in a certain direction on the highway, and another to stop the car by airplane. The reason for this is that the modern airplane cannot come too close to the ground and, even if it did, it could do so for only a very brief space of time, measured in seconds. Suppose we have instead a police plane equipped with a separate gondola, which is streamlined, and which can be lowered from the plane by a steel cable. By means of the plane’s engines, the gondola can be lowered or raised quite rapidly, while the plane can fly from 300 to 400 feet above the ground. The gondola, which swings free, except as it is supported by the steel cable, can assume a partially independent motion of its own, because it has a rudder and elevators to steer it, like a glider. It can, therefore, independent of the airplane, veer to the right or the left, and even turn about in the opposite direction, should this be necessary. The mobility of the gondola is, therefore, greater than that of the plane.

Suppose now, that Police Headquarters gets the report that a certain green sedan, with a certain license number, is escaping on a certain highway. The Air-Police Patrol, ready at all times, takes off in a few seconds and will be over the highway far quicker than any automobile could cover the distance. By means of binoculars, the fleeing car is spotted quickly. The gondola is lowered, as soon as the airplane is close behind the automobile and, in a matter of seconds, it is within fifty feet of the ground. The police, if they are sure of their prey take no chances, but immediately fire at the tires and bring the car to a standstill. If the bandits know what is good for them, they will not venture outside of the car because, by the time this system is in vogue, they will understand that they cannot resist or attempt escape without being riddled.

In the meanwhile, the airplane wings overhead in circles, while the gondola does likewise, except that it cuts smaller circles, if required. Of course, in the meanwhile, as soon as the airplane spotted the car, word was flashed by radio to the nearest police station ahead that the fugitives had been overhauled; and thus, without much loss of time, police cars will be roaring to the spot, surrounding the bandit car and taking their prisoners.

The gondola is then again hoisted upwards, the plane departs, and this particular job is finished.

This gives the idea in the rough and, while it may be necessary to do quite a bit of experimenting to perfect the system, there is reason to believe that it is sound and can be put into use immediately, if authorized. It would prove a powerful deterrent to present gangster methods.