Meeting the Crime Wave

Meeting the Crime Wave: A Comparison of Methods

By Joseph Gollomb

From “The Nation” magazine January 21, 1921

This story is a lot more representative of the work of Joseph Gollomb than my previous post. I'll try and create a bibliography in the near future./drf

The crime wave now afflicting the whole world is a logical aftermath of the war. Economic distress—poverty, insufficient food, clothing, and fuel—the loosing of men’s animal passions, coupled with the general disorgani­zation of our social structure, are producing their inevita­ble effect. While its manifestations vary, subject to local conditions, the disease knows no geographic boundaries, but its treatment is still largely national. Moreover, the police power of the world has been rudely shaken by events. It needs reconstruction, revitalization, and above all in­creased international cooperation. The American has, of course, always taken it for granted that his police organiza­tion is the best on earth, his system of detection the shrewd­est, most scientific, most persevering. Present-day New Yorkers, in the face of a mounting epidemic of unsolved murder and robbery, may perhaps entertain a lurking doubt. But it is questionable whether we could ever justly boast of anything in this direction but a mistaken pride. The actual claims of France and Britain—in fact and fiction—seem more valid. What have we comparable to the great Bertillon and to M. Lecoq? What traditions to equal the famous Scotland Yard organization, what hero of detection superior to Sherlock Holmes? As for Germany, its “verboten” has become notorious as the symbol of the omni­present and ever-watchful arm of the law. We shall do well to study our neighbors’ methods.

The tracking by society of the men who prey on man is already something of a sport and sometimes an art—in fiction. In real life it is a crusade, a science, a profession; there is no sporting ethics in it as yet and police prefer the shortest way to the kill whether it is good sport, art, or neither. But the quarry has grown clever with science and technique, and the hunter has had to keep up with him. The result is that so infinitely complex, delicate, and manifold have become the means and weapons of crime and of man hunting with X-ray, dictaphone, micro-photography, chem­ical reagents, psychoanalysis, organization technique, card cataloguing, and ten thousand other devices that the modern detective has come to exercise something of the care of the artist in choosing weapon and trail in his hunt. It is inter­esting to observe, therefore, the differences in the manner of man hunting shown by the detective systems of London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, and how in their hunting they reveal their racial traits. Let us consider four actual cases.

In a half-asleep residential section of east London is a neglected three-story private dwelling with heavy shutters and doors, inconspicuous and unattractive. It was just the kind of house for which an old man, calling himself Smithers, had been looking. For twenty years he had been accu­mulating money by buying all kinds of objects and no ques­tions asked. He could drive a shrewd bargain and his busi­ness associates usually acceded to his terms, though not without many a curse and often more or less impressive threats. Smithers did not mind the former; but as he grew more and more rich he worried about the threats. He knew his customers. So he tried to hide his riches and lived penuriously. Fear of being murdered and robbed drove him from his business to a retreat. The house, by reason of its inconspicuousness, its strong doors and windows, attracted him and he bought it. He secured every possible entrance with bars and double locks and had his home wired so that nobody could touch a door knob, window sash, or grating without setting an electric bell ringing. In addition he arranged it so that if any one detected the wiring and cut it, the loosened wire, dragged down by a leaden weight, would fall on a cartridge and exploding it would give as effective notice of danger as the electric bell. He lived by himself, received no one, and attracted as little attention as he could.

Nevertheless, one day tradesmen began to wonder why he did not take in off the front steps the articles he had ordered delivered. The police were notified, an entrance was forced. Smithers was found murdered. The burglar alarm had been cut, under the fallen leaden weight was found a pad of cloth and the cartridge unexploded. A strong-box had been rifled. Whoever had done the business was no novice. There was not a finger-print to be found, the work having obviously been done in gloves. The only clue left for the police to work on was a small dark-lantern, a child’s toy without doubt, which had been contemptuously left behind by the burglars.

Scotland Yard went to work on the case characteristically. A conference was held of the Central Office Squad, consist­ing of four chief inspectors, ten detective inspectors, nine­teen detective sergeants, and fourteen detective constables. They went at their problem like a team, captained, but working as one. There was no star performer. With only the child’s lantern to work on as a clue, the problem became at first mere drudgery. A tedious round of manufacturers and toy shops followed to determine if possible where that lantern was bought. In this search team-work was every­thing, individual cleverness nothing. Finally it seemed probable that the lantern was such as a mother in one of several tenement districts in London would buy for a seven-year-old child.

A simple plan was devised as the next phase of the hunt. A detective who had a seven-year-old son was assigned to allow his boy to play with the lantern in the streets of the quarter from which it might have come and to see what hap­pened. For a week nothing at all happened, and father and son were asked to repeat their task in the adjoining district. Here the simple device brought no better results and again they were assigned new territory. This happened several times, until it began to look as though nothing at all would come of it. But with the doggedness of the race Scotland Yard hung on to the trail. Then one day a little boy of the quarter edged up to the policeman’s son, looked sharply at the lantern with which the youngster was playing, and set up a wail.

“I want mah lantern!” he said.

“’Tain’t your lantern!” the policeman’s son retorted in­dignantly.

“Yes, it is! I know it is!”

The detective came forward. “Are you sure?” he asked, gently. “Because my son has had it for many weeks, you know.”

“ ’Ere, I’ll prove it’s mine,” the stranger boy said. “W’en mah wick burned out I cut off a little piece of my sister’s flannel petticoat for a new wick.”

The detective opened the lantern and examining the wick found it to be of flannel, as the boy had said. “We’ll have to ask your mother about this,” the detective said. “If you’re telling the truth you shall have your lantern back.”

The three went to the boy’s mother, a widow who kept boarders. The woman, honest and hard working, con­firmed her son’s claim. The detective kept his word, re­turned the lantern, but questioning the widow further found out that the boy missed the lantern at about the same time that two of her boarders had left without paying their board bills. One had told her that he was an electrician, the other a plumber’s apprentice, and she remembered seeing tools of their trade, or what she thought were such, in their room.

Followed then another series of weary searches by the men of Scotland Yard; searches among young plumbers and among electricians; in the underworld for two young fel­lows answering to the descriptions the widow gave; in the files of criminal records in Scotland Yard; in more expen­sive boarding houses and in dance resorts. Nothing short of a big organization imbued with team work and bulldog perseverance could have accomplished that search. But at last two young men were found whom the widow, unknown to them, identified as her former boarders.

The police had as yet nothing more serious against them than unpaid board bills. So they secretly kept them under surveillance. It was thus they learned that the young men were fond of target shooting with a revolver at trees in the country. The bullets extracted from the trees proved to be of the same exceptionally large caliber as that found in the murdered miser’s brain. Tactfully, patiently, a corps of detectives searched into the past of the two men, each finding out some seemingly unimportant item. But the whole was becoming a net in which one day the two men found themselves inextricably fast on the charge of the mur­der and robbery of Smithers.

Now let us contrast with this man hunt another under similar circumstances in Paris. There had been a remark­able series of burglaries in the aristocratic Etoile section. In each case the burglar—for there was every sign that one man was committing them—took art objects of considerable value but never of such marked uniqueness that they could not be disposed of without difficulty or danger. Indeed the man’s skill in entering well-guarded homes, in gathering his loot, and in disposing of it was such that the Paris police had not a trace to work on. This man, too, worked with gloves, so that there was never a finger-print left of his visits.

The Paris police, so to speak, ran around in circles trying to find his trail. One theory was as little fruitful as another and each man on the hunt followed his own. One detective- inspector, let us call him Dornay, struck out on a lone hunt. Posing as a nouveau-riche art collector and bon vivant, he made scores of acquaintances in the fast set where his quarry might conceivably be found. In this way he became interested in a rather quiet, alert man who knew where good values in art objects could be had. Dornay showed more friendliness than the other accepted and, apparently hurt in feelings, the detective thereafter avoided the un­sociable man, whom he knew by the name of Laroche. Thus far Dornay had only a nebulous theory about Laroche’s connection with the elusive burglar he was hunting. It was so nebulous that the detective could not convince his colleagues sufficiently to secure the number of men needed to keep track of all of Laroche’s movements, for the latter had an uncanny way of eluding Dornay’s vigilance. There­upon Dornay determined to get Laroche unconsciously either to clear or to implicate himself. Watching one night outside Laroche’s hotel he saw the latter leave in evening dress. Dornay stole up to the man’s room, let himself in with a skeleton key, and made a thorough search. The only dis­coveries that interested him were a much-used pair of gloves and the water caraffe and drinking glass Laroche kept on a little stand to the left of his bed. With a file Dor­nay rubbed gently at a spot in the thumb of the left-hand glove until little more than a thin filament of chamois remained, which, however would not be noticeable at a care­less glance. Then the detective carefully polished clean the outsides of the caraffe and the drinking glass. He took noth­ing with him when he left. But next morning, when La­roche again left the hotel Dornay stole back into the room and eagerly examined the caraffe and the drinking glass. With a camel’s-hair brush he dusted some graphite powder on it until Laroche’s finger-prints showed clearly. Substi­tuting other glassware Dornay carefully brought Laroche’s to police headquarters.

Three weeks later still another burglary was reported, bearing all the marks of the elusive burglar. But this time the police found faint impressions of a left thumb—and only that. It was, however, sufficient. Dornay’s instinct and little plot had won. As he knew, the moisture of the human finger is sufficient to leave a print even through gloves if the intervening texture is thin. And the finger­prints on the scene of the latest burglary were identical with those on Laroche’s caraffe and drinking glass.

Call it Anglo-Saxon love of team-play, or a racial disin­clination of the individual to shove himself forward at the expense of the group interest, or whatever other trait it illustrates, the Scotland Yard treatment of the Smithers murder mystery was characteristic. Certainly the instinct for organization and organized effort, which has made Scot­land Yard the foremost man-hunting medium in the world, is the inspiration not of individuals but of the race. In contrast in method was the Paris police treatment of the Laroche burglaries. The Frenchman is keenly individual in his work. It makes him less patient, therefore less effi­cient in organization, and consequently throws him back again on individual effort. He is much more prone, as a detective, to hunt by himself than with his colleagues.

Like the Anglo-Saxon gift for organization is the Ger­man passion for it. But there is a vital difference between the two in the outcome of the organization, a difference which is illustrated in the treatment by the Berlin detective force of a murder mystery that occurred in that city sev­eral years ago. The under-secretary for one of the impor­tant governmental departments was found dead near his home in a Berlin suburb. He had evidently been seized from behind, garroted until dead, dragged into an alley and robbed. It was not till late the next day that his body was found; no one had been seen lurking about the scene of the crime; so that the police had practically nothing to work on, other than the manner of the crime.

But they have a machine in the Berlin police department that works almost automatically in the solution of such mysteries. It is typically a German product in the thor­oughness of its organization, in the ruthlessness of its oper­ation, in the vastness and at the same time in the minute­ness of its product. Its principal part is the Meldewesen. Every citizen and visitor in Germany, the former from the day of his birth, the latter from the day of arrival, is re­corded at police headquarters, a card for each individual, and every card is kept up to date. If, for instance, the police want to know something about Carl Schmidt, respect­able citizen, in three minutes after his name reaches police headquarters they know the date, place, and circumstances of his birth, a brief history of each of his parents—if Ger­man, a cross-reference to their individual cards will give a complete history; his education, religion, successive resi­dences, dates of removals, names of business and other asso­ciates—again cross-references afford fuller information on each of these; the name of his wife, date of marriage, names, and other data of his children; dates of the death of any of the family, place of burial; names and histories of servants, employees, etc. At Berlin this Meldewesen depart­ment contains over 20,000,000 cards today, occupies 158 rooms, requires 290 employees, and is daily growing in size. The cards of names commencing with H alone take up ten rooms, S requiring seventeen.

What happens to any individual in Germany who fails to register can be seen in the working of the Razzia system, which is used as a complement to the Meldewesen, and which the police of Berlin proceeded to use in the case of the strangled under-secretary. The Razzia consists of police raids without warrants on gathering places of every kind and even on private dwellings. Every person caught in such a raid is required to give a complete account of him­self or herself. This account is checked up with the record in Meldewesen. If there is a discrepancy, it means anything from a fine, for a first offense for failing to register, to prison if it is repeated.

In this particular case the Berlin police raided Jungfernheide, an amusement park. Of the people there, three hun­dred could not give a clear account of discrepancies between their status then and what the Meldewesen showed. They were all arrested and a minute investigation of each case begun. Out of the three hundred sixty were found to be “wanted” by the police of other cities for various crimes. At the same time that this sifting was going on a special “murder commission,” appointed to deal only with this par­ticular case, was proceeding with coordinating investiga­tions. Such a commission consisting of seven or eight men as a rule, but calling in as many others as necessary, usually includes three or four of the higher officials of the detective force, a police surgeon, a photographer, and one or two men from some highly specialized detective squad. There are thirty-one such squads, each sharply specialized. These squads are known by numbers and the classes of crimes they deal with. For instance: 1. Church thefts, counter­feiting, safe-breaking. 2. Thefts on stairs, streets, squares, hallways, cemeteries, gardens, lead pipes, zinc, etc. 6. Larcenies in flats, tenements, apartments. 7. Burglaries in flats, tenements, apartments. 11. Thefts of overcoats, umbrellas, canes, in restaurants, waiting rooms, institu­tions, etc. 24. Usury, postal frauds. 31. Perjury.

To the special commission in this case were added two members of a squad specializing on highway robberies and an expert on stranglers. These men sifted out the mountain of cards dealing with every individual who could even in the remotest way be suspected of a possible connection with the murder of Under-Secretary Rheinthal. Meanwhile forty-two individuals caught in the Jungfemheide were waiting in prison together with other suspects arrested without warrant or charge. The search revealed that one of the women detained was the mistress of a man against whom were recorded in the police departments of two cities three former highway robberies and a burglary in which the victim was found nearly dead of strangulation, and through the elaborate system of records of the man’s accom­plices, friends, and family, he was finally caught. Once in the clutches of the police the celebrated method of “sweat­ing” or “third degree,” which includes every possible means of coercion, pinned the man to the crime itself and he con­fessed.

Clearly, then, what solved the Rheinthal mystery was a machine, which is what the German passion for organiza­tion produces, rather than a team, as in the case of Scot­land Yard. With the Germans organization reduces its human elements to cogs and parts of an automaton. In Eng­land it binds human beings into a group, which retains initiative on the part of the individual and adds to it the increased competence of the group. In France organiza­tion is the minor fact, the individual is everything.

Aside from the emphasis which national and racial traits give to their different ways of man hunting, these things are also determined by the manner in which men are chosen in these countries to become detectives. In England the instinct is against the creation of a man-hunting class. Scotland Yard, therefore, looks for its raw material among the common people, preferably those near the soil. The Metropolitan Police send scouting teams into the country and offer sufficiently inviting terms to splendid physical specimens to join the police force of London. They investi­gate most carefully the moral character of the applicants, take the successful ones to London, and school them to become one of the world-famous force of “bobbies.” Then if a man shows special aptitude for detective work he has to pass an examination, is given a special training in the detective school of Scotland Yard, and is allowed to work his way up to the top of the system as fast as merit entitles him to promotion. Three elements in his education are con­stantly stressed—the jealously guarded right of every citizen to untrammeled freedom until sufficient evidence is available to justify arrest; the subordination of individual benefit to the good of the group; the duty of every individual to develop initiative and some degree of specialization.

In Germany the practice is to limit the detective force to men who have had at least nine years’ training in the regular army. By the time a candidate becomes a member of the detective staff he is usually past the plastic stage of life and set in his ways. His army life has drilled every vestige of individuality out of him. He is confronted with a future in which he can rise only a grade or two, no matter how efficient he turns out to be. The higher ranks in the service can be reached only through a university training. The result is that the German detective can be depended upon only to follow a routine. It is a machine that the German system demands, rather than an organization.

In Vienna the detective system can draw on neither a people gifted with regimentalized efficiency, nor the individ­ual efficiency of the Scotland Yard man or the French detec­tive. Yet the man hunting done by the Vienna police equals in efficiency any other in Europe. For, in the professorial chairs, the laboratories, and the research departments of Austrian universities man hunting has attained its highest development. In Vienna it is not organization or the indi­vidual detective or a marvelous machine that hunts the criminal most successfully, but modern science with its microscope, chemical reagents, the orderly processes of in­ductive reasoning, carried out by professors, and a minimum contribution on the part of the professional detective.

Let us illustrate with the murder and robbery of a mil­lionaire recluse who lived in a villa on the border of Wiener Wald. He was found dead in his barn, his skull crushed in with some blunt instrument which could not be found. The only clue left by the murderer was a workman’s cap. Dr. Gross in his celebrated work on criminal investiga­tion, which is the most exhaustive study of the science of man hunting in existence, stresses the importance of hairs and dust as clues. The inside of the cap, therefore, was carefully examined and two hairs found, which were not those of the murdered man. These hairs were placed under the microscope, experts called in, and the following was ascer­tained as the description of the man to whom those hairs belonged: “Man about forty-five years old; robust constitu­tion; turning bald; brown hair, nearly gray and recently cut.” The cap was placed in a tough paper bag, sealed, and beaten with a stick as hard as possible. When it was opened again there was dust at the bottom of the bag. This dust was microscopically examined and chemically analyzed. Disregarding the elements that came obviously from the floor of the barn where the cap was found it was discovered that wood dust, such as is found in the shop of a carpenter, predominated. But there were also found minute particles of glue. The combination pointed to a wood joiner.

There was such a man living near the scene of the crime, who also answered to the description derived from the two hairs, a man of morose temperament rendered desperate by drink and poverty. A search of his premises for the instru­ment which might have caused the death of the murdered man yielded a hammer and two mortar pestles. The ham­mer with its octagonal nose was found incapable of inflict­ing the shape of the wound in the man’s skull. The pestles fitted. There were two of them, an iron one rusted in spots and a polished brass one. The rust spots on the iron one were found on chemical analysis to be due to water. But under the metal polish of the brass pestle, when it was carefully scraped away, were found remnants of stains which on analysis and microscopic examination proved to be blood. By a system of reagents developed by Professor Uhlenhut the blood was found to be that of the murdered man. After the investigation had proceeded a little further the murderer broke down and confessed his guilt.

Nothing is too small or insignificant to furnish clues to the Vienna school of laboratory detectives. The marks of teeth on a cigar holder left on the scene of the murder were found to indicate unusually long canines, a clue which led to the murderer. The dust found in pocket knives or clasp knives with which crimes had been committed brought many a criminal to justice wholly through laboratory methods.

The readiness of the German police to search, arrest, and detain citizens on the slightest ground, and the methods em­ployed by the French police in extracting confessions from suspected persons vary fundamentally from the procedure followed in man hunting by the English. When a Scotland Yard man, backed with a warrant, makes an arrest he is compelled by law to say to his prisoner: “Do you wish to make any statement? I warn you that anything you say now may be used against you. You are not required to make any statement.” It is generally acknowledged that a confession extorted from an accused would be barred as evidence in English courts. In contrast to this is the brilliant record made by a Paris detective in tricking arrested suspects into confessions. This man would cultivate the friendship of the accused, say, of murder. Outside of prison the detective would spend most of his time investigating not so much evidence of the prisoner’s guilt but his grievance against the murdered man. Then one day he would rush into the ac­cused man’s cell, his face burning with indignation. “My friend!” he would exclaim. “I don’t understand why you hesitate for one instant in confessing that you killed that snake! I am not a bad man myself. But if any man ruined my business and outraged the woman I love and did a tenth of the vile things that snake did to you, I would kill him and be proud of it!” “Isn’t that so?” the accused would ex­claim—and find himself betrayed.

In England a man’s home is his castle and a detective is limited accordingly. No search can be effected, no arrest made without a warrant based on such evidence as will con­vince a judge in open court. In Berlin a police lieutenant boasted with truth to a student of European police meth­ods : “I can have my neighbor arrested, his house searched, and the man detained in prison for twenty hours even if he is innocent as a lamb. And I can do it without a process beforehand or being made to answer for it afterward.”

This free hand the German police has, together with the infinitely elaborate net in which the German public con­sents to live, gives its detectives a tremendous advantage over the English. A man’s house in Germany is not his cas­tle; an accused can be forced to testify against himself; the habeas corpus is not the institution it is in England. As Sir William Harcourt said: “You must not be surprised if the English police is sometimes foiled, baffled, or defeated. . . . It is the price England pays for a system which she justly prefers.” On the other hand the German system does not necessarily argue a slavish people. The German is equally surprised at the English lack of the institution of the Meldewesen and other aids to the police. “What do peo­ple in England do to find where a certain criminal is?” a German asked in discussing the Meldewesen. “And why should I resent the Meldewesen when it operates to protect me against the criminal? Also suppose I want to find out the address of any man in Berlin or Dresden. For a small fee the police will get it for me. As for the right of search and arrest, well, an innocent man will not suffer long. In return he gets the protection of a system from which the criminal undergoes a maximum of insecurity.”

As the criminal becomes more and more international in his operations, more and more cosmopolitan in his knowl­edge of the ways of man hunters, so the latter, too, are forced to become broader in their hunting methods. The science and some of the organization technique of the Aus­trians and the Germans are being added to the equipment of Scotland Yard. Republican Germany, on the other hand, is modifying some of the autocratic police abuses established by an imperial regime. Paris police are working in close harmony with Scotland Yard and are assimilating from them some of the lessons of team work. Vienna is borrow­ing German organization and Scotland Yard emphasis on the selection of the raw material of its detective force and has surpassed Scotland Yard in the educational training it now gives its operatives. Some day there may even come true the dream of several visionaries among police chiefs—an international police headquarters in The Hague or in some other city from where man hunting in Europe will proceed on a world-wide scope and with the combined skill of all nations.

Conservation of Materials

Conservation of Materials

Part VIII of the series ‘England in Arms’

By W. Lacey Amy

From The Canadian Magazine, December 1917.

It required the war to convince the most pat­riotic of us that Great Britain was year by year becoming less self-contained, that by pro­cesses subtle or open her rivals in the world’s commerce, especially Ger­many, were gradually ousting her not alone from the foreign markets but from her own. And in the revelation that came with war one more eco­nomic theory received a staggering blow that manufacture of specific commodities should be left to the countries in a position to produce them most economically. The theory was unassailable were peace a per­manent blessing. But war has a habit of uprooting theory with relentless hand. There still remain in England those who resist the apparent corol­lary, that unprofitable national pro­duction must be protected, but the teachings of war are rendering their ideals at least momentarily unobtrus­ive. The grim straits through which Great Britain has passed since Au­gust, 1914, have impressed her with the national helplessness that accom­panies the relinquishment to foreign countries of national necessities. And as manufacturers are not the class who willingly produce at a loss in competition with their foreign rivals, there exists only the solution of Gov­ernment protection in some form.

Great Britain never realized how the very essentials of life were drift­ing into the hands of the Germans, until the sudden closing of the Ger­man market forced her to review her own industry. The facts forced home to her might well have discouraged another less resourceful coun­try. Not alone were the needs of everyday life unfulfillable, but some of the very weapons of war had so subtly trickled from British control that only British brain was able to cope with the situation without more than a temporary setback. Perhaps had the war been delayed ten years British brain might not have been so ready to re-grapple with a produc­tion she had lost only for a few years.

It is the popular impression that German dyes represent the climax of British dependence, but the dyes themselves are the least material of the deficiencies of British production. Not yet has the dominance of Ger­many in this commercial commodity been overcome, but adaptable substi­tutes are readily available, and dyes are in their nature immaterial to na­tional victory or even national life. Where the German monopoly of dye­stuffs looms most awkwardly is in the fact that Great Britain did not grasp their real significance as an indirect factor in international relations; for Germany’s monopoly was the result of her preparations for war, not of her superior inventive powers, the basis for dyes being the by-product of the manufacture of munitions. German dyes were subsidized in order to util­ize the coal-tar resulting from certain munition-making processes, and every dye-works was instantly convertible in time of war to war services. Dyes, therefore, have been the least of Great Britain’s troubles in the war.

In a thousand household needs Bri­tain’s dependence became revealed al­most with the declaration of war, and some of these were of sufficient im­portance to demand official attention at the same time as the more intimate ones of munition production. Since their manufacture has been permit­ted to creep into German hands more as an economic measure than through any inability to fulfil the local needs, they presented no striking problem. But in a score of the prime require­ments of war the effect was different. Certain processes of steel manufac­ture suitable for munitions were not practised in England. Electric sup­plies for Great Britain came almost entirely from our enemies. In the outskirts of London to-day lies idle an incomplete electric railway, be­cause construction was in the hands of German engineers using German fittings and principles. The little magnetoes that are essential to the aeroplane and the automobile were so completely of German manufac­ture that even to-day they are pro­duced in England by only two or three firms and their efficiency and cost is still not such as to supplant the German article should open com­petition recommence immediately. Germany was selling Great Britain all her finer grades of glass, such as those used for lenses and laboratory purposes. Great Britain had even permitted Germany to enter her dis­tant possessions for the practical monopolization of the minerals used in the working of steel processes. For her finer machinery required in the production of munitions Great Bri­tain is to-day at the mercy of Am­erica, since the English working engineer has not yet arrived at that nicety of adjustment, that perfection of specification which is absolutely necessary for serviceable and reliable instruments of war. I admit it with reluctance but with certainty of my ground. Indeed, English manufac­turers are candid in their statements that they must still look to America for the mechanical delicacy and nice­ty which have made British munition production one of the marvels of the war. This they may well leave where it is for the present, so long as Bri­tain’s energies are completely util­ized for more immediate require­ments. Its unsatisfactory feature is that this very mechanical perfection will be as essential to much of the coming industrial struggle of peace as it is now to the war output.

Toys, dolls, metal and leather novel­ties, gas mantles, brushes, certain popular earthenware, office requisites, musical instruments—these are a few of her daily wants for which Great Britain had been wont to send her travellers to the great German mar­kets, such as were represented at the Leipsic Fair.

There were other disadvantages under which Britain laboured on ac­count of her insular position. For her timber she was dependent largely on Norway, Sweden and Russia, and to a less degree on America. The skins for her leather came for the great part from abroad. Her paper was the product of foreign pulp. Her metals arrived by boat. In the bulk­ier raw materials England may be said to have been self-supporting only in coal.

Her problems would have been sim­ple, even in the face of these de­ficiencies, had it not been for the submarine warfare adopted by the en­emy. British control of the seas and of the shipping covering them would have assured her of sufficient supplies for her every want. The demands for war transportation would have embarrassed her shipping capacity to such a small extent that the simplest expedients of conservation would have sufficed. But with the sinkings and delays of unrestricted warfare conservation became a question equal­ly vital with the protection of the merchant shipping and the upkeep of the army. How she went about it is peculiar to a nation, proud, bound by tradition, reluctant to admit even in­convenience—and certain to overcome in the final emergency.

With the requisitioning of tonnage for war purposes—the transportation of soldiers, wounded, and supplies; patrolling the coasts, mine-sweeping, auxiliary cruiser duties—the neces­sity for some control of importations became evident. Certain luxuries were gradually eliminated from the freight lists, the bulkier unessentials first. A part of the tonnage was re­quisitioned for stated importations at Government rates. But the inade­quacy of these measures became ap­parent long before the sinkings were numerous enough to be an immediate menace, and the injustice of singling out a few ships and depriving them of the high rates obtainable by free ships clamoured for redress. In ad­dition, it gradually impressed itself on the nation that any satisfactory solution of the submarine menace en­tailed a more perfect organization for the elimination of delay in loading and unloading, as well as the speed­ing up of construction. For these purposes experienced officials were appointed. Construction was not only standardized, but workmen were utilized where they were of greatest service, irrespective of firms and em­ployers. The difficulty of delays in loading was met to some extent by mobile dockers’ battalions, and by a more strict supervision of transpor­tation and labour.

But shipping cannot be said to have been brought within the scope of a thorough control until the middle of 1917, when the Government took over ninety-seven per cent. of the entire British registry at Government rates. By this means it was not only assured of reasonable freight charges, but the entire capacity of the boats was di­rected with a sole eye to the real re­quirements of the situation. The move took the place of the scores of former regulations. It became no longer a case of publishing prohibited impor­tations but of satisfying the Govern­ment that purchases abroad were in the interests of the country at large. Every British liner was taken over, and the profits derived from private freight went to the nation. The re­sult was a pooling of interests by the large transportation companies. Long voyages gave place to short substi­tutes, and the facilities of the near­est ports were always available to save time. Shipowners arranged to purchase their ships’ stores and pro­visions abroad in order to save home stocks—an obvious act of wisdom that was so little recognized even during the early months of 1917 that Span­ish and Dutch and Norwegian ves­sels were continuing their custom of drawing their supplies from English ports. At the very moment when not a pound of potatoes was finding its way to the majority of tables in Great Britain these foreign ships were tak­ing away with them thousands of tons.

Land transportation, while not in the same emergent class as shipping, entered the scheme of conservation on account of the shortage of men, and because trucks and engines had been requisitioned for the use of the army in France. This was effected by reducing passenger service to the minimum, and by organizing deliv­ery so that the shortest route and dis­tance was compulsory. For instance, coal was brought to London only from the nearest mines and by the short­est line, the railways being brought under Government control to a dis­interested co-operation. One striking failure to complete the simplification of transportation was in the neglect of the canals that cut England in every direction. Whether this was owing to their railway ownership or to Governmental thoughtlessness is not clear, but such bulky freight as coal might have been poured into Lon­don by this means of transportation without disturbing the material so much in demand for quicker delivery.

The immediate need for metals and explosive ingredients for war pur­poses, as well as for other commodi­ties hitherto imported, drove Eng­land to measures never before con­templated. The Explosives Depart­ment of the Ministry of Munitions was organized to assume the duty of acquiring the necessary raw material of explosives. Glycerine was early placed on the controlled lists, and in February, 1917, was further restrict­ed to preparations of the British Pharmacopoeia and to uses approved by the Ministry. It was practically eliminated from dispensing. In March, the shortage being serious, a special branch of the Explosives De­partment was formed to take over control of all fats, oils, oil-seeds, and their products, including oilcake, soap, and margarine. For the same purpose the waste of camp canteens and messes has been carefully col­lected for more than a year. Since one of the by-products in the manu­facture of illuminating gas is a neces­sity for explosives, the people were urged to use gas where possible for heat, light and power. The huge de­mand for petrol led to the Govern­ment resuming the long-interrupted efforts to find oil in Great Britain, and in order to prevent exploitation the Crown assumed the exclusive right to bore. Should petroleum be discovered in quantity—and there have been signs that point to success—the submarine menace will be near­er to solution than it has ever been. The same prospecting is being under­taken for metals, although it is cer­tain that only small supplies of in­ferior quality will be found, lead and zinc comprising the bulk of British possibilities. Copper was requisition­ed in December, 1916, and its use for manufacturing purposes forbidden.

The control of petrol has been one of the big failures of attempted con­servation. For the first twenty months of the war this control rested in the hands of various inter-departmental committees whose main anxiety—as is the case in a hundred instances of divided control in England—was their authority and dignity. They competed against each other in the market and in shipping facilities and bought in the application of their au­thority even in war spheres. The Pe­trol Committee which succeeded them had not a petrol expert in its com­position, and at its best was impeded by a jealous Board of Trade. In dis­gust it resigned, after a period of in­adequate control and incompetent ef­forts. Its successor has proved more efficient. A different scheme has evolved. The principal petroleum companies have arranged a pool for distribution and importation, under the control of a Pool Board Petroleum Supplies. Restrictions were early put on petrol licences, and these have been extended at various times with the declared aim of cutting out pri­vate consumption. Business firms are allowed a certain amount for deliv­ery purposes. Taxi-cabs, of which there were 8,287 in London alone be­fore the war, were reduced to an al­lowance of thirty gallons a month, the most conspicuous result of which was to encourage the drivers to break the laws governing their service to the public. And motor-buses, which provide the popular means of trans­portation in London, were seriously curtailed. But the working of the restrictions was glaringly lax and un­fair. Petrol was wasted in the army sometimes used even for washing the trucks. Taxis, which usually carry but one passenger, were grant­ed petrol which if supplied to the in­terrupted bus service would have car­ried many times the number of pas­sengers. Until recently there were no restrictions whatever on the motor luxuries of officers, every one of whom of any rank has his own car and chauffeur for running about Eng­land. Day and night and Sundays this indulgence was unlimited until the middle of 1917, and since then its control has been evident only in the replies of Government officers be­fore the House of Commons. While private licences were supposed to be cut off in May, 1917, there is not a minute of the day when any import­ant street in London does not prove that civilians still ride at their plea­sure; and on Sundays the roads from London are still busy. In spite of the repeated official denials that pet­rol is granted for private use there is the frankest display of such waste. Even the social notes in the news­papers speak of wedding trips and visits to seaside resorts by motor, and the procuring of supplies demands but slight ingenuity. The greatest obstacle to such a perversion of a much-needed commodity is a price of $1.17 a gallon established in Au­gust, only twelve cents of which is Government tax. It is a detail of the recognized principle of regulation in England to reserve the privileges for the rich.

The shortage of petrol has led to the use of substitutes, but the fur­ther prohibition of liquid substitutes has confined the inventiveness of mo­tor enthusiasts to the utilization of gas.

Conservation of coal has been taken up officially, not because of a national shortage, but to save labour and trans­portation. In 1915 the price was fix­ed to prevent exploitation. In the spring of 1917 there was in London a severe shortage that bore heavily on the poor, who purchase in small quantities; and in the summer of that year steps were taken to prevent a repetition. A Coal Controller was ap­pointed to arrange delivery from the nearest mines and to equalize distri­bution. The Board of Trade issued advice to the people to purchase their winter supplies early, but when the orders poured in it was found there was not the coal to fill them. It was another instance of neglected prelim­inary organization before urging the public to action. The several in­stances of this which have occurred have done much to discourage public co-operation in attempted conserva­tion. The next step was to ration the coal according to the number of grates. A house with not more than four grates was allowed two hundred­weight a week, and the allotment was detailed up to two tons and a half for a house of more than fifteen rooms. Every consumer using more than two hundredweight a week had to register. The Controller’s plan was to work up to a five weeks’ stock in the coal yards, reducing the allow­ance as this quantity was reduced. The difficulties of such a system of rationing are obvious, since the ex­tent of occupation of a house, rather than its number of grates, determines its consumption. There is, too, no assurance that the rationed quantity will be available.

One of the early materials to be controlled was paper. Newspapers were cut down to definite quantities, based on their consumption during the year before the war, and this amount was further reduced in 1916. Importation was in the hands of the Government. The result was a dwin­dling of size and a consequent in­crease in price owing to the curtail­ment of advertising space. The Times rose by halfpenny stages to twopence, and many of the halfpenny papers advanced to a penny. In March, 1917, posters over a certain size were for­bidden, and tradesmen might not send out catalogues or price lists ex­cept on request. The newspaper con­tents bill, a feature of street an­nouncement in England, was pro­hibited. By the last measure alone it is estimated that 500 tons a week are saved. In July, 1917, the War Office arranged that, since the cas­ualty lists could no longer be pub­lished in the smaller papers, they should be issued weekly to the book­stores for sale. A few days later tradesmen were limited in their cir­culars and catalogues to a third the weight of paper used in the same period of the year before. And the whiteness of paper has been sacrificed in order to save bleaching powder.

In the matter of wearing apparel control was delayed as long as pos­sible. Leather had first to be taken in hand. The huge call for army boots was eating into the available supplies with disturbing rapidity, and in March, 1917, the Government took over all sole and upper leathers suitable for army use, following a less complete requisition of the previous December. Civilian footwear immedi­ately advanced. In June the Govern­ment made arrangements for the sale of old army boots at fixed centres, with the stipulation that they should not be patched but taken to pieces for repairing other shoes. The ob­ject was to prevent the scrapping of serviceable army boots. But shoe re­pairs continued to rise so seriously—soling advanced more than three hun­dred per cent. from the period before the war—that in September the Gov­ernment was forced once more to in­tervene and release for civilian use at fixed prices quantities of leather suitable for repairs.

An Advisory Committee on Wool Purchase was set up, representing the various Government departments con­cerned and civilian interests. It fix­ed prices and prescribed uses. Wool was not largely imported, but it was deemed advisable to continue exports as well as to supply home needs. Standard cloth is now produced for officers’ uniforms, and civilian wear will probably be similarly controlled. The manufacture of cotton has had to be curtailed, although it is one of England’s leading manufactures. Blankets are in Government control for army use and only such quanti­ties released for civilian use as are considered necessary.

All stocks of sawn timber in the United Kingdom were taken over by the Government in February, 1917, and in July the Local Government Board urged local authorities to for­go the use of wood-paving for the period of the war. In January anastigmatic lenses of defined focal lengths were requisitioned. In Feb­ruary the supplies of jute in the coun­try were commandeered. In June citizens were requested by the Board of Trade not to waste glass recept­acles of any kind. Metal spur, chains, buttons and badges of rank on officers’ uniforms were abolished, leather spur straps and buttons, and worsted badges of rank taking their place. Stone quarries were taken over in July.

General prevention of waste and of misdirection of effort was applied in a score of ways. Building and pri­vate motor-making were stopped. A new Bill was introduced for the pre­vention of corruption in Government contracts. A department was set up for the utilization of idle machinery. In 1916 an Order-in-Council empow­ered the Admiralty and Army Coun­cil to regulate or prohibit transac­tions in any article required in con­nection with the war. No horse suit­able for cultivation of land might be sold by the land occupier without licence. To save fuel illuminated ad­vertisements and lights outside shops and theatres were prohibited in May. 1917. In extension of this principle two of the large London stores closed on Saturdays.

Of course, with all this evident shortage there was profiteering. The case of matches affords a good ex­ample. These sold before the war as low as three cents a dozen boxes. To­day they are as high as thirty-two cents, although the manufacturers in­sist that not more than sixteen cents should be asked the consumer. In addition to their high price there are times when they cannot be obtained at all, and the stores release to each customer only a small box or two. The Government, knowing there were sufficient stocks somewhere, has taken steps to control distribution. A pool of manufacturers has been formed, and orders will be taken only through a Match Control Office in London, which will be under the Tobacco Con­trol Board.

In these measures of conservation it was necessary at times to ignore the claims even of allied countries. France, being close at hand and Great Britain’s source for much that might be called luxuries, has suffered most keenly. Fruit, wine, and silk were the largest of these importations. At various times all these products of our friends across the Channel have been either restricted or prohibited. Protest has been made, and at times mild reprisals applied, but common sense has prevailed. In some cases the protesting country yielded, in others the restrictions were modified. A general agreement between the two countries was announced in Septem­ber. By it England takes from France goods of French origin, ex­cept such as wood, motor-cars, ma­chinery, gold, spirits, and ornamental goods; and France has thrown her doors open to everything but cotton and woollen piece goods, soap, and oils. The fact that England has the European Allies almost completely at her mercy on account of her con­trol of shipping is proof of the wis­dom and justice of her treatment of them.

The straits into which the war has thrown Great Britain in the matter of material supplies are not without their blessing. The people of the small island which has dominated the world for so many centuries are learn­ing how luxurious and enervating was their style of life among certain classes, how much they can eliminate without serious inconvenience—even with advantage—and how near they were to losing valuable markets. The necessities of war have developed an inventiveness that was tending to doze and have taught the wisdom of great­er dependence on their own produc­tions than upon those of other coun­tries who appraise more truly the value of industrial eminence in the world’s markets. England after the war will swing swiftly into the Eng­land she can be, a resourceful coun­try that need give precedence to no rival in commercial as well as in in­tellectual attainments.

The next article of this series is entitled “The Enemy in England”.