Topics of the Day.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 149, 22 June 1912, Page 13

Topics of the Day.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, May 16. B__.C__MAir._NG A COTT-.TESS. Judge Lumley Smith and a jirry were engaged for a couple of days at the Old Bailey this week in trying Frances Page, the proprietor of "Kimpton's Detective Agency" and William Glendinning, his manager, for "feloniously and by restraint of person compelling the Countess Hamil de Manin to accept four bills of exchange for .-£ 100 each." It was alleged that the defendants, becoming possessed of certain letters which tbe Couute.s wrote in 1907, so terrified her by threatening to have her arrested that she signed the bills. No evidence was called for the defence. The story of the Countess wno seems to bave travelled extensively in the Antipodes, was to the effect that some years ago she met a Mr. John Hamilton Dobbie on board the ship going from New Zealand to Australia. At that time she knew a gentleman named Daniel O'Connor, "a man of considerable position in Australia." He and Mr. Dobbie were acquainted with each other. In .1907 Mr. Dobbie and Mr. O'Connor were in London. She knew a Mrs. Williams, stepdaughter of Lady Pink. The witness introduced Mr. Dobbie to Mrs. Williams, and the result of that introduction was that they became engaged to be married the same evening. In May, 1911, a Mr. Freeman Lloyd, who gave the name of Payne, called on her, sent up a card of "Kimpton's" and said he had come from Mr. Dobbie. He asked if she -would give information about Air. O'Connor and if she would tell what she knew about anonymous letters O'Connor had written. Lljfjyd suggested that she had written anonymous letter.. She said she had -written nothing but friendly letters, and that she had signed them all. Lloyd said she should have; them -back if she signed a letter of apology—that both O'Connor's letters and her own would be handed to her. She said she did not know how to write a letter of apology. Lloyd said he would dictate one, and he did.

On May 10th she went to 71 Strand and saw Glendinning. She said she had come for the letters. He said he couid not give them to her and must see his solicitor first. She left, and afterwards received a telephone message making an appointment for the next day. In the afternoon of May llt-h she wen-: to tho ollice of Kimpton's. The two prisoners and their solicitor, Marshall, stated that the witness had written anonymous letters. They said they would get a warrant lor her on the charge of writing anonymous letter-,- that she would have to pay £1000, and would be arrested if she did not.. They said: "You are a

rich.woman; you have '£12,000 a year, and can well afford to pay." She replied that she had done nothing, that she. had not written the letters, and could not pay £1000. Then Page suggested £500. Marshall said, "Yes, I will go and consult headquarters." He left, and returned in a few minutes and said, "Yes, yes; it's arranged for £600." Payne said "No, £400." Marshall said, "Let it be £400." Witness had not agreed to pay £400 or anything, and said she would not pay it. Marshall said, "You will have to give bills." Glendinning wrote out four bills and she signed them, because they said that if she did not a warrant would be obtained and she would be taken into Bow-street. She wain an awful state of mind, nearly mad. Glendinning asked her to have some •-hampagne, but she refused, and some tea was brought. She -had some and felt very bad after it. She gave some of the milk to her little dog, and it went to sleep for five hours. The tea waj given to her before she signed the bills, and after drinking it she felt dazed.

Glendinning said she must give him a gold and pearl chain and pendant which she was wearing, as they wanted £75 for counsel's fee. Some letters were produced, and Payne threw them into the grate and lit a match. She saw smoke, but she could not say whether they were destroyed. Glendinning said: "It's all over." She asked what would become of O'Connor, and he replied "He will go free." She then handed them her gold and -pearl pendant, ibeing, she declared, sc terrified that she did not know what to do.

The Countess was cross-examined at considerable length by counsel for the prisoners, who eventually submitted that the Countess was a witness upon whose evidence it would not be safe to convict a man even of petty larceny. He contended that the Countess was not only cognisant of, but instigated the writing of -the anonymous letters sent by O'Connor to Lady Pink and the (Pink family. He suggested that she entered Kimpton's office for the purpose of regaining the letters for as small a price as she could possibly manage, amd although she might have become agitated in the course of her bargain it was plain that she left victorious. The jury, however, accepted enough of the Countess's evidence to prevail upon them to bring in a verdict of guilty after less than ten minutes' conference, and the judge apparently concurred in their decision as he gave both prisoners twelve months' hard labour. TAILORS ON STRIKE. The strike of London tailors is no doubt a serious matter to those encaged in it, but to the v. .rid at large this fatcst manifestation of labour "unrest" appeals rather rs a mild joke than a serious episode, after the very real troubles caused by the transport workers' strike and tho coal war. Clothes are, of course, a-'necessary of life, antecedent in civi-

lized regions, even to coal and transport. But the nation is not threatened with an enforced period of the "altogether" fashion, nor even, is the mass with any serious inconvenience.

It may upset a few individuals, but tho average Londoner of the upper and middle-classes have usually clothe 3 enough in stock to keep themselves presentable for quite a long time, and for the poorer classes the strike has no terrors, for the tailors on strike have nothing to do with cheap ready-made clothing, and if they had. the stocks of such garments :h the hands of the wholesale houses are big enough to go round for weeks and weeks to come.

The strike, then, i.s not an organised attack on the community with the object of starving it into surrender, like those we have been having lately, but an oldfashioned struggle between employers and employed, in which the public are not directly concerned to any particular extent. All they can do is to look on without being in a position to form a clear idea of the rights and wrongs of the case. The points at issue -are, of course, money and hours of work; the employed want to get more money for less work, and the employers decline to grant it. Something has been said about the provision of more workshops, but more money 13 the real thing. It is not a very surprising or novel demand. The number of persons who would like to get more money for less work includes so large a proportion of mankind, that the exceptions may be left out of account.

Nor is the strike at present "in being" to be considered as a battle between the ''bloated capitalist" and the wretched, ground-down "wage .lave." The sort of tailoring involved in this strike is not a capitalistic industry of the modern type on a big scale. London West-End tailoring is a craft, in which the master-tailors have for. the most part been workmen themselves, and many of them still work at the business. They do not individually employ any large number of men, and those whom they do employ are, to a large extent, also employers in their turn. They engage and pay assistants. who are generally women or girls. A dispute between employers and employed therefore resolves itself into a question of details, and are bristling technical complexities which, utterly" befog t.h-3 sympathetic outsider. • For instance, bis heart may bleed to think that a highclass workman should only get the "dockers tanner" per hour, but it rather damps his enthusiasm for the workers' cause to find that the time "log" by which payment is reckoned is a very different thing from an hour by tho clock. Thus, 03 log hours are only equal to 35 real hours, and 6d. per log hour really mp«ns 11-1. aii hour.

The public.- cannot judge of these matters, and must leave tbe combatants to fight it out. They can do so without any compunction. The work-people earn very good wnges. Those on strike, so far. are the best p.id of their class. The master tailors, for their part, are generally believed to do pretty well in the

West End of London. Thei_s, however, is a seasonal business, and the strike has been timed to hit them as hard as possible, for it is interfering with their early summer trade, whicli is the best of all. It is now that the American visitors come over in their shoals and load themselves with London tailorings, and now that men generally renew their wardrobes. The employed will also suffer with the employer, for this is their fat season for earnings. The quarrel likely, however, to be of long duration, for the unions at present involved are very weak financially. On the occasion of the last strike in ISOI, the men won. This time it looks as if the masters, who are showing a firm front, are more likely to succeed. VISION AS EVIDENCE. In Dumfries Sheriff Court this week an application was made by the trustees of the late Robert Turnbull Scott, ship and insurance broker, of Palmerston Buildings, Bishopsgate, London, who lived at Highgate, to presume the death of his father, Archibald Scott, who went to Australia in 1851 at the time of a gold "rush," and was lost sight of. The object of the action was to complete the titles of house property in Langholm, Dumfriesshire, to which the missing man would have been heir. Mrs. Jane .Scott (or Debenham), of Great Warley, Essex, widow of Dr. Debenham, said the missing man, Archibald Scott, was her father. He was a member of a Langholm family, was born about 18-.1, and was some time clerk in the York City and County Bank -of Whitby. He was married to Anne Elizabeth Turnbull about 1843, and had two children, the witness and her brother Robert. Her father went to Australia in 1851, at the TTm-e of the gold "fever," and all efforts to trace him had failed. His elder eister, Sybella,*many years ago told the witness that she was convinced by a. vision that her brother Archibald was dead. Her aunt Sybella informed the- witness of certain family traditions, and told her that while she was taking a walk with her father one summer evening, she saw her brother Archibald walking along the path towards them, dres?cd in the cheek suit which he used to wear. She was a little behind her father, and in passing the figure she did not speak, but she turned round to look and make sure. The figure also turned in passing, and then disappeared. She asked her father if he had seen anything, but he said "No," _nd she was certain her brother Archibald had died at that very hour she had seen the vision.

Tho Court allowed Archibald Scott's death to be presumed—and was hardly taking any risks in so' doing, seeing that he disappeared just over CO years ago, and was then in his 31st year or thereabouts.

£= ' ... '. ' THE UNAPPRECIATED PIAHTST. Poor Paderewski! What a thing it is to lack a sense of humour. Paderewski is angry -with South Africa partly be--s__e when playing the piano on a coasting ship some unappreriative person rudely requested him to "stop that noise," and partly, it is to be. feared, because South Africa is not yet educated up to the 'Paderewski worship to which the long-haired virtuoso lias been accustomed in lands where men are not quite so elemental and candid, and where -women are wont to show their admiration by hysterical outbursts which, though gratifying, if at times embarrassing to the artist, are disgusting to the plain man. South Africa it seems, failed to take Paderewski as seriously as the great pianist takes himself, and is accustomed to be taken, and its towns, it appear., did not prove the Tom Tiddlers grounds he anticipated. The men were truly dreadful. To them Paderewski was a mere mortal apd was treated as such! In Port. Elizabeth one creature, greatly daring, seized the pianist of pianists by the lapels of his coat and peering into his face said, "You're Paderewski, ain't you.'—and then laughed! Worse than al], however, was an "open letter" which appeared in a Pretoria paper, and which perhaps gives a slight clue to the real reason why the pianist did not "make good" in South Africa. "What have you done forsthe world, (the writer asked). What do you do? You play the piano—l am told that you play the piano better than any living pianist; I am not prepared to dispute that; but, after all, what is there in playing the piano? "We had a man here the other day who could not only play the piano, but seventeen other instruments, including the Jew's harp. "Nobody made a fuss about him. It only cost two shillings to hear him -play , all his instruments. He didn't want the mayor to receive him, nor did he charge a guinea for his front seats." Paderewski was disappointed with South Africa, and South Africa was disappointed with the virtuoso. "If we have disappointed the great performer as an artistic community," says the Johannesburg "Star", "it is only fair to say that he has likewise disappointed us as a man of the world and a "good sport". .... It is not our fault if artists visit our towns, and particularly Johannesburg, under the impression that we are an open gold mine. It is never previously impressed upon | such visitors that we have had little more than a quarter of a century's existence, and that we are still in out artistic swaddling clothes." South Africa's education has certainly been sadly neglected. Fancy expecting to find in the most famous and —ost femininely feted pianist of this generation "a man of the world," let alone a "good sport!" It would be just as reasonable to expect to find gloxinias gro_» ing on an iceberg. Paderewski expected to be treated as something quite out or the ordinary, and to be made a fuss of. Had he possessed a real sense of humour the fact that he was getting some entirely new experiences would have proveda continual source of amusement. But your artist rarely has a sense of huinoui and Paderewski apparently suffers from the complaint common to his kind.