STORIES FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 215, 7 September 1912, Page 17

STORIES FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

LASHED FOR LOVE. Georgia is in a state of intenee excitement over the arrest of several prominent citizens of Dawson, who are accused of flogging a yonag girl named Bessie Carter almost to the point of death, because of her betrothal to Mr. Vogt I>ozier, son of the clerk of the Supreme Court.

The girl was found: in a grove in the vicinity of the city, w-hifher, she alleges, she was lured by the .father of her fiance. "I love Vogt and !he loyes mc," she whispered to the hospital authorities, "but his parents are bitterly opposed to the match. I urged him to give mc up so as to avoid parental friction, but he refused. As the result of refusal, Vogt's father locked him Un a. room, and with the aid of friends •bundled mc into a motor car.

"It was dark when we reached the grove. My clothing was torn from, my back, and while four men held mc Mr. Dozier lashed mc with a riding whip. Before I fainted I remember hearing him say lie was not satisfied."'

On their return to the city Mr. Dozier's friends dispatched two doctors to .the scene of the ontrage. They found Miss Carter In a pitiable condition, .with the hem of her gown thrust into her mouth to prevent her cries being heard by passers-l)y. In a .statement issued afterwards Mr. Dozier admits that he thrashed Miss Carter. "I did it," he says, "ito save my son." Jfiss Carter's recovery frqin the flogging is doubttul.

A CAiITORNIAN TRAGEDY. With her throat cut, skull fractured, her ribs broken, and her clothing torn off, the body of an unknown woman, apparently thirty years old, was found In a vacant house by a carpenter at Los Angeles (Cal.), recently, who had been sent to put the place in repair.

The woman apparently had been lured to the vacant house, robbed and murdered, after a fearful, (struggle, and her clothing set aflre in order to destroy evidence of the crime.

A handkerchief found in the pocket of the dress made by a Chicago firm, bore the initial "K." The handkerchief was at tbe side of the murdered woman, and bore the laundry marks "C.D.X," and "X 42." This and several half smoked hand-made cigarettes were near where the murderer attempted to cremate the body of the young woman.

Physicians said she must have suffered great agony from a fracture in her skull, apparently caused by a beer bottle near by.

Neighbours remembered having seen the woman in company with a man who seemed to be posing as a real estate agent. "There's your house." he was beard to remark before they entered it.

The effort to burn the body was abortive because the building paper used in the attempt bad been treated to a flreprooflng solution. SERIES OF FLOOD DISASTERS. Enormous Carnage was done at Torras, Louisiana, a place about 100 mHes north of New Orleans, on the Mississippi, where the nver burst the levees. The inhabitants of Torras " were wild with terror in anticipation of the destruction of their homes. Families rushed from their houses in the lower part of the town, and many escaped with lfcttle or no clothing, and absolutely none of their possessions.

So fast did the waters pour through the crevasse and flood the town that the people had to fly for their lives. A freight train, which was about to start from tie station, was pressed into service, and 600 or TOO inhabitants of Torras were carried off by it just in time before the railway station itself was flooded. Terras iwjus quite submerged, and 11 of the richest parishes in the State were inandaited'. Incalculable damage has been done to the sugar farms and cotton plantations, more than a dozen villages and thousands of acres of the finest sugar land In I/Oofetana being trader Dea th and widespreadClnrvoc have resulted from tremendous rains in West Pennsylvania, East Ohio, and West Virginia. From all points came repocts-of drownings and the razing of ■nnndrede of buildings and bridges, the cutting of telegraph and railway communications, and the rnln, of the crops.

In addition to a disaster near Uttlantown, where fourteen miners were drowned In a pit, it is reported that ten miners perished In a pit at Brownsville. Three dead aTe reported at Wheeling, West Virginia.

Within a radius of a hundred miles of Pittsbtirg there are wrecked nouses everywhere, tine streets are piled up with debris, bridge! have been torn away from their moorings and floated! away, and hundreds of families are homeless.

"GET RICH QUICK" FRATJDS. According to a'formal report issued by the U.S. Postmaster-General, Mr. Hitchcock, Americans, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1912, were swindled through the mails to the extent of £24,000,000, or £10,000,000 more than last year.

Why the smart, keen American should allow himself to be thus swindled is a mystery, although one very good reason advanced is that the average man there is always on the lookout for "something for nothing," and therefore falls an easy victa'o to the glowing personal letter addressed him, offering an investment which will give him a 100 per cent return on bis money within a few months, etc

It has been proved that Hste of the names of such "investors' , have been sold by one fraudulent manipulator to another for several thousand dollars—socb is the value placed by swindlers upon a good field" of easy victims. The figures given above show only the amount intercepted by the Post Office officials, and give no indication of the vast sums thrown away by the purchasers of "diamond rings just fonnd in the street," or "gold bricks, gilt-edged gold mine, and copper mine stock," fake remedies, worthless lands, and so forth.

According to the Tost Office figures, 1063 of those who are alleged to have operated these fraudulent schemes were arrested by the Tost Office Inspectors. They included persons in all walks of life—merchants, mechanics, politicians, professional men, paupers, and millionaires. Tostniaster-General Hitchcock's order to the inspectors to collect evidence that warrants the criminal prosecution of the swindlers is gradually building a wall of protection against such frauds around the Ameri-<-nn people, of which they stand in great need. The above figures do not include the amounts inveigled from European victims. These are undoubtedly very numerous, because "sucker" correspondence through the mails has been highly specialised by undeveloped or non-existent mining concerns, and people in England or elsewhere who have been swindled do not always complain to the authorities.

It is worth recalling that worthless mining companies and other disreputable concerns In America not only seek victims through the British mails, but also have agents working on commission, some of the exploiting "goods" which 6Ten the greenest rrp<-rl.nt"r (i the States wonUI Kora.