AMERICAN SIDELIGHTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 12

AMERICAN SIDELIGHTS.

CRIME DETECTION.

PAINLESS "GUILT FINDER."

INDUSTRY'S LIFE-TOLL.

(Prom Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, December 14,

Mechanical detection of guilt without pain to the suspect soon will ! be possible, Dr. Harold R. Crossland, psychologist of the University of Oregon, stated in Eugene, Oregon.

The new "guilt detection" apparatus differs from, the type now used extensively by American police departments, particularly- in Los Angeles and Berkeley, Dr. Crossland explained.

THe instruments now used by criminology experts cause considerable suffering, and do not give' perfect records, according to the professor.

A rubber, cuff around, the upper arm of the suspect is the only part of the new machine visible to the person being examined, Crossland said. The remainder of the apparatus is «in a separate room, where it can be Watched by experts. "Pressure oh the arm is produced by compressed air forced into the rubber cuff, replacing the hand pump which is now, used," he said. "Systolic (contracting) bipod pressure is recorded on a slowly-revolving drum by a delicate indicator, which utilises a column of mercury.. When the extreme pressure is reached, a small hole is burned on the record papers. The topmost perforation * indicates the height of the blood pressure. This is an exclusive feature." , ..

Efforts to develop satisfactory "guiltdetecting" machines have been made since psychblogists found a definite connection between, blood pressure and the emotions. The value of the guilt tests results from the effect-on 1 blood pressure to conflicting emotions aroused by the suspect wlien he must'respond to a word connected: with a crime, it is said. Experiments show a drop followed by a considerable rise in - pressure when the subject is startled or angered. The new instrument will be used in connection" with mental tests and intelligence tests at the school. Human Life Cheap. In the great army of men at the wheels and machines of American industry, 63 men "fall by the wayside" every day, killed by accidents that might have been prevented. In a year's time the toll, of' men maimed in this country, acclaimed the world's greatest industrial prpducer, mounts to the alarming total of 105,000. This means that a city of 22,990 population is wiped out to the last man by a sudden catastrophe. That city is wiped out every year by mishaps mostly due to carelessness, accidents that a little thought or education could have prevented. •

Secretary of Labour James J. Davis, a Welshman by birth, making his annual report for 1927, says: "No other industrial nation produces so many goods as we do in America, and in no other country are so many men killed and maimed in industry. We have been so busy speeding up this industrial machine of ours that we have turned our backs on

the price we have been paying for this in ternis of American workers killed or maimed every day in the course of their occupation. Whatever its mechanical wonders, the. nation cannot continue to be proud of its industry and prosperity while the machinery that produces it kills so many men. If industry will bend itself to the conservation of life with the same energy it has applied to perfecting its mechanical equipment, the result in safer conditions will be assured." America stands aghast at her 10,000 murders a year, .and reacts against the automobile toll of 20,000 lives and 200,000 injured every twelve months, but 63 men a day killed and 288 men a day maimed is only a human sacrifice of national industry, proving how very cheap human life is in the United States. Terrorism in Industry. Another picture of American industrialism is provided at Pittsburgh, where outside the gates of coal mining properties union pickets burl the warning, "There's a Strike in ther--.," to all who dare enter the company lines. At many of the mines the strike is two years' old, and now, with winter at hand, voices of the picketsi have taken on a note of desperation as they patrol the gates. "There's a strike in there!" They could just as .truthfully say: "There is tragedy, in there!" Poverty and hunger, social ostracism, fear and hatred stalk hand in hand through those camps. There is. vice; sometimes there is violence; always there is bitterness. On the eight properties of the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Corporation, 510 union men and their large families are living in company houses, pitting their wits and tenacity against the efforts of the company to evict them. Hundreds of families have given up the long fight and have drifted into other localities. Other hundreds, already forced from homes • which many had occupied for more than a generation, have crowded into the flimsy little barracks that the union has built just outside the lines. On company property the old-timers are making their last stand. Courts are opening the way for summary eviction of the "squatters." Even union officials admit that they soon will have to provide barracks for 2500 persons in addition to the 8000 already hous&d. But the siege will go on-, neither side will admit a thought of- surrender. . The tragedy pf the stuation is found not alone in the desperate physical plight of the union people, with their inadequate clothing and scanty food, but also in their social cognitions. The spirit* of the conflict has been carried into the churches and schools. Children of union' and non-union 1 men meet and fight, women meet and hurl invectives at each other. The men .themselves tactfully ignore each other and thus avoid pitched battles. Comradeships of yearß between men who have worked side by side in the darkness of the pits have been disrupted because some have returned to work for the sake of their children. Men who have saved the lives of friends when death stalked close to the entry now pass those friends without a sign. . Homes Broken Up. Homes have been broken up by the | strike When husbands worked open shop, despite the protests of wives who came from union families. One Sunday school superintendent has been forced out because some of his relatives "scabbed."

The high school football team of Centreville was foirced to cancel the remainder of" its? matches wlijin Bona: of'union men became so emaciated that they could no longer play.. Every one of the bosses at Ooverdale ltiße §o. 8 walked out one day because tliey_no;longer could endure seeing the hardships suffered by old crews. ' \

At "this same Coverdale mine arc 52 union families,- stljtl lighting . 'against eviction by the company. - They- say tJiat their water and, lights have been turned off in an effort to force" them''from the houses'. They point out Aeven houses from Which they eay the'roofs were.torb so they would be given no shelter. One instance of this kind occurred four hours after the wife of a union man had borne a child. Others of the 52 tell of attempts at terrorism—broken windows,. smashed furniture, threats against their women. The other night two rifle bullets crashed through a window in the house occupied by George Dudjak. ; His wife and seven children were in the room, but luckily they were not injured. George is undaunted by the threats. He has lived in the 6ame house for seven years and does not intend to move. Where will it all end? Officials.:on both sides know only that the crisis, is at hand. The union and the operatorsare fighting for their lives. The companies have spent vast sums in an; effort to operate independently of the union, and the union realises that tlie very existence of the. United Mine Workers' organisation depends upon defeat of the open shop movement. Chicago's Battle-front. According to Dr. Frederick M. Thrasher, whose volume on the subject is used as a text book in sociology at the University of Chicago, Chicago bousts 1313 gangs, all of them criminally inclined. Their total membership includes 50,000 young people of both sexes, though women are in the minority, and 10,000 professional criminals. And the empires are known as the North Side Jungles, the West Side Wilderness, and the South Side Bad Lands. With the east, the only quarter of the compass neglected, this would seem to leave only a .small proportion of the city to its more peaceful inhabitants. These statistics supply abackground and perspective in a-con-templation of the current effort of the law enforcement, machinery of the "Windy City" to cope with the extraordinary situation. The latest case to command public notice involves two powerful factions of Italian gunmen, or "Racketeers," who are rivals for control of the bootlegging, gambling and vice business on the North Side. It "broKc" in the usual manner, namely, as the result of the feud between these gangs, in* which machine and shotgun nests were planted for assassination purposes in such profusion that the police had to take cognisance of the war. Now William O'Connor, chief of detectives, is not onlv concentrating his entire force on the task of rounding up the killers, but also calling for volunteers —men who saw machine-gun service in France—to lend two squads of machine gunners on a tour of the city seeking encounters witli the gunmen. To those, already .recruited he has made a speech saying that should a battle ensue he wanted them, with their weapons, to "rip the tops ofi the gangs' cars off and kill all the occupants." He went on: "It has come to a pass, men, when we've got to show that society and the Police Department are running this town, and not a bunch of dirty rats."