AMERICAN NEWS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 288, 5 December 1929, Page 24

AMERICAN NEWS.

RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS. INFANT BUILT TO ORDER. JAPANESE BIOLOGIST'S CLAIM. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, October 30. Dr. Ysaburo Noguchi, Japanese biologist, who asserts that he can change an Indian to a negro, or a Japanese to a Caucasian, by means of electrical nutrition and glandular control, has arrived in New York en route to San Francisco from Brazil, where he studied "jungle" inhabitants under a grant from the Japanese Government. The biologist declared, through an interpreter that on the basis of knowledge he already has acquired in an extensive world tour he could practically build an infant to order, halting its growth or stimulating it, fixing its stature, breadth of shoulder and other physical characteristics. Eacial characteristics, he said, are the result of a combination of glandular secretions and physical environment. He claims that the use of ultra-violet rays and the stimulation or diminishing of glandular activity could accomplish the things he described. Dr. Noguchi, who is fall, heavily proportioned, is not related to the famous Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, who died in Africa a martyr to science. However, the two biologists were classmates at a Japanese medical college many years ago. "The big job of biologists," he asserted, "is to add to our store of this kind of knowledge until we can at will mould the human race closer to perfection, physically, mentally and spiritually. The knowledge we seek should be inestimable in value in the eradication of crime, which, after all, is the result of improperly controlled glandular action." Loans Germany 12s Millions. A man who twenty-nine years ago became elated over a 50-dollar commission for sale of a Chicago lot, to-day is a leading creditor of a dozen nations as one of the world's most powerful financial figures. Ivar Kreuger, 49-year-old Swedish bachelor, who in ten years has lent no less than 300,000,000 dollars to various nations in return for match monopolies, has again become the centre of attention in the financial world by the loan of 125,000,000 dollars to the German Government. Although born in a family that had been engaged for several generations in the manufacture of matches, Kreuger early in life turned to engineering as a career. Graduating from the Stockholm Technical College, he made a tour of the world to gain practical knowledge in his chosen field. He landed in New York in 1900 with 100 dollars in his pockets and the gaining of a job as his immediate concern. From New York he went to Chicago, where by answering a newspaper advertisement he obtained a job as a real estate salesman. After three weeks of visiting prospects he sold a lot and made 50 dollars. But real estate was merely a temporary venture. He returned to New York in time to take a small part in the creating of its skyline, working as an engineer on such buildings as the Flatiron and the Metropolitan. Enthused with American engineering methods he went back to Sweden in 1907 and organised the engineering firm of Kreuger and Toll which erected many of Stockholm's leading buildings.

In 1913 he entered the family match manufacturing business and in 1919 started it on its world expansion programme. The one-time engineering firm of Kreuger and Toll hae expanded to become the holding company operat-. ing 225 subsidiaries, a chain of banks in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin, Warsaw and Bucharest, and an extensive real estate company. Gigantic Liquor Bribery. Entries in a email black account book showing 2,000,000 dollars profits in six months, huge sums pajd for bribery, ships and liquor, revealed in New York the proportions of a syndicate which Federal officials charge monopolized liquor smuggling along the Atlantic coast. The account book was seized with other records at the "niansion" in Highlands, New Jersey, headquarters of the ring, when Federal and State officers made 32 raids along a 200-mile front in a preconcerted drive against the syndiWilliam J. Calhoun, prohibition administrator for New Jersey, eaid the book contained, in addition to notations showing the profits which were divided n ratioss of 7'to 23 p er cent amon the members, closely written memoranda lloSon™* I>aid t0 loCal ofßcei - s ' or Ma?cWr S el Ti' he Raid ' that la «t £ n MT dl ? at^, epent 700 ' 000 dollaia in Montreal, Canada, for "ships the purchase of liquor aid operatS the is S of prohibition enfX m a I q t U t lOn matter of financing all S } * a by banks, who are A,» °- Cnmes depositors' money n ! mi6USin ° their

United States Attorney Charles E. Tuttle, in announcing that three Federal districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey would co-operate in the prosecution of the syndicate, said: "Thie ring not only was conducting smuggling of contraband on an enormous scale with ramifications in. England, Canada and elsewhere, but waa bj practice virtually monopolising thift business of illegal importation." Among the score of men arrested was Malcolm McMaeters, radio operator, who was held in custody and was later liberated on bail for 30,000 dollars, i The motor ship Shawnee, which was fired upon by a coastguard cutter, was described in the indictment as the vessel which speed boats operated by the syndicate unloaded from 1400 cases of whisky, 750 cases of champagne, and 200 cases of gin off Navesink Light recently. This ship was need as a decoy to which a Federal officer sent messages from the smugglers' radio station after a recent raid, the raid now being the subject of diplomatic correspondence between Canada and the United States. Movie-Struck Girls Warned. More than 10,00t "extras" are pounding the pavemente of Hollywood jobless, penniless, and hungry, the figures Weal, according to Mrs. Edson, chief of

the Industrial Welfare Commission of California, who has charge of the official survey on "movie extrae." "King Canute," sighs. Mrs. Katherine Philips Edson, "told the tide to stand back and all he got was wet feet. I cannot keep the would-be movie stars out of Hollywood. There are 11,000 'extras' listed by the Central Casting Corporation in Los Angeles. Of these only 133 men and 87 women work more than two clays a week. The average of 'extras' who work each day is 756, leaving an average of 10,244 without work. This stationary picture of unemployment is reason enough why wouldbe movie stars should consider all angles before embarking for Southern California." "Extrae" are paid from 5 to 15 dollars a day. Last year the average daily wage was about 3() shillings, and Central Casting Corporation paid to "extras" the sum of 2,409,000 dollars. The Central Casting, according to the social worker, has booked the "extras" for nearly four years past. In the early days of production each studio had its own casting director. The corporation now fills the orders that come in something like this: "One French gendarme, in uniform; 100 beautiful girls, Latin type; 50 wonjen over CO years old, French types; four English Tommies, in uniform; 100 American, doughboys, in uniform. On location at 9 a.m." Each such "extra" has an eight-hour day, with extra pay for overtime, and pay begins at the time the order is given to report to the studio. Fighting "Canned Music." While Thomas A. Edison, inventor of the original form of "canned music,' , was being hailed by the world for another of his ideas, 140,000 professional musicians launched a desperate national attack against mechanical music in American theatres. Proceeding on the theory that the public does not know how bad canned theatre music is—or if they do know they need a leader—the American Federation of Musicians began a 500,000dollar newspaper campaign to set up a howl. According to union representatives in New York, at least that sum has been raised for expenditure in 617 newspapers in the United States and Canada. It came from 30,000 theatre musicians, 5000 of whom have already lost their ( jobs. The first advertisement, designed to make the public anti-canned music conscious, appeared in New York newspapers. It was a half-page spread, headed _by a symbolic cartoon of a mechanical man smiting a harp while strings snap unnoticed and lubricating oil drips from the performer's brow. A dog with his tail caught in the machinery howls dolefully and a cherubim of music, hogtied to the upright of the harp, bawle with manifest gusto. It was a spirited drawing and the text asserted that an atempt by "powerful theatrical interests" to sell mechanical . music to the public as a superior form of art is all "bunko," the lowdown" being that synchronised music is cheaper.