GOLF-MAD AMERICA

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 3 January 1931, Page 9

GOLF-MAD AMERICA

\ SOUTH African's impressions of some of the romantic ‘‘high lights" of America —the oil-gushers of Oklahoma, the gaugsrers and gunmen of the crime “industry” of Chicago, and the mighty motor industry—were given by Mr IL-. H. Oates, managing director of a motor firm in an interview with the “'Cape Times." Air Oates had just returned from a six months’ tour of Europe and the United 'States. While he was in the United States, Air Oates visited six of the biggest motor-car factories, and was greatly impressed by their magnitude. “But what was more surprising, in view of the conditions obtaining all over the world at present," he said, “was the numbers of cars being produced." There had been a 30 per eent. falling off in sales during the last few months by comparison with 1929, but manufacturers regarded this merely as a period of accumulation of future business.

The effect of the financial slump in America appeared to have been felt only in the sales of the Higher priced cars. One factory* hdd been producing 9000 cars a day while he was there. Another factory was producing 126 cars, daily of a type that was sold for about five times the price of the other. There was an increasing tendency for factories to buy component parts of the cars from manufacturing specialists, instead of making them themselves, and to-day such parts as valves, crankshafts, and pistons were being supplied to the factories by specialists. This, of course, would make for standardisation of parts to some extent. ‘What impressed me most about the Americans themselves," said Air Oates, “was the hospitality of the business people and their wonderful enthusiasm for golf. They are golf-mad there. They will play you all day on the golf course, and all night on the miniature course, and they record every stroke on paper. Their golf courses are magnificent, and the clubhouses more rnag-

A Colourful Country

nificent. The clubhouse at one place where I spent the week-end near Chicago cost 1,000,000 dollars.’ The Americans entertained chiefly in hotels and clubs, he said, because of the servant problem. Air Oates had some interesting impressions of 'Chicago. “It is outwardly peaceful and law-abiding, notwithstanding that every morning when you read your paper you find that, two or three murders have been committed the night before," he said. * “But the gangsters never shoot the public. They are as law-abiding as anyone else as far as the public are concerned.’’

Air Oates was in Chicago at the time of the sensation when Lingle, the crime reporter, was shot. The newspapers offered a big reward and declared war on the gangs, but Air Oates said that when they began to j,make investigations they' found that Lingle had been in the graft business himself, and that he had been making about £IOOO a month in this way. Apparently he went too far ill some delicate matter involving rival gangs,’ and his career .came to an. end in the summary fashion in which the gangsters, settled all their disputes.

Air Oates described the elaborate organisation of American crime, which was carried on as a recognised industry' with complicated ramifications. The big controllers divided up the city' into territories, in the manner of a manufacturing firm distributing proprietary' articles, and sold concessions in gambling rights, bootlegging rights, and vice rights to smaller men. The police were practically' powerless.

S Air Oates went as far as Oklahoma where he saw the new oil fields, about three miles out. Over 400 oil wells, all each one costing 125,000 dollars, 'i day' he was there two of the w'ells were running w'ild, spouting out millions of gallons of oil, which w'ere running to waste. It took five days to get one of them under control.