THE SISTER DOMINION

Southland Times, Issue 18965, 12 June 1923, Page 11

THE SISTER DOMINION

A LETTER FROM CANADA RUM-RUNNING. (From Our Own Correspondent.) VANCOUVER, 8.C., May 5. ‘’Rum-running” and “Boot-legging” may possibly be new terms to the average New Zealander or Australian, but for those living in Canada and the United States they have come to be quite as common as tea or coffee. The business of illicit liquor smuggling has grown to such proportions, and •its ramifications become so complex, that it presents one of the most serious problems confronting the people of the North American continent.

Following an inspection tour of the international border between Canada and the United States, Roy Merrick, chief zone prohibition agent, declared that more whisky was being shipped into the United States by the organised “Rum-runners” than from the smuggler’s fleet plying outside the three-mile limit. The manner in which the latter operate may be of interest to New Zealand readers. Their business is strictly “within the law” so far as Canadian laws are concerned while violating every law of the United States. The “rumrunners” when they cross the Canadian border into Canada obey the Canadian law and register their machines. Then they run their liquor stock back into the United States over a lonely road at night and store it, returning to Canada. The next day they leave Canada by the main road, allowing the Canadian authorities to check their machines. Once on the American side of the border they pick up the liquor shipment and go on their way unmolested. The rum-running business has attracted aS classes and conditions of people. On May 2 the Dominion Government for the first time in 24 years sent to the gallows a woman, Florence Lasandra, twenty-two years old, and her companion, Emilio Picariello, formerly town councillor of Blairmore and millionaire, for ths murder of Constable Steven Lawson, of 'the Alberta provincial police. The woman . and her male companion were engaged in the rumrunning business, and on the evening of September 21, following an unsuccessful attempt of Alberta provincial police officers to capture Picariello and his son Steve with an automobile load of liquor which they were running through the Crows Nest Pass, Picariello drove from his hotel in Blairmore to the Alberta police detachment at Coleman, four miles distant, accompanied by Mrs Florence Lasandra, wife of one of his drivers. There he called Constable Lawson out, and following words, four shots were fired, one entering Lawson’s back, killing him instantly. A posse was organised and succeeded in capturing Picariello as he was trying to escape in the mountains and Mrs Lasandra was taken shortly afterwards. The trial was held at Calgary, and both were sentenced to hang at Fort Saskatchewan gaol on February 21, exactly five months from the day the crime was committed. This date was later changed to allow for appeals to the Alberta and Canada Supreme Courts, a reprieve being granted till May 2. Strenuous efforts were made on behalf of the woman and the wealthy Picariello used all the influence he commanded, which was considerable, to have the sentences commuted to imprisonment, but the crime was such that to have shown any leniency toward either party would have encouraged more of the same kind. This, anyway, was the consensus of opinion of the Dominion Cabinet, which had the case under consideration until a few hours before the actual hanging took place. MARRIED MEN AND BACHELORS. In the opinion of Canadian bonding companies a married man is a better risk by six times than a bachelor, and that the next best risk was the “fcrank”—the man with one great and continual idea, and following him the man who used profane language with liberality. Frederick N. Whitty, an expert on the surety bond business, gave the above as his opinion in the course of an address to the Montreal Rotary Club on “gambling in Human Nature.” Speaking from the average of figures based on seven million ' dollars’ worth of surety bonds to an amount running into an aggregate of billions of dollars, the speaker declared that surety companies considered the married man a six to one shot as compared with the bachelor. The man with one idea was considered a good risk because his one great idea kept him so busy thinking that he had no time for sundry employments such as embezzlement or defalcation. The extremely profane man was a good risk because he took any grievances he had against society out in highpowered cuss words and let matters go at that. Fat men, Mr Whitty declared, were also good risks for any surety company. He suggested that the reason might be that men who enjoyed good meals seldom became losses to bonding companies, because when their stomach was full they had no incentive for illegal activities, at any rate Canadian bonding companies have found that fat men, young or old, were seldom defaulters or embezzlers.

Mr Whitty said that the one man all bonding companies dreaded to do business with and watched carefully once having entered into business, was the cynic, the man who openly professed to believe that every man has his price. Actuarial figures showed that a large percentage of such men had reached a period of development when they had their own price. But this was usually for comparatively small amounts, seldom over a thousand pounds. Other bad risks for bonding companies was the married man with a socially ambitious wife and the inveterate gambler whether at the race track or the stock exchange. BANKING ANP COMMERCE. The possibility that Henry Ford, now reputed to be the richest man in the world, would appear before the Dominion Committee on Banking and Commerce, is dissipated by the announcement of the chairman of the committee, Hon. A. K. Maclean, that Ford had not been asked to attend any of the committee’s sessions. The American automobile maker owns a large plant at Ford, Ontario, and it was thought that he would probably be called by the committee. Adam Shortt, former Professor of Economics at Queen’s University, and now attached to the Dominion archives, advocated a gold basis for registering exchange values. "You can run irredeemable paper money without gold, but it is very difficult and dangerous where a Government has to run it,” he told the committee. TRADE WITH ITALY. The trade treaty between Italy and Canada which recently passed the Dominion House, makes the second treaty with a foreign Power that the Dominion has concluded this year. The first one was with France. The Italian pact provides that each country shall grant most favoured treatment to the products of the other. “ Whatever was granted to any foreign country we must grant to Italy' Whatever. Italy grants to any other foreign country she must grant us,” explained Hon. W. S. Fielding, Minister of Finance. Under the Italian treaty Canada will receive better treatment commercially than the United States.