TRADE SPIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, Issue 17693, 6 July 1927, Page 12

TRADE SPIES.

SMALL FORTUNES PAID.

Fierce competition for world markets and intense trade rivalry nave brought into existence the trade spy, who mattes it his business to steal and sell priceless secrets. Sometimes his reward is big money —sometimes death. High up fn tlio service of the great steel nnn of Krupps was a young German who had just been granted special leave, and when he boarded a' southbound express, he carried a shabby portfolio and looked as innocent ami Harmless as any German “commercial.’’ Suddenly two plain-clothes men tapped him on the suounier anu mi/iwa niin to go with them to a private office at the railway headquarters. There he was invited to open his portfolio. But he was too quick lor the police officers. With one swift movement he drew a six-chambered revolver and blew his brains out. What was the hidden meaning of this tragedy? The answer was known to the police before the contents of that portfolio lay upon the tabic. The man was a trade spy, and his innocentlooking portfolio contained plans, specifications and technical data, concerning a very valuable, -secret process known only to his employers, Krupps. He intended to take them to Paris. Had lie got through undiscovered the great Essen firm- would now have found one of its French rivals manufacturing i steel goods by their own secret proJ cesses. £SOOO AS CONSIDERATION. "What arc such trade secrets worth and what arc the sines paid for them? ’these thieves of trade secrets are employees seduced from tlicir loyalties by big otters made by tile agents of rival linns. They are not spies and traitors at first; but they speedily become so, especially in those countries where wages are low and the cost of living high, when tempted with big money prizes. ’ A trade secret may be worth millions to a rival concern. A bagatelle of £SOOO paid for stolen plans and technical information, then, is a mere nothing. But it is much to the man se- ! duced from his loyalty, i Jt is an open secret that all the great I Continental firms arc employing men ’as spies and that counter-espionage \ systems are being operated to circumvent their rivals. One of the queerest trade-spy stories concerns a big American firm. The vendor of trade secrets brought to this £1,000,000 corporation whispered news of a machine which would, convert flax into the finished material without the I bleaching process. When the prospective buyers proved incredulous, the wily swindler offered to show them the machine at" work. Astonishing as it may sound, a complicated piece of machinery on very novel lines, into which flax went and from which linen emerged, convinced I them, and they paid up. The whole tiling was a swindle, for the finished fabric was in the machine from first to last. STEALING FASHION IDEAS. Just now the fashion trade is busy countering the spies who come from New York to Paris to steal ideas for | Spring modes. Very often they are charming women whose bearing disarms suspicion. 1 At a recent display in a. famous * Paris fashion house a woman who had r seen all the latest creations was folI lowed. She was seen to turn into a big 1 • ‘ the counter-spy took a seat near her. . i saw her produce a small sketcu-book and start making sketches * from memory of the. models and colour | schemes she had just been viewing as | a potential customer. Many vast fortunes have boon made out of patent? rights. It is therefore not surprising to find the same sort of traffic in patent plans. An apparently simple machine-plant may revolutionise the manufacture of a certain article and place the firm possessing it far ahead of all rivals. In one recent, case in Germany, when the existence of an; immensely valuable new invention was known, the spy petuaHv took emplovment in a draughtsman's office, and carried out hi." work in the ordinary way for some mentis befor" putting his plan into execution. Ho then started inserting carbons beneath the draughtsman’s drawings, removing each ivhenever a favourable moment oemirred. But "•ip dav be was caimM, in the °- f . and -ivhon was made a oom,li.n.,<yt, + cm'>U , S outfit W>S found in his lodgings. t,o" r of,lier with the halffinislied drawings of the secret patent.