UNERRING SKILL
MARKS FINGER
PRINT SYSTEM
WASHINGTON, D. C.. March 13.—
Finger print identification has been
developed by the army to the point of
efficiency where it is applicable at
times vies with the thrills of detec
tive fiction. Any unidentified man
who has served in the regular army
can be located in from ten to twenty
minutes and his full record laid bare.
In that short time a searcher finds
him among the more than seven mil
lion men who have been in the army
since 190G, when the finger print sys
tem was introduced. He may have
been one of the 50.32S Smiths, the 40,
101 Johnsons, the 2S,902 Browns, or
one of the 27.93S named Williams. All
the army needs is his finger print to
turn up his record.
Walter S. Kaye, in charge of the
bureau says the indexing has been
so worked out that even a new clerk,
one never before having knowledge
of the system, can begin work as a
searcher with a little preliminary in
struction.
The science of finger print reading
is based on the study of the curious,
circling network of all but invisible
lines on the ball of the thumb and
each finger. Examination of mil
lions of specimens shows that the nor
mal formation is the whorl, or the
scroll which winds in a gradually re
ducing circle to their inner termina
tion at the core of the network. A
majority of human beings are marked
with this scroll, but there are others
whose finger print lines run in flat
tened figures or in complications of
figures far removed from the simple
easily read whorls. The first step
in identification has to do with de
termining the broad general division
in which the prints under examina
tion are to be sought.
There are but four main groups or
classifications of prints, arches, loops,
whorls and composites. Each type has
its gradual cases. The whorls have
1,024 values or combinations and the
loops, arches and composites have
each their respective values to simpli
fy segregation for filing and to make
them easily located when identifica
tion are sought. The valuation of
prints thus made has overcome all dif
ficulty of dealing with large collec
tions of finger markings, such as are
j in the army files.
Finger prints, since their adoption
' in 1000, have exposed frauds, protect
' ed innocent men from injustice, kept
j undesirables of the criminal type out
■ of service, protected the government
j from unscrupulous claimants and un
| covered the guilty. Many interesting
jaccounts of such instances are con
| tained in official papers of the war
department during the last 15 years.
| Those who have worked in the
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FURNITURE AND RUGS
GLASS AND CHIN AWARE
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SHOP
J. L. GRAEF
Service Is Our Watchword
m
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ASK ABOUT IT
Tel. Adams 80
Every day in every way
You enjoy your meals
AT
THE FISHER CAFE
Seward, Alaska Chas. Fisher, Prop.
Bread—two loaves for 25c
The “Saturday Evening
Roast”
GET IT AT
Carstens Packing Co.
E. E. KURTZ, Manager
Free Delivery • Phone Main 130
V
identification bureau since its estab
lishment are authority for the state
ment that never has a mistake been
made. They have made more than
200,000 indentification.
“This finger print system,” Mr.
Kaye says, “i ssuperior to any other
system so far devised in that it per
mits of no error. This may seem a
strong statement, but the finger print,
when clearly made, allows of no mis
representation; it is an actual presen
tation and does not permit the person
al equation of error to enter. Other
systems allowed errors of measure
ment and errors in location of marks.”
In the more than 70,000,000 digit
photographs in the identification bu
reau’s files, Mr. Kaye says, there are
no two of them alike. "There is just
as much chance of finding two prints
alike as there would be in going into
the filds and finding two flowers ex
actly alike.”
WALL ST. TRICKSTERS
FOREVER ON SEARCH
FOR NEW VICTIMS
(By As»oeiated Press)
NEW YORK, Mar. 13.—The finan
cial underworld which fringes Wall
Street steadily hits upon new meth
ods to keep up with the times and
j ahead of the law. Its jargon is elas
tic, impromptu and bizarre.
For example, swindlers who fleece
the public through sales of fake
stocks work by telephone in what
is called a boiler room. Telephone
salesmen are said to “hook the suck
ers.” Dynamiters, so-called, “built
up” the victims and hoodwink then:
into switching from standard securi
ties, first held out as bait to at
tract investment, to worthless stocks
which the conspirators are in busi
I ness to unload.
! Gone is the “gold brick,” gone the
bunco man who struck up acquaint
ance with properous visitors fron
the interior at metropolitan railway
ice Cream
MADE DAILY
HIGH GRADE
Candies
Framed Pictures, Photog.aphs,
Curios
SYLVIA’S
Phone Adams 128
TAILORING
Come In and Get Measured for
a Suit. Guaranteed Fit.
C. HENNING
Seward, Alaska
Take
THE FUR FARMER
MAGAZINE
and know the fur business. It
deals with every phase of fur
farming. Learn how others made
a success of farming fur bearing
animals.
Address
21 COLMAN DOCK
Seattle, Wash.
HOTEL OVERLAND
GORDON SHEA, Propr.
SPECIAL RATES BY WEEK
OR MONTH
New Heating Plant Just Installed
It--*
PIONEER CLUB
John Nash, propr.
SOFT DRINKS, CANDY
CIGARS AND FRUITS
depots in the ’90s. The get-rich
quick man of today has imagination.
Avoiding the mails as much as pos
sible, he strikes -over the telephone
and telegraph, often to bring down
quarry as much as several states
away.
These swindlers operate from of
fices that usually are obscure, some
times merely desk room, so custom
ers will find telephone calls hard to
trace. In the larger plants there
often is a battery of as many as
eight telephones. This is the boil
er room, the term being derived from
the practice of creating an atmos
phere of bustling activity to impress
inquisitive suckers who cannot be
kept away.
The bustle is no wholly fictitious,
the Better Business Bureau investi
gators have found. Hour in, hour
out, salesmen with good voices can
vass by wire a list of names select
ed either from a secret "sucker’s
list” or the telephone directory.
They hook their man by offering
j to let him buy some active standard
| stock guaranteed to advance, on a
j partial payment plan. He can sell
I out at the rise and take a profit per
! hips equal to as much as he has
i paid in. The money is duly receiv
1 ed, but the stock is never bought.
When the stock goes up and the
customer has a substantial paper
profit to his credit, the dynamiter
steps in to give him high-pressure
treatment.
"Bully!” comes a smooth, congratu
latory voice over the telephone.
“Didn’t we tell you? See what a con
cern like ours can do for you?”
The dynamiter, if he is a good
one, persuades the happy plunger to
switch to another stock, equally
guaranteed, which will bring tar
higher profits. This will take a
SILVER FOXES IN CANADA
FINDING HOMES IN ENGLAND
, LONDON, March 12.—British farm
L ! ers are watching with much interest
■ | the experiments which are being
; made here in an effort to make silver
fox farming in England a paying prop
osition.
i Farms have been started at Alness
in Scotland and Oxfordshire an Bex
j hill-on-sea. What effect this move
I will have on the price of silver fox
J fur in Great Britain cannot at present
j be stated, but it has been proved dur
i ing the last fifteen years that the
! best and most costly examples of the
i silver fox are those of animals bred
in captivity. The foxes have been
brought here from Canada.
I
THE PALACE
John Mattich, Prop.
POOL, SOFT DRINKS AND
CIGARS
Furnished Rooms
Phone Main 55
ARON ERICSON
Painter and Decorator
SIGNS WALL PAPER
slight additional investment, of
course—“it takes money to make
money, but you know by this time
you can trust us!”
The new stock, the luckless cus
tomer finds,, is worthless. If he
threatens to make trouble he some
times gets an adjustment. Not of
ten. Usually salesmen and dyna
miters quietly pack the boiler room
in a suitcase and fade away—to bob
up elsewhere tomorrow.
An attorney in Toledo, Ohio, was
reached by long distance telephone
from Philadelphia and New York. He
placed .$515 on a curb stock here,
and won. He was persuaded to
switch to a worthless mining stock,
and agreed to send $2,500 more. Pos
tal inspectors nabbed one of the
swindlers at a telegraph office as he
was waiting for the remittance. La
ter they caught two others.
British Fear Necessity
of U. S. Trip To Study
Fine European Art
ifiy Associated Press)
I LONDON, Mar. 13.—The time ap
| pears to be rapidly approaching when
it will be necessary for Englishmen
to make a tour of the United States
in order to study European art, says
! the Sunday Pictorial, commenting
I on “our lost art treasures” which
| have been purchased in England and
' (her European countries by Amer
iran3 since the war.
“Our own artistic treasurers are
pouring across the Atlantic at a
portentous rate,” says the article-.
“Two million pounds’ worth of pic
tures and antique furniture alon
\V( re sold in London for Vine; ie i L
y and the total since the wai
has been estimated at nearly ?'e>.
. 000,000. Soon there may be no “oh:
masters” in England outside the pub
i lie gallaries. All the private collec
i tions will have been transferred to
j American millionaires and transpoi
ed to the other side.”
Antsy Reservations May
Be Turned into Parks
(By Associated Press)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Mar. 12 —
! Data on state parks in the south and
I plans of various states for develop
! ment and maintenance of systems of
j state recreation grounds are being
gathered for the National Conference
o State Parks by Raymond T. Tor
rey, field secretary of the organiza
tion. This information is to be used
in advising other states ot the ways
and means used in establishing,
maintaining and administering state
park systems.
Mr. Torrey, speaking of his labors,
declared that one of the objects of
the survey was to induce states in
which are located military reserva
tions which the United States war
department wishes to dispose of, to
take over these tracts for outdoor
recreation purposes. There are many
such tracts, he said.
The National Conference on State
Parks is composed of executives,
technical experts and supporters of
state park systems from states which
already have public outdoor recrea
tion spots.
■■■■■■■Mi
A CARLOAD
OR A SACK
,_C-0-A-Lt-—.
HEALY LUMP, NUT OR MINE RUN,
BAXTER NUT OR MINE RUN
EVAN JONES LUMP OR MINE RUN
NANAIMO RANGE COAL
IN SACK OR BULK *
THE ALASKA TRANSFER
WOOD, ICE, HAY AND GRAIN,
TRANSFERRING AND TEAMING
TEL MAIN 17 ARCADE BLDG.
H. V HOBEN A F. DAVIS