Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 May 1938 — Page 9

x which were always there.

¥

\

with Colorado history as Herndon Davis.

of the new

serving the old hotel.

dance floors. ¢

"” one year, boll-weevil another, and the inevitable 10

a

Vagabond

From Indiana = Ernie Pyle

Ernie Turns Press Agent, Offering A Piece of Biased Publicity for | Two Underdogs—a Hotel and a Man. |

DENVER, May 10.—This is a bold, biased | and unabashed piece of publicity for a | couple of underdogs. One of them is a historic Denver hotel, trying to make a comeback. The other is a man who has been a friend of mine for nearly 15 years. The man and the hotel are closely linked, although the man has no money in the hotel. In fact, the man has no money even in his pockets. The history of Colorado in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties is a dramatic one. It is the history of prospectors and mining and wild days; insane wealth, sudden poverty, and finally the story of great tragedies in human lives. The Windsor Hotel was the cennS \, ter of all that. In its day it was $i the grandest thing west of New

Ra - : York. £

When the Windsor was built, in Mr. Pyle

1881, it cost $600 a room to furnish. Beds and dressers were £ of German black walnut. Mirrors of French diamond point. In the Windsor was Colorado’s first bathtub. But the old hotel wen! the way of old men. A couple of years ago they started to tear it down. But they found the walls so sturdy that it was cheaper to leave it standing. Then new owners took it over, | with a vacue idea of raising it out of the ashes of | its past to a renewed glory. Now to change the subject. One night about 14 vears ago in Washington, D. C, I met a young man who was nearly as big around as he was tall. His name was Herndon Davis, and he was an artist who would paint you anything from a hamburger sign to a masterpiece. I have known Herndon Davis off and on through all these years. He has never got any smaller. Last fall he came to Denver on a small commission job. Well, when he arrived, the agent told him he could have free rooms either in a swank suburban hotel or in the old Windsor. Davis chose the run-down Windsor. He got interested in what the new owners were trying to do. He saw the huge old ballroom, and an adjoining dining room big enough for three modern night clubs. The new owners didn’t know what to do with these rooms. But Davis did. : : He grabbed a scrubbing brush, and his paints. And he turned out in scores of marvelous pictures the history of the Windsor Hotel—which is the history of Colorado itself —right on those plaster walls which housed the history in the making.

Soaked With History

The new owners, not too rich themselves, were able to pay Davis so little that when he finished they gave him, in addition, all the massive old furniture in his room. I doubt if there is an artist in Colorado as soaked He hangs around the Windsor daily, with more ideas. But work has run out. He is leaving in a few days for the East. I'm very little interested in the personal successes | Windsor owners. In fact, I don’t even know them. But I am interested in the idea of preThe great old beds still grace The public rooms—the ones with cocktail rooms and |

the high rooms. the Davis paintings—are now | the kind |

But I have grave fears. Denver is not

of city that wishes to turn back to old things. It |

doesn’t seem proud of the flashy page in Western | history that its early men and women created. . | And so. as I said in the beginning, this is an |

unashamed piece of publicity designed to save two

underdogs for the benefit of themselves and Colorado. | 1 know it will do no good, for you can't stop progress, | even with sentiment. But there's no harm in trying.

My Diary

By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt |

| First Lady Is Seeking to Spend The Summer as Lazily as Possible. |

Ar YYDE PARK, N. Y., Monday.—When up here, I |

sleep out on a sleeping porch surrounded on all | sides by trees. These last few days I have waked to a great variety of mornings. Being on the west side, I see only the reflection of the sunrise. The first day it was deep red and shone down into the waters of our little lake. This morning, in contrast, everything was shrouded in a heavy fog. I could not see the birds even though they could occasionally be heard chirping as the sun was struggling through the fog. Ordinarily, I can see them busily flying from tree to tree in the early morning. I always wonder if they are getting their breakfiist or building their nests, or just working up an appetite with early morning exercises. It is a good lesson for us all, for most of us do not stir around so swiftly when we first awake and that is probably why so many people will tell you that they do not care much for breakfast as a meal. We were up fairly early this morning to see a guest off by train, but not so early as our neighbors who had to send off a guest at 6 o'clock.

A Month Passes Quickly

I am not trying to plan how I may accomplish the most this summer, but how I may arrange to spend two and half months as lazily as possible. Most of the year we plan for activity but I find it takes even more panning if you want to vegetate in one place for a while. So many people think that it would only take a ccupnle of days to go here, or a week to go there, and few people realize that, if you | add up these days, a month is soon at an end. Yesterday I finished reading “Elysian Fields; a | Dialogue,” written by Salvador de Madariaga. Each of ue Madariaga's imaginary personalities, whether of times past or of today, has retained his most striking characteristics and added some side which may have been more or less unnoticed on earth but

New Books Today Public Library Presents—

GAINST the wilderness background of inland Florida, deseribed in prose so poetic as to render the reader breathless, does Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings set the scene for THE YEARLING (Scribner). There lives Penny Baxter, gentle, witty and wise, who is not only an intrepid hunter, but an ideal parent to his son Jody. There is Ma Baxter, unforgettable. There are the Forresters, lawless and violent, charming Grandma Hutton, and her son Oliver, There are old Slewfoot the bear, and other wildlings that roam the wilderness, drink in the secret dell where Jody dreams. that prey upon the livestock, that provide relentless hunting expeditions, and food. This is a novel full of drama, tragedy, humor, and strong speech, but primarily the story of young Jody and his pet fawn. Anyone who can read of these two lovable “yearlings” and share without emotion the intimacy of Jody's dreams, his innocence, his boyhood tragedy and his bright courage must surely be devoid of feeling. The loveliest story of the year. » ” EJ N a one-room cabin with a lean-to kitchen Donie and Bill planted flower seeds in empty lard cans and dreamed of a white painted cottage with climbing

roses much like the one on the calendar at the planation commissary. Somehow with low cotton prices

per cent interest charged by the plantation store, the broken tea cup which was their bank was always empty in the spring. The novel, THE SHARE-CROPPER (Dutton), by Charlie May Simon, is from notes collected by the author's father during many years of close association with the lives of tenant farmers. The book presents the life of the share-cropper, his relation to the plantation owner, and his dependence on the land he will probably never own,

» { { /

The Indianapolis

.

Times

Second Section

| side,

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1938

Jraming G-MEN

Wanted Men Are Tagged Wherever They're Found By Identification System

(Second of a Series)

By Sutherland Denlinger

Times Special Writer VW ASHINGTON, May 10.—Here, in this particular section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s complex identification department, one could find every available bit of information on Fainting Emma. Here, neatly ticketed and neatly filed by efficient young women who seemed continuously busy, was all the dope on Accessory Mike, on Cabbages and Cat Eye and Dolly Dear, on Funny Face, Foxtail Annie and Leaping Lena and Bald Knob, and thousands of other unconventional folk with unconventional monickers. “At first glance,” said the special agent who was showing us about the maze of filing cabinets on the seventh floor of the chateau-like Department of Justice Building, “you'd be apt to think this alias and nickname file a foolish thinga. Actually, however, it has proved very helpful to us. “Suppose,” continued the agent, “that someone tells us that one of the persons involved in a crime was called Bald Knob by his associates. And suppose we have no other line on him. “If this man had been arrested before, and it was indicated on his

arrest card that he was known by the nickname ‘Bald Knob, we'd simply look for ‘Bald Knob’ in the nickname file. The chances are that we would find his true name,

| his fingerprints, description, pho- | tograph—all the information we

needed to look for him intelligently.”

Ed o EJ

HE agent reached into a file drawer at random, picked out a card, red-tabbed at the top to indicate that the man whose identification data it contained was wanted. The card, which bore a stamp showing that it had been checked by a clerk, related to a Negro inmate of a prison camp in Florida. “You will notice,” said the agent, “that there is no covering letter. This card is in itself a communication telling us that the person whose 10 prints it contains is the person whose record is desired. “Forget all about the name. We are interested only in these impressions. We know all fingerprint impressions are different. But in most instances we make no attempt to file by individual Prints, but make a formula of all “We get the basic type. Perhaps the lines arch in on one side and out on the other. Or the loop lines go in and out on the same with one ‘delta’—a sort of

‘I" formation. There are arches

| and tented arches and so forth,

but by use of the basic types and

TS

The fingerprint, being classified, leads to the file where the picture

of the wanted man can be located.

their subdivisions we arrive at one formula. “The searcher arrives at his formula, and he goes, say, to a drawer containing ‘laAa’ prints. He

goes through the drawer. Perhaps

he has noticed an outstanding ‘bl’ formation on the fresh set of prints, and he looks for a similar one. He knows that while all prints are different, those in this drawer posscss a general similarity and he concentrates upon the individual characteristics in the print. » n »¥ _e T present it requires about. five minutes to search and classify, determine if the man whose prints have been sent in has a prior record. About 55 out of 100 have.”

The agent said that approximately 8,100,000 prints are on file a the bureau, and that about 23,000 of them bear the red tab indicating that the persons whose prints they bear are wanted by some law enforcement agency.

“Here,” said the agent, “is the card of a man who escaped from a Florida road camp in 1926. Suppose that he was arrested in Seattle for auto theft. And suppose that he pleaded that he had been intoxicated and that it was his first offense and asked clemency on these grounds. “Well, his prints come in to this bureau. And he is identified as an escaped prisoner. Seattle learns that he is no first offender, and Florida learns where he can be found. In this manner 598 fugitives were identified during last December, and we average about 6000 such identifications each year.” We walked down the long aisle (classifications run from 1 over 1 to 1 over 32) to a settion the wall of which was decorated by hugely enlarged prints of the type called “ulnar.” Its fundamentals seemed to be that the lines ran in and out toward the little finger and that it had 32 ridges.

» » » HERE are lots of Smiths,” said the special agent, smil-

ing, “and there are lots of ulnars. There are so many ulnars that

it would take fully 20 minutes to search out the individual charac-

teristics by hand, and that,” pointing to a longish contraption of steel and chromium, “is why we use this machine. “We use these smaller cards with a selection code. We count the lines in the loop on each finger and we count the ridges and we set the machine by punching out these numbers. If there is a difference of opinion as to the count, which sometimes happens, the machine can take care of two to three variants.” The next stop was in the civil identification files, where are kept approximately 500,000 prints of persons who voluntarily placed their identification data on record. “Many persons,” the agent commented, “seem ‘to think that these prints could be used for criminal identification. It isn’t true. They are classified in entirely different sections, and if a man who had his prints filed here was arrested the next day we'd never know it. His prints would be searched in the criminal files and we'd reply to the Police Department, ‘No record.’ ” ” ” “YP UT suppose he is among the victims in a big theater fire, where bodies are recovered with no means of identification other than fingerprints. “In that event we’d look in both the criminal and civil files. We'd find his identification here, and we'd notify his relatives.” A select division devoted to 13,500 of what the special agent termed “the most outstanding criminals of the country” is the “single print section” of the identification department. Here are filed separate prints for each finger of the criminals listed, rather than a single card containing all ten prints, as with most. Gangsters, kidnapers, extortionists—their cards are cut up into ten sections, filed separately in this “public enemy” file. The reason for this is that almost never do such latent prints as might be left, say, on a safe door

as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,

Entered at Postoffice,

Official Photographs U. 8. Bureau of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation ‘technicians projecting on a screen a picture of a fingerprint found at the scene of a crime.

yield more than a single print in shape to be of value. “But assume,” said the special agent, “that the scene of a bank robbery yielded no prints at all, or latent prints too fragmentary to be of any use to us. And assume, further, that there was a witness who had an opportunity to observe one or more of the robbers...” “In that case”—he gestured toward another section of the great army of filing cabinets—‘"‘we would make use of the personal appearance file. n » » » E'D use the machine, too, just as we do when searching for the fingerprint record of a person with ulnar characteristics. We'd take the description of the person’s height and weight, of his hair, his eyes, his apparent nationality, dental characteristics and so on, and we'd punch the card for each. “Someone says ‘a man about 5 feet,' 6; approximately 30 years old,” and goes on to list his other points. We run through the group on the machine, sort out all who generally meet the description and send them on out to our witness. Sometimes it results in identification. “Over here,” said the agent, “is what we call the modus operandi file. Very often, you know, a bank robber or other criminal feels that he has a good idea and sticks to it “We go to the file which briefs those characteristics, and if they all check we're getting somewhere.” Another section of the identifi cation department is devoted to a tremendous name file containing some 9,500,000 names. The special agent leafed through the cabinet at random, dredged up the pallid, haunted, reticent face of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Again, and it was the envelope of “John Dillinger, DEAD.” “He paid lots of money—$5000— to get his face lifted and in an effort to remove his fingerprints,” the ‘agent recalled. “It almost killed him. The futility of this is shown by the fact that we need but 12 points of similarity to establish identity in court. “After Dillinger was killed they found 81 of these points, and they could have found more, To make identification impossible you'd have to change the course of every single line, and that cannot be done.” ” ” EJ BRIEF stop at the Bureau's printing office, where is printed a law enforcement bulletin with data on fugitives, etc, that goes out to peace officers. Past the closed doors behind which members of the Seventh Session, National Police Academy, were holding a classroom forum, and up for a look at what is in many respects the most interesting of the Bureau's activities— the work of its laboratory. The entrance hall contains a machine for X-raying packages received for analysis and also, the inevitable glass cases. In these are displayed, presumably for the edification of students, a variety of work done by the laboratory's technicians.

“The laboratory,” remarked the agent, moving toward the X-ray machine, “accepts evidence from police agencies which do not have adequate laboratory facilities or technicians of their own. “They send it to us, and we make examinations for them without charge, the examiner goes out and testifies to what he found. “When we get these packages we want to know what they contain before they are opened. For one thing, the package might contain explosives, for another, if the man who opened it was not the man who examined it, we would have to send two men out to testify in court. Otherwise the prosecutor would say ‘Are you the man that opened it?’ and the examiner would have to say ‘no.

Ld » » n ND so,” said the agent, “we place every package in the machine. Look,” he said, setting a small wooden box on the metal tray beneath the eye-piece. You looked and saw, through the wood of the box and the interior wrappings, the black shape of a revolver.

“With this machine,” he went on, “all the actuating mechanisms of a bomb or other infernal machine may be studied, and you know in advance just what wires to snip, just what must be done to render it harmless. You can see what I mean by that picture up there.”

The picture, an X-ray photograph of a bomb, showed clearly the arrangement of wires and gadgets by means of which it would be detonated. Continuing toward the room in which chemical examinations were made, you passed a large table covered with field office equipment —leg irons, handcuffs, tools and the like, together with a large batch of stickers bearing the legend, “Do Not Open; Evidence.” The walls of the large, bright chamber were covered with shelves, and the shelves in turn by a bewildering variety of test tubes, vials, retorts and other glass implements used by the chemical technician. At one table, equipped with running water and a variety of professional apparatus, chemists made organic examinations, testing contents of the stomach to detect the presence of poison and the like. At another table examination was confined entirely to stains which might be blood and might be, quite as well, mould or rust. There are instruments used in the examination of hand-writing and instruments used to examine typescripts to determine whether they were made from a particular machine. A type chart shows the faces used by 695 standard makes of typewriters, and every machine, of course, has its individual characteristics after a period of use—a letter off balance here, another worn lotter there. More than a score of technicians and their assistants are employed in the examination of documents.

NEXT-—Light in Dark Places,

PAGE 9

Ind.

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

A Mistake Takes Your Columnist Out to Henry English's Home, a Veritable Storehouse of Souvenirs.

AST week, you may recall, I ran a gruesome piece about the way Pogues Run be haved in 1883. In the course of it, 1 said that everybody standing on the Pennsylvania St. bridge that day was swept into

the water and drowned. Well, it turns out I was only 90 per cent right. Anyway, when Henry K. English read my piece, he straightaway called up and asked me to come over and have a look at him. He looked all right. When I told him so, I learned that he was one of the dozen who stood on the bridge that day in '83. Sure, he went down with the rest of them, but in some way he caught hold of a log and held tight. As for the rest of my account, it's 0. k., says Mr. English. Mr. English is now 84 vears old and driving his eighth automobile. He lives in a big house at 2035 Broadway. From the outside it looks much too big for him, but I hope to clear up that, too, before this piece is done. Mr. English has spent the last 54 years in that block of Broadway. It speaks well for the neighborhood. Before that, he lived at 264 S. Pennsylvania St., which explains why he was on the Pogues Run bridge when it went down, In 1850, Mr. English's father (Joseph K.) went into the painting business, Son English, who eventually fell heir to the business, still has his father's account books, and you have no idea the class of clients he served. In 1854, for instance, he glazed some broken windows in the Governor's Mansion on the Circle ($1.20). In 1855, he painted the fence around Christ Church, and with some work in the parsonage it amounted to $15.80. In 1856, he hung 15 bolts of wall paper for S. A. Fletcher ($3), and in 1859 he painted the inside of Benjamin Harrison's house ($15). At the same time Mr. Harrison got him to paint his doorsteps, too (75 cents).

He Saves Everything

Mr. English also has the private cash book his father used when he was City Treasurer (1861-65), The last entry reads: “May 10, 1865—Decoration for Funeral of President Lincoln, $2568.80.” Mr. English says Miss Esther McNitt visits him every once in a while just to have a look at that book. She's dying to get it for the State Library. Up till now Mr. Eng« lish hasn't made up his mind who is going to get

Mr. Scherrer

| like that. all the back number of Scribners beginning with 1870 | when it had a blue cover. | Rebecca Harding Davis | serial called “Natasqua,”

—

"Be quiet, everybody! If my husband thinks we have guests he won't qome home."

|

|

"Sh-h-h! You'll get your

ies

4

Jasper—By Frank Owen

stork back—soon as Jasper sees his new

. baby sister!”

' LE

|

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1—How many members compose the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority?

2—To which nation does the island of Formosa belong? 3—What is brass? 4—How many cylinders did the engine have on Orville Wright’s airplane in which . he made his first flight? 5—In what round did the bout between Joe Louis and Nathan Mann end? 6—What was the middle name of James K. Polk, 11th President of the U. S.? 7—What is the name for salmon after spawning?

» » ”

Answers 1—Three. 2—Japan. 3—An alloy of copper and zine. 4—Four. 5—Third. 6—Knox. T—Kelt.

ASK THE TIMES

Inclose a 3-cent stamp for reply when addressing any question of fact or information to The Indianapolis Times Washington Service Bureau, 1013 13th St, N. W., Washington, D. C. Legal and medical advice cannot be given, nor can extended research be

| it. There's plenty of time to think about that, he says,

Mr. English's house is jampacked with material He saves everything. For example, he has

That was way back when (Richard's mother) ran a Mr. English also has all the McGuffey Readers except the First Primer. Henry Ford happens to have that one. And besides, he has everything ever written by an Indiana author, to say nothing of a big pile of scrapbooks. That's why Mr, English has to have such a big house.

Jane Jordan—

Cites Figures Showing 48 of 100 Runaway Marriages Are Successful,

EAR JANE JORDAN-—I will graduate from cole lege this June and am engaged to a young man who graduated last June. He has a job, but doesn't make much. We can live on it if we had a start from our parents. My mother is the only one who could give us this start as my fiance's parents are not well to-do. But she objects to the match. My father died several years ago leaving everything to mother in the expectation that she would take care of me, but she says she will cut me off without a cent if I marry this boy. She hasn't anything against him except that he has no money and she says that he isn't the type to make a success financially, but that he will be cone tent with a small salary all his life as long as I have my allowance to help out. I don't know whether he will make any money or not and I don’t care a lot. We are very congenial and happy together and have gone together throughout college. If I can’t have any of the money my father meant for me, then I will work to help him. We are planning to elope as soon as I am out of school. I've heard ‘that runaway matches are seldom successful, but I can’t see why not. You must hear from a lot of runaway couples and I thought perhaps you could tell me something to help me. A READER, n n n

Answer—It is not the form of the ceremony which makes or breaks a marriage, but character of the partners. The motives for running away are impors= tant to the end result of the marriage. . Some couples elope to avoid publicity, some to avoid the expense of a large wedding; but probably the strongest motive for running away is to escape the objections of parents. The latter group usually are young people who are in love with each other and their marriage has as good a chance to succeed as if it were contracted under any other circumstances Some statistics on elopement have been prepared by Dr. Paul Popenoe, director of the Institute of Fam= ily Relations in California. These statistics, which were taken in many parts of the United States, show that runaway marriages are successful for 48 out of each 100 couples studied in a group of 738. If the figures are confined to educated whites, the number of successes increases to 58 out of each hundred. Of course these statistics are not accurate because the couples are still alive and have yet a chance to be divorced, but they have lived together long enough to exonerate the elopement from blame for the failure, In this survey parents do not show up very well in their attitude toward the marriage of their chile dren. Dr. Popenoe finds them unreliable guides for their children in the choice of a partner. Even when their objections are understandable and legitimate, the marriage often turns out well, not in all cases, of course, but in enough cases to shake the faith of par« ents in their own infallibility where the marriage of their children is concerned. JANE JORDAN.

Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will answer your questions in this column daily, ‘

Bob Burns Says—

OLLYWOOD, May 10.—TI still hate to buy clothes in the city where there's so many stores and there's so much competition that the salesmen will tell you that you look pretty in pret near anything just to get you $0 buy it. In a little town where they haven't got but one store, the salesman can afford to give you an honest opinion. It's like the time down home when a lady went in and picked out one of them new style hats that the ladies are wearin’ now and the praprietor said, “All right, lady. Do you want me to wrap the hat

up or do you want the people to start laughin’ now?” (Copyright, 1938) .

Walter O'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, May 10-~-Anybody who wants & couple of teeth removed these days can do it very quickly and economically by saying what he thinks in Jersey City. The events of the last couple of weeks make Jers sey look like the Prussia of this continent. Une der the leadership of Der Fuehrer Hague, she's put= ting up a desperate fight against the encroachment of Americanism. Unlike other dictators, Mr. Hague doesn't want his boys wasting their time learning a right-hand sa lute. All they've got to do is to keep their fists down where “a handier for slugging.

#8