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society woman. She had missed the necklace while on the street, but, being afraid to let her husband know of her carelessness, had charged one of the chambermaids of the hotel in which they were stopping with the theft. A rigid investigation was made, but without results.

The happy sequel to this incident was that the owner of the necklace gave the floorwalker a reward of $250, the exact amount of a mortgage on his little home in the suburbs, which he'd been put to great straits to pay off. She also apologized to the chambermaid and made her a handsome present.

Another case of vicious carelessness was that of a society woman who, accompanied by her husband, went to the station-master at one of our great depots and claimed that she had left a diamond ring valued at $1,000 in the washroom. She described the incident most circumstantially. She had taken the ring off and laid it on the right-hand side of the washbowl. This particular detail had impressed itself upon her because she had had to move it away from the soap-dish. She distinctly remembered that there was no one else in the room at the time but the attendant, and her she charged with having appropriated the ring. The station-master protested that he had every confidence in the attendant, who had in the course of twenty years' service turned in thousands upon thousands of dollars' worth of abandoned jewelry. Neverthe

less he investigated. But nothing developed, and after a time the lady called upon the station-master and confessed that she had lost a large sum of money at bridge, had pawned the ring to pay for it, and had used the aforesaid ruse to throw her husband off the scent.

"But didn't you consider the attendant ?" asked the station-master with great indignation.

"Why," exclaimed the woman, with great astonishment, "I never thought of that!"

"Well," said he, looking at her severely, "I suspected there was something crooked about it and I never told her."

Women when complaining of losses in railway cars always declare positively that they were the very last ones to leave, and consequently the valuable must have been picked up and kept by one of the trainmen or sweepers. A society woman, the wife of a New York banker, claimed that coming in from New Jersey she had dropped a valuable diamond brooch from her neck. She solemnly

avowed to the general passenger agent that no one was in the car when she and her woman companion quitted it. Therefore one of the company's employees must have picked it up. A search was made without result, and the agent wrote the lady that he had every confidence in his people and that she must have dropped the brooch elsewhere. At this she wrote him a very insulting and abusive letter and threatened to sue the com pany. He paid no attention to this, and a month later received another letter from the lady. In it she expressed great shame and humiliation at the way she had treated him, and proceeded to explain the loss and recovery of the brooch. It transpired that she and her companion were not the last ones in the car. It seems that a young man who was engaged to the daughter of a neighbor in the little resort in which she was spending the summer had occupied the seat behind her. He knew her well by sight. He saw the brooch fall to the floor, and picked it up and held it until such a time as a reward should be offered. She had advertised the reward and no questions, and he had promptly turned the brooch over to her. Certainly a nice young man to have for a son-in-law !

This woman had a more fortunate escape from the effects of her careless accusation than did another woman who went to a department store not long ago and ordered a vacuum cleaner sent to her house with a demonstrator. The girl who took the order had a brother who was selling vacuum cleaners on commission for an outside house. Instead of booking the order, she kept it and turned it over to him, which was disloyal, of course. The young man took the cleaner to the customer's house and proceeded to show off its various merits. While doing this he complained that in some way he had wounded his finger, and the lady of the house went out of the room to fetch bandages.

The young man finished his demonstration and took his leave. But no sooner had he gone than the lady discovered that a diamond brooch which she claimed to be worth $2,500 had disappeared. She at once 'phoned the department store and charged the young man with having taken her jewel. The manager investigated and found that no demonstrator had gone from that store to the lady's house. The salesgirl was examined, and confessed that she had switched the order. From her they learned her brother's address, the customer had him arrested as the thief, and he

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PHOTOGRAPH BY PILOT FILMS CORPORATION, NEW YORK
THE CARELESS CIGARETTE-SMOKER MAY START A "TRIANGLE FIRE
Of the 15,633 fires in Greater New York last year, more than one-third were caused by carelessness with matches, cigars, and cigarettes

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was locked up for several days. Then the lady found her brooch under a bureau where it had fallen! The young man was released and began an action for damages. The absurd part is that the jewel was found to be worth only a very small fraction of what its owner claimed, and she is in for considerable damages practically for nothing.

Women by their carelessness often lead, or rather drive, servants astray in homes or hotels. The psychology of it is that the servant is always more or less suspected, and knows it; there is a constant suggestion of wrongdoing which has a tendency to break down moral inhibition. Often servants are not treated as human beings, their self-respect is impaired, and a spirit of resentment is aroused, followed by a curiously illogical resolve to have the game as well as the name. At the psychological moment jewels are left unguarded. Jane may have been a good girl for many years.

But the Jane of yesterday

may not be the Jane of to-day. Her father or her brother or her lover may have got into trouble. She may be in the sorest of straits for money to help him—and, lo, a negligent mistress supplies the opportunity!

The habit among women of carrying money loosely is to blame for more theft than almost any other agent. The deadly handbag is the cause of most of this kind of crookedness. Over on the East Side of New York even poor women push their way through the throngs with gaping handbags dangling at their wrists, exposing loose change or purses on the inside. This has developed vast numbers of amateur pickpockets among children who had never thought to steal until the opportunity was so grossly forced upon them. One tried it and found it easy and told his playmate, and he tried it—and the thing spread like wildfire. Stealing became a habit; and from picking purses from these bags they aspired to more difficult jobs with bigger rewards, and first thing we knew we had a host of adroit pickpockets to deal with.

This habit on the part of female shoppers has created a very formidable class of young women pickpockets who prey upon the more respectable element in the great shopping centers. The shopper loves to go to her bank and get a bunch of crisp yellowbacks before starting on the rounds of the stores. Who knows?—the female crook may have an account in the same bank. She's there on business of her own, but when she spies out a woman with an especially big roll

she follows her. The woman with the yellowbacks makes straight for the swirling crowd round a bargain counter, and on her heels come the two girl thieves, for they usually operate in pairs. One gets on her left and steps on her toes or pushes her roughly, while her companion on the right opens the foolish bag, takes out the roll, and closes it. The woman discovers her loss and gives the alarm, and one of the crooks points down the aisle and says, "I saw her crowding you— that big woman with the plush hat."

Two of these girls were caught operating the other day. In the pocket of one, nineteen years old, was found $1,343 in valuables. Her large hand satchel contained more than twenty pocketbooks, in which was a total of $605 in cash. This girl had an account in three banks. She confessed that she had spent some time in the penitentiary and had resolved to lead a straight life, but that the temptation of the bags, stuffed, unguarded, and dangling before her eyes, was too great.

On a certain morning last month a young man went up to a woman on the street near Riverside Drive and asked for a nickel to get a cup of coffee. He claimed he hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours. The impulsive woman opened her purse, displaying a roll of bills, and the young man snatched it and darted down the street. Then the woman remembered that he was an evil-looking young man. She looked for the patrolman on the beat, but none was in sight. The young man had observed that fact before he had accosted her.

The crook was wise. He wanted that pocketbook, but he didn't intend to run the risk of jail for nothing. To snatch the book and run, only to find that he had risked his liberty for a few cents, was not his particular lay. So in a tactful way he asked the lady to show him if she were worth robbing, and she very promptly did so.

This is only a sample of what the police are up against in trying to protect the public. There are about nine thousand patrolmen in this great city of five and a quarter millions of people, and they expect us to be everywhere at once. Only the crooks know that we can't be! If the public would only help the police by exercising a small bit of vigilance, the crooks would disappear from our streets, if not from our cellars. The host of pickpockets that is gathered in by the police every year would fade away if women ceased carrying their purses in the deadly little hand

bag and if men would tuck their wads in their watch pockets or carry their wallets inside their waistcoats and wear guards on their stickpins and watches. This is some trouble, to be sure, but it's necessary. When I urged upon a friend the other day the need of caution, he said, "I'd rather spend the money to buy a new coat than constantly guard this one. It costs me time, vigilance, and anxiety, and keeps my mind from more important things." But that isn't negligence

—it's arithmetic !

It's disgusting to see men and women in a great crowded shopping thoroughfare like Thirty-fourth Street fairly pushing their valuables at you, wearing watches in outside pockets or on sleeves. To punish pickpockets for taking property thus held out to them is like holding meat up to a dog and then kicking him for grabbing at it; or it's like turning a lot of ravenous boys into a field of cherry trees with the ripe, luscious fruit hanging low and begging to be plucked. The police are forever eradicating these pests-but the public unconsciously is behind them-the pests, not the police!

It's a wonder that the matinée girl has not made a thief of every box office man in New York. She gets on line with the idea that he's going to hold back the best seats on her. She is angry and more or less hysterical when she reaches the window and is ready to quarrel with the ticket-seller. Yes, as she feared, there's nothing left but the twelfth row. After the usual argument, she grabs her ticket and leaves the window, mad to the roots of her hair—and the ticket-seller calls her back and gets his revenge. "You've left your change, madam," he says sweetly, handing her eight dollars or eighteen dollars-for girls of this class very often have big bills-and she grabs it and turns away, angrier still at this added humiliation.

Occasionally women stand gossiping with one another while they hold up the line, and then move away, forgetting their change. Obviously a man who was crooked in the box office could not last long, because the loss of a considerable amount of change is quickly noticed and easily traced.

But women are not the only offenders in this way. Men in their hurry are constantly leaving change. A certain cigar company having three hundred stores in Greater New York reports a hundred cases a day of customers abandoning amounts of change all the way from twenty cents to twenty dollars. In

cases where the amount is considerable it is almost invariably called for. But, nevertheless, the public has been constantly giving opportunity to the salesmen to become thieves at small risk.

The chance to steal where large amounts are negligently abandoned is not so great as where small change is overlooked. At one time or another, every one of us leaves a nickel or a dime at the window of the ticketseller on the " Sub" or the "L." There are many subways and elevated roads in the United States, and hundreds of ticket-sellers at whose windows small change is neglected. Yet I am told that such moneys are rarely turned in at the treasurer's offices. Probably they are absorbed in transit. To a man with a big family and small wages a nickel counts!

I know one man who became a thief just from the start he got at a railway ticket window. People used to rush off, forgetting their change-only a nickel, perhaps, or a dime, not worth going back for. At first he used to call them back, he told me; then he saw how careless they were, and after a while he didn't care. He got to pocketing their change. But this wasn't getting it fast enough. He thought that, as they were so careless, he could "put it over" on them right along, and he began to short-change them systematically during rush hours. He got bolder and bolder in this, till complaints began to drift in. The company set a watch and caught him. The contributory negligence of the public had made a thief of this man.

In every one of New York's seventy firstclass theaters, valuables are found every night, such as fur pieces, eye-glasses, chatelaine bags, jewel-studded combs, and purses, the latter often containing hundreds of dollars. During a season of one hundred and twenty performances at the Metropolitan OperaHouse no fewer than 728 articles of value were found, ranging all the way from a set of false teeth to an immensely valuable pearl necklace. This number takes no account of hundreds of handkerchiefs, single gloves, and the like, but it does include one hundred and fifty pairs of valuable opera-glasses. The list for a single day is about as follows: diamond scarf-pin, gold eye-glasses, opera bag, black gloves, and the like. Under one seat was found a lady's bag containing a kimono, breakfast cap, comb and brush, bottle of whisky, and a box of cigarettes. In a seat in the gallery was a package containing

two cans of pork and beans and a baby's nursing-bottle. Occasionally a man's tall hat is found, and gold cigarette-cases are common. Most of these articles, being found in boxes or chairs of subscribers, are easily traced.

A glance down the page of the book that is kept by the custodian of these valuables would amaze one-almost nothing but gold, gold, gold, diamonds, diamonds, diamonds! Surely, a fortune could be realized if the attachés were dishonest. But, as a matter of fact, fully 95 per cent of these valuables are returned to their owners.

At the Grand Central Station, through which from 35,000 to 40,000 persons enter the city every day, two men are kept busy receiving, classifying, and delivering articles abandoned in the trains. Among articles left in the trains of this company last year were several pairs of crutches and a wooden leg. For sheer negligence, this puts the item of the abandoned false teeth in the Metropolitan into cold storage. To such an extent are umbrellas abandoned that the custodian made the remark that he could invariably tell by looking over his book of receipts whether a certain day was rainy or fair from the number of umbrellas brought in.

On the Jersey Central, which brings 20,000 passengers a day into New York, 5,000 articles were left in car seats last year. There were overcoats, dress suit cases, golf sticks, and several hats every day-which is very remarkable. Others left chickens, parrots, melons, muffs, mechanics' kits, and in many cases shoes that the wearers had discarded to ease their feet and had walked away without them-which was even more negligent than leaving their hats. Most of these articles betrayed the sex of their owners-the size of rubbers showed it without a doubt, but eye-glasses and umbrellas were of neuter gender. The commuter was indicated by packages containing such things as bread, butter, eggs, lard, pickles, and cans of bug powder.

At the lost and found department of the elevated road and subway in New York an average of 40,000 abandoned articles are taken care of every year.

Recently the older chauffeurs of New York City organized under the name of The Gasoline Engineers' Protective Association, their purpose, according to a resolution adopted, being " to eliminate joy-riding and drunkenness and to put the profession on such

a plane that the chauffeur will not be discriminated against because of his calling."

What a commentary on the status of a vast army of skilled workmen "discriminated against because of his calling."

Yet it is absolutely justified. There are probably seventy-five thousand of these men in Greater New York, the majority of them of good character, yet all more or less under the ban of suspicion because of the acts of a by no means small minority.

The negligence of the machine owner and the public has developed the greatest definite field of criminal operations ever known in America. Nor in any field has specialization in crime developed the efficiency that it has in this. So tempting is it, in fact, that many who were crooks before they entered it have come in, and many have developed crookedness from the inside because of the opportunities found there.

There are four classes of automobile crooks -the chauffeur who robs his employer right and left; the man who steals the machine; the sneak thief who pilfers the accessories from the car; and the taxi driver who cheats us in the matter of fares, steals whatever belongings we may leave behind, often robs drunken fares, and occasionally carries unprotected women to lonesome places and relieves them of all they've got.

And this is all directly due to negligence! The owner is negligent, either directly in leaving unguarded a machine, or in retaining in his employ, as he too often does, a chauffeur whom he knows to be dishonest or a drunkard or a dope fiend.

We wonder why an owner keeps a chauffeur whom he knows to be dishonest. It happens usually with the first machine; then he (the owner) becomes sophisticated. Usually he has made a lot of money in some up-State town. The neighbors have machines. They are all regarded as expensive toys, yet an indispensable mark of social standing. Our friend's wife must keep up with the neighbors. Very good. He gets a car. He has heard that other men have been grafted on, but this is a necessary evil, he concludes. So he submits to it. This is where his negligence comes in. He doesn't take the trouble to determine that he needn't submit to it. The chauffeur comes to him with good references and seems to fill every need. He keeps the machine in first-class shape, makes good mileage, and avoids collisions. Immediately he arrives, the chauffeur locates the repair

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