Are You Sure?
Answers on Page 9
theso
famous
1. One of. British admirals was a roldier before he was a sailor-
Nelson, Drake, Jellicor, Blake, Hawkins, Beatty?
*. From which of these trees would you get * deal
board...
Oak, fr, elm, beech, pine. cedar, poplar?
5. An octo lasse 18-
Squid with eight in, musİ-
cal Instrument, October deepest voice in choir?
4. This craft is A-
Topsell
nie,
old-time salling
brig. achooner,
barque, full-rigged ship, brigantise?
5.
R
FALL
OBERT GREENWOOD TARRAN, Bentenced earl this month in England to nine months' im- prisonment for publishing a false balance sheet, was fond of quoting an old Spanish proverb.
My belief in that if he had paid more heed to the advice it ave he would not be spending
· Christmas in jail.
For the proverb was, "Take the greatest care when you feel safest."
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1947.
OF THE HOUSE
OF
The trouble with Boli Tar- F Fan was that he did not take enough care in the financial sense. That was the cause of hin downfall.
Here was a man of immense abilities, of restless energy, and tremendous drive who, starting from nothing, had built up in 25 years a business doing more than £2,000,000 of work a year.
Like other self-made meu before him, Tarran wanted to keep it all under his own con-
troj. For what are these Lon- don streets famous-s
Threadneedic-street, Harley- street, Wardour-street, Hatton- garden, Carey-street?
6. Twenty years have pass- ed nince the F.A. Cup was taken out of England by
(Glasporo).
Park Queen's Swansea Towen, Glasgow Ran- vern, Cardig chu?
Superlor
7. Lake called because of it
Es 150-
Size, fish, depth, shipping. Balta?
8. Which
is the ephemeral of these-
most
Centenarian, fairy. Mayfly.
mustic, ghost?
9. Besides being
writers.
Chates Lamb, Trollope, Pepys
and Burns were-
Farmers, civil servants, doc-
tors, innkeepers?
10. Which of the following. laid side by side, would cover the greatest distance
in his early days Tarran's primi- tive accounts were fotled down on the backs of tram tickets and other odd scraps of paper.
TARRAN
by BERNARD HARRIS
1941
... The King, with Tarran in Hall
$3
To this plain. forthright shireman, who claimed that never read a book ("Tve been too interested in my the orthodox anathema.
"I never kept books," be oner told me. "To do so would be foreign to me as the Russian lan- Kuage."
Tarran understood building. But he did not understand what he call-
ed "high Onance and accountancy," Once he took me over to a large oak chest and started to "cost" It on his broad, aiubby fingers....so muny feet of timber at sa much, so many man-hours, so much vamish, and so on.
"That sort of knowledge is worth more to you than all your work," he said.
book-
Tarran was inclined to binme the blitz on Hull for some of the dit- nculties In which he became In volved.
After he had been sacked and the board of hla company was rear- ganised, he was not a single the directors.
Is to
לונות
and
work with the materiais 1, love."
He told me. how he had taken a car ride to Wakefield to have a look at the Jalt.
"When I was sheriff I entertain- ed the King. I want to be properly topked after when the rules are re versed."
Terran made one of his rare mis- calculations there. Ho, hael vlalted the wrong Jail.
Behind all this banter Tarran, wan, think, sustained by tho knowledge that he had not engaged in any double-crossing or financial roguery to line his own pockets, Nothing like that, had brought him down.
"Whatever they may do to mo, they
cannot destroy homes that scures of thousands of people live In today through the use of what ever gifts I have.".
Wealth muda little appeal to him. He saki he had been born not with the "Just for gold," but with the "lust to provide the human nced,"
He was comfortably ol. Bu nothing like so rich as other people could have been if they had had a business such as his under control.
Tarran had known what it be poor.
their
was to
"I was the eldest child of boys and one girl.
seven
In
to
crown a
"I had
to
complained that the
ML."
me,
builder
among of a He asked "Would you send the Queen Elizabeth to sca with fawyers on the bridge and accoun-
tants in the engine room?"
And again, "Has any manipulator of finance ever made a tank, battle- ship, or aircraft?"
Throughout that dinner and in conversation until midnight, Terran seemed liked a man without a care in the world.
He said, "The happiness of every worker, the boss's special duty.
He bull them canteens, installed first-old. stations, set up
dental ellies, and' organised a crecho for the bables of the working mothers
A Torran orchestra and a Tarran concert party were started.. A large sports ground sprang up alongside the factory.
་
Intro-
Holidays-with-pay | were duced long before the Government thought of them-and in an indus- try where they were regarded as Impossible because it used casual labour.
Hull people loved "R.G for hin success, his generosity, his skill in getting things done in the face of opposition from bumbledom and officialdom.
During the in 1941. Tarrant,
heavy raids on Hull as chief A.R.P. warden, was worried because there was no organised evacuation of women and children.
Thousands would trudge to qut- lying villages in search of a night's rest.
Tarran, disguised in cont and cap (which he normally Rever wore). coloured glasses, and muter, join- ed the trek to the village of Bilton. There he spent the night with several families in a piggery. "The rats," he cald, were almost worse than the bombs."
Next morning he called up his his lorries to run n transport manager and arranged for shuttle service
1
CheSNAPSHOT GUILD
HANDS AT WORK ·
Jus like face, hande cals tali a story of their owner. Then, for example, bespeak quiet age sed patient workmanship.
for the "trekkers." The authorities THERE'S a certain fascination and helps bring out the texture and were Indignant.
in photographs of hands, tiny wrinkles of the skin. threatened to stop shilling's petrol.
his particularly hands nt work. Today's picture, for example, was Tarran
persisted. He won,
They
was organised.
u
Said Terran, "Ring up my
farm
and tell them to milk a cow." The
cow was duly milked in the middle
their fea.
When
n
York-
"When I started in business he had
always 1919 I was so poor that I had work", buy my timber by the
worth. financial expert was
I wheeled it to my tie as usual. Before long a proper sy. You'll find such pictures in made with a lens aperture of f/10. workshop, for which I paid half a tem
exhibitions, week, on my bicycle.
advertisements, The shutter speed was 1/10 of a On another occasion some people magazines. The
second. The photographer used buy
the bent and sheltering in a building asked Tar-
reason for tripod nails I wonted
to guard against camera up this lies in the fact that hands movement, a wise precaution when- ran for a cup of tea. He rang from the packing cases his works canteen. "We've got tea, are themselves expressive. One ever exposures are greater then On those foundations rose a busi- but no milk," they, said.
need not be a palmist to read 1/25 of a second, and the model ness which was to use 500 tons of timber a
ber a day, and more thun 500
the story told by a picture such was careful not to move through- tons of nails a year.
out the exposure. The possibility us today's.
of such movement, however, may Luck came Tarran's way in 1923. of the night and the shelterers got A customer had
make it a good Iden to use run up a debt
flash Snapshots of this sort can be bulbs when you which he could not pay. So Tar-
are able to get made in much the same way them. ran look an old oll engine from him and cancelled the debt. With his
commissioned by the
you make informal portraits, savings of £68 he bought a circular Government carly in the war to
Such a picture tells a story of throw up defences from Spurn using two lights, one near the quiet age, of patient workmanship.
Head-equal camera and slightly below it rattle, can tell
A baby's tiny fiat, clutching a That gave him a rudimentary start Head to Flamborough
of production of joinery. to one-fourteenth of the coast
different story. Or of the case. It had already cost in the mass
and the second somewhat higher "I thought I was on top of
snapshot showing a carpenter's England-Tarran had to
recruit He confessed to me that an even Hull ratepayers the equivalent
3,000 men in
in 10 days.
than the camera and placed so
hands, skilfully planing wood. greater disaster was the death in a 2d. rate and was to go on for 76 world," he told me.
Tartan went on to build cinemas, For 10 nights he interviewed 300 March 1940 of his confidential days and cost them a 3d. rate.
With all such plotures, shoot as houses, flats, churches, hospitals, men every night. And he spent his the light falls on the subject at secretary, 38-year-old Doreen
to "I'm cheap on the basis of a 20. banks. His name appeared on sites Sunday mornings training thern in a 45 degree angle. This second close your subject as your Mason.
rate," he said, with his broad grin. all over Britain. In Leeds he bullt gangs of 14 In the best methods of light serves na
camera permits.. It may be, if you a modelling use a box camera, that you Sho know more about the finan- "Considering" what I've done for
railway
will cial administration of the business Hull, I think people should value Europe's largest block of flats hous- driving steel girders and
that lines into the beaches
light, bringing out the round- bave to include much detall ing 000 families. than he did.
might better be omitted. If this is Though he never read books, Bob ness of the hands and fingers. The first year's turnover of £95 dinner with me on the 32nd
the case, the best policy is to crop £100,000 by 1931, Tarran claimed that he could "road In his whole business life
the Anished print day of the inquiry into the charges
had swollen to
carefully. Re- passed the £1,000,000 mark before men.' against him, Tarran insisted that if
themselves no applicant for a job was ever ask- Generally speaking, with lighting member that the hands Miss Mason had been alive to give
Then Tarran switched his activi- ed for a reference.
of this type a fairly long exposure should tell the whole story. Crop- only will fake evidence the case would have turn-
Now he looks forward to a second will be used. The camera not
This is because you ping, leaving only the hands ties to the mass production of huts
the materials with which they are pictures at a pace of one-a-seconded in his favour.
bullt defence chance. He has a business in Perth for the Services, 1940 he had 10,000 people working in Leeds. You can't keep
like Bob Tarran down. for him.
Ten
pennies, 12. half- pennies, 16 sixpences?
DREAM CAMERA
A "dream camera" that will take pictures automatically as fast as the photographer can work the shutter In US Army is being developed laboratories.
"Our records office and our cost- ings ofce were blown to pieces," he said.
He wisecracked about the length
of
saw.
out war came.
me at least at is."
asked him what he thought would be the outcome of the case. Without a moment's hesitation he fashed back: "I've worked it that if I get seven years I can re- duce. it to five years four months by or more, but will be iminune to heat, "I owe all my success in life to good conduct. Then I can get busy
He said. "My again. cold and wet, and will stand being three
wife, and
"What I did 25 years ago Doreen
with dropped and bumped, says
naught I will do again. All I want Army-Associated Press.
women,"
the mother. my
Mason."
the
and
works, and constructed airfields. In which he hopes to run from his cell will want to use a relatively small working, makes this story emphatle
Such an aperture people lens aperture.
gives greater range of sharpness,
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
John van Guilder..
"Starting the New Year"
BY KEMP STARRETT,
SOME PEOPLE WILL START THE NEW YEAR
VERY THIRSTY AND BEMUSED.
JUST
SO THEY CAN SWEAR OFF ALL DISSIPATION
FOR AT LEAST TWO WEEKS.
YOU MARK MY WORDS... THIS
TIME NEXT YEAR WE'LL ALL BE
IN THE
DOOR: HOUSE?
OTHERS WILL START THIS YEAR JUST AS SOURLY AS THEY DID LAST YEAR SO AS NOT TO BE OUT OF PRACTICE FOR NEXT YEAR..
SOME WILL PAY UD ALL THEIR BILLS...SO THEY CAN BEGIN TO COLLECT A NICE FRESH CROP OF DEBTS,
WE KNOW FOLKS WHO LIKE, TO START A HEW YEAR WITH
A PROPHESY,
Ledges Studizati
STILL ONIERS WILL BE SATISFIED IF THEY CAN MAKE A HECK OF A RACKET: BEATING THE BEJINOR OUT OF THE LOUSEHOLD HARDWARE WITH NO COMPLAINT FROM THE FANLY
FOR ONCE
AND LET ME
TELL YOU..
LOTS OF PEOPLE LIKE TO START THES
NEW YEAR FLAT....FLAT BROKE.. AID FLIT OF THE FACE
TO 1 LỜI ON OTHERS IT WILL TEEN JUST LIKE LAST YEAR. AND THE YEAR BEFORE AND THE YEAR BEFORE TUT