1937-12-17 — Page 20

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1987..

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Thongkong Telegraph.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1037.

HIGH COST OF LIVING

which

T

Who is

"The Thin

He is almost

mysterious

a s

the as

Stories he writes

HE man who wrote "The Thin Man" is called Dashiell Hammett. But who is Dashiell Hammett? Many people have asked that since the appearance of the film..

He is more mysterious than even the characters he creates in his detective stories. His publishers known very little about him except that anything he writes sells fantastically well.

The magazine editors who serialise his stories have never seen, him.

The film bosses who make big money out of his stories can- not tell you how old he is, and this in the business where nobody is allowed to have any secrets.

Millions have read his book, "The Thin Man," millions more have seen the film. So let's put on record what we have found out about him, for his career is more interesting than that of most literary folk.

First to describe him: Dashiell Hammett is a thin man. He is tall, handsome, has grey hair, a black moustache, and humorous eyes.

Hammett's hobbles are few and simple: drinking, ping-pong, and parlour games. He likes giving parties, but prefers to sit The Government feels that round while others do the talk- rents now demanded in Hong-ing. He likes to keep long and kong are not unreasonable and late hours, and he doesn't sleep that increases

have so well even when he gets to bed. occurred since the demand for The world's greatest detective living quarters increased with writer does not read detectives the outbreak of hostilities in stories, but he does read philo- China are probably justified. In sophy. Do you know that excit- the majority of cases the rents ing but heavy-going book called now asked, even those which "Decline of the West," by Oswald have recently been increased Spengler? and have been the subject of It tells of the decay of Western complaint by tenants, are less civilisation. To banish his in- than those of 1933. These are somnia Hammett reads a slab of fucts which cannot be con- that at nights. tested. And yet there is no

Temperamentally Hammett is question in the minds of many lazy. Though he lives near the people that the average rentals best beach in the United States charged among the poorer he is too apathetic to go swim- classes. are too great burden upon

their slim

ming.

sources, The question of

a

re-

!

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THE

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EVERYWHERE

correcting the situation which WHEN he is in New York he spends part has resulted from the sys- of his time sitting round night tem of principal tenantry clubs. going to first nights, but.. space in the form of cubicles, the author of "The Thin Man"

been discussed frequently.ig among them. has The abuses to which such

When he is in Hollywood he system is heir

are too well-also spends part of his time sit- known to require repetition. The labouring class of people,:

there is no fault found with the

}

Man"?

• He knows crime first-hand

-that's why his stories are real

Something here Sharpen your

liere is a test designed to And out how in- telligent you are. You are your own examiner, and you have to assign yourself to the highest prade in which you pass the text auccessfully. Grade B is the average man or woman. Grade A is below the average, Grade C is above the Average. Grade D is much above the average.

Work the following sums in your head (without using paper or pienell) within the time allowed for each grade, writing down the results on a slip of paper. Then compare them with the answers at the foot of Columu

6 and 7.

Time allowed for Graile A: Four minutes. 1. What is the length of a string seven pleces elghi A

inches long, two pieces five inches long and have nine inches over.

can cut into

2. Jean is twice as old as John, John three times as old as William, who is as old as Robert. Robert is thirteen. How old is Jean? 3. Seven separate triangles, each having three equal sides, "are" made out of "sixty-three- inches of wire.

How long cach side?

4. A boy sells nine dozen newspapers at 2d, each. What profit does he make on the whole if each newspaper costs him 14d.? -

Time allowed for Grade B: Siz minutes.

B

1. I have bought three books at 7. d. and one at 59. How much change have I left from one and a half guineas, which I had left in my purse?

2. If a train travels Afteen miles in ten minutes, how long will it take to run one mile?

Hammett never

to

wits

on

3. A man of thirty-five is seven times as old as his child. How many times as old us his child is he twenty-five years later.

4. in a bag are apples. John is given half and Robert a quarter. John has twelve more thun Robert. How many apples were in the bay at first?

Time allowed for Grade C: Eight minutes. 1. What is the greatest number that will divide into 91 and 135_and leave 3 in cacb.euse?

C

2. A policeman is pursuing a man who has, had an hour's start on him and is walking at the rate of three miles an hour. The police. man is progressing at the rate of four miles an hour. How long will it take the policeman to catch up with the misn he is pursuing?

3. If your salary is reduced by 20 per cent. and then increased by 20 per cent., do you have the same as before; do you lose or gain. and if so by what percentage?

and so on.

1. The first even number is 2, the second 4,

What is the 200th even number? Time allowed for Grade D: Twelve "minutes.

1. A big solid cube, each side mea-

suring four inches, is composed of wooden cubes measuring each, one cubic inch. The outside of the big cube is then painted black. When the paint is dry, the big cube is broken up into the small cubes.

(a) How many small cubes will have paint on four sides? (b) On three sides?

On two sides? (e)

(d) On one alde? (e) How many have no paint on?

2. What is the area of a plot three and a half yards square?

wns

mobsters,

the shop foki and office coolie Bank observes:

"The changes which havej type who live in these cubicles! are the victims, all too often, of taken place in modes of living principal tenants who expect to and habits of spending since live on the profits of sub-letting. 1914 have made it apparent for some time that the cost of liv- Landlords, ag & race,

aring index of the Ministry of ting round night clubs and going on good terms with his ex-) (and enemies) were unpopular people as a rule; but Labour does not adequately re- to film premieres, but few in employers.

molls, con-men, fences. present present conditions. that city recognise him as the War came, and Hammett went ordinary Hongkong building Nevertheless, in the absence of man who made William Powell to France, and there he

He saw the drama, squalor, proprietor for the rents he asks. a better standard, many wages and Myrna Loy more They are not exorbitant. They agreements depend upon it and, than ever they were before.

famous promoted to sergeant's rank. humour, and tragedy of the under-world at close quarters— do not always bring a decent in a considerable number of in-

He was gassed, and back home, profit on the investment. That dustries employing nearly 1

talks about with his health half-ruined, he so close that his talks with

looked round for a job. He saw

"dese, dem and dose guys" made is probably because the cost of million workpeople, the collec- himself, but he is a good listen-

it difficult to prevent himself none that interested him. construction is very heavy, for tive arrangements between em-er. He lets other people do the

Now after the war crime was from talking like them. explained. But for the cubicle ployers and employed include talking, listens in the hope that one of the major occupations in some reason which has yet to be

No reason to marvel, then, provision for the automatic ad-some atray words will suggest a the United States. It fascinated that Hammett's detective stories dweller and even the $200 or justment of wage rates in ac- plot, character, or phrase for Hammett, and he joined Pinker are different, that they set a new $300-dollar-a-month man times cordance with the movements his next book.

ton's, the famous detective standard in detective fiction. are always hard, and rents are of the official cost of living in-

That's the secret of his suc.agency.

No other detective writer one of causes for his constant

dex. The principal object of

Pinkerton's is a great agency, shows so brilliantly the actual Anancial stringency, the perpe the inquiry now being under cess. His characters are people

called in when the means by which the criminal is penny-watching which

has known in his varied often taken by the Ministry of Labour ho

that racy And what a career for Government's police fail. It has caught. Add to must be the lot of such a com- into the expenditure of working career.

offices in about forty cities. It dialogue, humour, and

swift munity as this where labour is class households is to remedy novelist! Consider it.

recovered the stolen Gains-action, and you get something' The Hollywood publicists may cheap. A condition which

situation this unsatisfactory

borough portrait of the Duchess rare. allows cheap labour can proba-

tual

80

bly be traced to over-supply, and it is hoped to obtain suflike to know that it began forty-of Devonshire after the police) simply to too great a population/ficent information for the con-three years ago, for that is his had sought it for twenty years.

for the commercial require-struction of a cost of living in- age. ments of a placo, though econo-dex which will be a real repre- mists do say that no population sentation of the facts of or- can be too large to support it-dinary working class life. self.

No

However that may be, Buch comprehensive official in- fashionable Maryland, but he there la much poverty here, and quiry has been made in Great left there when he

WAS

four

REALISM is the secret.

For Hammett recorded

living conditions for the small Britain since 1918, when the years old for dirty Philadelphia: to get on the inside of crime, and Thin Man" may have been fat

The trade mark of Pinkerton's HE was born in an un-is a wide-open cyo and the motto, every character he mot in his mind, and every one of his fashionable part of "We never sleep."

characters comes out of his So Hammett, in this mind Into his books.

** The organisation, was able Disguised, of course,

he had eight years of it.

in real life, or he may have been wage earner are such that they position was greatly affected by Then he went to the State school.

Daily he talked with gangstera a fence instead of a gambler. might very well be further in- the abnormal conditions arising until he was fourteen.

Hia. friends Then he began work, and his and racketeers.

(Continued on Page 5.) vestigated. The blame for the out of the War, and the only high coat of living in Hongkong official inquiry prior to that

occupations. He sold probably does not Ile upon rents year was carried out in 1904. jobs sound like a catalogue of Hongkong would be well ad-papers; he was a messenger boy any more than on food and

vised to ponder the example of in a railway company; a clerk clothing. And since wages must be governed by the cost of the British Government, and in an advertising office; a stock- broker's clerk; time-keeper in a living it would be interesting to possibly apply to wages in this

cannery and a machine shop. discover just what their rela- Colony the related cost

BO living Index tion is at this time.

is possible. There is no doubtle says he was not much good A cost of living inquiry is but it would relieve much dis. at any of thom. under way in Great Britain trees and in all probability and in this connection the would eventually make for Monthly Review of Barclay's richor community.

of

far as it

news.

SOLUTION

These are the solutions to the tests in Column Four:-

A

(1)

75ins. (2) 20.

3in..

(4) 2. Jd.

C

(3) (1) 44 (2) 3 hours, Lose 4 per cent. (4)

(3)

400

#

DJ

He was often sacked, but,

a

with the sense of humour. of """The Thin Man,” he was alwaya |

(1) 48. Twice.

(2) 40secs.

(3)

(4) 48.

(1) n=0, b=8, c=24, d= 24, 8

(2)1 123⁄41⁄2 sq..yards.

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