1937-12-17 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1937.

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FRIDAY, DECENDER 17, 1937.

HICH COST OF LIVING

Who is

Thin Man"?

The Thin

He is almost as mysterious as the. Stories he writes .

[HE man who wrote "The Thin Man" is called

To

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, n, black moustache, and humorous eyes.

Hammett's hobbies 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 which 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 detective 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 sommia Hammett reads a slab of facts which cannot be con- that at nights. tested. And yet there is по question in the minds of many lazy. Though he lives near the Temperamentally Hammett is people that the average rentals best beach in the United States charged among the

he is too apathetic to go swim. classes

are too great 4

ming. burden upon 'their slim re- sources. The question of

tem of

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COUNT

THE

"TELEGRAPHS"

EVERYWHERE

ส

poorer

correcting the situation which WHEN he is in New York he spends part has resulted from the sys-of his time sitting round night principal tenantry clubs, going to first nights, but the sub-letting of floor few in those places know that space in the form of cubicles, the author of "The Thin-Man has been discussed frequently is among them. The abuses to which such a When he is in Hollywood he system is heir are too well- known

also spends part of his time sit- to require repetition. The labouring class of people, the shop foki and office coolle Bank observes:

do

Something Sharpen

He knows crime first-hand

-that's why his stories are real

here

to

your

Here is a test designed to find out how in- Jelligent you are.. You are your own cxaminer, and you have to assign yourself to the highcai grade in which you pass the test successfully. 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 pencil) 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 Column 6 and 7.

Time allowed for Grade A: Four minules. 1. What Is the length of a string

A

I can cut into seven picces eight inches long, two pleces five inches long and have nine inches over.

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 is cach side?

4-A-boy-sells-nine-dozen-newspapers-of

2d. each. What profit does he make on the whole it each newspaper costs him 1d.?

Time allowed for Grade B: Siz minutes.

1. I have bought three books at 78. 6d, and one at 5s. How much change have I left from one and a half guineas, which I had left in my purse?

B

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

wits

on

3. A man of thirty-five is seven times as old as his child. How many times as old as 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 than Robert. How many apples were in the bag at first?

Time allowed for Grade C: Elght minutes. I. What is the greatest number that will divide into $1 and 135 and

leave 3-in each case?

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 un hour. How long will it take the

policeman

to entch up with the man 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, und if so by what percentage?

4. The first even number is 2, the second 4. and so on. What is the 200th even number?

Time minutes.

allowed for Grade D: Twelve

1. A big solid cube, each side mea.. suring four Inches, is composed of wooden cubes mensuring each onc 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? (c) On two sides? (d) ́On one alde? (c) How many have no paint on?

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

type who live in these cubicles | "The changes which have 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, as A race, are ing index of the Ministry unpopular people as a rule; but Labour does not adequately re- to film premieres, but few in employers.

of ting round night clubs and going on good terms with his ex- (and enemies) were mobsters, there is no fault found with the present

molls, con-men, fences. present conditions. that city recognise him as the ordinary Hongkong

War came, and Hammett went 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 famous promoted to

was sergeant's They are not exorbitant. They agreements depend upon it and, than ever they were before.

humour, and tragedy of the rank,

under-world at close quarters- 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

Hammett never talks about with his health half-ruined, he so close that his talks with "dese, dem and dose guya” made none that interested him. construction is very heavy, for tive arrangements between em- er. He lets other people do the some reason which has yet to be ployers and employed include talking, listens in the hope that one of the major occupations in

Now after the war crime was from talking like them.

No reason to marvel, then, explained. But for the cubicle

provision for the automatic ad-some stray 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. are always hard, and rents are of the official cost of living in-

ton's, the famous detective standard in detective fiction. one of causes for his constant

That's the secret of his suc- agency.

No other detective writer dex. The principal object of

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

which

called has known in

when his varied often

the means by which the criminal is. taken by the Ministry of Labour

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

Add to offices in about forty cities. It dialogue, humour, and swift munity as this where labour is

the recovered

stolen Gains action, and you get something The Hollywood publicists may so cheap. A condition which class households is to remedy a novelist! Consider it.

this unsatisfactory situation allows cheap labour can proba- bly be traced to over-supply, and it is hoped to obtain auf- like to know that it began forty-borough portrait of the Duchess rare. simply to too great a population / ficent information for the con-three years ago, for that is his had sought it for twenty years.

HE was born in an un-"We never sleep.”

is probably because the cost of million workpeople, the collee- himself, but he is a good listen looked round for a job. He saw it difficult to prevent himself

tual

penny-watching

or- No

he

four

in

of Devonshire after the police

The trade mark of Pinkerton's

that

racy

REALISM is the secret.

For Hammett recorded for the commercial require-struction of a cost of living in-age. ments of a place, though econo-dex which will be a real repre-

is a wide-open eye and the motto,overy character he met in his mists do say that no population sentation of the facts of

mind, and every one of his fashionable part of

characters comes out of his can be too large to support it-dinary working class life. self. However that may be, such. comprehensive official in- fashionable Maryland, but he

So Hammett, in this mind into his books.

organisation, was able when the years old for dirty Philadelphia. there is much poverty here, and quiry has been made in Great loft there when he was

Disguised, of course, "The may have been fat living conditions for the small Britain since 1918, wage earner are auch that they position was greatly affected by Then he went to the State school to get on the inside of crime, and Thin Man

he had eight years of it.

in real life, or he may have been Daily he talked with gangsters a fence instead of a gambler. might very well be further in- the abnormal conditions arising until he was fourteen.

Then he began work, and his and racketeers. His friends |-

(Continued an Page 5.) vestigated. The blame for the out of the War, and the only

that jobs sound like a catalogue of] high cost of living in Hongkong official inquiry prior to

occupations.. He Bold news- probably does not lie upon rents year was carried out in 1904." Hongkong would be well ad дру more than on food and

vised to ponder the example since clothing. And must be governed by the cost of the British Government, living it would be interesting to possibly apply to wages in this discover just what their rela-Colony the related

far living index tion is at this time.

in possible. There is no doubt A cost of living inquiry is but it would relieve much dis- under way in Great Britain tress and in all probability and in this connection the would eventually make for Monthly Review of Barclay's richer community.

wages

до

of

and

cost of

1#

it

clerk

papers; he was a messenger boy in a railway company; a broker's clerk; time-keeper in a cannery and a_machine shop. He says he was not much good

any of them.

in an advertising office; a stock-

He was often sacked, but, with the sense of humour of The Thin Man," he was always

SOLUTION

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

A

(1)

3ins,

75ins. (4)

(2) 70. 23, 3d.

(3)

B

(1) 45. Twice.

(2) 40secs, (4) 48.

❤

(1) 44. (2) 3 hours. Lose 4 per cent. (4) 400

D

(3)

· (3) ・・ (1)_a=0, b=8, 2=24, d=

24, 8, (2) 12 sq, yards.