1947-12-27 — Page 9

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