A NEW YORKER ON NEW YORK

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 17, 15 October 1919, Page 8

A NEW YORKER ON NEW YORK

HOW THE PRESIDENT BEAT THE PROFITEERS Mr. William AVadman, well-known in local moving picture circles, who went to America y i'cw months ngo to place the local Deiiby fireproof spool (for kinemalograph machines), returned to AA'ellington by the Moana. Mr. AA'adman was born in New York, yet when he told his friends in San Francisco that he was going through to New York they solemnly assured him that there was no such place. As they seemingly wished to be taken quite seriously, lie wondered if some awful cataclysm had engulfed tho place of his nativity, and felt strangely upset that he should have baeu too late for tho obsequies. "No, sir," said the Westerners, "there ain't no such place; there was. It is now called Jerusalem!" Then the stranger saw what the subtle Franciscan wished to convey—that New York was in the hands of the Jews. And he found it to bo so. The Jews controlled tho greater part of the theatrical business, and the theatres, not only in New York but right through, and now they had tho picture business—the controlling- end —in their fists, and when they gripped somebody had to jump. The Jews had gat the clothing business of the States; they owned the big hotels and restaurants; Jows ran the delicatessen stores all over the country—but nowhere was it liioro noticeable than in. New York. An Englishman might walk .up and down Broadway all day without hearing his own language spoken, If it was not German, Polish, Rumanian, Serbian, Russian, Czech or Bulgarian, it was a a polyglot of the lot, called Yiddish, which they all appeared to be to understand owing to its Hebraic basis.

Tho Now Yorker of to-day was so changed from what he was yesterday that Mr. AA'adman, whose make-up is distinctly American to New Zealand eyes, was mistaken for an Englishman. It was tho Jews, who made or marred the success of any play on Broadway, for thev were all keen lovers of the theatre, and keen first-nighters. A curious and somewhat puzzling' feature was the astonishing loyalty of theso heterogeneous millions of New" York in connection with the raising of the Liberty Loans. No one could qo any business in any way .without being an investor in the loan— i't was the white badgo of loyalty to buy Liberty bonds publicly—in tho street, the hotel, the theatre, and even the little youngsters selling newspapers saved their pennies to buy war stamps. , "Profiteering, well, I think so," said Mr. AVadmnn. "You don't have to pay to breathe, but someone will get a concession over the air yet. ■ That's the only thing that's not a dollar a time, at present. The cost of living is as high as anywhere in the world. The railway men went to President AVilson about it. and said that if tho profiteering in the essentials of life dirt not cease they would stop every wheel in the country from running. So the President got busy, and his officials in New York discovered that shameless profiteering was going on through food merchants- and manufacturers deliberately hoarding hundreds of thousands of ions of goods in orner to create an artificial shortage that would enable them to raise tho prices. AVhat. did tho President do but L'et 'hold of vast Army stores of all sorts and dump them on the market at a trifle over cost, to the utter consternation of the inhuman profiteers,, who shed tears at being let down 'on a good thin-,'.'" "Scrupulousness in business is a negligible factor in America," says Mr. AA'adman. "The man who can 'put it oyer' another by fair means or otherwise is the fellow, so that you will realise that American novels and pictures that glorify the clever crook are not altogether a false reflex of conditions in America."