TRADE DETECTIVES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 260, 27 June 1932, Page 2

TRADE DETECTIVES

VALUABLE WORK RESEARCH WORKERS DETECT ADULTERATIONS AND FRAUDS. SLEUTHS IN LABORATORIES. In London there is a Scotland Yard of trade. It is officially called the Goveimment Laboratory; its "sleuths" are chemists and the "research worlcers," yet they are really detectives who analyse hundreds of thousands of samples — 500,000 in an average year

— and discover adulterations and frauds, decide the amount of duty payable on imp.orted goods, and carry out experiments to help trade. All kinds of goods-— from airship propeller steel to margarine — reach them; sent by Customs officials, manufacturers, Post Office authorities, market inspectors. Every year they net many extra millions of pounds for the revnue. The l'aboratory is a tall grey building, hidden away in a side passage of Clement's llnn. Only a brass platc on the door gives away its identity. In the ground floor fabric testing room there are men poring -over tables piled with elastic garters, slceins of thread, hats, womens artificial silk underweai* — all of which come under the new tariff regulations. One young man was studying a straw hat under a microscope — not the straw, but the glaze on it is liable to duty; another weighing a prayer rug from the East. Two others dissected, thread by thread, a small piece of imported grey felt. Work for Analysis. "We are searching for wool," one of them said. "This felt was labelled 'pure cow's hair.' As such it is duty free. But if we find one thread of wool in it on goes the tariff charge." Upstairs there is a succession of large rooms, where more of the laboratory's fifty "detectives" analyse perfumes, haircombs, tohacco, fuel oil, motor car varnish — any and every article used in homes or factories. Two men are kept busy with toilet goods alone, for from every consignment of imported tooth paste or hair lotion a tube or jarful must be tested for dutiable spirits. The laboratory workers handle as many British-made samples as foreign ones, for a British manufacturer can get back the duty he paid on imported raw materials which he uses for goods to be resold abroad. If he makes cigarettes from Virgia tobacco, and wants to sell them in Holland, he sends samples to the laboratory. There they are burned in a special slow oven, "the muffle" and the ashes weighed and analysed to discover how much pure tobacco they contain. All other parts — such as the cigarette paper — are deducted, for an ounce less tobacco in each ten pounds of cigarettes may entitle the maker to £10,00 less total rebate. Jam for Army. In the Government Contracts Department a chemist mrniTn-lates an elaborate devico of glars tubes and polarised light. He analyses army plum-and-apple jam; the devicc shows him exactly how much plum and sugar it contains. His colleagu inspects gum for postage stamps and official envelopes — pure gum arabic, guaranteed harmless for licking. In a warm oven near by, under a heavy weight, are pieees of oilskin cut from postmen's capes. They stay there twenty-four hours. Then the folds are pulled, and if any stick together those oilskins are repected. In the illegal drugs section is a collection of dangerous drugs smuggled into England. Here, besides a thick brown lump of Indian hashish, are packets of cocaine seized by the polico in West End„ nigbt resorts; raw opium, looking like cakes of tobacco, and thc finished product, done up in inch-long* slabs like chowing gum. Each slab contains several pipefuls of tho drug; it is actually worth a few pence, but could be sold for fivc or six shillings. There is one 'dctcctive" which workers in almost all departments consult from timo to time — an enormously poweifful lamp in a purple glass case. -Only a glimmor of light

shows through the glass. "Buttcr" samples are placed in front of this glimmor, and they change colour suddenly. One turned a pale, sickly shade — it was cunningly-disguised margarine. Adulterated pepper, placed in tho ray, turns gi-een. An apparently clean tablecoth reveals greasy finger— marks Even writing in invisible inlc yields up its secrets to this scientific Sherlock Holmes.