The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-08-08
SPY SYSTEM
 IN NEW YORK The Giants of Commerce Are Followed. SURPRISING KNOWLEDGE Rival Business Men Set the
 Watch. The Queer Human Bomb Which Threat- sns te ExpIode.-New York now Considered Healthy
 Cfty-New system of
 Fixhting.

New York. Aug 7.-Startling testi- mony in connection with several prom 1nent recent business failures here has brought to light evidence of regular system of business espionage and secret service extending not only to employees but to business rivals as well among the more important com mercial interests. New York has long been cited as the city in which ones personality could most easily be lost as well as the one Hlace where mo- body gave more than passing thoughts to the activities of others. That such a supposition Is entirely false and that 1t Is practically out of the question for any one even yerging on commer- cfal prominence here to escape con- stant surveillance has now been brought to light. Nowhere else in the world has the science of minding other peoples business been so highly de- veloped. not because of idle curiosity but as a result of the mad race for commercial supremacy. Not only do business men have their employees watched but heads of firms have the heads of rival firms, together with their able assistants, watched con kinually. in an effort to discover what they are doing or planning to do in
 
 of the agencies employed to do this work of espionage are records of many events in the lives of we'll known men, which they regard as se- crets known only to themselves, sim- ply because they have never been made public The only indication which the public in general ever receives Of this secret shadowing system comes occasionally as the result of note- worthy lawsuit It Is then that the intimate lives of the persons in- volved are revealed in a manner which shows in it's wealth of detail that in some cases at least, in addition to being watched from the time they leave their houses in the morning until they return at night persons are actually spied upon in their own homes. house servants sometimes part as strange as any in contem- porary melodrama or fve-cent de- tective fiction. It is estimated that not less than $1.000. 900 a year Is spent hero for tthis secret surveillance.
 Hckpftal Population.
 While New York alone accounts For nearly one-tenth of the 1.50o.o persons who make up the annual hos pitaf population of this country--that sB the number of persons treated in these fnstitutions--this city is steadily progressing in its effort to become the healthiest municipality in the country. How far 1t has succeeded Is shown In the fact that in spite of the trials of dog days during the past month with its vicissitudes of weather. the death rate of the city touched a new low mark of fraction less than fifteen per thousand. which is almost two per thousand, or fourteen per cent lower than the average given out by the cen sus bureau for the whole country in its last report. New Yorlx's great ad- vance in the field of healthfulness Is attributed by experts to several causes. Chief among them is the great advance In municipal sanitation ranging from the proper cleansing of the streets to pure milk and pure water cam- paigns. In the hospitals themselves where patients are actually treated. and on whose reports any analysis of the causes of the low death rate must be largely based, the advance has been equally striking. The reports of the Flower Hospital. the leading home opathic institution in the city show. for instance. that in the last ten