SPEAKING OF VOCATIONS

Adventurous souls who find safe-cracking monotonous and petty thievery degrading have flocked to rum running, a trade to test their spirit and to make their fortunes. In that occupation they find the tang of a sailor's life, the profits of a swindler, the exhilaration of evading the law, and a dash of old-time bucaneering.

There are places for all. Two rum fleets have recently appeared off the Atlantic coast, one last week from Scotland hovering outside New Jersey, and one in the last few days from the West Indies sailing for Rhode Island. Only the boldest, hairy-chested sailors may apply to man these ships. On the smaller fry, motor-boats that steal out at the whisper of a radio, there is a place for hard, ham-fisted nondescripts who can plant a heavy blow and shoot a sawed-off shotgun. Gunmen out of work will find employment here, for close encounters are frequent. It is a glamorous life, full of the very smoke and reek which fired a Captain Singleton or the famous Kidd himself.

The time for the quicker-witted "con" man comes when the cargoes are unloaded at the wharves. Then in little wide rooms, perhaps with the persuasion of a revolver, the purchaser gladly pays $50 a case for the liquor. Brazen daring, cool savoir faire, are essentials in the successful applicant. . . . Perhaps these rum fleets serve a useful purpose--at any rate they attract the riff-raff of law-breakers and give the city police a needed rest.