A GUILD of ICONOCLASTS .sx The Housebreakers of London .sx In this era of architectural transition , the demolishers of old London are to be seen on every hand , poised precarious on crumbling masonry , silhouetted against the reeking dust of buildings shattered by their own hands .sx By HERBERT JEANS .sx No doubt when execution by beheading was in fashion there were curiously- .sx inclined persons who won- .sx dered how the headsman .sx learned his work - upon whom he practised , and which was his first real job .sx A similar thought must have passed through the mind of many a wayfarer in the London streets as he has watched the housebreaker following his calling at a dizzy height above the pavement level .sx And there the analogy must end .sx In the .sx case of the housebreaker it is the operator who occupies the position of danger , and a mistimed blow is likely to be harmful to nobody but himself .sx That the housebreaker is engaged in a hazardous calling must be evident to every-one who has seen him nonchalantly plying his trade on the wall of the top-most storey of a building , from which the staircases and all other apparent means of access have been removed .sx Sturdily he cuts away with his pick his slender foothold .sx Every moment it seems that he must fall with the tumbling masonry ; and yet he never does fall .sx And so we come to wonder how .sx he was taught his trade .sx As a fact there is not much teaching about it .sx Housebreakers are born not made .sx Housebreaking is essentially an A1 man's job ; perfect health and complete lack of " nerves " are indispensable to success in the craft .sx Obviously it is a job on which no monkeying about can be permitted .sx Lads fresh from school , therefore , who are generally apt to be frolicsome , are never employed on the work , the commencing age seldom being under from 18 to 20 .sx In some cases the house-breaker has an hereditary aptitude for the work , as the son not infrequently follows the trade of his father .sx Practically the only tutor is Experience , and the more intricate or hazardous jobs are given to men who have proved themselves in that severest of schools .sx The ideal age for the perfect housebreaker is between 20 and 30 .sx A man may continue to work aloft until he reaches the age of 55 or 60 , but as soon as he begins to see dangers which are not apparent to younger men , he is employed as a groundman , his job then being to clear the debris and load it up into carts for removal .sx As in all other callings , some house-breakers are cleverer at their work than others .sx The more efficient men are the first to be engaged on a job and the last to leave it ; and with the orgy of pulling down prior to re-building that is going on in London just now there is little , if any , unemployment among such men .sx Speaking in general , the army of housebreakers is made up of a body of men as sturdy in character as in physique .sx They are as a rule bound to no particular employerbut migrate from firm to firm and from job to job as occasion arises .sx They have no special Trade Union of their own , although individual members may belong to one of the great Building Trade Unions .sx This independence is apt at times to cause concern in Trade Union circles .sx The officials of a Building Union recently approached a well-known housebreaking con-tractor to protest against his employees working overtime at a period when the Union was seeking to check the practice .sx The contractor explained that it was by their own wish that his men were working .sx extra hours , and that he was .sx practically helpless in the .sx matter .sx The Labour officials .sx went away threatening to .sx bring pressure on the men .sx themselves .sx This they endeavoured .sx to do , but were met with an un- .sx equivocal answer couched in such .sx forcible language that they retired .sx defeated and the housebreakers con- .sx tinued to work their own hours .sx untrammelled by any Trade Union .sx If the journeyman-housebreaker .sx has a weakness at all , it is for collect- .sx ing lead , in whatever form he may find it .sx In fact lead is to the housebreaker what a hare is to the poacher .sx Nowadays , all valuable structural items , such as are chimney-pieces and stair-cases , are removed from a building before work under the actual demolition contract is commenced .sx All that then remains becomes the property of the contractor ; but if anything in the shape of lead is discovered the housebreaker's sporting instinct is at once aroused , and , if he sees a chance of getting away with his quarry , he promptly appropriates it .sx A short time ago , a contractor who felt determined to put a stop to peccadilloes of this character brought a police court charge against three of his men for stealing about .sx 1 cwt .sx of lead from a certain job on which they were engaged .sx The men were convicted and fined 1 each .sx On leaving the court they adjourned to a neighbouring public-house where they met several of their workmates who received them as beings more sinned against than sinning , and loyally subscribed the sum they were out of pocket by the conviction .sx Apart from this little weak joint in his armour the skilled house-breaker is a stalwart warrior in the ranks of industry .sx The insurance companies , recognizing that his work is more venturesome than the average , charge a higher premium for this class of risk than for most others ; nevertheless , accidents are comparatively few , and this is due to the fact that the dangers of the occupation are more apparent to the onlooker than to the phlegmatic worker .sx An age of machinery has done little or nothing to aid the house-breaker in his work .sx To men of this stamp working at altitudes becomes what is called second nature .sx On a chilly morning recently , a constructional engineer who , through a pair of field glasses , was examining the steel frame of a building in course of erection noticed a pair of boots standing without a wearer on the flange of a girder 200 feet above the foundation level .sx He asked what was the meaning of their being there , and was told that one of the workmen had taken off his boots as he could hop about on the steelwork better without them .sx A Silent WORLD REVOLUTION .sx Triumph of the Motor Highway .sx I. Persia and its New Roads .sx By ROSITA FORBES .sx All over the world the petrol-driven lorry is making its way , supplanting the traditional transport of the district , be it camel , donkey , mule , horse , or even yak .sx " The Sphere " proposes to present to its readers a series of articles dealing with this economic and social phenomenon , the first of which , from the pen of Rosita Forbes , the famous traveller in the East , appears below .sx Herein is told the tale of the difficulties and dangers , the thrills , disappointments , and triumphs attendant on the new roads in Persia .sx All over Persia the camel caravan is at a discount .sx Except in the great salt desert , the Dasht i Kavir , which occupies the centre of Persia , and in its southern neighbour , the dreaded Sea of Sand , the Dasht i Lut .sx American lorries have taken its place .sx A few years ago mules were the taxi-cabs of Persia and dark-skinned dromedaries , roped head to tail , its omnibuses .sx Caravans of the latter used to ply between the cities with legendary names , Isfahan capital of Shah Abbas , Meshed , the Place of Martyrdom , and Shiraz , whose inhabitants " have honey instead of speech .sx " They averaged two miles an hour .sx Each camel carried a 503-lb .sx load and died presumably out of spite if asked to carry 510 lb .sx The leading beast bore a deep-toned gong hung round its neck and a chime of bells depended on each side of its head , so that many an old-time traveller must have been saved by the peal which rang steadily across the uncharted wastes .sx To this day the camel men will not sell their bells for it brings them bad luck .sx Sometimes they are engraved with dragons which , as every desert traveller knows , is the form taken by the unworthy dead who have in life committed some such crime as refusing water to a wayfarer !sx But with the coming of the lorry , 1-ton Chevrolets and 2-ton Dodge trucks , legend must die .sx The tortoise which to the muleteer was the spirit of a man who overloaded his beasts , so that for a thousand years he must carry his house on his back , becomes no more than ground game whose roasted flesh is eatable when provisions fail .sx During the last six years there has been evolution in Persia .sx The provincial towns are being Americanized by means of huge streets , sometimes as much as a hundred feet wide , driven at right angles through walls , houses , and mosques , irrespective of private property .sx Garages are taking the place of the old caravanserais .sx Electric light is dawning in the cities .sx Where , six years ago , the traveller thought himself lucky if at the end of an eleven-hour drive in a sort of Victoria drawn by relays of post-ponies , all of them with sore backs , he found a fortified mud building with a watch tower at each corner , wherein , in too close communion with beasts and baggage , he might spend an insect-ridden night , to-day there is a garage advertising " B.P. " and Russian spirit .sx It is built on the same principle as Haji Baba's khans , with a square court surrounded on all sides by a double row of cubicles , but lorries take the place of mules and camels in the lower series , while their passengers , who bring their own beds , sleep in comparative comfort above .sx Sometimes there is a tea khane attached to the garage , where the seats and the table tops , the shutters and possibly the door or a couple of the walls are apt to be made of flattened petrol tins , which in the new motor-driven Persia serve as roofs for all sorts of buildings , not to mention the domes of mosques , tombs , and Imamzades .sx When Lord Curzon travelled from Tehran to Meshed , he took twenty-eight stages and found it , to say the least of it , monotonous .sx I believe he remarked that there could be no possible reason for .sx anyone to traverse such a " road " except to get to the end of it .sx To-day the six hundred odd miles are traversed by lorries laden with cotton for Askabad , Russian sugar for the capital , or piece goods for Afghanistan in just over three days and three nights .sx The roads , of course , are still only indications of where one day arterial highways will run .sx No attempt has been made at camber or surfacing .sx They are broken by water-courses and cut into innumerable pot-holes by the passage of heavy traffic .sx Sometimes they disappear altogether , and the track meanders across the shifting sands of a desert or over a chute of rocks under one of those sudden mountains which appear glued without foundation all over a Persian landscape .sx In the course of one generation , the present Shah is intent on forcing a mental and material development which would normally occupy a century , and it .sx cannot be denied that a considerable measure of success has so far attended him .sx Faced with what , six years ago , would have appeared the superhuman task of welding into one nation a collection of vastly different races , tongues , and creeds , and of breaking the power of the tribes who preyed each on a neighbouring province , the Baluchis on Kirman , the Turke- mans on Khorasan , the Shah- sevand on Azerbaijan , the Lurs and Kashgais on the south , he relied first on a well-armed and regularly-paid army , but hardly less on a system of connecting roads which opened up the country and , policed by efficient road guards , now link the commercial towns .sx Education and the Pahlevi hat , symbol civilization , followed in the wake of the roadmakers , but 8,000 miles of passable motor tracks limited the scope of raiders who for centuries existed by levying toll from an unapproachable stronghold high above a caravan route .sx