Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1883-07-27


work. In the early part of the evening they
had 115. They also said the service was
going on with but little delay. The striking
operators parade tomorrow.
A Graphic Account of the Condition
OfThings in New York.
From the New York Morning Journal
Worm-eaten desks and rusty telegraph in
struments, the latter green with verdigris;
worm-eaten carpets and rusty baize curtains
a rusty man; corners full of cobwebs and
dust, shabby room on Dark Row, where
country pumpkins and mild cranks and such
people us have screw loose in their mental
compostion-go to learn telegraph operating.
They come from all quarters. They prac-
tce daily on old telegraph keys. They sleep
in the parks. AT the end of six months
they are ablc to send four words in half
an hour and receive" three words in the
| same limited time. Not the smallest coun-
| try telegraph office is ever filled by one out
Of twenty-five of them. The school is an
| enigma. No one may guess why it exists.
| No one would venture an opinion us to what
its objects and purposes are. 1t is pro-
| found public mystery.
Though not one citizen in five hundred nor
one telegraph operator in ten thousand, has
| the most remote, vague or uncertain idea OF
its reason for being, which for fourteen years
has remained a sphynx-like riddle, it was
solved yesterday when its owner, at the
strike OF eight thousand telegraph operators,
offered the services of twenty-seven pupils,
the flower of his school, to that excellent and
highly esteemed gentleman, Jay Gould, to
defeat the great and righteous Telegraph
| OF ri .n N W.a at
ern Union telegraph building about noon and
were marshalled up stairs by Gould himself
They sat down at desks in the operating
room, which was filled with worse crowd
than were gathered together in Falstaif's
army. All the girls were red headed, All
the boys were gawky, awkward and ignor-
ant. Scores of persons sat at the keys. They
sat there. That is all they did. Few OF
them were able TO work, and some of them
were not able to read. Men who
have been carrying turtle-signs in the Bow
cry and up Broadway occupied seats
where the most expert operators in
the country formerly sat. Cigars
and free lunch were given to these people by
the Western Union Telegraph company
When the tramps who are usually seen in
the street sandwiched between two signs
went home they were helped by Mr.. Gould
into carriages furnished by the monopoly
Jay helped in all the old "bummers' who
have been backmailed by the company and
blackballed by the Brotherhood.
The students from the telegraph schools
were able to send an ordinary ten-word mes
sage in about six hours When it was re-
ceived by another telegraph student at the
other end of the line it was fearful and Won
derful to read. An order was sent by Long
Branch hote-keeper to q purveyor in this
city for five hundred loaves of bread and
two hundred pounds of coffee. 1t was re-
piled to by brief message. evil send
your bread, the coffee is on the way" The
dispatch as sent real "Your brother is
dead. The coffin is on the way" A hearse
waited at the Long Branch railway depot
last night, and the innkeeper's family were
there in two carriages, In half mourning.
was written, "ship five hundred beeves.
, There are few prime beeves in New York.
, 1t was received in Chicago, ship five hun.
dred thieves There are few prime thieve:
in New York" A message delivered at q
, wholesale crockery house in Warren street
yesterday, read as follows "Sendtw two hun
dred dozen lramps of the latest pattern; ais
twenty dozen patent tramps, and ten dozel
! of all grades. Win pay carriage and cos
9 of boxing" The order was for lamps au,
. shades.
, MANY OF inc operators were very young
several being between eleven and thirteel
years of age. All sent their messages YER
: slowly and with exceeding difficulty.
C broker who went to New Haven a
o'clock Thursday telegraphed l.
It his family at the Union Square Hotel
II will not be home till tomorrow night
a Business calls me out of town. Don't
Il anxious about me-" AS he entered the vesl
Il bule of the hotel last evening. he saw IA me!
Il senger getting into the elevator with tn
h message in his hand. The previous night a
n alarm had been sent to all the police stations
and several thousand OF his photographs ha
been printed and pasted on hand bills d,
I. scribing him.
"The students Of the Dark Row schoC
and other telegraph colleges" said an opert
e tor, Twill finally be swept out Of the Yves
q. ern Union office among sundry other rut
bish. The end Of the college experts will |
that about one out of forty of them wi
u some lay get little Office in some desola
re spot on the plains, where there is nothu
re but one telegraph pole, one Indian, two gri
=, ely bears and a pack of coyotes. A giizz
is will kill him and the Indians will eat him."
It. When the strike began all the message
he which were on the wires stopped. NJ
n. George Augustus Barrow, a young billo
en- nare at the Sixth Avenue Hotel, had ia
On sent II message appointing wedding day
re his aifianced in Baltimore. 1t got Ms far
ey Emmettsburg, Maryland and stopped abo
&c II mile outside OF the town. Congratulate
p to Mace on his safe arrival from Europ
We offered by Parson Davis of Chicago, we
to caught twenty feet outside the Wes
he ern Union Building by the strike and ,