Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-08-11
Observation-Disclosures
They Are Ground to Pulp by the
Pennsylvania Railroad Co.
NEDINAP6L. E. LOCOMOTIVE.
Johnstowns Great Run on the Coupons of
All Ticket Sellers.
COUNTERFEIrS OF THE PASTEBoARDs.

After a railroad conductor takes youl
ticket, punches ii and slows it away under
his fingers, has your Imagination ever ran on
and led you to wonder what the great rail-
roads do with the thousands of pasteboards
that thus become useless on their hands
every day? Do the officers give them to
their babies for playthings? Or does a
waste-paper merchant turn a ticket, good
between New York and San Francisco, over
and over again while he wishes the punch
hole was not there? No. They are gotten
rid of in a more thorough manner.
The Pennsylvania road has a pulp mill
in the general offices in Philadelphia, and
after a certain length of time the old tickets
are ground up and sold to the paper men in
that shape. The Pittsburg and Lake Erie
Company has been in the habit of burning
their tickets in the frebox of an engine, but
General Passenger Agent Clark says he
would sell them to the pulp dealers if there
were any mills in the city. None of the
railroads sell the old tickets to paper men
because they desire to prevent all possibili-
ty of their being used again by sharpers.s
PUNCHED TICKETS JOURNEY.
Each railroad buys its tickets in different
places. A Pittsburg firm prints the Lake
Erie tickets, the B. s. o. work in this line is
done in Baltimore, and the Pennsylvania
road purchase their coupons in Philadel-
phia. The methods of collecting and audit
ing the tickets are almost identical on the
numerous railroads. After a conductor
punches a ticket he turns it over to the
auditor, who keeps it until the report of the
agent who sold the ticket is handed in. The
reports are usually made at the end Of
every month. but the ticket is kept
much longer than that. If the
auditor finds everything satisfactory the
local tickets are disposed of in the way
described. The foreign tickets, as a general
rule, are never destroyed, but are preserved
for future reference. Some of the railroads
have immense piles OF these old tickets
stored away in boxes. Atany time after an
agent sells foreign ticket the other lines
are liable to make request for their share
of the purchase money, and the coupon is
often the only thing that prevents serious
disputes. For example, limited ticket
may have been sold when the other road
demands the fare for an unlimited one.
AS there is quite difference often in the
price of the two tickets, a reference to the
coupon will soon settle the difficulty.
A RUN ON TICKETS.
1t may not be generally known that the
manufacture and printing of railroad tick
cts has become a distinct business, and
there are a number of firms devoted excIu..
sively to the work. By referring to the
annual reports of the railroads in the
United States the number of tickets sold in
year could be approximately estimated,
and any one who stops to think will see the
,har nof ha
fares are often collected on all the roads by
the conductors, and these would represent so
many more.
The railroads are usually prepared for all
emergencies. Every passenger agent knows
about how many tickets he can use from
past experience, and the General Passenger
Agent keeps him supplied. Bnt it some
times happens, as in the case of the Johns
town calamity, that big run is made on q
place, and the regular tickets give out. To
provide for such an event the ticket offices
always have on hand a number of skeleton
tickets, which the agent can soon fill in with
pen and ink, and the business is kept going.
In this age, also, when machines will make
0.000 tickets in a day, in few hours the |
railroads can secure all the tickets they |
need to supply any crowd, no matter how
large.
fare passenger tickets ever counter
feited, was asked General Passenger Agent |
A. e. Clark, of the Lake Erie, yesterday.
ABOUT CoUNTERFEITERs.
"In my experience have met with only |
one case" he replied, as he pulled out of his |
pocketbook an old Nypano ticket, and |
showed it to the reporter.
"That ticket" he continued, "sent man |
to the penitentiary in 1877. It is stamped, |
as You see, and the fellow had successfully |
it. The ticket fell into the hands
Of Cincinnati broker, and he came to me
one day, and said there was something
wrong with it. He felt sure it had not been
made in one of the regular printing offices
for that kind of work. 1 looked at it for a
few minutes and almost staggered the
broker when l remarked that it certainly
mad not been made by an experienced
printer
why, how can you tell that?" he asked
quickly.
"Well," replied, "the tickets are made
m revolving machines, and, if you will look
harply at the numbers, you will always
ind one figure little higher than the other
n this ticket they are even, and it is evil
lent they were put in by hand.
81 then telegraphed to number of places
o look out for such tickets, and two hours
fterward I received a telegram from In
ianapolis stating they had caught nv man
nth number OF the counterfeited tickets
n his person. But counterfeiting in these
ays is seldom attempted"
|
A LARGE stock of diamonds set and un-
ct at prices below competition at M. G.