The age-herald., 1897-08-08
LIFE OF \ RAILROAD TICKET An Interesting Sketch of the
 Coupon Passport. BORN IN A PRINTING OFFICE And Ends Its Days In a Fiery Furnace-De- rails of Complicated System of
 Checking Up the Tickets.

The life Of railroad ticket is one of the most absorbing interest. It is record of "intricate simplicity" all through. From the time it leaves the hands of the printer until it arrives at the office of the ticket auditor of the railroad on which 1t was col lected it has passed through great num- Der of processes that insure it's safe trans- mission, correct sale and certain return to the checking officer of the road, all of a complicated nature, yet all simple enough.
 Coupon tickets are, as a rule, of but two kinds. In selling these tickets it is neoes- sary to so arrange them that every road over which they are honored will have something to show for it. For this reason coupon is provided for each road and the conductors on that road tear it off when it is presented to them for passage.
 What is known as tho Stron berg form is in general use all over the United States This is a patented ticket, and all of the reads pay a royalty for it's use. On jour ney from St. Louis to El Paso, Tex, there would be three coupons. The ticket would be sold In St. Louis by the Missouri rneific railway, and tho first coupon would read "Missouri Pacific railway. St. Louis to Sedalia, Mo- The second would read Missouri, Kansas and Texas railway. Sedalia to Fort Worth. Tex" The third would read: "Texas and Pacific railway Fort Worth to destination between the punch marks" Every coupon agent has one of the Stromberg punches and he punches the point of destination on the last coupon.
 The other style of coupon ticket is what is called in railroad parlance the skeleton fei + fs,r, bot, I,-tnu 4t.,n- point or destination is concerned, and is issued to tho smaller agents. When they have 0 call for one of those tickets, they fill out as many coupons as there are roads to be travelled over.
 The tickets are sold to the passengers and remain in their hands for but short time if tho conductor of the train is vigil lant and he usually Is enough SO to get all the tickets before the next station is reached.
 And there tho public's acquaintance ends. Q
 Tho conductor, always suaye and ready to be obliging, has many things on his mind to look after. One of these is tho disposition of his ticket collections for the trip. asi --afa He gets them together out of his sev- eral pockets at the end of his trip and as sorts them in station order. He then counts them. All collections from mileage books are also counted carefully. He then enters up on a report blank the number of tickets collected and the number of mile- age slips taken up and between what points. On the same report he also enters the numb of cash fares and between what points collected.
 ,91This report, with the tickets, is incloscd in an envelope and mailed to the general auditor or tho ticket auditor of the rced.
 Here tho real work on the ticket begins. Theauditor receives reports daily from the agents along the line, and it is his busi- ness to check them up against the receipts of tickets from train collections
 The conductors collections are brought in and turned over to young men in tho auditors office and by them opened. Tho tickets inclosed arc carefully counted to sec that the conductors statement on his re- port is correct. They are then entered up on blank IS "from, !" ito, D humber of tickets" and amount" and the total is struck. This is done in order to arrive at tho daily earnings of each train. A care ful record of this is kept and monthly average per trip taken. The traffic officials are then enabled to sec whether certain runs are paying and to take steps to make them pay or withdraw them. It is odd to look down the list of certain train and sec how nearly nliko arc each days earn ipgs Except where there has been big excursion the collections do not vary to an appreciable degreo from day to day.
 The ticket checkers assort all of the months collections in order of destina- tion. Thus, if St. Louis be the station that is to be checked all tickets from St. Louis to Jefferson City are got together. The agent may have reported the sale of Nos. 16,211 to 15,310. 100 tickets It is the business of the ticket sorter to ses how many of these tickets have been collected and to mark the report of the agent to show those that have not been turned in. Whenever these missing tickets do come in the report of the agent for the month in which they were sold is resurracted from some dusty box and tho missing ticket checked as "in." It is surprising how many tickets are belated and how many mover como in. Frequently persons buy tickets that arc limited and cannot use them until the limit has expired, when they throw them away. In other cases a ticket may not show up for month or two, when it is unlimited.
 ODupOD lfCkObS TcqulTt IDOro ChrG- ful handling than local tickets, and the men who keep the books on them receive better salaries than the local ticket sorters.
 All coupons tickets are turned over to them from the train collections and by them carefully assorted us to roads of issue. Each ticket or coupon is then carefully re- corded in a book so that its history can be traced from its start to it's destination. At the end of each month statement is ren- dered to nll interested lines by the road that issues tho tickets of all sales over their lines In this way kind of clearing house arrangement is kept up and the debtor road makes remittance to the cred itor road after deducting offsetting ao- counts.
 And then comes the end of the rnilroad tickets life. As soon as all reports have been checked up and a careful division of earnings-that is, the apportionment to the various divisions of the earnings--has been made, the tickets are filed away for future reference. It is absolutely necessary that tho tickets should be kept on hand for a long time, not less than 12 months, for sometimes a lawsuit is dependent on the ticket on which some passenger may have ridden. After 12 or 14 months' wait the tickets meet with their fiery fate. They Arl- Al.