The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-05-01

III
leave for san Francisco today. in
first class standard sleeper His
- title viii be safely locked in a
trunk and sent ahead by baggage
is is permissible TO carry $50 pounds
on every first class ticket, and that is
just about what Pratt's title weighs
If you don't believe it, weigh il for
yourself Here it is: Clarence o.
Pratt, chairman of the International
executive committee of the Amalga-
mated Association of Street and Elec-
. trio Railway Employees of America.
Pratt has given his solemn promise
that, at the next biennial convention,
he will make a determined effort to
have that title cut down about seven
car lengths
Pratt is an enigma, but he's a pretty
smooth citizen, as the saying goes.
Prdtt's face is always the same. 1t has
the perpetual serenity of those coun-
tenances that are made in France, and
1 challenge any man to alter that
peaceful, blithesome calm. Pratt is a
young fellow, at least he looks it, but
what Pratt looks and what Pratt is are
two vastly different things Pratt can
look you straight in the eye and tell
you the finest story that ever was
told, all the while beneath that imper
turbable mask there lies the infOrma
ton you are after, and you know it
is there. 1 have sat in Pratts little
room in the Kenyon and listened to
hours OF the most interesting converse !
ton and "reminiscences, but never a
loophole for me to get my auger in for
a tap. Occasionally some of the boys |
would put the question bluntly and
plainly to him. Surely, 1 thought, |
there is no getting away from that,
but the unmoyed and unmovable Pratt
switched his left arm over the back of
his cha IL ms OF fha right and fOid |
us all about the time when there was
an earthquake i'm Mars.
Early in the game we discovered, at |
least some of us did, that Pratt was /
q non-pumpable piece of human ma |
chinery. He was deaf alike to threat, |
flattery and cajOlery. He beamed upon
you with d clear, kindly benignity that |
touched your heart, but you didn't get |
any more news than he wanted you TO /
get. After we had butted our heads |
against this stone wall couple of
times, we waited for Pratt to loosen |
up, and he loOsened. Pratt is abso- |
lutely, positively and emphatically fair |
and square with the newspaper mem
What he tells the newspapers is the /
real essence of what his side has done
or Is doing. He does not predict things.
He does not tell you what the COM |
pany is likely to do, nor when it will /
do it. He shinuies on his own side /
every time. 1t is the experience of the /
Salt Lake newspaper men that Pratt /
totes fair when he has anything to tote,
and it is also the advice of Salt Lake /
newspaper men to their brethren in
other cities who may encounter Pratt /
that they leave their pump handle at
home.
Pratt is the most cautious man who /
has come into these parts recently. He
Looks hafoTa ha no
leaps he knows exactly where he is go
ing to land-if the leap is big one. If |
the landing place is not clearly discern
IDLE Pratt reaches it by easy leaps. He
can surround a plain proposition with |
more words than the late lamented
John Milton had in his amazing Vocab-
ulary; If you don't believe that. read
the last official statement ne sent to
the management" of the company.
Then, again, he can put the question
In about as terse and concise a man
ner as ever did man who put pen to
paper. But Pratt never equivocated.
He used the language of the diplomat
and the strategist. The other side did
the same. 1t was a case of parry and |
thrust and thrust and parry, as Burl
Armstrong put it.
No one knows just how many strikes
Pratt has gone through. He doesn't
know himself, but there are scores of
them. Nobody knows, either, how
many strikes have been averted by his
wise counsel and his tact. There are
scores and scores of these. too. Pratt
doesn't want strikes. They are hell,
he says-and this is the only word that
he has ever used in Salt Lake City that |
approaches profanity. He doesn't drink,
and doesn't smoke at all. He wears
good clothes, but clothes modest in cut
and color. He goes days without
sleeping; on Monday he worked all day,
in conferences nnumerable, told funny
stories, patted his men on the back,
told more yarns, from daybreak until
o'clock Tuesday morning, without a
bite 10 eat. Eating becomes with
Pratt only a LUXURY when there is a
strike involved that means bread and
butter for four hundred men and their
wives and children. At one stage in the
proceedings of last week Pratt went
fifty-three hours with a rest Of six
Sleeping is time wasted, to his mind,
when there are things to be done.
X
Away back in Welshfield a little
town I'm Ohio. there is a sweet little
woman and two little boys and one lit
tie girl waiting for husband and father
10 send word of the progress of events.
Hervey Duane, Lyle Alfred, Gertrude
Mae and their mother know that pop