N&W in 1911--Pass riders

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Wow!  Now there's an interesting story.  My dad was the General Freight Agent for Grand Trunk Western in NYC for many years.  I clearly remember us as a family riding the 20th Century Ltd. from NYC to Chicago to visit the grandfolks.  We had a Pullman sleeper - the whole nine yards.  I also remember passing by the huge Indian neon sign on the old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland some time during the night.  And getting thrown out of the observation car past "curfew" - hey, I was 10.
 
As what happened to Mr. R. L. French, it's the "drinking and carousing" that will get you every time.
 
I wonder if the Hepburn Act is still in force?

Ed Svitil
Norfolk & Western Railway
 
  



 


To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: N&W in 1911--Pass riders
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:30:11 -0400
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org





Bluefield Daily Telegraph
April 6, 1911
 
FINED HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR RIDING ON A PASS
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Costs in Case Will Amount to $700 or $800 When Price of Ticket Was Only Seventy-Five Cents
    R. L. French, of near Welch, was fined $100 and costs by the federal court at Huntington on Tuesday for riding on a pass contrary to the Hepburn law*.  In addition to the fine the costs amounted to between $700 and $800 including attorney's fees.  This sum was spent to save the man from punishment for illegally riding on a pass when a ticket could have been secured legally for the distance for seventy-five cents.  In addition to the fine and costs French's brother, who secured the pass, has lost his job with the railroad so that the seventy-five cent ride has cost the two brothers of the French family considerably in excess of $1,000.
    R. L. French went to visit his brother, who was a railroad employe, and when he started to return home he secured a pass through his brother.  The pass was accepted and the man would have gotten along all right except for the fact that he got to drinking and carousing on the train to such an extent that the conductor started to put him off.  Before doing this, however, he called an assistant trainmaster who was riding in another car, telling him that one of the employes was drunk in a coach ahead.  The trainmaster looked the man over and said he was not an employe, with the result that he was arrested instead of being put off the train.
    Many people who have used passes illegally--and there are a large number of them--have felt that small fines of perhaps $5 would be imposed but the case just completed shows that it is expensive business to fool with illegal passes.
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*Among other things the Hepburn Act of 1906 passed by Congress prohibited free passes to favored shippers, legislators, newspapermen, but not to railroad employees, their families and clergymen (free or reduced rate).  This applied to interstate commerce, so, I believe that some states still mandated free intrastate passes for their legislators after the Hepburn Act.
 
Gordon Hamilton
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