Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1910 — NOTES ABSENCE OF HONESTY. [ARTICLE]

NOTES ABSENCE OF HONESTY.

Few Articles Forgotten Ip Cars Are Tamed In by Passengers. The man in the rabbit hutch was talking. “It’s wonderful what a difference the pay-as-you-enter makes with lost articles,” he said. “I guess we turn in about one-tenth the stuff we used to pick up in the cars before we were confined to. this box. You see, we used to walk through the cars for the fares, and if there was an umbrella or a grip, or anything of that sort, left in one of the seats we ran a good chance of seeing it and restoring it to the owner. Now we can’t do that. We have to stay here at the rear, and we have hardly any chance at all to pick up anything left on the car.” “But the passengers turn in some of the things they find, don’t they?” I asked. • There was a great and sad knowledge of human nature in the conductor’s smile. , “Do they? Not much,” he said. “Ask the man Tyho has charge of lost articles over at the De Baliviere station. He’ll tell you that we handle almost nothing there now, whereas we restored quantities of stuff to the owners under the pay-when-discovered system.” My eye, but what thieves we are! “Why, I used to pick up an umbrella or two on my car every day, and now there is not one handed over to me in seven days,” he resumed. Here, then, is a valid objection to the pay-as-you-enter—one, we have never thought of: It is making all of us thieveßit St. Louis Post Dlspatoh.