Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1913 — LIKE PITCHED BATTLE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LIKE PITCHED BATTLE

RAILROAD IN FINISH FIGHT WITH / HORDE OF CATERPILLARS. Though Defeated in the End, the Insects Succeeded In Demolishing Alt Train on Long Island Railroad. About a month ago a column-long telegram from Montauk, L. 1., ap-

peared in the newspapers under a big-type caption: "Caterpillars Lose "War on Railroad.” i There was no picturesque exaggeration in _that caption. One of the most offensive tactics of an

invading army is to cut railroad lines in the enemy’s cquntry, and this.iß exactly what was done by a countless army of caterpillars that invaded the Long Island railroad’s right of way, between Amagansett an,d Montauk. The fatalities among the invaders were appalling; billions of them were squashed; but for two weeks the dead and the dying, their number constantly increased by willing hordes from the ranks of the living, succeeded in smashing train schedules. There were battles daily between the big, powerful engines of the road and the tiny caterpillars, the former aided by skirmish lines of trainmen armed with brooms, shovels, and pails of sand, the latter aided by nothing but their ability to climb up on the track and grease it with their squashed bodies. If these two opposing forces —the big locomotives and the tiny caterpillars—had been left to fight it out between themselves, it is a grave question but what history would have had a different story to inscribe upon her tablets. Acting under hurry-up orders, however, from President Ralph Peters, H: B. Fullerton, the railroad company’s director of agricultural development, bore down on the invaders

with a couple of hand-car batteries manned by section gangs, and swept the field of action with solution of sulfocide and nicotine shot from hand spray pumps. Day after day Fullerton * and his hand-car batteries raked the battlefield yith their spray pumps, and day after day caterpillars and yet more caterpillars immolated themselves before any and every Long Island train that juggernauted that way. Then Fullerton bethought himself of the method by which mediaeval castles were defended. He ran a sixinch moat along both sides of the invaded stretch of track and flooded it with crude oil. Then did history repeat herself and tell over again the story of the French cuirassiers and the sunken road at Waterloo; rank after rank of caterpillars dashed into this moat of Fullerton’s, but not a caterpillar reached its other side. The Long Island railroad had won the war of the caterpillars. But though vanquished, they had established a record. Bugk and worms before this have crippled railroads, but never before has any army, either bug or worjn, succeeded in continuing its campaign for so long a time.

Spraying Tracks Against Caterpillars.