Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 299, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1913 — Wagon Tongue Silences Traffic on City Street [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Wagon Tongue Silences Traffic on City Street

CHICAGO.*— After a crowd of 500 persons, including a patrol wagon load of police, had failed to raise a blockade of street cars on South Dearborn street the other day, a civil engineeg solved the problem by simply sug-

gesting the uncoupling of a wagon tongue; A heavily laden coal wagon was stalled. A crowd had gathered. The driver tried to take all the tips from the crowd, the result being that the wagon slipped off the tracks into the excavation made by a gang of street pavers. Traffic came to a full stop. Four mounted policemen galloped up and talked the situation over with nine crossing and other policemen. The wagon finally got clear, but the horses stood across the tracks. The policemen and on lookers argued and the street car men growled, but none was able to solve the problem. The track simply could not be cleared. Grhy matter revolved at such a velocity in a hundred heads that there was danger of an epidemic of brain fever. The civil engineer came down out of an office

building and whispered to a policeman. The policeman looked suddenly wise, after admitting In a whisper between bis closed hands, “We’re a lot of boneheads," and then, In a loud, commanding voice, ordered the teamster to pull a bolt holding the tongue to the wagon and drive his team away. Traffic had been at a full stop for three-quarters of an hour, but only the engineer who had viewed the situation from an upper office window could see what as the matter.