Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1915 — IN THE CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN THE CITIES

How New York’s Subway Guards Earn Their Wages

NEW YORK. —The New York subway company selects Its burliest and hoarsest employees to act as platform guards. It might be thought a waste of good money by some to pay $lO to sl2 a week for uniformed ushers

to trains, when the passengers could just as well step into the trains and find seats for themselves. But such a thought could only find lodgment in the brain of some denizen of Medicine Hat, whose opinions on many subjects would be much more reasonable than those of the conceited, dyed-in-the-wool “subwaiter." The latter may be densely ignorant and believe the world ends in a roid Just west of Hoboken, but he knows that each platform guard

Is supposed to and does earn just 60 cents for the subway company ' whenever he slams a door. * Unassisted, the passengers would only crowd ipto the door until they filled the space, touching each other solidly on every side. Then from the rear comes a guard, roaring, “Step into the car! Move inside!" About the door Is a fringe of those who would get in but cannot. Into them the guard catapults. He spreads his arms wide, and by some inconceivable summoning of brute force, he jams ten persons through the door. Some of those already in slip up and slip down, and perhaps a few dislocate a shoulder or so. But holding his victims in with one arm, the guard haniw the door with the other. Perhaps he finds he has gone too far and the edge of the door blackens the eye of some tired business man who is h»if in, half out. Then the guard seizes one or two of the outermost passengers, cries "Don’t be rough," and throws them back on to the platform. In these rare cases it is usually found the. guard has made a; mistake and shoved in twelve or fifteen instead of the regulation ten.