Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1918 — LIFE OF A RAILWAY AGENT A SNAP—NIT [ARTICLE]

LIFE OF A RAILWAY AGENT A SNAP—NIT

The following clipping is taken from an exchange and relates to the duties of a railway agent: “The life of a railway agent, for the most part, is one of roses, excuse us, we meant to say, cinders. Some folks seem to think that about all he has to do is to sell tickets and keep the extra cent when he makes odd change, but there are some other things in the life iof a station agent besides framing his face in a ticket office window and opening a money drawer with a doorbell attached to it, and smiling when someone asks him if the ‘4:31 train will be on time on a certain day of a week hence?’ And, ‘if it is on time, what time he thinks it will be here?’ “From early in the morning, when he starts the day by looking into the bin at the end of the platform to see how much coal has been stolen during the night, until sundown, when he starts out to hang drug signs on the switch posts, he is an extremely busy man. Between checking over freight receipts and running the hay press for the carbon copies of waybills, its no wonder he hasn’t time to build a fire in the waiting room or rub off last week’s train schedule from the blackboard, because he is a busy man. “He listens to complaints with one ear and the telegraph keys with the other, and has been known to answer the ’phone, sell a steamship ticket and put a bucket of coal in the stove all at the same time, in order to get his work done within the eight hour schedule. “About the only ones to envy an agent his job are the girls in the town/ and that’s because he has such a good chance to get acquainted with the brakemen on all the freights.”