Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1876 — Baggage-Smashing. [ARTICLE]

Baggage-Smashing.

The manner in which travelers’ baggage is handled at most of our railway stations is a disgrace to the railway system of which we boast so much and in general so justly. It will fill any impartial spectator with indignation to stand near the baggage-room in almost any depot in this and other cities as a train is being made up or unloaded, and witness the reckless if not intentionally destructive way in which trunks, large and small, without respect to character, condition or contents, are thrown from car to platform, or from truck to car, or from store-room to truck, with a waste of muscular power in giving them the customary height and velocity such as is rarely exhibited by laborers in any other calling. If the baggage-han-dlers were paid by their companies according to the number of trunks which they dashed to pieces or damaged, they could hardly show more zeal and successful devotion to that end than they do now. So common is this abuse in the handling of passengers’ property that the long-suf-fering American has accepted it as inevi table, and tries to make the best of it by ■jocular remarks. Tlie newspapers also at frequent intervals contain humorous allusions to the evil. One praises the skill *with which an accomplished baggage-man will crack open a trunk at a singl* throw. Another tells about the consternation and grief of baggage-hurler on finding among the arrivals a trunk made of boiler iron, heavily riveted and iron-bound, bearing the defiant inscription, “She'll stand it." Another announces a forthcoming tournament of baggage-smashers, at which a prize offered by trunk-makers for the most expert smashing is to be contended for.

j The subject, however, is too serious for a joke. It is no joke to recklessly and wantonly destroy or injure the property of a confiding traveler; it is a barbarous and brutal act for which no excuse w hatever can be given. It takes no more time and strength to lift a trunk and set it carefully down than it does to hurl it high in the air and propel it violently to its destination. There is abundance of time, especially at our great terminal stations, where these abuses are most common, for the proper handling of baggage. pNTo train will move until the baggage is all taken on or unloaded, and the smasher Cannot make a claim of necessity for his barbarity. An express company will carbox of eggs 1,000 miles without cracking a shell; a baggage-smasher will frequently knock off the hinges of a trunk, break the lock, split the bottom and smash (every fragile article of its contents on the trip from baggage-room to car. It is high time that our railroad superintendents took summary steps to reform this evil. The property of passengers should be as sacred as their persons. A railroad employe has no more right to break a passenger’s trunk needlessly than to smash his hat or tear his coat. This mistreatment of baggage is never seen upon European railways. There the railway employe is the servant rather than the master of the traveler, and treats him and his property with civility. If a luggage man handles a trunk with unnecessary roughness he is pretty sure to be warned by a uniformed official, and if he repeats the offense he gets his walking-

papers. We do no not mean to say that all American baggage-men are guilty of the abuses complained of. There are many creditable exceptions, but no one will deny the general truth of this picture, and our railway officials should at once put a stop to these outrages, as they can easily do, by a little exercise of their authority. Let the baggage-smasher be reformed or abolished from the American railway system. He has disgraced it too long.— Age. —The Pittsburgh Commeroial reaffirms the story that “Many houses, and even whole blocks In the down-town part of New York belong to the ex-Empress Eugenie, purchased by third parties on the account of Napoleon III.”