HIS LIFE AND WORK 



of this trial was a comedy of mishaps. A Mc- 

 Cormick family party of six, with nine trunks, 

 boarded a train at Philadelphia for Chicago. 

 The train was about to start, when the baggage- 

 master demanded pay for 200 pounds of sur- 

 plus baggage. The amount was only $8.70, 

 but McCormick refused to pay it. He called his 

 family out of the train and ordered that his 

 trunks be taken off. The conductor refused to 

 hold the train, and the trunks were carried away. 

 Mr. McCormick at once saw the president of 

 the railroad, J. Edgar Thompson, who tele- 

 graphed an order for the trunks to be put off 

 at Pittsburg. The McCormicks set out for 

 Chicago by the next train. At Pittsburg they 

 learned that the trunks had been carried through 

 to Chicago. And the next day, in Chicago, when 

 McCormick went to the Fort Wayne depot, he 

 found it a mass of smoking cinders. It had 

 caught fire in the night, and the nine trunks had 

 been destroyed. 



McCormick sued the railroad for $7,193 - 

 the value of the trunks and their contents. Re- 

 peatedly he won and repeatedly the railroad 



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