1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



87 



ticket at all I shall have to ask you to pay 

 your passag'e. When you ^et to Medina, if 

 j'ou will hand it to your ticket aj^ent he will 

 send it back to the seller, and return you 

 your money." 



Some of 3'ou may not ag^ree to this; but I 

 think, on further reflection, the conductor 

 was rig-ht. Whoever buj's a railroad ticket, 

 or any thing else, for that matter, should 

 examine the article and see whether it is 

 exactly what he paid his mone}' for and ex- 

 pected to get. The man who pays his mon- 

 ey, and then sticks his purchase in his 

 pocket, without looking at it at all, ought 

 to get into trouble to teach him to watch 

 and see what he is doing — not only to avoid 

 being swindled, but to save trouble and un- 

 necessary delaj-s in the general business of 

 life. Let us now go back to our state- 

 ment. 



There are a good man3' kinds of railway 

 tickets. Some of them say, "For this spe- 

 cial person and this special train." Other 

 kinds of tickets read just as j'ou have it — 

 transportation for somebodj', no matter who, 

 to a certain place, no matter when, or with- 

 in a limited period. Tickets of the latter 

 class, scalpers can use legitimateh'; but 

 tickets of the former class can not be used, 

 as I see it, without transgressing legal or 

 moral law. 



Then you make another mistake in sa}'- 

 ing the railwaj's make a speculation on the 

 one who loses a ticket or who does not use 

 it or can not use it. I suppose 3'ou know I 

 travel a great deal. Very often I can not 

 use the ticket I have purchased; and in 

 every case of this kind so far in my life the 

 railroad companies have paid me back the 

 price of the ticket I could not or did not use. 



At Niagara Falls I blunderingly got on 

 the wrong train, and was obliged to pay 

 $2 50 extra to go to Toronto on the boat. 

 When I told the railway company about it 

 the^' paid me back the price of the ticket, 

 and returned to me the S2.bQ I had paid the 

 steamboat company because of my blunder. 

 I did not lose a copper b}' the transaction, 

 because a railwaj' man told me when I got 

 aboard I had the right train, when he was 

 mistaken. At the Buffalo exposition I pur- 

 chased a sleeper ticket from Buffalo to 

 Cleveland. After I got on the train I found 

 the sleeper would reach Cleveland before 

 midnight. I explained my blunder to the 

 conductor, and he said if I chose to take a 

 seat in the other car the sleeper company 

 would probably return the monej' when I ex- 

 plained the matter to them. They did so 

 without a word. 



Now in regard to excursion tickets. This 

 is a complicated matter, and perhaps my 

 explanation may not be correct. If so, I 

 wish some railroad man would set me right; 

 but it is something this way: 



The railroad companies make preparation 

 to carry a great number of passengers to 

 some particular point, on account of the G. 

 A. R., or something of that kind. They run 

 extra cars — perhaps extra trains. Thej' trj' 

 to make a wholesale business of it. They say, 



"If you will go on such a date, and use a ticket 

 that applies onlj' on the special train, we 

 will carry you at half the regular fare, or 

 less." Well, \vi going ih'\& works all right. 

 They can carry a big crowd a great deal 

 cheaper than they can a few persons. But 

 many of these persons are Yankees. They 

 want to look over the world, and they do 

 not want to go back until they get ready. 

 Furthermore, thej* usually want to go back 

 some other way, so their return trip will be 

 through some part of the country they have 

 never seen before. Well, these railway 

 companies, when they take a notion, are 

 very liberal, and so thej' say, "If you go 

 with us on that special train we will not 

 only let j'ou come home when you wish, 

 within a certain limit, but we will let you 

 choose your route home. If you prefer to 

 travel on some other road than ours on the 

 return trip we will take the money out of 

 our pockets and pay this other railroad 

 company cash for carrying you." 



Now, this the railroad company could 

 afford to do if its patrons all did exactlj' as 

 they agreed, or according to the printed 

 agreement on the ticket; but the railroad 

 companies have learned by experience that 

 these same Yankees who are so anxious to 

 see the whole world, and staj' as long as 

 thej' please, are also greedy on a trade, es- 

 pecially if they can make a trade so as to 

 save alittle money. Someofthemmayconclude 

 to stay a while, we will say in California; 

 and when one of them runs across a man 

 who is going back east he sells him his 

 ticket at a very much lower price than he 

 could buy one outright. But this new par- 

 ty has to pretend he is the original pur- 

 chaser. He has to sign a name to the tick- 

 et that is not his own. He does something 

 that would be called forgery, if it were not in 

 a railroad-ticket deal. You admit this is 

 wrong; but you seem to take the ground 

 after all that the railroad company is not 

 injured thereby. But it /^ injured. It loses 

 customers who would otherwise pay the 

 regular established prices. Many seem to 

 think these prices are a g'reat deal too high, 

 and that it is not any thing' particularly 

 wrong to cut down the price established by 

 the railroad companj'. But, my good friend, 

 these same companies have agreed on an 

 established price. You can not travel on 

 any other railroad, and you can not travel 

 in any other way any cheaper than the reg^- 

 ular printed rates. If their prices are too 

 high, as with every thing else there will 

 soon be competition, and prices will come 

 down. I do not know that ticket scalpers 

 are alwa^'s dishonest men; but Ihey are 

 usually a tricky sort of people, and every 

 one who deals with them knows their reputa- 

 tion. They do not make a living by dealing- 

 honestly as people do in other lines of busi- 

 ness. Very likely a part of their business, 

 and perhaps a great part of it, is legitimate 

 and honest. I for one want nothing to do 

 with a man who coolly looks j'ou in the face 

 and says there is nothing wrong in signing' 

 another man's name, for the reason that 



