EXTRAORDINARY RAILROAD CONSPIRACY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1591, 23 June 1887, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY RAILROAD CONSPIRACY.

The American correspondent of the 'Sydney Morning Herald" writes: — " The example of extortion and dishonesty on the part of railroad managers ha* been followed In the case of the Pan Yandie road by a conspiracy among seven-eighths of all its brakemen and cndnotora to rob the Company, .Rarely before m a oiviHeed country — probably never — has there been such a shameful oatbreak of wholesale demoralisation. Out of 700omploj b\ all but about 100 were formed into a sworn secret society with oaths, passwords, grips, and ether appliances, the purpose of which was to systematically filch from the freight card of the line, More than 500, 000d.il was thus stolen, and within the past year the Company hare paid" claims to shippers for goods lost m tranait amounting to 300,000 do). Having discovered the conspiracy, the Company were at their wits' end to know how to stop it without serious delay. All the guilty ones conld not be simultaneously arrested, because that would leave the road without hands to work it, and it wfh feared that if part only were arrested the others would run away, and again the same dilemma would have to be encountered. So a month was spent m gradually concentrating a reserve force, and then a couple of hundred of the worst of the banditti were arrested on one day, A hundred or bo more have since been taken into custody, and nearly all tbo reat have left for parts unknown."