Stalled President

During the rush hour one morning last week in Manhattan, President Frank Hedley of Interborough Rapid Transit Co. boarded one of his own subway express trains at 14th Street like any other nickel-paying subway rider. As the train hurtled downtown, Mr. Hedley smelled smoke. About the train curled acrid yellow fumes. President Hedley did not need to be told something was seriously wrong. He at once took mastership of the situation. Shouldering his way through the pack of nervous passengers to the front car, he told the motorman to stop beside a local at the Bleecker Street station. At his command the guards slid open the side doors. Using seats to bridge the gap between the tracks, the subway's president supervised the herding of passengers through the local train safely to the station platform. Afterwards President Hedley explained: "My actions were unnecessary. My men are well-trained and know their business." A pneumatic driller had pierced an I. R. T. power conduit near City Hall, causing short circuits, fire, and a four-hour paralysis of one-half of Mr. Hedley's subway system. Two thousand passengers were led choking and gasping from dark stalled trains below ground. Smoke and bursts of flame shot up through exits and ventilators. In the excitement several women fainted, many a car window was smashed by hysterical passengers who could not get out quickly enough. Fourteen were injured. Rarely does a railroad or transit president get caught in a wreck on his own line as Mr. Hedley did. Most famed case was that of Samuel Spencer, president of Southern Ry., who in 1906 was killed in his private car when one of his own locomotives rammed it.

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