In a Pullman

To most people a Pullman porter is a Negro called George who will do anything he can to make railroad journeys pleasant, comfortable, safe. He is the factotum of a confined and temporary world and his trustworthiness is part of the national credo. The necessity for this trustworthiness was evident last week when a Pullman porter went berserk on a Montreal-bound New York Central train.

Conductor Edward English said that he found Porter J. E. Smith drunkenly annoying a woman passenger in her berth. When the conductor interfered, Porter Smith knocked him down with a brake club. Passengers and trainmen joined in the fight which ranged up and down through three Pullmans and finally out to a private car on the end of the train. Armed with a ventilator stick and an emergency fire axe, the Negro felled five passengers and three of the crew as the train rushed through the night. At Thendara, 50 mi. north of Utica, N. Y., State troopers had to board the train, quell Porter Smith by threatening to use tear gas bombs. The train was delayed more than an hour.

Taken off the train, charged with assault, Porter Smith protested that he had been arranging baggage for the woman, that Conductor English had started the fight. New York Central officials were grieved to announce that Porter Smith had become "mentally unbalanced."

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