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Workmen's Advocate Domestic News April 25, 1886
New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut
What is this article about?
A striker on New York's Third Avenue line tells a reporter the company cannot restore full service in a month, lacking competent drivers, hostlers, blacksmiths and helpers, and claims many riders are paid to make a show of business.
Quality green show the numbers
Measured from the scan
— how cleanly the OCR engine read the characters
- Mean ink quality
- 99.0% The length-weighted average confidence across the OCR lines — the mean of exactly the per-line scores whose tails the two figures below report. Typical is 99%.
- Illegible ink
- 0.0% Text sitting in OCR-detected lines that scored below 80% confidence — very shaky reads. Weighted by line length, so one long bad line counts for more than a short one.
- Uncertain ink
- 0.0% Text in lines that scored 80–90% — somewhat shaky reads.
- Matches source
- 99.56% How closely the served text matches the raw OCR of the same boxes, letter by letter, after collapsing spacing and case. This measures agreement, not correctness: the OCR is often wrong and the extractor corrects it, so 100% does not mean perfect, and a low figure usually means poor scan text was rewritten rather than that text was lost (length vs source shows loss).
- Length vs source
- 99.24% Below 100% means text was dropped from the OCR; above means text was added to make it read.
Assembled by the extraction model
— whether the stitched-together text holds up; catches layout and segmentation errors, which the scores above cannot see
- Transcription confidence
- 97.0% (typical 96%) How cleanly the extractor could assemble what it was given. Low here with clean ink scores points at layout analysis — the characters were read correctly but grouped or ordered wrongly.
- Comprehension
- 95.0% Whether the piece reads coherently start to finish. Can stay high while transcription confidence drops, when only part of the component is affected.
Clipping
Full Text
A STRIKER'S OPINION.
The Third Avenue Car Company will Have to Surrender.
"The company claim," said one of the strikers on the Third avenue line, New York, to a reporter, "that they can have the road in full working order in a week to fourteen days. They cannot do it in a month. A driver is not broken in in one trip or a day. Formerly, they would not take a man who had not experience in driving. Is it possible they can get 300 competent drivers in a month. Then there are the hostlers, who, although requiring no special skill for their work, cannot attend to a certain number of horses as well as experienced men, and remember there are 1,100 horses to be looked after. Nor have they any shoers. If a horse were to lose a shoe to-day there must be no one to put another on. The blacksmiths are skilled laborers and union men, and will not work for the company. Their helpers must be men of rare skill, and even if they get blacksmiths they can't get helpers, for the helpers are strong union men. They say they have got 300 men, do they? Well, that falls far short of the 1,200 men who went out. No, sir, it's a machine, is the Third avenue road, and when it once gets out of order it ain't easy to repair it."
During the early part of the day the reporter noticed that some of the cars were heavily laden. He mentioned this to the striker just referred to. "Well, sir," said the man, "you make a few trips more and you'll see the same people. They are paying lots of people to ride in the cars to make a show of business." The reporter certainly did meet a good many old faces in the various cars he boarded, but whether these people were riding for curiosity or not he could not ascertain.
The Third Avenue Car Company will Have to Surrender.
"The company claim," said one of the strikers on the Third avenue line, New York, to a reporter, "that they can have the road in full working order in a week to fourteen days. They cannot do it in a month. A driver is not broken in in one trip or a day. Formerly, they would not take a man who had not experience in driving. Is it possible they can get 300 competent drivers in a month. Then there are the hostlers, who, although requiring no special skill for their work, cannot attend to a certain number of horses as well as experienced men, and remember there are 1,100 horses to be looked after. Nor have they any shoers. If a horse were to lose a shoe to-day there must be no one to put another on. The blacksmiths are skilled laborers and union men, and will not work for the company. Their helpers must be men of rare skill, and even if they get blacksmiths they can't get helpers, for the helpers are strong union men. They say they have got 300 men, do they? Well, that falls far short of the 1,200 men who went out. No, sir, it's a machine, is the Third avenue road, and when it once gets out of order it ain't easy to repair it."
During the early part of the day the reporter noticed that some of the cars were heavily laden. He mentioned this to the striker just referred to. "Well, sir," said the man, "you make a few trips more and you'll see the same people. They are paying lots of people to ride in the cars to make a show of business." The reporter certainly did meet a good many old faces in the various cars he boarded, but whether these people were riding for curiosity or not he could not ascertain.
What sub-type of article is it?
Labor Dispute
What keywords are associated?
Third Avenue Car Company
Streetcar Strike
Striker Interview
New York
Where did it happen?
New York City
Domestic News Details
Primary Location
New York City
Outcome
strike continues; company short of skilled workers; some cars running with reportedly paid riders.