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Show ; -: THE LOMAX TICKET. ." Tha Report of Its whoUnl Coanterf.it-V- tag a Fak. - Recently some very sensational dispatches .vers printed in the newspapers about alleged wholesale counterfeiting of the "Lomax" form of ticket used by the Union Pacific. The news caused considerable excitement, "specially among railroad people, because it "as claimed that thousands of the forged t ikets had been passed on conductors and that the loss thereby to the company had I Ueeu almost enough to swamp the passenger passen-ger department. The form of the ticket claimed to have been counterfeited Is ia use en no other road than the Union Pacific and was originated by E. L. Lomax, general psssengur and ticket agent of the company. After a i borough test the management of the road deeded ihat the ticket was the best that could be devised and agreed to accept it, becued it was deemed to be almost impossible im-possible of counterfeiting. Mr. Lomax has written a letter relative to t ie matter in which he says that the whole :Tair had originated with the Chicago Her. r. d, and was absolutely false. During the t-vo years in which the ticket bad been in use Mr. Lomax said several millions of the tickets had been sold and used and not a s.ngle counterfeit ticket had been discovered by the auditing deoartinent. and onlv about half a dozsn cases had occurred where alterations alter-ations bad been attempted. Specimens of the ticket have been sent to Mr. Maze. The ticket was gotten up for the purpose sf taking the place of what is kno'n as "local card tickets," issued for lonsr displaces dis-places covered by the company's lines. These tickets could be altered from short to long distances, and alterations and manipulations manipu-lations were so perfect as to almost defy detection. de-tection. The "Lomax" ticket was the result and this ticket is the lat-st addition to the various forms of local tickets in use for handling what is known as "local business," snd is patented for the sole use of the Union f. ific company. :efly described the merits of the ticket are as follows: It is printed upon a chemically chemi-cally prepr.red paper, upon which the use of acids is Immediately detected. The texture of the paper is so thin that any attempt at erasure can be instantly discovered and any pasting together of the mutilated portion of or.t or more tickets, or the filling up of punch marks by wax or colored tissue napar, is immediately discernible both by the'touch and by holding, trie ticket up to the lierht. TJiirty-sjxfqjtas of these tickets are all that is r,ece8sary for alt stations on the system covering some 7000 miles of rail and some 3000 miles of water lines, the last of thirty-six thirty-six forms being especially made to cover new stations that may be opened up front time to time, or to provide for the changing ot aames of stations already opened up. ; '"'ne of the advantages which has been sh wn in regard to the ticket, is the cheap-3he. cheap-3he. of the ticket itself and of the great saving sav-ing in ticket stock, besides clerical labor in kerning the ticket accounts. Itobviates the ca rylng of a large supply of practically de?.:l 'icket stock, and a station account can ,be checked in minutes where it used to take ."hours, which to a large railroad corporation jne ns the saving of thousands of dollars per an am. ,-- |