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Show WILL PLACE BLAME FOR LOSS OF LIFE PLANS FOR FEDERAL, STATE AND CITY INVESTIGATION OF EASTLAND EAST-LAND ACCIDENT. Western Electric Employes Declare They Were Almost Compelled to Purchase Tickets for Excursion for Fear of Losing Positions. Chicago. Plans for investigations by federal, state and city official bodies bod-ies to determine who was to blame for the capsizing of the steamer Eastland East-land in the Chicago river Saturday, with a loss of hundreds of lives, have been completed. Slate's Attorney Hoyne, in pursuing his investigation, has seized correspondence corre-spondence which had passed between officers of the Western Electric Employees' Em-ployees' organization, which gave the picnic, and the Indiana Transportation comnanv. ooeratlng the Eastland and four other steamers set aside to carry more than 7,000 persons across the lake on this excursion. The state's attorney asserted that this correspondence disclosed the fact that the steamer company had advised those in charge of the picnic that the more tickets sold, the greater would be the rebate paid to the employees' organization. or-ganization. Tickets were to be sold to employes of the Western Electric company for 75 cents at the factory, or $1 at the wharf. According to the state's attorney, the letters he took showed that there would be a rebate of one-third on all tickets over 4,000, and something less on those above 2,500. Complaint had already been made by several employes of the Western Electric company that they had been almost compelled to purchase tickets for the excursion for fear the foremen would discriminate against them. The picnic to Michigan City has been an annual affair and these men said that employes who had refused to buy tickets in previous years had been discharged, dis-charged, although probably without the sanction of executives of the company. com-pany. To the confusion of determining the total number of lives lost there was added much wrangling among officers of different jurisdictions over tentative plans to right the Eastland, which still lies on its port side where it sank within twenty feet of the south bank of the river, which is 200 feet wide at that point, just west of the Clark street bridge. Estimates by marine engineers showed that it would take from ten to thirty days to put the Eastland on its keel. It was said that until the ship was removed it could not be determined de-termined how many. If any bodies had been caught under the hull and superstructure. super-structure. Plans to use dynamite In raising bodies imbedded in mud were abandoned for the time being, for fear the explosions might destroy any evidence evi-dence the Bhip could give of possible mismanagement of the water ballast system, said by Beveral marine engineers engi-neers to be the probable cause of the capsizing. |
