100 years ago in The Record
Saturday, Dec. 1, 1917
The city of Troy is cooperating with state authorities to crack down on wartime food hoarding, The Record reports. The city’s four police captains have been instructed to monitor incoming shipments of sugar and other foodstuffs that reportedly are being hoarded in an attempt to force up prices. They’re also under orders to keep a close eye on store keepers who discriminate for any reason when selling scarce goods. Investigators should “seek direct evidence of the names and places of business of certain merchants who have insisted on the sale of other merchandise in amounts which they specify before they will sell sugar even in small quantities to other than regular customers or in fact to anyone at all,” our reporter explains. Regular inventories by police will be part of the process to monitor suspected hoarding. “Similar action may be taken later with reference to farmers who are alleged to be holding back needed supplies for bigger prices,” our writer adds. The state food commission “promises to be unrelenting in the prosecution of these offenses, as both the federal and state authorities are determined that extraordinary profits which inflict serious hardships upon people already affected by the war shall not be tolerated.”
Ladder slipped
After our Saturday evening edition goes to press, firefighter John Strang has what the Sunday Budget calls a “thrilling experience” from which spectators “closed their eyes or turned away quickly to avoid witnessing what eminently threatened to be a tragedy.”
Strang, a ladderman with Truck No. 2, responds to a fire at John W. Davitt’s house at 90 First Street. He climbs a ladder to bring some rope to Captain William J. Cunningham on the rope, but the ladder starts slipping toward the sidewalk when he’s two-thirds of the way up.
“It was then that those on the sidewalk shrank from witnessing what they thought would be the fireman’s death,” the Budget reports, “The ladder continued to lean and then fall to the south and finally came to the sidewalk with a crash which smashed it.”
The cool-headed Strang ignores spectators’ advice to jump for his life. Instead, he starts climbing down the ladder as it tips, so that he’s only six rungs from the bottom when it hits the street.
“He went down with the ladder, and men who ran to his assistance, expecting to find that he had at least broken an arm or a leg, were surprised and rejoiced to see him rise and walk away.”
Strang feels able to get back to work, but Mayor Cornelius F. Burns orders him home.