[Ads-l] Straphanger (UNCLASSIFIED)
Susan G Yerkes
susanyerkes at UTEXAS.EDU
Thu Apr 14 18:48:14 UTC 2016
The pre-1900s strap-hanger reference is most likely to trolley cars, first
horse-drawn and then motorized on rails.
My great-grandfather Charles Tyson Yerkes, slightly fictionalized in
Theodore Dreiser's trilogy "The Financeer" "The Titan" and "The Stoic"
owned most of Chicago's street railroads and built the Loop and the El
before being run out of town on a rail for open bribery of politicians.
One of the quotations commonly attributed to him is "It's the straphangers
who pay the dividends."
Susan
On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 12:34 PM, Mullins, Bill CIV (US) <
william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: "Mullins, Bill CIV (US)" <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL>
> Subject: Re: Straphanger (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
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