Whitewashing coal would seem to be a labor as unheard of as washing the spots off the leopard, yet, says the Saturday Evening Post, that apparently crazy scheme is carried out by some western railroads. The coal is whitewashed, not for aesthetic reasons, but simply to prevent theft in transit. Before a car of coal starts on its journey the top layers are sprayed with limewater, which leaves a white coating on each lump of black coal after the water evaporates. The removal of even a small quantity from that whitewashed layer is immediately detected, so that the exact junction or station at which the theft occurred can be noticed. Once upon a time when many boys were investigating the fallacy of the supposed transformation of a black horse hair into a snake after nine days sojourn in the rain barrel, a loaded oil tank car was glued to the rails in Detroit yards, but urgently needed on the other side of the international boundary. Giving a clear receipt, a connecting line hooked on to it, but almost immediately finding the tank in a leaking condition because the discharge pipe had been snapped in a rough shunt, they shot it back to the original carriers. The latter were on guard and refused it, the tank in the meantime losing 200 gallons of oil. To aggravate matters, a third railway whose office was to deliver the shipment, looked askance at the “cripple” and thus both exits were closed. Despite the pleadings of the consignees for the oil, the middle line holding the “white elephant” turned to them a deaf ear until a settlement would be made. After much fencing and correspondence an adjustment on a mileage basis was arrived at. The road accepting the “bad order” tank was held liable for a proportion gauged by a thirty mile haul, and the comparatively innocent delivering company, being ten miles longer, drew a debit of $4,000. The interpretation of a maze of tariff rates and a thousand lights and shadows affecting their application, as well as classification, deadlocks regarding analogous goods perplex and keep bright the wits of railway people, that the responsibility may be placed where it should rest. To elucidate this remark let me refer in passing, to a partly demented and very undependable dealer in a commodity that was barrelled--long since gone to his reward--who requested and obtained a quotation on a specific shipment of twenty cars, each to contain a stated number of barrels, which were to be of agreed size and weight. He then had made a larger barrel, forwarded the product in them and, of course, when weighed a heavy undercharge claim developed, the carriers holding the short end.