100 years ago in The Record
Monday, Feb. 10, 1919
Burden Iron Company reopens its Troy plant this morning, two weeks after its first shutdown in more than thirty years. The plant closed on January 25 due to the abrupt postwar cancellation of military orders. The closing put more than 1,200 people out of work, with threatening consequences for the South Troy economy. “Practically all the men employed at the plant live in the South End,” The Record reports, “and some of the storekeepers stated that if it had not started up again soon they would have been forced to close, as they were not doing enough cash business to pay expenses.” Burden general manager William H. Millhouse announced Saturday that the plant would reopen and “all the men will be returned to their old jobs.” He elaborated yesterday, explaining that “the plant had received some orders which would enable it to start up again.” Our reporter notes, however, that Millhouse “could not state for how long the orders would hold.”
Auto is Recovered
The three men who carjacked cab driver Leonard Schaap yesterday remain at large, but the vehicle they took from him is recovered in Watervliet early this morning.
Schaap was hired at his Albany station for a trip to Cohoes. Between Latham and Cohoes the trio took over the vehicle at gunpoint, robbing Schaap of $11. The cabbie managed to escape from the vehicle while it was stopped behind a trolley in the Spindle City. “With bullet holes through its roof and register box to show the experience it had passed through, the taxicab was recovered this morning by Sergeant Thomas F. Maloney and Patrolman John J. McGrath,” The Record reports, “It had been abandoned on Twenty-fifth street, between Seventh and Eighth avenue, Watervliet.” The bullet holes confirm Schaap’s account of a gunman firing a shot through the car roof to intimidate him. The suspects may be headed for Syracuse, having threatened to kill Schaap there.
Sen. Chamberlain Talks To Large Audience
U.S. Senator George Earle Chamberlain of Oregon addresses the annual meeting of the Troy Chamber of Commerce at the Music Hall tonight.
“You folks to-night may be surprised to learn that Troy is a household word in my family,” Chamberlain says. His mother attended Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary around 1840.
An early supporter of U.S. intervention in the world war, Chamberlain warns that “Bolshevism is trying to find a foothold in this country, but if we treat the [returning U.S. troops] the way we should treat them … Bolshevism will have as little chance of finding a place in this country as treason did during the war.”