above, below: Newspapers.com

Until well into the 20th Century, travel of any distance could be an arduous task of lengthy duration that involved several uncoordinated cross-town transfers. Travelers tended to pack extensive wardrobes for the long run in large wooden trunks, which were theoretically designed to hold up under the depredations of the dreaded baggage handlers. Empty trunks sometimes weighed upwards of 100 pounds, as a consequence. The basic wooden box might be reenforced with all manner of fittings and cladding made of iron, leather, tin and/or barrel staves, held together with many yards of rope or leather strap. Corners made of iron were requisite, because it was the corners that received most of the punishment of unloading. Full, a trunk might scale out at 300 pounds so the path of least resistance at unloading points was simply to let gravity do the work. Depending upon the conveyance, this could represent a free-fall of five feet, or more. Even the highest quality trunks featuring iron frames only held up for so long.

The ultimate inability of trunks to withstand repeated assault created tremendous opportunities for the criminal element, given that there was no such thing as a baggage check and luggage tended to be deposited willy-nilly over receiving platforms. Thus entered the baggage smasher. As far as can be determined, he term first appeared in the press in 1842, as far as can be determined, when the New York Daily News described baggage smashers as of two sorts. The worst of the bunch were, "young boys… who congregate about the railroad and steamboat depots, for stealing". After finishing off an unattended and already weakened trunk, the junior hoodlum would rummage through its contents, then scram with the loot. The other sort was the freelance baggage porter, who would offer to transport luggage and simply make off with it - the fear of Horatio Alger's gentleman.

Theft became somewhat less of an issue as the craft gradually fell under direct employment of transportation companies, but the massacres of baggage persisted unabated. Should a train baggageman detonate a trunk at the foot of some unfortunate soul, the railroad company now took the rap. Some old timer baggage smashers later recalled the early days with fondness as a kind of sport, where they could test their accumlated skills against the science of trunk design.
As might be expected, apocryphal stories of their exploits abounded. Trade journal Expressman's Monthly repeated several of the more universally known tales in 1895, accompanied by a philosophical reasoning of how, in modern times, such activities were no longer countenanced:

Neither trunk manufacturers nor the railroads seemed to have all-encompassing answers to the problem. The round-roofed steamer trunk, invented in the 1880's, mitigated crushing through stacking, but otherwise was no hardier than the rest in resisting repeated impacts with baggage platforms.

Invariably, wags came up with all manner of "solutions". A most notable one was The Missionary Trunk, which purportedly sported spikes on its corners in the theory that the trunk would do more damage to its surroundings rather than the other way around, thus inspiring baggage smashers to clean up their behavior for fear of losing job and limb. According to a very suspect chronicle which circulated the news wires, the inventor "put his invention to a most thorough and satisfactory test" on an eastbound trip out of Chicago to New York City. The the trip's box score claimed that, in the process, the trunk "had killed four baggage smashers, wounded - for the most part seriously - seven more, injured eleven platforms, six cars, and two express wagons, and evidently caused the discharge of thirteen porters. The trunk itself was wholly uninjured..." In summary, "Throughout the entire journey the trunk fulfilled most gloriously the expectations of the inventor..."

The scourge of baggage smashing continued on well into the 20th Century for lack of a workable cure. For instance, a 1903 San Francisco Times editorial proclaimed that, "The conclusion has been reached that baggage smashing must be discouraged. That highly autocratic individual known as the baggage smasher is to be subjected to a restraining influence. How it is to be exercised nobody has the faintest notion...He has been suspected of an alliance with trunk manufacturers, but the suspicion is a libelous reflection on the smasher. It may be possible to teach him the virtue of moderation, but we are inclined to believe that he is wedded to violence and that he cannot be divorced."

Remediation still eluded the industry eleven years later, when the Seattle Post Intelligencer ( as quoted in Railway Journal) commented:

Even as late as the 21st Century, baggage smashing received a due nod by toymaker Lionel, which marketed its catalog #789, a remake of the 1958 era American Flyer "Baggage Smasher." Remarks its promotional, ah, flyer: When trains pull in, Billy the Baggage Smasher has his work cut out for him! Our observation is that at a suggested retail price of $129.95, the customer's bank account received a real work out, as well.

Below. Our inspiration for this article came from the 1930's Southern Pacific Company photo slipped to us by a certain J.R. Signor depicting one of its newfangled baggage elevators. Perhaps it is because baggage smashers were left to operate them that they had a reputation for being breakdown prone. Click on the image for thoroughly unreliable further elucidation.

One would guess from hindsight that any railroad attempt to divest itself of responsibility by pleading "helplessness" in controlling its employees must have met considerable derision, particularly in the courts. Ironically, it may have been the strengthening of trade unions in the early 20th Century that played a key role in corraling baggemen antics, because union contracts had come to specify the details of correct behavior in great detail. Union reps had little foundation for argument should a baggage handler be caught violating "the contract" flat footed.

Ultimately, it may have been the passing of an era, rather than the direct efforts at remediation, that put an end to the baggage smashers' glory years. The Post Intelligencer editorial appeared in 1914 at the height of railroad passenger service in America, but at a time when the automobile was already significantly infusing its way into passenger counts. The competition was so lop-sided that the outcome of the competition was pretty much settled by World War I, even if it was not comepletely evident to people of the time.

A significant outfall of the newly dominant form of transport was in the way people packed, since automobiles essentially were self-service. Few drivers or autos were physically equipped to handle 300 pound steamer trunks, hence the more versitile suitcase - around since the 1880's - began to hold sway. If nothing else, suitcases took the sport out of smashing baggage, thereby giving baggage smashers little recourse but to reluctantly following respectable ways.

Fashionable people who have spent the summer at the watering-places or at the sea-side, but have now returned to the cities, assert that the baggage-smasher has become more destructive than ever. The baggage-smasher is indeed a terror. In fact, there are two of them: the one who flits from station to station and dumps your poor dumb trunk with force enough to drive piles in a government breakwater, and the one who loiters around the depot watching for his chance to shatter your baggage. The depot baggage-man is the most culpable of the two species. In his long and dark career of smashing trunks, he has evidently knocked the hoops off his conscience, and there is no remorse brave, foolish, or reckless enough to tackle his heart-strings and play on them. -Texas Siftings, November 3, 1888; quoted in Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities by William S. Walsh, page 78 (1892)