Clipping

[Kenneth Josephson]

"Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:

> Thought you folks might like the attachments ... HTML, Word 95 or TEXT
> ... you should be able to open one of them.
>
> A wonderful editorial from a 1901 edition of the Lancaster New Era
> telling us that rural trolley lines can be profitable and that
> promoters
> should be honest!

What a scream. But let's look at another side of the story. There was
considerable debate as to whether or not the automobile would become a
viable and competetive alternative to the horse and buggy for those who
could afford either.

Few people thought the automobile, perfected or not, would ever become
widely available to the masses. Few planners envisioned suburbs beyond
the final reach of the carlines. No one really imagined the "superfarms"
we know of today. The distinction between rural and urban was still
relatively black & white. So it was easy for outsiders and even a few
insiders to imagine nothing displacing the streetcar or interurban at
the turn of the century (yeah, I know, the last century.) Look at  John
I. Beggs, shrewd and ruthless in business, but carrying to his grave the
belief that electric railways would remain a permanent and viable
transportation mode for both the urban and rural dweller. Mr. Beggs died
in 1925 and the system he ran (Milwaukee) continued to plow huge sums of
money into improving its interurban service until the early 1930s!

The steam railroads knew all along that passenger service would never be
likely to generate a profit. And commuter operations were big money
losers from the start. Many trolley systems were eventually cast off by
their parent corporations as the "parents" became major electrcity
generating systems. The Holding Company Act was a Godsend to many of
these systems, whether they admitted it or not.

But in 1901, few people could have predicted the major changes beginning
at the close of WWI.
Ken