[PRCo] Re: Philadelphia You-Tube Video

[Schneider Fred]

Bill Robb and the rest of you.
Regarding the link below to National City Lines in Cleveland, it is a  
PBS series called History Detectives.   I found it yesterday and sent  
it to a friend who has a rabid hatred of NCL and who sends me a lot  
of anti-NCL garbage.   Pasted in below is the note I sent to him last  
night of the strengths and weaknesses of the tape your just forwarded.


Here is another diatribe on National City Lines and General  
Motors.    The link for you to view this is underneath my letter.

I will start by saying that the researcher tried to do a better than  
average job.   It is from Public Broadcasting and they tried not to  
get caught in the usual traps.   They tried to research it well.    
But there is so much out there by people stirring up hatred against  
GM that it is very difficult to find people who can honestly discuss  
these issues.   Even when you think you have an honest reviewer,  
they're not.

What are the flaws in this one?

(1)   So, in this he points out that the city politicians had someone  
on the transit board to control bus purchases.   I should f--king  
well hope so.  What the narrator didn't know or forgot to tell the  
listeners was that Cleveland Transit System (CTS) was one of the  
first four publicly owned urban transit systems in the United  
States.  The city owned CTS.   By god, I would expect them to have  
their people running it!    The tax payers should expect someone from  
city hall to be running the show.

What were the first transit publicly owned ones?   San Francisco  
Municipal Railway was formed in 1912 to provide service in the more  
rural parts of the city but they didn't take over Market Street  
Railway (the big company) and dissolve it until 1944.   Boston  
Elevated Railway was formed in 1897 but became subject to the  
Massachusetts public control act in 1918, at which point five public  
trustees were installed.   It remained a stock corporation with the  
original stockholders guaranteed 6% but it was run by the City of  
Boston from 1918 until dissolved and replaced in 1947 by the  
Metropolitan Transit Authority.  Seattle Municipal Railway dates to  
about 1939-1940.   Cleveland Railway Company, a private stock  
corporation, was sold to the city on 28 April 1942.

(2)  They also make point that a newspaper reporter discovered that a  
retired city politician got a GMC truck franchise.   So what?   For  
one thing, the man was going need the capital up front to pay a  
certain percentage of the inventory in parts and new vehicles and a  
building that he was going to need, and he needed impeccable credit  
to get the banks to loan the rest.   If you or I had that and also  
had the salesmanship and management ability, they would give us a  
franchise too if no one else already had it.   If you had already  
come out of an elected office, that proves that you can sell yourself  
our you would not have been elected in the first place. It does not  
prove he was going to sell buses to Cleveland Transit.  That would  
not have happened.   Bus sales to transit companies went directly  
from the purchaser to the factory in Pontiac, Michigan.   Once he was  
out of office, he would have had no control to funnel bus sales to  
himself.  Even a company as small as Conestoga Transportation in  
Lancaster bought from the factory.

(3)  He is trying desperately to prove that there is a connection  
between Cleveland and GM and NCL.   The connection wasn't there.    
While CTS did buy some GM buses, most if not all  in later years  
after the competition had gone out of business, CTS tended to favor  
Whites.   Why?   Because White buses (and White trucks) were  
manufactured in Cleveland.   It was politically acceptable to support  
the hometown industry.  I think White may have produced their last  
buses around 1952 or so and by then CTS had to turn to GM if they  
wanted a 40-foot bus. CTS also bought a large number of Marmon- 
Herrington and St. Louis trolley buses and 75 St. Louis and Pullman- 
Standard PCC streetcars after World War II.  But he missed the fact  
that CTS was favoring the home town bus builder!   The had a huge  
fleet of White 798s and 1100s running on the streets.

(4)  He fails to note too, something that is probably isn't relevant  
to his story, that Cleveland had a huge exodus of population starting  
in 1930.   It was a steel city.   The loss was reversed during World  
War II, and then it started down again after the war.   The sucking  
sound of people moving out was among the worst of all the U. S.  
cities.   Among the worst?   St. Louis was worst with almost a 60%  
population loss from 1950 to 2007.   Cleveland lost 57%.   Detroit  
and Pittsburgh lost about 50%.   GM and NCL were damn lucky that they  
weren't in Cleveland.   They took a blood bath by being in St.  
Louis.   They sure as hell didn't need to be in the third worst city  
too!

What are the good points in this video?

(1)   It admits the factual truth, right up front, that NCL was not  
guilty of any illegal conspiracy to get rid trolleys.   As I  
explained the other night, it does point out that the only illegal  
thing NCL did was monopolize the market for products among their  
stockholders.   They sent out a written notice to the underlying  
transit companies saying you will buy only from our stock holders.   
Which meant you could only buy a bus from GM or Aerocoach.   You only  
buy tires from Firestone.   You only buy fuel from Phillips (or  
certain other favored suppliers).   And that was got them in trouble  
with the federal government.   As I said, it violated the Sherman  
Anti Trust Act.   [To the group:  This sentence ... "as I said"  
refers to a meeting I was at with the promoters of the Lancaster  
Streetcar Consortium where one man tried to back me into a corner  
about NCL.]

(2)   Blain Hays is a pretty thoughtful person to talk to.  Notice  
that he threw out the number of automobiles registered nationally ...  
very similar parallel to Pennsylvania.  He lives in Erie and worked  
for GE.   I had dinner with him last spring.   The man they  
interviewed down at National Capital also has a pretty good  
reputation ... he was the man who pointed out the actual conviction  
of NCL.   Bradford Snell, on the other hand, was an attorney simply  
out to make a name for himself ... what he said isn't necessarily  
always proven.   Snell just wanted to get his name in print.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To go beyond what I wrote to this friend last night, the one single  
person in the United States who did the most to eliminate streetcars  
had to be New York's mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.   Remember that he  
dictated the removal of all streetcars from New York City in the  
1930s and 1940s ... that is everything that was not already gone for  
economic reasons.   Why do it put him in such a high position?    
Because in 1907, one-third of all the transit fares in the nation  
were were lifted in New York City.   Today it is closer to one- 
half.   In his defense, the elevated lines in Manhattan and Brooklyn  
were partly converted to subway lines and the one-third number  
includes subways.   While Chicago Surface Lines was the largest  
single company in the United States, New York City had four electric  
railways in Manhattan alone, one of which worked in the Bronx, two in  
Brooklyn, two in Richmond, and five or six in Queens.   Collectively  
we're talking probably 10,000 or more streetcars plus the subway- 
elevated fleet.




Fred Schneider

On Dec 26, 2008, at 9:20 PM, Bill Robb wrote:

> Here's a bit of TV reporting on National City Lines and GM and  
> Cleveland.
> http://video.google.com/videoplay? 
> docid=6882337546307300051&ei=YAdUSdycA4rEqQK9x5n2Cw&q=interurban
>
>