The New York herald., 1876-02-27
Horse Car Finance.

Every car on a street railroad costs, or is
supposed to cost, one thousand dollars
Horses are rated as worth one hundred and
fifty dollars each, and the lines are equipped
on the basis of four horses to car. 1t will
be liberal to allow one hundred dollars for
harness Thus to count seventeen hundred
dollars as the investment for each car, its
horses and harness and to allow that any
line, say the Third avenue, has two hundred
and fifty cars. this part of its equipment
costs it four hundred and twenty-five thou
sand dollars. To lay the rails in the streets
costs ten thousand dollars mile and as the
Third avenue has sixteen miles, its road cost,
therefore, one hundred and sixty thousand
dollars. For real estate for stables, Office,
&C., allow four hundred and fifteen thousand
dollars very liberal allowance indeed
and we find that this line, built and
equipped and ready to run, with more cars
than it possesses-with cars enough almost
to accommodate its traffic-may be
counted as costing one million dol
lars. Allow an interest of seven per
cent, and the road owes to its orig
the sum of seventy thousand dollars per an.
mum. For two hundred and fifty conduc-
tors and two hundred and fifty drivers at
two dollars and half day, the yearly out
lay would be $456, $50. For two hundred
stablemen at a dollar day, seventy thou
sand dollars. For president say twenty
thousand dollars year, and for all other
officers and bosses say, together fifty thou
sand dollars. For feed accounts one thou
sand horses, two hundred thousand dollars
a year, and for repairs fifty thousand dol
lars Let us allow margin of two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars for points not
specified, and then with every item allowed
on the most liberal scale it costs to run the
Third Avenue Railroad eleven hundred and
sixty-six thousand dollars year. For the
year 1878 this road in its official report ad-
mitted an income of two millions one hun
dred thousand dollars, which was therefore
clear profit of nine hundred thousand
one year, as reported by the company is
actually enough to pay for the whole road,
to build it and equip it. But we
rely as little upon the returns made
by the company of its receipts as
upon the return made of its expen-
ditures. On the expenditure side in
genuity is strained to swell the account.
Every horseshoe is put down as worth five
dollars; every item that amounts to ten
thousand dollars turns up at fifty thousand
in the report and, on the other hand, re-
ceipts are put at the lowest figure that it is
thought the public will credit 1t is safe, in
any case, to count the receipts of horse car
company as double the amount put down in
its report But it appears that to accept the
receipts even as the companies report them
they give a return of one hundred per cent
on the actual capital invested in the road.
On the fictitious capital, on the watered
stock and bogus bonds, they may not give
that but the public is not to be oppressed
in order to sustain the roguery of these COM
panies. 1t is demonstrable that on the real
value of these roads q good dividend can be
paid with the fare reduced to three cents
and with cars enough put on to accommo-
date the passengers.