Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-04-12
RATES ARE TOO HIGH.
What a Five Cent Fare to the Suburbs
on the Steam Cars
WOULD Do FOR THE GAS CITY.
Both People and Railroads Would Be Bene-
flied by 1t.
THE CHARGES To EAST LIBERTY

Americans love to travel, and the desire
for change is not confined to the wealthy
who can CRAFTY their aspirations to see
something beyond their native heath. The
poor read, and the desire for an occasional
SHIFT of scene is thereby greatly stimulated.
The consequence is the beginning of dis
cussion of railway rates that promises to
| bear fruit before many years.
Thousands of people are beginning to
wonder why the views of the late Commo-
dore Vanderbilt do not prevail among rail-
way managers. He expressed preference
for carrying human freight on his lines to
the inanimate kind, and many are begin
ming to ask why railway company viii
| carry merchandise at one third or one-fourth
| the price that it charges to carry the same
weight of humanity that loads and unloads
itself and requires no warehouse in which to
| be stored?
The Difference in Rates.
The average passenger weighs less than
| 100 pounds, but ticket to ride ten miles on
most railways in this State will cost 30
cents. The sam2 railway viii carry 400
! pounds of merchandise the same distance
and pay men to load and un-
| load it, furnish warehouse to store it until
called Tor, a bookkeeper to record the
transaction and give you receipt into the
bargain, all for % cents.
Now, some people argue that for local
traffic passenger coaches could be built with
wooden seats and without elaborate uphol-
stering and adornment,ss as cheaply as freight
cars and last much longer. 1t is argued
that there would be more money car
rying passengers ten miles. for 8
| cents on such cars than there is
in carrying ordinary merchandise
at full present rates. For long distances
passengers would doubtless prefer the pres
ent upholstered seats, though the ordinary
ones are scarce more comfortable than plain
wooden ones, but for an hours ride the lat
ter are the most comfortable and less liable
| to harbor and disseminate contagion.
George I. Whitney states that in England
wooden seats give satisfaction to the masses,
and it is well known that in England many
| people among the well-to-do class ride third
class without feeling that they lower their
dignity by so doing.
An Instance of False Pride
It is true that some poor Americans have
idiee priue thdb pTcvcuIS luem lrOm Ouy-
ing second-class tickets, but it is often no.
ticed that this class buys first class tickets,
from here to Chicago for instance, and then
rides the greater part of the way in the
smoker among the second-class people.
Style is dearly bought sometimes at
the expense of safety, aud money expended
| In making safe roa1bed and in sound rails
and all safety appliances would be more ju-
diciously spent than in needless adornment.
While steam and improved machinery
have in the last quarter Of o century cheap
ened many of the necessaries of life 25 to 80
per cent it is notorious fact that it costs as
! much in fare to ride from Pittsburg to Phil
| delphiR- rs it did 40 years ago, when animal
power was the only one employed. 1t is
| true that time is money to most business
men, and the saving in time they regard as
the principal item. but even many business
men are beginning to think that the fare be-
tween here and Philadelphia ought to be
reduced at least one-half and they believe
that the Pennsylvania Railroad would
make more money at the reduction than 1t
does now. But while time is an important
element in business there are hundreds of
thousands of mechanics, laborers and farm
ers who are in enforced idleness a consider
able portion of each year during which
time they would travel, and be the better
lOI IL, Wtfe Tdtes WlLulu meanS-
The Farmers Would Ride More.
Time hangs heavily during two weeks or
a month every winter on the hands of most
farmers and their families. and could they
take trip cheaply it would be educating
and healthful to them and profitable to the
transportation companies. They could visit
the orange groves, and not only escape pneu-
monia, but get by travel more ideas in one
month than by poring over books half
lifetime. There isn't any doubt that travel
would greatly increase, as 1t is proven by
the thousands who take advantage of the
cheap summer excursions to the seashore,
though they generally occur at time that
does not suit people who must work for q
living.
In Austro- Hungary, where railways are
largely subject to Government control and
the zone system of regulating charges is in
effect, travel has become so cheap that even
the ''pauper labor of Europe" cannot afford
to walk, and travel and business generally
has so greatly increased under the new
management that railways pay better than
they did under the old.
Although there are so times as many
steamers plying between New York and
European ports as there were in 1910, when
the Great Western and the Sirius monopo-
lized the steamer passenger traffic, and
though the cost of passage is less than half
what it was then, the immense fleet makes
dividends for its owners, thing impossible
in 1910, and passengers have accommoda-
tions now not dreamed OF then. Reduction
in railway rates in this country would work
even greater results than in ocean travel.
The Fare to East Liberty.
1t will doubtless be news to many people
to learn that in 1852 the Pennsylvania Rail-
road Company carried passengers to East
Liberty for 10 cents, while 35 years later,
when that portion of the company's passen-
ger traffic had increased more than thous-
and fold, the charge was IA cents. Had the
company followed Engineers Rea's advice
and reduced its fare to, say, 5 cents the East
Liberty valley would have been densely
populated and the cable roads would not
now be getting the best custom of the line
west of the suburbs of Philadelphia.
1t has been estimated by a Pittsburg
physician that the substitution of cable and
electric cars for horse power will eventually
greatly improve the sanitary condition of
the city, and it is believed that by the end
of the century brute power will entirely dis
appear and mechanical appliances take Its
place for street traffic. Now let railway
companies continue the good work by carry
ing people out to homes in the country Is
miles in every direction for cents and thus
depopulate all the courts between the Point
and Fiftieth street and Soho in the old city;
between Sawmill run and Beck's run on the
Southside and all the overflow ground in
Allegheny City, and the Department of
Public Health would find no excuse for
further existence.
The City Empty at Night
The benlghted farmers who now sit in
darkness would see great light and be
forced to me Ike good roads and be made happy