The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-02-27

A REVOLUTIONARY AGENT.
On Feb. s, 1883, the first electric car was
successfully run in Richmond, Va. A few
months previous, engineers consulted by a
street-railway company declared that the
propulsion of street cars by electricity is
wholly impracticable." On the tenth anni-
versary of the experiment in Richmond
there were 1900 miles of track employing
5000 motors and trailers and carrying mill
lions of passengers. The achievement is not
so much a development as a revolution
The trolley has found its way into every
large city except New York, and it IS a
very backward village of any size which
has not its trolley line. The thousands of
mules and horses which, often with great
cruelty, were used for the propulsion of
street cars have vanished. The motorman,
mechanic, has supplanted the man with
the blacksnake whip These cars, which
jolted along at the rate of five miles an
hour, have been replaced by that run
fifteen miles an hour Suburban villages
which, in 1880, were an hour and half
from the heart of a city by mule cars that
ran infrequently and uncertainty, have been
brought within thirty minutes by the troll
ley. The congested districts of populous
cities are being relieved by the trolley,
which transfers forty or fifty people from
the slums into the open country in half an
hour. The ten thousand hitherto sub
merged in crowded and vile tenements are
being drawn out and set down in new cot
tages with cheaper rents, pure air and
new life by this revoutionizer and re-
former. Boards of health with their long
codes of rules and fussy regulations cannot
be taken into account in promoting the pub
lie health, with the trolley With other
things, the trolley has doubled the value
of property within ten miles of cities like
Indianapolis. With the shorter day of la
Dor, the wage Garner can have home in
the suburbs and time to enjoy family and
leisure.
In the beginning of it's second decade the
trolley is reaching out beyond the limits of
the city and its suburbs. When two or
three short gaps are closed one can go from
Providence. r. L., to Portland, Me-, in troll
ley cars. Michigan has trolley line
ninety miles long, and a trolley fever" in
and villages. Judging from what has been
done, one need not be a prophet to assert
that towns to which it will not pay to build
steam railroads will be brought into touch
with the busy world by the Introduction Of
the electric railway. The experiments with
the third rail- which has been proved to be
the cheaper method of transmitting the
electric current, will bring this new agent
of transportation within the reach of yet
larger number of localities
Judging from tho achievements of cleo
trio propulsion in the past decade, there
seems to be no limit to it's usefulness. The
cheapest motor now, it Is sure TO be greatly
cheapened by experience and new inven-
tons. We should not be surprised if the
| trolley or some of it's successors shall solve
the problem of good roads between hamets
| and railway stations When an electric
track can be put down for from 5000 to
$1,000 mile, it win be found to be much
cheaper than any system of good road MAX
ing for the use of a carriage drawn by ami
| mails. What farmer would drive his team
ten or twenty miles into town or to the
railroad station, taking from two to four
hours, if loaded if he could load his prod
uce into an electric car and be in the CEN
ter of traffic in half an hour? From the
wonders which electricity as a motor has
| performed during the past ten years, it may
be counted with certainty that before the
end of its second decade most of the viii
lagos and haInlets within thirty or forty
miles will be connected with indianapolis
by electric railways.
The effect that the bringing of city and
country into close connection will have
upon both city and country will be to turn
the city into country and the countrys into
the city. All the complaint that farm life
is irksome because of its isolation will
cease because the cause of complaint will
be removed while the man who desires
greater space than the city affords can
have home out in the country while doing
business in the city. In reality the full de-
velopment of the electric motor will blend
| city and country into one.