The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1903-10-22
MINNESOTA, THURSDAY, OCTOBER %, 1903

their sole wants, irrespective of the
rights of their fellow citizens or of
that of the operating company. And
it is this class of people that this article
is aimed at.
There has been a great howl going
up in st. Louisiana the same thing
may he said of nearly every other
street car town in the country-about
motormen at times passing people by,
not stopping to take them aboard. No
reason is ever assigned in the press re-
ports for the motorman's arbitrary &C.
simply "he would not stop the
car and somebody got left" Then cit
izens of the above named village took
to fourishing guns in front of ap-
preaching cars to scare the motormen
into stopping. 1 imagine this worked
about once. After that the motormen
were onto the bluff. Now. there are a
great many legitimate causes for
motorman's or conductors acts that
appear to be nothing more or less than
downright pure cussedness to the aver
age patron who has run up against it.
All street cars run by time table that
is as rigidly enforced as that of steam
road. If it were not so, the many cars
operating all over city would soon be-
come punched" and there would be
no service at all, much less rapid tran
sit. A car company assigns to each
line of its system a number of cars
known as regulars" always sufficient
in number to meet the average daily
traffic on each line. You may be sure
a company will run as many cars as is
compatible with good business manage
ment; to operate more cars to accomo-
date few stragglers now and then
would be poor business policy. 1t would
be paying out dollars to take in nick
ell here and there. Yet the stragglers
expect it and are the chief howlers
about poor service. At certain hours
of the day another set of cars is put
out on the lines. These are known as
"tripper" cars; they make one or more
trips fom one end of the line to the
other to accommodate people going to
and from their daily avocatlons or
places of amusement, etc. AS a rule
these cars run on a time in between
the regulars and are so spaced as to
give as good service as possible.
But car company cannot always
meet every contingency that arises for
the transportation of passengers. Some
days during the busy hours there will
be more passenges to carry than the
average. The cars on hand at the diff
ferent points of congested traffic soon
fill up and are gone; but before they
can discharge their loads they are sure
to meet other patrons along the line
waiting to 60 along, and here trouble
commences. If the car is absolutely
filled, which is more than likely, the
motorman will not stop to give some
one chance to run around the car two
or three times looking for place to
get on, only to get left. So he gives
them the "high ball." They next car
to come along may be in same condi-
tion and that does not stop. Maybe
for the same reason the next car does
likewise. But you can be pretty sure
the next one is in condition to take
all who art waiting and have perhaps
been waiting eight or ten minutes for
nsportation-which is not bad by
any means when one stops to consider
the thousands of passengers to be TAX
en- care of. Yet there are lots of these
people ready to blame the motorman
for this short wait, and perhaps report
him at the general Office. The COM
pany, however, hardly ever takes more
than formal notice of such reports.
The greatest amount of trouble be-
tween car crew and the public hap
pens as rule at such hours of the
day and night when traffic is not
heavy, and invariably it is all ow-
ing to the obstinacy, ignorance, su-
perciliousness, and pure cussedness
of the "hogs." But ignorance is the
main cause. To begin with, for pur-
poses of illustration I'll divide this
class of patrons as follows: Those who
are always imposed upon by the car
and the waiting curbstone passen-
gers before mentioned are of these
and those who do the imposing. Now
it's obvious that a car company in order