Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-04-05


 month marks the fiftieth anniversary
 of the beginning of modern street rail
 roading. On March 26, 1856, a horse
 railroad was opened for traffic be-
 tween Bowdoin Square, Boston, and
 Harvard Square, Cambridge-not, in-
 deed, absolutely the first of it's kind,
 but the first to be continuously sue-
 eessfu. making start in the dlrec.
 ton of it's logical successor, the most complete and comprehensive rapid
 transit system in the world.
 Many years before 1856 New York City had seen the advent of a lumb- erins omnibus car known as the "John Mason" which horses drew over strap rails laid on stone ties, but this was hardly street railway in the modern sense of the word. nor did it lead to similar enterprises in other cities The metropolis also saw attempts at constructing other horse railroads, about the middle of the nineteenth century. but the cred it of establishing the first conner eial street railway line with a con- tinuous record belongs to Boston. Just as soon as it's success was dem- onstrated similar reads began to be started all over the country, and the half century work of improving and readaptiHg was on i'll earnest. With in so brief Il time American enter prise has created an industry involv. ing, at the time of the assurance of the special report of the census office on street and electric railways in 1902. the laying of 22.57G miles of track, on which ply 60.290 passenger cars. carrying total of nearly five billion fare passengers a year, and giving employment to an army of 150,0 ,000 men, about twice as many as are in the regular standing army of the United States.
 Since the first little group of horse cars began to jangle and rattle out ward from the West End of Boston. across the bridge immortalized by over the then untenanted marshes of Cambridgeport to the classic precincts of Harvard universi- ty, momentous changes have been in the ever improving street car service with which every Ameri- can city is now provided Sociologi- cal effects have every where been no- ticed. Through cheap transportation facilities the population has been spread out, people have been enabled
 Q live at a distance from their work. and the cluster of suburbs around ev- cry American centre of population, almost unknown in Europ- can countries, has become one of the most marked features of our civiliza- ton. Everybody has come to take he convenient street car and it's five cent fare as a matter of course, and )nly the older generation of Ameri- cans remembers the time when there was reason as we'll as rhyme in Mark rwain's haunting jingle:
 Conductor. when you receive fare, Punch in the presence of the pessen-
 jare," with it's attendant adiuration to be careful about the color of the trip slips representing three. five and sightcent fares.
 The technical changes alone in the methods of street car operation have been of tremendous importance. Ami. nal traction has nearly gene out. for ess than two hundred miles of horse car line are now in use in the United States. The cable systems, too. which v one time were so popular in many he cities of the country, have be- 'ome we'll nigh obsolete They were irst introduced about 1873; before
 S9S they had virtually disappeared n favor of overhead or underground rolley systems Electricity as a mo- i've power was already being seri- 'rsly considered at the time when he first successful horse car line was operated in Boston, but many inven- ions were necessary before a depend 'ble trolley Car could be put upon 'ails. Just such tireless energy as is LOW being expended upon the prob. em of navigation of the air was spent or many years by experimenters in electric traction, who often seemed 0 their contemporaries to be hope ess visionaries.
 The pioneer work of Thomas Day- import. Professor Moses G. Farmer. Professor C. G. Page of the Smith sonian institution, Thomas Hall of Boston, Henry Pinkus. Stephen B. Iin11 Tbon,ac Edicop oo nof+