Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1906-04-05
FIFTY YEARS OF S> y. so S- s- ~ ~ >. STREET RAILROADING
of the Opening of the First Successful American Horse Car Line Occurred Last Month th--Remarkable Expansion of O Peculiarity
 American Utility.

i In the lndlSt rlal Hall Of Fame, con tributed to the total result which was l first brought to commercial fulfilment
 at Richmond, Va, by Frank J. Sprasue, i'll 1SSS, and which was put
 into operation in q large city system fol the first time in Boston in the year following. Between the earliest
 crude electric cars, often the size of toys, shown as cllriosities at eXposi. tons, summer resorts and county fairs, and the finest type of elevated trains or interurban street cars today there is, of course, an immense diff ference-such q difference as that be-
 tween Dr. Bells queer little tele. phone of 1876 and the protected in- strument of today The electric dyn. amo had to be developed in order that electric traction should be more than theoretically possible A meth cd of overhead contract had to be de- vised, for the third rail type. in the perfection of which the Germans also had a hand. is open to grave practical objections which make it unsuited for ordinary American conditions. Only the trolley name which originat- ed with little experimental line in Kansas City run by John G. Henry.
 or the "broomstick train, as Dr. Holmes quaintly dubbed it, has prov ed 10 be exactly adapted to our na- tional needs outside of the most con gested parts of our greatest cities.
 Boston, as the city in which horse cars were first employed successfully as means of connecting the centre with outlying suburbs through a sys- tenn of transit which truthfully could not be called rapid, but which was much better than the busses that used to crawl along over no definite. route and with no fixed schedule, has taken a pardonable pride in being first in many transportation develop. nets. It was the first of any of the larger cities to take up the overhead trolley. the first to have subway, the first to bring subway, elevated and surface lines together into | single great comprehensive system. Now it is the foremost company. so engineers from every part of the world have admitted, in point of pres. ent day equipment and accomplish. ment
 No city, from a geograp phica loca. tion, has needed rapid transit more no other got it so soon. Nowhere else have the engineers evolved so complete theory of series of short subWays under the congested portion of the city with outgoing elevated lines and surface lines spreading like the ribs of great fan to embrace ! district peopled by considerably more than million inhabitants. Out of the little single line track three miles and half long. over which Lowell and Longfellow and other scholars and literati of the academic town used to make their journeys Gin town. with their feet in cold winter days buried deep in straw, there has grown a network of nearly 45O miles of track, on which about 25O,OOO 900 revenue passengers travel every year.
 The statistics of the use of the cars of this earliest developed of rapid transit systems prove at once it's nee. esslty and it's popularity Riding in the street cars has become something of national passion; nowhere, prob. ably, to the same extent as in Boston The average American in 1890 rode @2 times, while at the time of the is. suing of the last census report in 1902, he rode 6 times. This estimate Includes the denizens of rural com munlties. many of whom do not ride at all from years end to years end. The everyday city man, who in 1890 treated himself to 9S rides was twelve years later contributing 16S niekles annually. The average New Enslander, country and city, rides more frequently than any other Amer. lcan. for the reason that there are more lines and cars in his section than anywhere else. He actually gets on to the car 124 times a year. The New England city man rides on an average 192 times. If he happens to live in the greater Boston he does better still. In the territory covered by the Boston Elevated company. rep. resenting a population of about l. 100000, the average number of rides per individual is in the neighborhood of 21O
 In one other respect the Bostonian likes tO ha1iava that hic nitv u,b;ob