The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-24
YEARS OF TROLLEY TRIPPING "sroomstick Car" Appeared
 Two Decades Ago IT IS NOW OMNlPRESENT An Important Factor In Transporta- ton and Has Opened Vast
 Field for Investment.
 World Benefited.
IT IS NOW OMNIPRESENT

World Benefited.
 Boston, May 23.-(Special. )-Twenty years ago this spring Boston street rail- way manager went to Richmond, Va, to inspect the newly opened trolley line. other, start their cars from the car barn and go buzzing up hill and down through the city streets. The spectacle was some thing new In street railroading.
 The Richmond line, the first practical application on any scale of the principle of the overhead trolley, had been in ope- ration since February il, 1888. Of it's sue cess there was no question: The Bos- tonian went home to take immediate steps for the installation of a trolley sys- tenn on one of the lines leading outward from the Hub. Boston was thus the first very large city of the United States to begin to electrify its street car services. Since then in the brief space of two dec aces there have been built in this coun- try alone trolley roads which carry more than five billion passengers annually
 If one person had to do all the trolley tripping for all his fellow Americans he would travel in straight line more than fifty thousand times around the earth. In order to finish his task in a single year he would have to go day and night at a rate of about 15O, 900 miles an hour say POGO times as fast as the human voice Is carried through the air. At the present rate of growth of the industry he would be obliged a few years hence to exceed the velocity with which the light leaps from sun to planet.
 
 All this in twenty years. The modern world moves fast. Men who would re- sent Dr. Osler's chloroforming were stu dents at Harvard University a little less than two decades ago when the plush seated vehicles remodelled from horse cars and provided with motors and con- trollers, began to zip to the accompani- ment of sparks from the overhead wire along Main Street into Bowdoin Square, Boston. That and one other were the only electric lines in the country besides the one at Richmond Today the student in any of the New England universities can travel by trolley far into the Middle West or to a considerable distance south ward or northward along the coast.
 Often as the story of trolley develop ment has been told the rapidity with which 1t has taken place is not always appreciated This sort of electric trans
 
 life time of boy the horse has been re- tired. Because of the inconvenience of animal power as a motive street car managers everywhere a few years ago were eagerly watching the outcome of experiments with electric traction. For years they had kept watch on the pio- neer efforts: Thomas Davenport's little circular toy railroad shown at Spring field, Mass, in 1885: Professor Moses c. aa,sc lad Y,ft a1id battery in 1S47; Thomas Halls toy motor car on a 40-foot track, the marvel of vis- itors at Charitable Mechanics Fair at Boston, 1857; Professor c. G. Pages trial motor car run over the Washington and Baltimore railroad in 1879; the trial mot or cars experimented upon by the wiz ard of Menlo Park in the early eighties; Leo Daft's experimental roads exhibited at Coney Island and Mechanics Insti- ute Fair at Boston in 1884; Chas. J. Van Depoeles' demonstration line at the New Orleans Exposition of 1885: John c. Hen ry's Kansas City Independence line, first exemplifying the overhead wire system with a rod which the management of the road called a troller but which the em- ployees called the trolley, fixing the name of the system for all time. When finally Frank J. Spragues system at Richmond was declared successful practical men
 
 the change as soon as possible.
 To help them do this 1t happened that within a very few years after the first successful operation at Richmond great ceal of money became available for what appeared certain to become a profitable form of investment The steam railroads ir the early nineties seemed to have been pretty well constructed. Many of them I1r G%al IA fAxx decades before. Particularly in New England, where SO many of the great continental lines were projected, and to an extent elsewhere, owners of railway stocks were beginning to sell their hold ings and to re-invest in electrical enter prises. Telephone securities appealed to many, with the result that today, as President Vail has recently shown, more than three-fourths of the share capital of the parent company of the Bell sys- tenn is held in New England.
 Many others, particularly during the dull times about 1892 and 1898, put capi- tai for which there were but small dvi- dends in the established industrial en- terprises, into trolley projects. Electric street car systems were installed in all the more populous cities, after superced- ing the cable cars which had been in- vented about 1873. Frequently there were several DLlle eleClIlC llrdctlOl tOiipdHltS in city; later came such consultations in the direction of efficiency as the Bos- ton Elevated Railway company, the De- troit Unite Railway company, the New Orleans Railways company, the United Railways and Electric company of Bal timore and many others. Toward the end of the nineties came the beginning of the great interurban systems of the Middle West, one of the most prominent pro- noted by New England interest which has since come to grief, but most of them successfully and conservatively financed The whole country had awak- ened to perception that the trolley was going further. Figures told a remark able, growth. Some 5000 miles of track In 1890 had expanded to nearly 23OOO in 1902S The number of fare passengers more than doubled in 12 years The mum Der of employees became an army twice the size of the standing army of the United States
 The time came early when not only the largest cities and their suburbs were seen to offer field for electrical equip ment but places of from twenty to two hundred thousand as we'll. Capital from the eastern money markets was on the lookout for investment in traction eter- en modern transportation, usually by CO., MAD ID DHINE