Omaha daily bee., 1909-02-14

considerable part of the line, most of this work being done
on Farnam and North Eighteenth Streets.
For the first time in it's history the Horse Rail
way made money. The profits were substantial.
But every dollar of profit was put back into the
railway in extensions and betterments. Not one
cent was paid in dividends.
From 1883 to 1889 between $500, 900 and $500, 900 was
spent on the construction, reconstruction and equipment of
the Omaha Horse Railway. At the end of the period there
were about IS cars in service, 900 horses owned and worked
and 25 persons employed. There were about IS miles
of line.
The large amount expended on the Horse Railway in
these years was practically swept away by the introduction
of cable tramways and the application of electricity to urban
transportation. The money was paid out to give Omaha
street car service during a time of wen-advsed doubt over
the desirabnity of cables and uncertainty as to what might
be expected from electricity.
The cable had been demonstrated a practical working
success in a number of cities and no doubt existed but that
this power method was better than horses. But the posi-
biities of trolley operation had been foreShadowed and men
gifted with optimism had attempted to picture its immeas-
urable superiority over the cable trans.
What good was to be produced if large sums were to be
paid out, streets torn up and cables installed, if in a year or
two electric railways would be proved successful and practical
/. beyond dispute?
This was the question that confronted capitalists, trac-
ton managers, city councils and the people in the middle and
later sos. 1t was a question that required time and experience
to answer. In the meantime the public asked insistently for
something better than horse cars, adventurous men took
chances and made vivid promises in exchange for franchise
rights and street railway operators studied the subject night
and day, conscious of their experience with horse railways
and feeling that they must, in prudence, be conservative.
Cable construction was costy-much more SO than horse
railway construction. Some cities escaped entirely the waste
of capital in cable roads, but Omaha did not Gable roads
not only were built here, but were permitted to parallel the
horse cars on certain streets.
Competition at that time was popularity believed to be a
solution of public utility problems. This is evidenced by the
fact that in Omaha, subsequently, granting afranchse for cable
roads, the city council granted franchises for two electric rail-
ways at the same time and under the same conditions.
In the closing years of horse car operation Omaha nat
urally and properly wanted the best street railway transporta-
ton, even though it was not clear what was to be best in the
future. Civic pride, the desire tor fastand comfortable transit,
and the determination not to be outrivaled in metropolitan
accomplishments by competitors, made Omaha willing to
encourage the expenditure of capital that might never pay
out on the utilities it actually was invested in.
The people and the municipal officials invited promot-
eS (using the word in its best sense as meaning leaders in
legitimate new enterprises) to accept franchises to secure the
money of others and to spend it and their own money, in new
kinds of street railways. The main thing was to get the in
novations and to do SO at the earliest possible moment
G. w. President,