The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1912-12-24
An indianapolis Newspaper
Gives Publicity to Strug-
gle of the City with Street
Car Company.
OUTLINES STORY
OF THE COMPANY
City Demands Public Utility
Commission as Result Of
Trouble with Service Cor
porations.

A staff correspondent of an Indiana
polls newspaper writing on the desire
of Richmond for the establishment of
a public utility commission reviews the
contest between the city and the Terre
Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Trac-
tion company and it's predecessors.
The text of the news dispatch in
part follows:
The citizens of Richmond are so
anxious to have enacted law Great
ing a public utilities commission that
they have appointed a committee of
five citizens to help it along This
committee will send letter to each
member of the legislature in a few
days. ~>r
The city of Richmond has never had
any luck with its corporations. It's
corporations always had all the good
fortune and the municipality always
all the misfortune. So the munich
pality is after public utilities COM
mission in hopes that it can thus get
an even break with the corporations.
Richmond has trouble with it's water
company, with it's gas company and
with the street railway and interur-
ban systems. 1t is of the latter this
dispatch will relate. The gas and wa
ter propositions will be the subject of
another story.
Owns All Street Car Franchises.
In the beginning, 1t should be ex-
planned that the Terre Haute, Indiana
polls and Eastern Traction lines does
not wish any kind of public utilities
commission. 1t does not even wish an
act entitled public utilities law, and
this company owns all the street car
franchises in Richmond. The street
car system here was originally con-
structed by local capitalists and it was
finally sold to what was called the
Richmond City Street Railway com
pany This company bought the prop.
erty to sell, and few years ago pur-
chasers were found in the persons of
John F. Miller, then general superin
tendent of the Pennsylvania lines, and
Daniel G. Reid, the multi-millionaire
at that time assistant cashier in a 10
cal bank.
Every day some one representing
the street car company would dump
half bushel or so of nickels into Mr.
Reids bank and Mr.. Reid could not
help but see what great business
the line was doing. The cars were
crowded all the time and photographs
of those crowded cars are still in ex
istence in Richmond.
Many Tickets, But Few Nickels.
The deal was made and Mr.. Miller
and Mr.. Reid placed I. A. Gormon, the
present superintendent of police, in
charge of the operation of the prop
erty. But Mr.. Gormon could not get
the nickels. They did not come in
And he found, too, several thousand
tickets in possession of the citizens OF
Richmond that had been given them
pany.
Il had an awful time of it, laughed
Mr.. Gormon. Il don't know where the
nickels that were dumped into Dan
Reid's bank came from, but l suspect
they were sent here from Indianapolis
and for more than year | was refus
ing tickets that had been given away
originally by the company in order. to
make a showing that the company was
doing a big business. Honestly my
shoulders used to ache" continued Mr.
German. from putting fellows off the
cars that were trying to ride ON these
deadhead tickets"
Murdock Gave Good Service.
The line was next sold to James
Murdoch, of Lafayette. and his asso
ciates, and what was called the Muir
dock syndicate gave the people here a
much better service than ever, Their
the Murdocks sold the line to the
Terre Haute, indianapolis and Eastern
Continued on Page Eight)