Norwich bulletin., 1919-07-21
MEDIATION COMMITTEE 10 TRY TO
 EFFECT ARBITRATION IN STRIKE

hours of work, A trolley empleye whose wages had been $1,500 in the
 past year had made it by working 1o
 hours as a. motorman and hours al
 time and a half as train despatcher
 each day.
 i Mayor Morgan read the figures of
 the enormous increase of meats in
 cold storage in this country in the
 past year and said he thought there
 ought to be some investigation and
 I resuia tion of this as cure for the
 strike situations that we are having
 all over the country.
 | Shore Line President.
 i President Robert w. Perkins of the
 Shore Line road was called upon by
 MT Miner as an expert on the trolley
 subject.
 MT. Perkins disclaimed being an ex-
 pert but said he was the representa-
 tive of one of the victims of peculiar conditions that are driving the trolley 1 companies to the wall. 1t is the same story everywhere It is not question or present wages alone. but whether the trolley lines shall be saved to run, MT Perkins reminded his hearers that he had warned them last October not l to worry about the rate of fare but whether they should have transporta- i ton at all in the future.
 Financial Comparisens.
 1 Because of the down grade since 1 1910 which has now reached a place
 where gross revenue is less than op- erating expenses MT. Perkins said that i it was evident that MT. Plant had been giving trolley service for ten years at 1 less than cost. and he went into fig ures to show the difference between i 1914 and 1918. He gave the following: l; Gross revenue in 1914. $1,272.5S in 1918, $1.524,16s. an increase of s251, 519; operating expenses in 1s1N $8s9,- 017; in 1918. s1.47S:251. an increase of sas9,204; net return in 1914. s3s3,572; fr Tlai I leaving a return oa investment of s3oo, ,206, which is 2.44 per cent In 1918 the net return was $4S.s47, with which to pay s6S.266 in taxes
 meaning a defciency of s2231s, and to this was to be added s41.725 for eapi- tai epenses. which meant that the Shore Line owners had to go into their pockets to the extent of S64044 for the pleasure of owning the road. Far 1919 the conditions are worse 1 for there is operating loss of s32- 900 up to the first of June, and the entire shortage for the five months is
 saoea In 1914 the wage account was s47a. .as1, in 1918 ss1o.s5o. increase of s3s5,01s.
 In the effort to reduce operating expenses, Mr. Perkins said, the car mileage run has heen reduced from 4,457.e56 ear miles to 3,94SSo9 car miles through this diminished service results to certain extent in dimin- ished patronage. The road is seoo,- oVO Oii tiiC WIOHS sue Ol lHe le1SeT
 and if it were not for the Plant abso- lute ownership would have been in the hands of a. receiver long ago. One | of the advantages of a receivership the dead ends which are not naying. Now that cannot be done without for feiting the whole franchise. He gave these figures of cempara- tive expenditures in the different de- partments of operation: Way and structure-1s14. s163.644. in 1918 s250,- ooe; maintenance. in 1914. s72, ,s25 in 1918. SIPS. 315; power. in 1914. s2o1,- 7s6. in 1918. s4s4.so1; conducting 1918. s467,o52: traffic. in 1914. s2.7o2, in 1918, s1.2s3: general and miscel-
 laneous. in 1914. $155.1s9; in 1918, s1s6,s
 MT. Plant Paid 6ranford Wreck Claims.
 The road had been faced with the necessity of a receivePsfip. MT. Per kins said. as a result of the Branford
 wreck on Aug. 13, 1917, when it looked 1 as if the claims might aggregate half a million. He had called the di- situation to them- MT. Plant then did what Mir. Perkins said he consid- cred one of the noblest acts of the
 n1illionaire's life. He told MT. Per kins to go ahead and settle the claims and MT. Plant paid for them out of
 ss5O, ,oOO
 Negotiations With Employees. In the recent negotiations with the employees MT. Perkips said. the men i haven't believed what I told them about the condition of the road. I told i them I couldn't pay any more wages but MT. O'Brien said. Oh, you can get the money. and they took exception to the provision of arbitration that an l award, in case it advanced wages, was i,,o n he no i financially able to pay them. I can't even promise that all the property will be o11erating this fall. You f<a the abandonment of a large part of the road. I'm sorry that some of the
 men seem to think I'm enough of crook to attempt to put up a false | statement to them in view of the re- ports to state and interstate commis-
 SiOnS and the audItS that the accounts
 have to stand.
 Mir. Perkins said he had come to the
 conclusion that all interurban trolley i traffic would ultimately have to be abandoned, except in the middle west, for roads that cannot run on sched- ule oftener than an hour, cannot pay
 But the other trolley service can never
 be supplanted by the jitney competi- tion.
 Jtney Competition. On the point of jitney competition. he said that the history of the jitney
 showed that it was a transitory thing.
 It had started in the west and grad ualy worked dast and had died out wherever it had been given trial. The jitney men run for a while. but find by experience how costly is the up- keep and then look around for an- other sucker to sell out to, telling rosy stories of the big money they have
 made. The life of a bus is only about 100000 miles. After that it is nothing but junk heap. but trolley car will make 1oOo miles in a sea- son and last for many years. The Shore Line president claimed that the state had done the trolley companies a big wrong by practically going into business with one class of transportation, the jitney owners, and putting the burden on another class, the trolley roads. The state prepares good roads for the automobiles and then invites them to go in and do up the trolley companies. who had been granted franchises under the belief that they were getting monopolles. The state highway department has ex-