Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1920-03-11

Miami. Fla, March s.-Miami had
a titney service which is said by
widely travelled persons to be one
Of the best In the United States.
But this jitney service has . greater
distinction than that. 1t has fought
two corporations and the city coun-
ell and licked them all. 1t now
parks its cars on the street car
tracks which are mere mementos
of . dead enterprise, and it has
also put q bus line out of business.
These giant-killing feats it ACCOM-
plished in . dramatic struggle by
reason Of having the people back
Of 1t. The Miamians liked their
little jitney service End they refused
to let it die.
This battle between the independ-
emit jitney operators and the street
car and other corporations is of
course an old story. The same
fight has been fought in scores Of
cities. But almost il not quite ev-
erywhere else the corporations have
won out. In these United States,
for some reason, corporations al
most invariably win out against in
dependent operators Of any kind.
Organized money seems to COM
mand the sympathy Of Judges and
legislators to an almost incredible
extent, and the public seldom has
NERVE enough to take . hand in the
game. Here the legislators sym
pathized with the corporations, too,
but the public made it's wishes in
the matter most clearly known, lit
orally taking both law and equity
into their own hands. 1t is re-
freshing to discover one instance in
which the little fellows won out.
1t would appear that the street
car service in Miami, however, was
never a very big fellow and Ger
tainly not a very efficient one. 1t
is said that the people used to run
to their doors to watch the street
cars go by, it happened SO seldom.
None-the-less, old citizens remem-
Der that way back about 1917 the
street car company made some kind
Of an attempt to have the jitneys
put out Of business and that the
, attempt failed. Then the car barn
and all of the street cars burned
up, and the car company was out of
the running.
1t was then that the real enemy
of the jitney drivers was organized
in the form of bus company which
| proposed to operate large motor
buses over the same routes the
jitneys travelled. It is said that they
intended to charge 10 cents for ex-
actly the same trips that were cost
ing the citizens a nickel in the jit-
neys. 1t is also said that they had
signs all painted and ready for use,
charging quarter for a trip that
could be made in a jitney for a
dime. But it never got a chance
to use these signs.
About the time the bus company
was organized, the town council
passed law which placed a variety
OF limitations upon the operation of
jitneys. The most formidable of
these made it necessary for each
driver of a jitney to furnish bond
for the good behavior of himself
and his car in the sum of several
thousand dollars. It was a sum
which no jitney driver could pos
sibly pay. 1t was intended and ex-
pected, by some people. to be the
death of the Miami jitney service.
Protected by this law, the bus
line put eight buses into opera
ton with the fare fixed at a dime
where the jitneys had charged a
nickel. But the buses Immediate
!ly encountered the formidable diff
ficulty that almost nobody would
| ride in them. They made their
regular and scheduled trips in lone
ly and empty state
Meantime, all Of the jitneys re-
appeared on the street. 1t was
against the law for them to operate
for hire without having put up that