Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-10-01
THE DAWN OF SoPHISTIcATioN
BREAKS AT LAST IN NEW YORK
A Home Rule Plan for Street Cars
Which Shows That cliff Dwellers
AREN'T So Artless as They
Sometimes Seem

Sometimes Seem
| FASHIONS come and go and change, even
in public opinion. To be really stylish,
| for example, you must believe that the city
| Of New York is the last stronghold and abid-
ing place of the irrecaimnble hick.
| 1t is fact that one of the richest markets
| for fake oil stock is in the general region of
| Forty second street and Broadway. Folk
from up burlington County way and from
| Quakertown and such like places look at the
funny restaurant cards when they go to
Manhattan. and at the FIVE dollar highbals
and the Greenwich Vilager. and Mayor
Hylan and Tammany Hall and the roof
garden shows, and wink gravely at one an
other while they hurry away to Staten
Island or Jersey to laugh in a truly ribald
manner.
But the world ought to be fair to the
Manhattanese. They have achieved more
than skyscrapers and the stage bath and the
most distressing police administration known
to man.
They have FIVE cent trolley fares on their
surprisingly efficient lines. They have al
ways had them-even while the rest OF the
country has had TO dig painfully for more.
They propose to keep nickel fares and, with
that purpose in view, they have formulated
plan for the merger and future municipal
ownership of all street car systems on their
! island.
They believe that they can buy all sub
way, overhead and surface lines and re-
| order them in one system for the good OF
the city, and then retire their purchase bonds
with future profits from fve-cent fares
| They have REDEEMED the issues ut stake In a
| hundred controversies and formulated SIM
| pie prnci"ie that sooner or later must be
universally acceptable.
They hold by inference, that in every
largo city trolley service is n necessity of
life and that it should be free forever from
the depressing influence Of political and
financial opportunism.
The cliff dwellers are indubitably right in
that assumption. So large have American
cities grown that you cannot get to work
without the trolleys. You cannot get home
without them. You cannot hold a job or
earn living or do the days shopping with
out the incidental help Of the street cars.
Street car systems ought to be as free
from deliberate exploitation by profit takers
as the water supply Is. Ordinarily there Is
no substitute-no alternative.
The service may be too costly or il may
be inadequate poorly organized as to
! be an absolute detriment to business and to
| the community. You have to take it OF
! leave it. You take it as a matter Of course.
! Who would walk from Germantown to Mar
| ket street or from West Philadelphia to
Kcnsngton?
The people in New Jersey have been won
dering why street car fares 60 steadily up
ward while the quality OF the service main
tans downward trend. In this city few
people know the basic truth about the ap-
! palling tangle of transit affairs which has
led to unused elevated structures and rising
| fares
Much Of the trouble is due TO absentee
ownership Of the street car systems. A
group of fnanciers sitting in Buffalo or in
New York naturally can know little or
nothing about the transit requirements Of
Camden, n j. But as matters are going
nowadays, they may have full power to die.
tate the rate Of fare and the operating policy
Of the Camden car lines. II schemes Of
financial Capitalization and control now being
worked ont are perfected, an exclusive group
Of large investors may obtain complete con
troll of most OF the big street car systems
in the East. including the lines in this city
The expanding influence OF these ambi-
tious inanciers is largely responsible for the
steady increase of street railway fares in
regions where competitive transit service
| Is not maintained
knowledge Of this general movement
toward q new sort OF street car monopoly
Is in part responsible for the scheme OF
mergers and municipal ownership now pro-
posed in New York. The people in New
York want to get their car lines out OF the
stock market.
Can they get them out OF politics, tooY
Proponents Of municipal trolley control
have rpassuring answer for that question.
They believe that the practice of municipal
ownership would be fatal to "thc rotten
politicians" whose sins are forever being
rccOunted in defense Of the private owner
ship Of basic public utilities. Men who
support the New York plan insist that the
public toerates rotten politics only 70 long
as it feels no direct injury from the system
The public will not realize that it is beins
hurt every day indirectly. But translate
Tammanyism or Earelsm in terms Of street
believe, You will have the public on til,
warpath in no timn.