James Wolfinger - Running the Rails: Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry

For Amy and Elizabeth

When the Catholic Times posed its questionmore a pointed challenge than a true queryto Philadelphias traction magnates in 1895, it tapped into a pervasive feeling of discontent in the city. That discontent stemmed from Philadelphians mixed, sometimes tortured, relationship with their transportation system. Boosters believed transportation integrated, and integrated smoothly into, a growing city, fostering commerce while helping develop space for housing and industry. As early as 1859 men such as Alexander Easton, writing in his Practical Treatise on Street or Horse-Power Railways, captured the view of transportation as a nearly unadulterated good with an idyllic description of the horsecars employed in the early days of the system: There is no crowd, for the little cars glide along rapidly and frequently, accommodating every body; at a slight signal the bell rings, the horses stop, the passenger is comfortably seated, no rain drops in from the roof, the conductor is always ready to take the fare when offered, and the echo, great improvement, this, is constantly repeated. Two generations later, after electric trolleys supplanted horsecars, the journalist Christopher Morley was equally charmed. Describing Chestnut Street, he wrote of the light sliding swish of the trolley poles along the wire, accompanied by the deep rocking rumble of the car... the clear mellow clang of the trolley gongs, the musical trill of fast wagon wheels running along the trolley rails, and the rattle of hoofs on the cobbled strip between the metals. Such sounds gave Chestnut Street a music of its own, [a] genial human symphony [that] could never be mistaken for that of any other highway. Observing the Chestnut trolleys from a balcony, Morley

Yet at the same time, many Philadelphians came to understand the problems the transit system caused in their city. Horsecars and especially the electric-powered trolleys that replaced them brought danger and violence to children and heedless adults in Philadelphias tightly packed working-class neighborhoods. Corruption ran rampant, leading citizens to claim that Traction owns the town... corrupting the municipality and controlling legislation for their selfish purposes. And, most importantly, private ownership of this public service engendered worker exploitation and class conflict that periodically threw much of the city into turmoil. During the era of private ownership, major transit strikes shook Philadelphia in 1895, 1909, 1910, 1944, 1949, and 1963. The city witnessed many smaller strikes, authorized and wildcat, as well. In the history of Philadelphias transportation system, key themes emerge across generations, including the competing visions of transportation; the violence it brought; the recurring charges and reality of corruption, venality, and graft; the problems posed by private ownership of a public service; and the incessant conflict between labor and management. These themes became common threads in this book for understanding the history of the system from the late nineteenth century to the post World War II period. Yet, of them all, the central importance of labor relations, class relations, stood out clearly.