t ..: i ' ! 
 
 
 THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 OF 
 
 'HE ELECTRIC RAILWAY. 
 
 A PAPER'; 5 ' 
 
 BY 
 
 T. C. MARTIN, 
 
 Editor of THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, New York. 
 
 LEAD BEFORE, AND PRINTED BY, THE N^W YORK 
 ELECTRICAL SOCIETY ELECTRICAL SECTION 
 
 OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 
 
 APRIL, 1890. 
 
- 
 
THE SOCIAL SIDE 
 
 OP 
 
 THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY. 
 
 Bv T. C. MARTIN. 
 
 A MONTH or two ago we had the pleasure of listening in this 
 hall to a most interesting paper by Mr. & RanA jjrreea^ on the 
 development of electric traction. I hr.4> ]Jievioufsly prccftiyed the 
 secretary of the society a paper on the same subject, but I felt it 
 would be useless for me to traverse the same ground again. Mr. 
 Greene spoke *with authority, and not as one of the newspaper 
 scribes ; and I was glad to learn from him and accept most of 
 his conclusions. I recognize the fact, however, that he dealt 
 with the topic mainly on its technical side, as a specialist of 
 experience, and that there was still a very important branch of 
 the subject on which a few helpful words might be said naaiely, 
 the relation of the electric railway to the public and to social 
 conditions generally. 
 
 Few of us stop to think of the enormous diff erence that facili- 
 ties for travel make in our lives. I do not refer to the opportu- 
 nities and appliances for long journeys, but to the simple every- 
 day transportation that we calmly accept as a prime condition of 
 existence. It is probably safe to say that every one of us came 
 here to-night, and will go home, without depending on our legs 
 to make the trip. But this is altogether modern, and to the 
 generation immediately preceding ours would have seemed as 
 unlikely as that, from total lack of exercise our legs should 
 become atrophied and own no function of pedestrianism. Yet 
 now that we have enjoyed the advantages that the means of 
 artificial locomotion already familiar give us, we want more. 
 The Harlemite does not consider it rapid transit unless he goes 
 from City Hall square to the rocks and goats above Mount Morris 
 park in an hour and a half, and his discontent with the steam 
 railway on stilts becomes daily diviner and deeper. The citizen 
 of Brooklyn is not satisfied to be reduced to a despairing calcula- 
 tion as to whether he is after all better off by being jammed and 
 gouged on the bridge than by balancing on one trodden toe upon 
 the old ferry boats, before he can reach his little vine-clad, 
 mortgaged home at the back of the east wind. And as for the 
 Jerseyman, it is needless to say that of all the ills of his weari- 
 some daily travel, he is able to commute only one. Still, we are 
 
 679935 
 
infinitely better off in choice of location for our homes than were 
 the people of Manhattan before us, who knew not the elevated 
 railroad, and never gladdened their eyes with the majestic 
 spectacle of the platform of Brooklyn Bridge at a quarter to six 
 on a wet March night, with the cable broken down. If you will 
 take the trouble to invite the candid opinion of the "oldest 
 inhabitant " as to the vanished Broadway stages, the early street 
 cars, and the ancient ferries, you will learn that we have scored a 
 distinct advance. That is why we all want something better. 
 
 This is a barbarous age we live in, but we have a foretaste of 
 'the civilization that awaits our descendants. We are beginning 
 to learn 'that luxury is a relative term. A hundred or even 50 
 years ago there was no such thing as luxurious travel. Washing- 
 ton came to New York to be installed as president, in a manner 
 
 fc & fastidious drummer might now despise. De Quincey was 
 
 iivg to give $i$ jreaiis of his life for an outside place on a stage 
 coach that carried cfoVi^ from London through the English 
 \ (jojijfej* tjti$*4^ ws &f A great event. We save our five years and 
 * '-our fieafthj 'anft* get .'a*ll the thrill we want, by blocking up the 
 sidewalk on Park Row, and reading the newspaper bulletins as 
 they cover one another on the boards, like successive waves of 
 emotion, rolling in from the unseen but tangible^throbbing dis- 
 tance. We know what the past was. The blizzard of two years 
 ago brought us down to the normal, average conditions of semi- 
 savagery in locomotion as it prevailed prior to the introduction of 
 the steam road, conditions that need all the glamor of the roman- 
 cist to be made even tolerable as a picture to the New Yorker 
 who boards the Pullman special for the south, and has had his 
 pleasure in Florida, and returned before the storm that was in 
 progress when he left has gone eastward to discover Europe. 
 
 What steam has been to long-distance travel in replacing the 
 stage coach and the sail, electricity is in turn to urban travel in 
 replacing the horse car and the cable road. Later in this paper I* 
 will indicate the manner in which electricity may sooner or later 
 realize the best and brightest promises made on behalf of the 
 trans-continental steam railroad, but pur first thought is as 
 to electrical travel within towns and cities, and the manner in 
 which it affects social relations, by modifying as with the 
 harlequin wand of transformation all the conditions to which we 
 have heretofore been subjected. 
 
 In speaking of this great advance in electricity as applied to 
 the comfort and convenience of man, I do not wish to be under- 
 stood as praising a perfect thing. We are in the early stages of 
 practical electric locomotion. The pioneer work has been done 
 by young men, still among us, much too near their salad days to 
 fall into the reminiscent vein. It is barely three years ago that I 
 had myself the honor of bringing before the American Institute 
 of Electrical Engineers the first statistics published on American 
 electrical railways, when I seized with brazen audacity upon 
 every bit of a track that could possibly bear inclusion as a road. 
 I would be understood rather as appearing in advocacy of an 
 improvement in many respects crude, but that is not yet appreci- 
 
ated even as it stands. We of the electrical industry have a great 
 duty in this respect, of preaching the advantages of electric 
 locomotion, in season and out of season ; and by our persistency 
 we can help the art along. The phrase that good wine needs no 
 bush was not coined by an American advertiser, and the idea 
 that electricity will make its own way is not justified by the 
 history of any great invention that has yet subserved the needs 
 of mankind. Electric locomotion is, however, ready for adoption 
 at an opportune moment. It offers itself at a time when every thing 
 else that has been tried for urban travel, has revealed objections 
 and disadvantages, the more keenly realized because of our higher 
 conceptions of what such travel may be. It is a singular prin- 
 ciple that as a system or device reaches perfection something 
 comes forward to supersede it. The horse coach was at its height 
 of speed and comfort when the steam engine challenged it. The 
 white-sailed China clipper was never swifter than when it 
 lowered its flag to the conquering steamship. And so to-day,, 
 the horse, the cable and the steam locomotive have shown the 
 utmost that they can do, just as the electric motor rolls to the 
 front and takes the stage, as the means best suited to the peculiar 
 requirements of passenger traffic in modern towns and cities. I 
 do not say that it will banish these competitors from the scene, 
 but I do maintain that its superiority will quickly gain it the 
 decided preference. I am always suspicious of an invention or 
 improvement that is going to knock out everything else, like a 
 charge of dynamite. History is against any such phenomenon. 
 What we do see is a limitation of the antecedent methods and 
 appliances to the sphere within which they are most useful and 
 economical. The old is restricted to its proper place and function 
 as by a ring of fire ; the new goes on making its own kingdom 
 until at last its boundaries of achievement are also determined. 
 Thus, as Tennyson puts it, " God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 The first of the social considerations to which I would direct 
 notice is the effect on the public of the adoption of electricity as a 
 motive power for street railways. The struggle for supremacy in 
 urban passenger work has already narrowed down strictly to the 
 horse, the cable and the electric motor. As everybody knows, 
 steam motors are completely out of favor for use within city 
 limits. Their glorious record of half a century in long-distance 
 travel does not deceive anyone dwelling in a city as to the insu- 
 perable defects and nuisances of noise, smell, smoke, dust, steam 
 escape, oil drippings, etc. , which may more readily be tolerated, 
 remotely, in the open country. Perhaps I am wrong, but I 
 believe we shall not see any more steam roads in New York, and 
 that imposing as are the statistics of the Manhattan elevated sys- 
 tem to-day, they will be eclipsed in a very few years by those of 
 the newer form of electric locomotion. And may not the same 
 be said as to the horse? There are now close upon 15,000 horses 
 engaged in hauling street cars around this city. It is high time 
 that every one of these was dispensed with, as well for its own 
 sake as for that of the city, whose air it assists in polluting and 
 
whose population it aids in driving into exile. Allowing an aver- 
 age space of 40 square feet to each horse, or a stall 9 feet by 4> 
 feet, we find that in stall space alone those 15,000 horses occupy 
 600,000 square feet of floor in their stables. These horses are 
 required to operate some 2,400 cars, an average of about seven to 
 the car if every car were in commission at once, which is not at 
 all the case. But even if nearly all the cars were wanted, an 
 average of 10 h. p. each would be ample in the central station of 
 an electrical plant, bringing us to a liberal allowance of 25,000 
 h. p. But here comes in the remarkable though not unfamiliar 
 fact that a steam plant will go into much less space than an ani- 
 mal power plant of equal capacity. Mr. C. J. Field, who is 
 known to many of you as a constructing and mechanical engi- 
 neer, informs me that his recent practice shows that a generating 
 electrical plant for 0,000 h. p., to operate all the street cars of 
 this city, could easily be placed in a building 100x150. The 
 engines and the dynamos would be placed on the first floor, and 
 the boilers on the second floor. The generators in such a plant 
 would be multipolar, 500 h. p. each, directly connected to the 
 engines, and each engine would be of a vertical triple expansion 
 type, of 500 h. p. each. This gives only 1J^ square feet to the 
 horse-power, and we may offset the space for feed, etc., by that 
 for coal, etc. I have tested these figures by those of recent elec- 
 tric light stations in actual operation, and they are found to be 
 very fair and reasonable. It might be objected that all the power 
 would not be bunched in this way ; but even with half a dozen 
 generating stations of 2,000 h. p. there would only be an increase 
 in space required of about ten per cent. From this remarkable 
 but strictly proper comparison, we can form an idea as to the 
 economy of real estate, bearing in mind also the fact that horse 
 car stables are generally wooden or brick sheds, only one or two 
 stories in height, while an electrical plant may be run up as high^ 
 as an apartment house or an office building, just as ornate with- 
 out, just as clean within. 
 
 Hence there can be no mistake in the statement that elec- 
 tricity is a direct boon to the urban population that clings to the 
 city, loves the city life, and that if crowded out from it into the 
 country suffers all the pangs of banishment. Indirectly, too, it is 
 a further boon because with horses a great portion of the district 
 surrounding the car stables is also spoiled for human habitation. 
 The whole region within what I would define as "the area of 
 smell " is unsavory and unhealthy the year through, and the con- 
 sequence is that while the taxing and renting value of it is less- 
 ened, the death rate is run up. ' ' Do not insult a respectable animal 
 who has come from the country to do his share of the work of 
 the world," says one authority, " and has brought with him the 
 ^memory of the sweet hills and skies at least, by immuring him in 
 'one of those cramped, rickety, rotten, slovenly, damp dungeons, 
 where a dumb beast would lose his self-respect and his courage, 
 beneath an oppressive weight of miasma, and hideous, gloomy, 
 nasty confusion." And so say all of us, and all of us are glad to 
 note a vast improvement in this respect. The stables are better 
 
ventilated now as a rule, but the trouble is just there. If they 
 were not so well ventilated, the neighborhood would be sweeter, 
 and would be fitter for human beings to live in. The poor die 
 quicker that the horses may suffer longer. 
 
 An objection I may anticipate is that, after all, such large gen- 
 erating plants would not be desirable with their huge smoke 
 stacks, their discharge of gases, etc., upon the atmosphere, their 
 receipt of coal and their removal of ashes. I would reply that it 
 is by no means necessary for such plants to be, as the stables 
 must be, right upon the main lines of travel. They would by 
 decided preference be located near the water's edge, out of the 
 way. Moreover, the stacks would be, as they are to-day in large 
 electric light plants, high enough to carry off all smoke or smell 
 far beyond perception. Perhaps the familiar smoke stack is not 
 an aesthetic object, but it can be made so. There are steeples in 
 this town that on the score of their beauty are not fit to compare 
 with smoke stacks near them. 
 
 Much that I have said under this head with respect to elec- 
 tricity applies to the cable. That system has been an immense 
 advance in street car travel, and is destined to many years of use- 
 fulness yet. It is worthy of much praise ; but it will not hold its 
 own with electricity, simply because it is deficient in some things 
 that electricity possesses to a pre-eminent degree. It has been a 
 forerunner for electricity. It is not only enormously costly 
 in its first installation, but has the disadvantage of being a unit. 
 The whole of the road and all its power hangs by that one cable. 
 If the cable be duplicated in the conduit, the expense is again so 
 much the heavier, while the criticism as to risk still stands. 
 Moreover, a cable car cannot go backward at its driver's will. 
 Onward it must go, Mazeppa-like, strapped down to its carrier, 
 no matter what unfortunate contingency impend, or what ob- 
 stacle lies in its path. It cannot greatly vary its own speed. An 
 electric car is so manageable that it will reverse in its own length 
 or less. But the greatest trouble of all with the cable is that it is 
 always the one thing, while there are very few towns or cities 
 that are alike in offering just the rigid Procrustean conditions it 
 meets. There are about 50 cities in the United States with a pop- 
 ulation of over 50,000, but there are between 700 and 800 street rail- 
 way companies, if not more ; so that even if all the places in the 
 first category could justify the heavy expenditure on a cable sys- 
 tem, there are hundreds of others unable to do so. We need not 
 wonder then that at their last convention in Minneapolis, the 
 street railway men gave electricity such a hearty welcome, adopt- 
 ing the enthusiastic if not elegant language of a committee report 
 which said that it "filled the bill to perfection." Nor need we 
 wonder that the street railway company in Minneapolis has just 
 thrown aside an unused cable plant that cost $400,000, and is put- 
 ting in electric cars and over 100 miles of electric road. 
 
 Why does electricity " fill the bill," and in a manner that inter- 
 ests the public? Well, for the reasons given already and for 
 others. It is above all things flexible, plastic, protean. It can be 
 applied in half a dozen different ways, and be absolutely safe for 
 
8 
 
 human life in any and all of them. The street railway may be 
 equipped with an overhead system for supplying the current to 
 the motors, and to that system, well built, with trim ornamental 
 poles, lines well run and guarded, little or no objection can be 
 offered. The air is God's own insulation ; we know none better, 
 none so cheap, and a wire is well insulated up aloft. The Bos- 
 tonians, who are people setting no small store by their refined^ 
 acute and cultivated taste, have adopted poles and wires in pref- 
 erence to the hideously ugly lattice work tunnels we have in New 
 York to hold up our elevated roads, and I admire them for it. It 
 is possible that Boston may have an elevated road, but if so it 
 will be a handsome electric one. Or, if the overhead wire be 
 objected to, as it may, there is the conduit system, which is fully 
 able to give a good account of itself if w'ell put in and plenty 
 of money be spent on it. It is true that the wires are not ex- 
 posed in the conduit system, but otherwise there is not much 
 operative difference between it and the overhead method. There 
 may be difficulties in heavy wet, or snowy weather, but we 
 shall see them all overcome. Or should this or its modifica- 
 tions again be found fault with, there is the ideal storage battery 
 system, where each car starts out "on its own hook," an inde- 
 pendent, self-contained unit. I don't exactly know why we call 
 it the "ideal system." It is either within reach or beyond. If 
 within reach, it is not " ideal," but ought, speaking from the pub- 
 lic standpoint, to be adopted wherever there is actual need for it. 
 It may be a trifle expensive, But that is certainly not one reason 
 more why the public should do without it. It may be somewhat 
 difficult to put and keep in order. " Coaches, Sammy," said the 
 elder Weller, sententiously, to his son, " coaches is like guns 
 they require to be loaded with werry great care afore they go 
 off," and that is about the case with the storage battery cars. 
 But they do go off, and we know from the approval they have 
 met with that they do hit the mark of popular approval, and that 
 is one of the main things I am talking about to-night. 
 
 It is in one or other of these systems or modifications of them 
 that electricity will become familiar to the public of this country 
 in street railway work. It will, I think, be chiefly for a long time 
 to come, the overhead system, which is not costly to put up, is 
 not expensive to maintain, can be operated economically at about 
 half the running charges of animal power, and fully answers the 
 requirements of the vast majority of our thriving, intelligent 
 centres of trade and manufacture. All these methods are safe, 
 and none of us ever heard, or expects to hear, that the current of 
 500 volts they have employed has taken a single human life. The 
 motor cars cannot " explode," the daily papers to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. They scatter no dust or ashes ; they do not lit- 
 ter the streets with offensive refuse, but rather ozonize the air ; 
 they are pleasant to ride in and they do not damage the paving* 
 They require good tracks for their best operation, and naturally 
 make their worst showing on the automatic mud sprinklers that 
 so begutter the roadways in this city. But the roadbed between 
 the tracks they never touch. It might as well be a continuous^ 
 
plot of flowers. In the outskirts of Boston, some of the electric 
 cars whose aerial wires run hidden between the overarching trees,, 
 have their tracks laid down on a narrow green lawn for three or 
 four miles ; and at a remove of but a few feet, it seems to the 
 spectator as though the cars were gracefully skimming over the 
 smooth grass, in effortless flight, like low-darting, even-poised 
 swallows. 
 
 I have just spoken of the outskirts of Boston, and this brings 
 me to another important point wherein electric cars are an ele- 
 ment making for the public good. They help a man to get farther 
 away from his business, and yet bring him nearer to it. "Rapid 
 transit " by their means is no longer a deceiving phrase, or the 
 proud monopoly of one or two big cities. The smallest city in the 
 country is at once given a command it never had before over the 
 territory around it. The smallest store keeper or the humblest 
 clerk can revel in the sweets of rural life, if he wish. His electric 
 car, running at 15 or 20 miles an hour, will give him more of home 
 life a few golden minutes with the children in the morning, an 
 earlier return to the wife at nightfall. The whole social atmo- 
 sphere of the place is vivified, and the social bonds are knit closer, 
 as they always must inevitably be where the facilities of travel are 
 increased, and the opportunities of intercourse are multiplied. 
 
 Nor is this all. Rapid transit of this nature opens up a 
 number of districts that before were practically inaccessible 
 for residential purposes. There are few of us who care to- 
 practice the ancient form of dissipation known as early rising, 
 agreeing rather with Charles Lamb, in the idea that to rise with 
 the lark or go to bed with the sheep is a popular fallacy. There 
 are still fewer of us, who, even for the sake of rural delights, care 
 to isolate and immure ourselves in remote suburbs reached with 
 difficulty. In vacation time, it is true, we often seek the loneli- 
 ness of the woods, or the solitude of the mountains, that we may 
 commune with Nature and hear the still small voice of our better 
 self ; but when we are doing the world's work 50 weeks in the 
 year, we want to be handily situated for reaching our desk or 
 bench. If a man lives in the city, he pays a high rent and takes- 
 Irish views of the landlord question. If he lives far out, and 
 wastes his time in travel, he is in hearty sympathy with the eight 
 hour movement. I look upon electric roads, therefore, as likely 
 to prove a beneficial agency in the more equal distribution of a 
 happier population around any centre, thus increasing the return 
 on outlying property, while, by the encouragement of retail trade, 
 enhancing the profit of the area lying within the region thereafter 
 more legitimately restricted to business occupancy. I have 
 watched with much interest the manner in which electric roads 
 have already thus developed suburban areas. Booms are not a 
 particularly healthy feature of progress, but they may be, and not 
 infrequently are, genuiue and real ; and I know nothing more 
 likely to bring on a real estate boom of the best character with 
 permanent results than the installation of a well-managed electric 
 road, enabling a man to leave his work at 6 o'clock, and be sitting 
 down to his supper sev.en or ten miles out, if he wish, under his 
 own roof -tree, at 6.30. 
 
10 
 
 Having thus discussed the effect of electric roads on the com- 
 munity and on the individual citizen, I will add a word as to their 
 effect on the wonderful impersonal entity, " capital." If all that 
 I have said be true as to the general benefits, it follows that the 
 wealth and ease of the community are materially increased ; but 
 what I refer to now, is not the direct enhancement of values, so 
 hard to trace out, though so palpable, but the stimulus given to 
 saving habits by the better opportunities of investment. Careful 
 analysis of the working of electric roads goes to prove that when 
 operated with skill and discretion, they are 50 per cent, less expen- 
 sive to run than horse railroads are. What does this mean? One 
 thing it means is that many roads can be built that would be out 
 of the question with horses. Another is that roads not paying can 
 be placed on a dividend basis. In 1888, out of 19 horse roads 
 reporting in New York city, 10 showed a deficiency. Last year 
 their net earnings were much better, but it is evident that a horse 
 road is not always a mine of wealth, though it may be of fertili- 
 zers. A third point is the establishing of a new class of invest- 
 ments of a solid, enduring nature. It is within everybody's 
 knowledge that the accumulation of capital tends constantly to 
 the reduction of interest to a minimum. There was a time when 
 the long stocking and the iron chest were the common bankers for 
 the savings of the timid ; and the capital that was bold earned the 
 double reward of its bravery and scarcity. As Walter Bagehot, 
 the economist, has remarked, the English people have always 
 wanted to put their money into something safe that will yield five 
 per cent. ; and this is undoubtedly one reason why English capital, 
 free and fluent, is so much a power in the finance of the world, 
 and why so much comes this way. As Mr. Bagehot says : " In 
 most countries, most men are content to forego interest ; but in 
 more advanced countries at some times there are more savings 
 seeking investment than there are known investments for." It 
 is thus in America, so far as " safe " investments are concerned, 
 and by safe I mean such as do not require the active care and 
 ceaseless thought of the capitalist, but may be held by trus- 
 tees, widows, hospitals, universities, savings banks and the like. 
 The competition of capital for the best class of government bonds, 
 municipal bonds, railroad stocks, &c., has reduced the return on 
 these to a very low figure, whether in America or England or 
 Germany ; and the result is that we see to-day, as never before, 
 the planning of enormous trusts and gigantic industrial enter- 
 prises, which represent in no small degree the endeavor of capital, 
 or savings, still to enjoy its wonted income, but in newer fields. 
 Now I look upon the street railway business of the country, under 
 the regime of electricity, as offering one of the best opportunities for 
 local capital, and for what may be called the organization of local 
 savings, which might otherwise lie around in napkins, like the 
 unjust steward's talent, and be of no use to anybody. The capital 
 in street railways in America to-day, reaches from $175,000,000 to 
 $200 000,000. If the statement I have made as to the superior 
 economy of electrical power be true, how much greater becomes 
 the earning capacity of this investment, and how much greater 
 
11 
 
 are the attractions held out to construct the hundreds of new 
 roads that are still wanted and will be called for as our towns and 
 cities grow. Of course, I am aware that it may be said that this 
 showing might lead to a demand for lower fares. It might, but 
 the public is intelligent enough to know that other things are more 
 necessary, such as better cars, with better heat and better light ; 
 improved tracks, faster running time and shorter headway ; so 
 that the 150,000,000 passengers on the street railroads every year 
 may travel in all safety and comfort. Street railroads are peculi- 
 arly suitable as a field for local investment. Their operation can 
 be watched all the time. They run under a man's eye when he is 
 on the street, or past his window when he is home. He knows 
 something of their officials ; he can influence the domestic legis- 
 lation they are subject to ; he can assist in more ways than one to 
 swell their earnings. 
 
 The next important point to which I would direct your 
 attention is the effect that the electric railway has upon the 
 employes of the service. It cannot be denied that the introduc- 
 tion of electricity in this respect marks a decided advance in the 
 social condition and aptitudes of a large body of men. I have 
 never yet met with anybody or anything that could place the 
 work of a horse car driver in a favorable light. One certainly 
 could not fairly expect a man who spends the day with his nose 
 at the tail of a car horse to realize a very high ideal of life and 
 duty, especially when the whole of his work is done under con- 
 ditions exhausting alike to temper and physique. It is out-door 
 exposure the whole time, whether in summer heat or winter 
 blast. Half the time it is an exercise of sheer brute strength, and 
 no car driver believes in his heart that a horse-power is only 
 33,000 foot pounds a minute. His aching wrists and dislocated 
 shoulders tell him that Watt was far below the mark in putting 
 it at that figure. And then, the worry of the street traffic. We 
 have all of us noticed the conscientious persistence with which 
 draymen and coachmen will keep on the car tracks iu front of a 
 car. An investigation made two or three years ago in Chicago 
 showed that at one point in the streets there, 97.6 of the street 
 traffic sought the railroad, while at another it was 87^, and at a 
 third, 90 per cent. Against such odds the driver with his restless 
 or apathetic team has to make his way and keep to the running 
 schedule ; fighting all the time with the fear of an accident either 
 to his car or to some hapless foot passenger. 
 
 With an electric car, the matter is not one of muscle and 
 brawn, but of average intelligence and ordinary readiness of 
 decision. A better class of men are wanted and forthcoming, or 
 the same men are relieved from physical wear and tear, and 
 thereafter can earn their bread in the sweat of their brow and 
 not that of their body. A woman might easily run an electric 
 car. The motorman gets instantaneously by the turn of a switch 
 the exact degree of power that he wants ; he can apply his 
 brakes readily ; and if he needs to run backward up-hill he can 
 do so, sitting down at his switch. It is not necessary to expose 
 him to the weather. His fears as to running people down are 
 
12 
 
 materially lessened by the gain in control of the car and by the 
 further fact that an electric car takes up only half the space on 
 the street that a horse car and its team do. The work is not les& 
 safe than cleanly. You may remember that when steam roads 
 were started in South Carolina, one of the negro drivers tied 
 down the safety valve and then sat on it. As a result, cotton 
 bales were placed between the locomotive and the coaches to 
 protect the passengers in case of explosion. The new driver was, 
 however, still on the wrong side of the bales. In electric cars 
 both driver and passengers are free from harm. John Bright 
 once said that the safest place on earth was a first-class carriage 
 in an express train ; but to-day it may be fairly affirmed that no 
 vehicle can compare as to freedom from danger with the electric 
 street car. 
 
 A feature of this refinement of the work is that it must neces- 
 sarily be attended by better pay for the higher intelligence and 
 skill. Mere brute strength does not command good wages now- 
 adays, except in a prize fighter, and the further we get away 
 from animal conditions the better do we find the status of the 
 individual or the occupation to be. The remarks made above as 
 regards the drivers apply equally to the staff at the generating 
 plant. People sometimes wonder why there are so many hostlers 
 around car stables, but when you remember that well-kept car 
 horses work only two hours and a quarter daily, you will see that 
 they need a good many attendants at the stables during the other 
 20 odd hours. In place of these grooms and hostlers you have, with 
 an electric plant, a skilled force of steam engineers and mechanics, 
 each trained for the special function which the principle of the 
 division of labor has shown him to be best qualified for. 
 
 And here let me inject the pertinent remark, that this new 
 and successful development of electricity is one reason more why 
 the mechanical engineer and steam engineer should master elec- 
 trical principles and practice, whether for the higher walks of his 
 profession or for the humbler duties of running a plant. The 
 coming of electricity, and its application to light and power, has 
 afforded a grand stimulus to steam engineering in every depart- 
 ment, and may not improperly be claimed to have created the 
 modern high speed engine. Sir William Thomson has said that 
 the electrical engineer is nine-tenths a mechanical engineer. To 
 this I will add a corollary, and say that the mechanical engineer 
 may be a master in these new electrical fields if he will only add 
 the one-tenth to his education. The time is at hand when the 
 mechanical engineer will not be considered worthy of his name 
 or his calling unless he is also an electrical engineer, as familiar 
 with Ohm's law as he is with Carnot's or Mariotte's. 
 
 Incidentally through this paper I have referred to the effect of 
 the electric railroad upon horses. It has, indeed, been most grati- 
 fying to see how readily the electric railroad has rallied to the 
 support of the Humane Society. It is a humane society itself. 
 Whether he wished it or not, the electrical engineer in this 
 instance is conferring a great boon on the horse. We sometimes 
 do the greatest good, as we do often the greatest evil, uncon- 
 
13 
 
 sciously, rather than of set purpose ; and so, here, the inventors 
 of the modern electric motor and the electric car have released 
 the horse from one of the most painful and exhausting services 
 that it was ever put to. Investigations over a long period have 
 shown that with the pavement dry a horse would meet with an 
 accident in every 78 miles of travel on granite ; on every 168 miles 
 with the pavement damp, and every 537 with the pavement thor- 
 oughly wet. Unfortunately for the horse, though happily for the 
 rest of us, the first two conditions generally prevail on our streets ; 
 and hence the horse has a poor outlook as to accidents. But it is 
 not the accident the horse has so much to dread, after all, as the 
 constant strain and the pull of a heavy load from its dead rest 
 every few hundred yards. It is generally admitted by street 
 railway men that car horses fail because of this feature of their 
 work, and that it helps to cut down their railroad life and utility 
 to the average of from three to five years. If you want to see 
 these conditions at their worst, take Broadway, once our pride, 
 now one of the most overrated throughfares in Christendom. 
 The pavement is abominable, and the horses, like the foot passen- 
 gers, can be seen struggling for a grip on the uneven, slippery 
 stones, all the way from one end of it to the other. The traffic 
 on the street is so great that I have noted full cars making a 
 dozen halts and starts from dead rest between Chambers and Bar- 
 clay streets two blocks. It does not require an expert to fore- 
 see the effect of such wear and tear on animals. In Cincinnati, 
 recently, on installing an electric equipment, a street railway 
 company advertised its horses for sale for family and carriage 
 purposes. I have not observed any such advertisements in New 
 York city. The street railway managers are more modest or 
 more truthful here than they are on the banks of the Ohio. The 
 only persons likely to regret seriously the departure of the street 
 car horses from this city would be the horse dealers and feed sup- 
 ply houses, and possibly the street cleaning contractors, though 
 they get their pay anyhow. 
 
 I might point out that as a further offset to this displacement 
 of a certain amount of labor in an elementary form whether that 
 of the horse or the human being in charge of him, we have the 
 stimulus given to a higher class of labor, not only in the station 
 engineer, and motor car driver, but in the electrical expert and 
 inventor. Society benefits greatly by this, just as it does by the 
 superior skill and efficiency implied in the maintenance of such a 
 system as that of the Pennsylvania Railroad company. The run- 
 ning of express trains and fast steamships demands the exertion of 
 the best qualities of a man, as well in the conception of ideas of 
 improvement as in the details of solid construction and vigilant 
 management. Here, therefore, we strike at once into a new field 
 of design and invention, one that promises to be as large and 
 fruitful as any other known to the application of electricity. 
 There have already been several hundred patents taken out on the 
 special subject of electric railways, and the whole air is alive with 
 rumors of the ideas and inventions assuming shape. In a year or 
 two it will be a wise motor that knows its own father. Each new 
 
14 
 
 step is a prophecy of a dozen more. Each new patent is a " father 
 of its country," a germ of endless fertility. We begin to learn 
 our resources. " Is there any load that water cannot lift ? " asked 
 Emerson, "If there be, try steam ; or if not that try electricity. 
 Is there any exhausting of these means ? " 
 
 Now and then I hear the objection that people would be the 
 quicker to adopt electric locomotion if it were not so beset and 
 made costlier by patents. This is not true, and I have no patience 
 with the spirit that begrudges the inventor his reward. Why do 
 we use the great inventions ? Simply and solely because they 
 effect an economy for us in some way or other, chiefly in time or 
 money. If they did not, we should care little about them, and the 
 inventive geniuses of the day would be mere common clay to us. 
 But, on the contrary, the inventor is revered and admired, and is 
 encouraged by the wealth and fame he can earn. Occasionally 
 one hears the expression of an idea that the inventor is wanting in 
 public spirit and devotion to science because he takes out patents 
 and does not invite the world to revel in the riches he reveals 
 while he is content to starve over a crust in a garret. A few weeks 
 ago, Mr. Edison told me that he had found one of his greatest 
 intellectual pleasures in reading " Evangeline." But why should it 
 be less public spirited for Edison to secure a patent on his phono- 
 graph than for Longfellow to obtain a copyright on his poetry ? 
 Why should not Bell have a patent on the telephone when Victor 
 Hugo protects his " Notre Dame ? " Is it not as right for George 
 Westinghouse to derive a princely income from his life-saving air- 
 brake as for Gilbert and Sullivan from their comic operas? Shall 
 not Elihu Thomson enjoy some revenue from his new art of elec- 
 tric welding, as well as Bronson Howard from his ' ' Shenandoah ? " 
 It is time that the ideas on this subject were set in the right per- 
 spective. Our inventors enjoy the benefits of the patent system 
 because, like the novelists, the poets, the musicians and the artists,, 
 they are public benefactors. They promote the public welfare, 
 add to the public comfort, increase the public wealth. The field 
 of electric locomotion will be but one more opportunity to demon- 
 strate this truth. There is no patent on the horse, but the patented 
 electric motor can beat him on every point every day in the week. 
 
 Such then, are some of the reflections to which our subject 
 invites us, at this early stage of its development, and there is but 
 one other point to which after this section, I shall refer inclosing. 
 Before I leave the electric street railway, I would again say as I 
 said at the outset, that I am not presenting this latest application 
 of electricity as perfect. It is not ; on the contrary it is in devel- 
 opment and improvement under our very eyes. It is endeavoring 
 to harmonize with its environment. The questions and problems 
 that it opens up are very much like the concentric shells of the 
 Chinese ivory puzzle balls ; and we have not yet reached their 
 core. It has one or two family quarrels on hand. The telephone 
 is hardly yet on speaking terms with it. But we know fairly well 
 where the solution of each difficulty lies, and we are on the way 
 to it. Nor am I in any sense an apologist for the shortcomings of 
 our pioneer work. Electric railroad men have made mistakes, 
 
15 
 
 are making them now. That cannot be helped. Heaven save us 
 from the men who cannot make mistakes ; they will never learn. 
 The conditions in electricity as an industry change with lightning 
 rapidity. A Russian general once remarked of the political situa- 
 tion in Central Asia, that it changed every minute ; and so it is in 
 regard to the onrush and uplift of electrical discovery and enter- 
 prise. This very fact explains why much of the earlier electric 
 railway work has been of an unfinished, unkempt kind. Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams, some years ago, in his interesting little 
 work on railroads, said : " It is a matter of curious observation 
 that almost uniformly those early railroad builders made grave 
 blunders, whenever they tried to do their work peculiarly well ; 
 they almost invariably had afterwards to undo it." This is not an 
 excuse, however, for slovenly work. It is better to make blunders 
 trying to do well than in lazily neglecting one's duty ; and though 
 it hurts a man who built for eternity to see his work ripped out in 
 five years, he has the serene, sustaining consciousness of right 
 effort and honorable performance. The electric street railway 
 will the sooner achieve its social destiny if the engineering done 
 upon it be the highest and best that the art at each instant will 
 allow. 
 
 The topic I have reserved for brief final mention is that of elec- 
 trical long-distance travel. This is the department of the subject 
 in which imagination has not yet sobered down into invention. 
 Our fancy still plays around the possibilities, and so far from 
 realizing the social side of teletra vel, people have not yet awakened 
 generally to the idea that it has any serious, practical side at all. 
 Our patriarchial poet, Whittier, expressed his surprise a month or 
 two ago in his " Burning Driftwood," when he wrote : 
 
 " Far more than all I dared to dream, 
 Unsought before my door I see ; 
 On wings of fire and steeds of steam 
 The world's great wonders come to me." 
 
 The steeds of steam are now an old familiar story ; but the 
 mechanical Jay-Eye-Sees of the coming day bid fair to be those 
 with "wings of fire;" and then our speed may be something 
 more nearly approximating that of light. It is amusing, how- 
 ever, to see how quickly our generation has become accustomed 
 to teletravel. Did not the Royal College of Bavarian Doctors 
 seek to forbid railway travel because it would induce delirium 
 furiosum among the passengers, and drive the spectators crazy ? 
 Did not an English quarterly say : " We would as soon expect the 
 people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired from one of 
 Congreve's rockets as to trust themselves to the mercy of a 
 machine going at the rate of twelve miles per hour ? ; ' And did 
 not our own General Webb in 1835, after a railroad journey, with 
 ladies, from Boston to Providence, exclaim in horror : "To 
 restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at 
 five miles an hour, and take her meals in comfort at a decent 
 inn." Suck alarming and conservative extracts have a familiar 
 sound, perhaps, but I can assure you that they are positively of 
 the ancient date mentioned and not extracts from recent New 
 
16 
 
 York newspapers. The fact remains that to-day we have ceased 
 to regard a speed of 60 miles an hour in railway travel as extra- 
 ordinary, and are casting about for the means with which to 
 attain a higher rate even than 75 miles, of which record was made 
 in 1886, on a short run. This acceleration is, it appears probable, 
 to be found best, or only, in the use of electricity, for the reason 
 that the electric motor may drive directly on the axles, that it 
 need not offer much resistance to the air, or smash the track, and 
 that it does not have to carry its own supply of fuel and water. 
 There are men in this audience who have seen such an electric 
 locomotive making with ease 120 miles an hour, and who propose 
 to propel it at 180 miles an hour. If these things be so as they 
 are we know that with electric teletravel, the public will have 
 to accustom itself to strange new conditions, exceeding in scope 
 and power those of the last fifty years. The change will come in 
 our time, and the present telegraphic and telephonic facilities are 
 but an education for it. When we can talk instantaneously with 
 friends in Boston or Philadelphia over a wire, we resent the inad- 
 equacy of the means of fast and far locomotion that should enable 
 us to meet them face to face if we wish to do so. When we see 
 electric cars in our streets traveling easily at 15 and 20 miles an 
 hour, and know that on a clear, unbroken, straightaway track we 
 could go from New York to Philadelphia or Boston with the same j 
 agency and kindred apparatus, in about an hour, American inge- 
 nuity and enterprise will not rest until the thing is done. That | 
 will be the first stage in the next evolution of travel. 
 
 At the present time electric street railroads are running 01 
 building in nearly 150 of our towns and cities, with some 2,000] 
 cars on about 1,200 miles of track. So far as urban traffic is con- 
 cerned, the new departure has been made. Electric locomotion is 
 with us, an assured fact, the most civilized form of travel, as the 
 electric light is of illumination and the telegraph or telephone is 
 of communication. Already over 150,000,000 nickel ballots are 
 being cast yearly in its favor, and the welcome to it is universal. 
 In the northwest that brand-new cable plant costing $400,000 has 
 just been thrown aside to make room for it. In the south, it is 
 saluted with the exclamation of the delighted darkey, " First 
 dey freed de negro, and now dey freed de mule." In New York 
 we are waiting on Providence and the aldermen, but we shall not 
 be satisfied till this city is abreast of other progressive com-j 
 munities in the adoption of that which has given, in so short 
 time, so many proofs of its ability to promote in every respect] 
 the highest social welfare of the citizen. 
 
 The address was followed by the exhibition, with the aid of ! 
 the magic lantern, of over 50 views of electric roads in as manyj 
 American towns and cities, and of the leading systems. These | 
 views were explained with running comment. 
 
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