Most people don’t know that just past the turn of the last century, all the major cities in the United States had a complex system of electric trolley cars that provided clean, safe and efficient transportation to those cities populations.
Over time, it was no secret that gas powered cars provided the same freedom for more people as an affordable alternative. The suburbs began to be developed as people saw a way out of the congested cities, but still had the ability to commute between the two on a daily basis.
But, the question you have to ask yourself is, why couldn’t electric trolleys coexist with gasoline powered transportation? Keep that thought.
This is an excerpt from the Orange Empire railway site:
“By 1914, more than 1,600 PE (Pacific Electric) trains entered or left Los Angeles daily over the system’s four operating districts. The system reached its peak in the mid-Twenties, after which it began a slow decline, halted temporarily by the traffic boom brought on by World War II, and then declining precipitously in the postwar years. In 1953, PE’s remaining passenger operations were sold to transit operator Metropolitan Coach Lines, who in turn sold the remaining lines to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1958.
The last remnant of PE’s vast passenger operation, the line to Long Beach, was replaced with busses in 1961.”
http://www.oerm.org/collection/red-cars-pacific-electric
This of course is a microcosm of the macrocosm, because all the major cities had horse drawn carriage and trolley systems in place to assist in public transportation. The most efficient routes were in place, they were just expounded upon by the more practical and faster electric lines.
Okay then, what happened to all those hundreds of thousands of perfectly efficient trolleys and the entire system?
These are some excerpts from the Culture Change site, from the article: “Taken For a Ride”
http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-a-ride.htm
The Pacific Electric Railway served the Los Angeles basin with trolley service through World War II. In 1950, it abandoned most of its lines. The "Red Cars" were junked, stacked and left to rot. Similarly, General Motors targeted over 100 other U.S. cities through its front company, National City Lines. As was beginning to be the new trend, the real money and ‘motive’ needed to be hidden from the, then, perceptive public.
This is a story about how things got the way they are. Why sitting in traffic seems natural. Why our public transportation is the worst in the industrialized world. And why superhighways cut right through the hearts of our cities.
When you're talking about public transportation in America, for the first part of this century, you're talking about streetcars. Trolleys ran on most major avenues every few minutes. Steel track and quiet electric motors made the ride smooth and clean and comfortable. The center of the road was reserved for streetcars, and the new automobiles had to move out of the way.
Bradford Snell, who has made a career researching the auto industry for 16 years: In 1922, only one American in ten owned an automobile. (Everyone else used rail.) At that time Alfred P. Sloan (President, General Motors) said, 'Wait a minute, this is a great opportunity. We've got 90 percent of the market out there that we can somehow turn into automobile users. If we can eliminate the rail alternatives, we will create a new market for our cars. And if we don't, then General Motors' sales are just going to remain level.
'When they finally motorized New York, General Motors issued ads throughout the country. And this is important, because they are trying to show that motorization is the wave of the future.
They issued these ads and they said, `The motorization of 4th and Madison is the most important event in the history of community transportation.'
In the mid-1930s, GM worked hard to create the impression of a nationwide trend away from rail.
But there was no trend.
Buses were a tough sell. They jolted. They smelled. They inched through traffic. City by city, it took the hidden hand of General Motors to replace streetcars with Yellow Coach buses.
In 1936, a company was founded that would grow to dominate American city transportation. National City Lines had no visible connection to General Motors. In fact, the director of operations came from a GM subsidiary, Yellow Coach, and members of the Board of Directors came from Greyhound, which was founded and controlled by General Motors.
The money to start this new company also came from Greyhound and Yellow Coach. To hide these connections the company needed a front man.
Roy Fitzgerald got his start in Northern Minnesota where he hauled miners and school children in a couple of buses. General Motors would groom him to become president of National City Lines.
Over the next few years, Standard Oil of California, Mack Truck, Phillips Petroleum and Firestone Tire would join GM in backing this venture.
The Plot Thickens…
The appearance was always that this was only a company that was owned by the Fitzgeralds. You know, these people had come from Minnesota with no money at all, and all of a sudden they were in control of this multi-million-dollar enterprise.
But, in fact, the money was coming from the corporate sponsors.
“To the Mayor, to the City Manager, to the City Transit Engineer, and to the taxpayers and the riding citizens of your city. You are entitled to this warning: There is a carefully, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your electric railway system…”This message was prepared and delivered by Edwin Quinby.
Edwin Quinby was a rail buff with a talent for financial sleuthing. In 1946, he mailed a warning to influential people in hundreds of cities across the country. His 33-page broadside was filled with surprisingly detailed research. It brought to light what GM had worked hard to hide.
Edwin Quinby: “The plan is to destroy public utilities, which you'll find impractical to replace after you discover your mistake. Who are the corporations behind this? Why are they permitted to destroy valuable electric railways?”
Of course the corporate shill came out and loud, using it’s own publication mouthpiece:
Mass Transportation Magazine: Queer Case of Quinby, by Ross Schram. Edwin J. Quinby took full advantage of the great American privilege of the free press to feed the lunatic fringe of radicals and crackpots springing up like weeds in the United States today. The document, printed on cheap paper, is natural fertilizer for suspicions, for disunity. What is the Quinby pattern? Was he used by some strange political influence?
Edwin Quinby's efforts did not stop National City Lines, but the cat was out of the bag. In 1946, the Justice Department began an antitrust investigation into National City Lines, General Motors and the other investors.
Justice Memo: Memorandum to the United States Attorney General: It appears that National City Lines and its manufacturing associates have entered into a plan to secure control over local transportation in important cities throughout the United States. If these companies are permitted to continue their program, they will soon have a stranglehold over the industry.
Snell: The key lawyers involved in the case told me there was not a scintilla of doubt that these defendants, General Motors and the others, had set out to destroy the streetcar system.
But since there was no antitrust law on the books at that point saying, `Thou shalt not destroy streetcar systems,' the best way, the only way they could get them on a violation was to proceed along the criminal antitrust, conspiracy route. And that's what they did.
The government's case was straight forward. National City Lines, General Motors and the other defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to monopolize the local transportation field.
Snell: These companies, that had probably eliminated systems that in order to reconstitute today would require maybe $300 billion, these companies were individually fined $5,000.
And the individuals involved like the treasurer of General Motors who had actively run Pacific City Lines, one of the subsidiaries, and was a major moving factor in all of National City Lines' operations, he was fined the magnanimous sum of $1 at the conclusion of the trial.
The Justice Department would spend the next 25 years trying to limit GM's influence on transportation. It would begin three major investigations into monopoly practices: two were settled out of court; one was eventually dropped. An effective way to rein in GM was never found.
And that was, and is, the purpose of corporate government, to set up harmless ‘paper laws’ to ‘officially’ pursue/prosecute and break up the strangulation, appease the distracted public, and just move along.
Oil, and every derivative that comes from it controls the world in its entirety by controlling what is by nature entirely ‘free.’ And that is called: Energy.
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