Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1891 — WOMEN AS CONDUCTORS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WOMEN AS CONDUCTORS.

That’s a “Near Future” Novelty on the Chicago Boulevards. One of tlie queer things which will be visible to people who go to Chicago during the World’s Fair will jbe a line of “Columbian coaches’,” whereof the conductors will be in every case neatly uniformed „ young women. They will wear snug-fitting braided jackets, and hell punches swung about their necks, and caps something like the yachting headgear of 1891. And they will be at work long before 1893, too. This isn’t exactly a novelty. Away down in conservative Chili some years ago, when the men all went away to fight the Peruvians, women took to running the street cars, and they did it so well that they've been doing it ever since. Up in New Hampshire a woman has owned a street-car line

and hired men to drive for her, which is much nicer, of course. But the Chicago experiment will certainly be the first of its sort in the country. But why women? Mr. James L. Dyer is the designer of the Columbian coaches. He is no more than ordinarily gallant, perhaps, /but very practical. Chicago has a curious provision that no vehicles can be run on the boulevards without a lady aboard. The object of this ordinance is to keep the boulevards, for pleasure driving—to keep off business wagons and drays on the one hand and fast trotters driven by “horsey” men on the other. As Mr. Dyer says: “I can ride down Michigan boulevard on a load of hay if I have a lady with me, but I can’t make the same trip alone in a grocer’s deliveryw. agon. During the World’s Fair it will be absolutely necessary to utilize t ie boulevards for passenger traffic, and we purpose to evade an unjust ordinance by earning our ‘lady passengers’ in the shape of conductors.” The Columbian coaches are making trial trips now, and will soon be turned, out at the rate of twenty a month. They are as low basket phaetons, will carry sixty-five passengers, and will be dainty enough to •uit women conductors. Those young

women in uniforms vill never havti to jump off and swear at truck-drivers or untangle jams or help lift the coach on the tracks, because on the boulevards there are neither trucks nor Jamps, nor are street-car rails permitted. On tho whole, their (coach) lines will be cast in pleasant places. They will get plenty of open air, and ought to be healthier than shop-girls or seamstresses. “Will j’ou secure the handsomest women you can find for jour conductors?” “We won’t have any homely ones if we can help it,” said Mr. Dj’er with a wink. “There is no reason in the world why a woman should not engage in the legitimate occupation of street-car conductor. There are women lawyers, women doctors, women clergj’men; women are gaining an entrance to the ranks of toilers everywhere. Why not in the street car?” “Don’t you apprehend criticism of your new idea?” > “Of course, but we will see that our women conductors maintain proper decorum and turn in all the nickels in due form. Women have more sense than they ordinarily get credit for.” Mr. Dj’er does not think it-will bo necessary to post in conspicuous places signs reading: • GENTLEMEN ’ : WILL BLEASE NOT OGLE : ; THE CONDUCTORS. : No j’oung woman will be accepted as conductor, he saj’s, unless she is proof against the smiles of the other sex. A dry goods firm-on State street has arranged for a line to be run from State and Adams streets to the Northwestern Depot. Another line will be operated between Lincoln Park and the downtown district. There is no city ordinance to prevent this latter line being run by men conductors, however. Probably the Chicago city fathers when they adopted that queer rule that they were paving the way r for young women in caps to col-

lect fares. But perhaps if they had foreseen it it wouldn’t have made any difference.

ALL RISES’. CO AHEAD.

A POPULAR CONDUCTOR.