Jasper County Democrat, Volume 17, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1915 — The JITNEY INVASION. [ARTICLE]

The JITNEY INVASION.

New Method of Transportation Literally a “Prairie Fire.” Had one been asked a month ago if he thought it possible for the motor car to supplant the street car as the popular vehicle of urban trans portation, one -would have answered no, promptly and emphatically. And only a little less promptly and emphatically would one have expressed the opinion that the motor car was incapable of ever becoming a serious competitor of the trolley in this field of transportation. Even now one may believe that the trolley has natural advantages to safeguard it against competition, but if he has been a diligent reader of the newpapers he must feel the folly of being dogmatic. For there has been printed much within that time to question whether the monopoly of the trolley is so secure as he had imagined. First it was a cry from (Houston, reverberating through the press, that the street car company of that city had been losing money because of the competition of jitneys. That was followed shortly by a dispatch from Ft. Worth telling that more than a 100 jitneys have been licensed in that city. Next was an item from San Francisco telling that there are 1,000 jitneys in use there; and on tqp of all this comes a dispatch from Seattle reciting that a proposal to have the municipality buy the street railway system of that city has been put in abeyance because of the multiplication and popularity of the jitneys.

Certainly one has occasion to revise one’s judgment if one’s judgment has been that these cries of distress coming from the street car men were intended merely to win the sympathy and indulgence of teh public. Of course, it •has not yet been proved that the motor car is capable of supplanting the trolley, except, perhaps, in some exceptional cases. If they are being put into competition with a rapidity which testifies to the confidence of those who are doing it, nevertheless it is to be remembered they have as yet been subjected to no test that justifies this confidence. It is one-thing for an individual with a 7-passenger car to turn to the business of carrying passengers. He may do so profitably as long as the car lasts. But it is quite another thing to earn as much above wages and operating expenses in that way that when the car refuses, to serve longer there will be a surplus of profits sufficient to buy its successoi And this field into which the motor cars have rushed with such boldness is so hedged about by peculiar conditions that it may well support a few, but impose loss on all the moment it is invaded by any considerable number. The secret of the trolley’s success is in its ability to carry large numbers. That elefnent the motor car lacks. Its carrying capacity is so limited that there must needs be many of them if the public is to be served in the way it has become accustomed to be served. Of course, one cannot forget that the stage coach owners must have argued in such confident way when they beheld the first locomotive. and assuredly the passenger traffic managers looked with some such Contempt on the competition of tfife interurban lines. But the stage .coach Js a curiosity found only in museums, and there are numerous reEports of traffic managers which indict the interurban by way of apologizing for diminished revenues.Galveston News.