Clifford Berryman penned this cartoon of “The Man on the End,” for the June 21, 1907 edition of the Evening Star. National Archives.
That meant bringing electrification to the remaining lines that were still horse-powered and even one that was cable-driven. The Columbia Railway, operating on New York Avenue and H Street Northeast to Benning Road, was the only D.C. streetcar company other than the Washington & Georgetown to adopt cable. After experimenting briefly with compressed air technology in 1892, the company decided in 1894 to replace its horsecars with a cable system, even though the superiority of electric propulsion had been well established by that time. Construction began in October 1895, making the Columbia the very last streetcar system in the country to convert to cable. When the Crosby syndicate took over just four years later, the company’s brief cable adventure ended, and its tracks were quickly converted to underground electric.
The busy intersection of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1910s. Library of Congress.
Forward thinking as the Crosby syndicate was, it still managed to bite off more than it could chew. Many of the lines Crosby acquired—like the Anacostia & Potomac and the Eckington & Soldiers’ Home—were unprofitable and saddled with debt, and they dragged Crosby’s holding company down. In 1901, the company, called the Washington Traction and Electric Company, defaulted on its debt and was sold in foreclosure. The following year, a new company was formed with a slightly different name: the Washington Railway and Electric Company (WRECo). It took over and formally merged all its nominally separate subsidiary lines. This finally left D.C. with just two major streetcar companies—Capital Traction and WRECo—that would run independent, competing services for the next thirty years.
Horse-drawn carriages and wagons compete with streetcars powered by underground electric conduits in this scene on Pennsylvania Avenue at Seventh Street, taken in February 1901. Library of Congress.
Once out of the D.C. streetcar picture, Oscar T. Crosby turned to other interests. An amateur anthropologist, he went on a grand expedition to Tibet and central Asia in 1904, publishing a book on his travels the following year. He continued traveling to exotic locales the rest of his life and increasingly became involved in international affairs, serving as the director of a relief commission in Belgium during World War I and, later, as an assistant secretary of the Treasury Department. He died in Warrenton, Virginia, in 1947.
The irrepressible George Truesdell put much of his energy into real estate investment, although he reportedly faced financial difficulties in his later years. In the 1880s, he had purchased a large tract of land in the Kalorama neighborhood northwest of Dupont Circle, which would become one of the city’s poshest residential suburbs. Here he built an immense “summer home” there called Managasset, akin to the mansions of the wealthy along the Hudson River in New York. In the early twentieth century, Truesdell gradually sold off much of his Kalorama property, and in 1911, he razed Managasset and replaced it with a luxury apartment house called the Altamont. He died in his apartment at the Altamont in 1921.
“THE PRESENT CONDITIONS ARE A MENACE”
Meanwhile, with consolidation issues out of the way and electric power firmly established, Capital Traction and WRECo became the entrenched mass transit providers for the sprawling city, their service intertwined with Washington’s daily life. Several Capital Traction lines began operating mobile post offices in converted streetcars that were attached as trailers to passenger-carrying cars. Patrons could deposit their letters in slots built into the sides of the cars, which transferred the mail among various locations around the city. For outlying suburbs, an even more comprehensive service was sometimes provided. The Cabin John streetcar delivered a crate of bread and cakes each dawn from a downtown bakery to the small food store at Glen Echo. “People would stop your car, hand you a basket, a list and a $10 bill,” Isaac B. Goad, a former conductor, recalled many years later. “I’d drop the basket off at the grocery and pick it up on the next trip, and take it back. We’d do banking for these folks, or pick up a prescription.”97
In the early 1900s, the two companies also began modernizing their rolling stock. Manufacturers had been producing faster and significantly larger cars, allowing for greater loads and more efficient use of drivers and conductors. For example, cars purchased by the Capital Traction Company in 1898—just after the great cable power station fire—seated only twenty-six passengers, whereas cars purchased between 1909 and 1919 seated between forty-four and forty-eight.98 Strap-hangers could virtually double that number.
Although they may have made good design sense, the larger cars could be loud and menacing and tended to alienate the public. In 1900, a group of Eleventh Street citizens signed a petition complaining about the noise the new cars made: “[T]he health of the residents near and along this line will be endangered and their comfort greatly disturbed as it is almost impossible to converse while the cars are passing, and the noise at nightfall greatly disturbs our rest.” The residents went on to “call your attention to the rapid and unlawful rate of speed at which these cars are being run, altogether resulting in great damage to the value of our property and the loss of tenants,” a remarkable concern given that just ten or twenty years earlier they had enthusiastically welcomed the streetcars, celebrating increased property values they brought.99 In 1905, similar complaints were raised by merchants on F Street downtown, who found WRECo’s big cars annoyingly loud and dangerous.
The new streetcars could indeed be hazardous. None was equipped with speedometers, and thus motormen had no idea whether they were exceeding the speed limit. Even if they realized when they were speeding, they were still motivated to travel as quickly as possible because they would be severely penalized for failing to adhere to their strict schedules.
Perhaps motorman James Reilly was worried about keeping on schedule when he headed down the Second Street hill in Eckington during the morning rush hour on August 1, 1919. At the bottom of the hill, the tracks turned sharply to the right on to R Street, and Reilly’s streetcar probably was going too fast when it took that curve. The car overturned, and the ninety-five passengers crowded onboard were thrown in a heap amid a shower of flying glass. “For a few moments after the crash pandemonium reigned. Women screamed as they were thrown to the left side of the car. The passengers fell in bunches, with fragments of the car and pieces of glass flying around them.”100
Thirty-five passengers were injured, six seriously, including Miss Ruby Edmunds, whose skull was fractured. All eventually recovered. A number of the injuries likely resulted when passengers stepped on one another as they frantically tried to escape the overturned car. Reilly told police that the car had not been going more than ten or twelve miles per hour, but a professional army driver who had been onboard estimated that the speed was likely twice that. WRECo investigators concluded that the accident was a result of Reilly applying the car’s air brakes too suddenly as it sped around the curve.
Only two months later, another serious accident occurred on the Georgia Avenue (Brightwood) line just outside Walter Reed Army Hospital. Witnesses told police that a WRECo streetcar was speeding down Georgia Avenue when an army truck emerged from the entrance to Walter Reed. The streetcar slammed into the side of the truck, pushing it more than one hundred feet down the street. Edward Sothern, one of the four soldiers on the truck, was killed instantly, and three passengers on the streetcar died in following days at Walter Reed. The streetcar’s motorman, Carroll Nash, miraculously survived, although his post at the front of the car had been turned into a mass of twisted steel. Seventeen others were injured in the wreck. Two months earlier, after the Eckington accident occurred, officials at Walter Reed had complained to WRECO about the speed of streetcars on Georgia Avenue. Apparently nothing had been done to slow down the cars.
A crowd gathers at the scene of the overturned streetcar in Eckington, August 1, 1919. Note the ambulance from Casualty Hospital on the right. Library of Congress.
; The early 1900s marked the rise of the women’s suffrage movement, culminating in the first Woman Suffragists parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1913. With the push for the right to vote came also a broader assertiveness about issues that affected women’s lives, including the inconvenience of traveling on streetcars designed by and for men. Women were leading increasingly independent lives, traveling more extensively outside their homes for work, entertainment or shopping, and they needed streetcars they could ride in comfort.
The biggest problem was the height of the steps into the passenger compartment. Many streetcars had a gap of fourteen inches or more from the ground to their first step; climbing aboard was a struggle for many people. Women in particular faced challenges because of their clothing. When Capital Traction began running a new series of cars with high steps on its Fourteenth Street route in 1908, the women living along the line fought back. Mrs. Frederick L. Ransom of 1455 Belmont Street organized a protest movement after witnessing other women struggling to get on and off the cars. She would ask them if they wished to support the cause, and “[t] hey always gladly assented—as soon as they caught their breath.”101
A wrecked WRECo streetcar outside Walter Reed Hospital, October 13, 1919. Library of Congress.
Matters were only made worse with the advent in 1910 of the fashion craze for hobble skirts, which severely constricted a woman’s gait even when she was walking on level ground. The streetcar company executives patronizingly offered their sympathy but little else. One commented that women wouldn’t have such problems if they would just avoid wearing hobble skirts, infuriating Ransom and her supporters, who argued that the high steps were dangerous regardless of what style skirt a woman might wear. By 1912, a committee of representatives from several D.C. women’s clubs had been formed to meet with Capital Traction and WRECo executives and convince them to modify their cars. “We respectfully ask that a well-graded, lower step be added to the cars, or else a new type of car introduced,” the committee wrote. “The continuance of the present conditions are a menace to the health and lives of all women of Washington.”102
A woman tries to climb aboard an open streetcar of the type commonly used during the summer. Although the scene is from New York, Washington had the same type of cars, with the same challenges for women. Library of Congress.
In March 1912, stepless “hobble skirt” streetcars were introduced in New York, adding more pressure on D.C. companies to take action. WRECo followed suit in April by introducing new cars with doors in the middle and lower steps. The women pronounced satisfaction, and the flap over hobble skirts (which were already going out of fashion) quickly subsided. Along with traditional cars, WRECo’s fleet of sixty elegant center-door cars would remain a component of the streetcar system for several decades.
Despite the higher capacity of the newer cars, complaints still poured in about overcrowding, especially during rush hour, just as had they had for as long as streetcars had been running. “The limit of caution seems to have been passed too often of late,” the Evening Star protested in 1900. “The practice of allowing or compelling passengers to crowd in between filled seats is dangerous and highly objectionable.”103
Replying to a complaint in 1902 about crowding during rush hour on the Columbia (H Street) line, a WRECo spokesman vaguely replied that the company’s manager “tries to do what he can for the good of the citizens as well as the company.”104 Conventional wisdom within the industry held that crowding riders was the only way to make streetcars profitable. When Charles Tyson Yerkes (1837–1905), the well-known Chicago street railway tycoon, was once asked why he didn’t put more cars out to better handle the passenger load, he replied, “It is the straphangers that pay the dividends.”105 With such attitudes, real improvements were unlikely.
A center-door streetcar stops at Union Station. Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Riders chafed at the companies’ indifference, and sometimes nerves were frayed to the breaking point. One day in February 1911, a certain Alexander C. Black, clerk at the War Department, was sitting on a car that grew very crowded. An elderly woman boarded, and Black decided that he should give her his seat but vowed to do it only if he were compensated for the inconvenience. He “extricated himself from the several inches of seat on which he was wedged and gallantly gave his place to the woman passenger. He then wormed his way to where the conductor was standing and demanded either a seat or his ticket back.” When the conductor wouldn’t meet his demands, Black scuffled with both him and the driver and then jumped off to sit in the middle of the tracks in front of the car, refusing to move until his fare was returned. Black’s act of defiance was reported admiringly in the newspapers but had no lasting impact. The police carted him off to jail and charged him with disorderly conduct.106
The newspapers relished stories of people, young and old, achieving small personal victories against the mighty streetcar companies. A simple delight in causing trouble seems to have motivated eight-year-old Draper F. Horton, who decided one day in June 1901 to stick an iron awning rod down into the conduit slot at Eleventh and G Streets Northwest. As expected, the rod promptly entangled itself in the plow of the next streetcar that rumbled by. “Besides tying up the cars, the boy caused serious damage to the system, and the current had to be shut off for quite awhile to make repairs,” the Washington Post reported. “The boy was arrested by Officer Harry Warren, of the First precinct, charged with malicious mischief.”107
Increasing concern about safety, as well as dissatisfaction with the way streetcar companies dealt with complaints, led to reforms in how they were regulated. Since 1862, Congress had directly legislated major aspects of streetcar operations in the District, leaving the District’s commissioners a very limited role. In 1909, Congress granted authority to regulate D.C. streetcar systems to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), a federal agency mostly concerned with matters unrelated to the District.
One of the biggest impacts the ICC had was in instituting a rule in 1910 that led to the end of two-streetcar trains. In the early days of cable and electric power, two-car trains—composed of a powered motorcar pulling an unpowered trailer car—were common on D.C. streets. They were an efficient way to serve a large number of passengers with just two operators: a motorman and a conductor. However, with larger cars and heavier traffic, these mini trains could become dangerous for passengers, particularly if conductors were not on board the trailers to signal the motorman when it was safe for the train to move. The commission became concerned for the safety of both passengers and conductors. It ruled in 1910 that two-car trains must have two conductors on board, one each for the motorcar and the trailer. The rationale was that it wasn’t safe for a single conductor to handle both cars because it was dangerous to step across the space between the cars while the train was operating.
The streetcar companies insisted that they couldn’t afford to pay for two conductors on each train. Rather than doing so, they opted to discontinue using two-car trains altogether. Eventually, even having one conductor on a streetcar would be considered prohibitively expensive, but it would take several more decades before conductor-less streetcars (like the old-fashioned bobtail cars, which had been banned in the 1890s) would be allowed again on D.C. streets.
The ICC’s streetcar reign proved to be short. In 1913, a new D.C. Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was established, modeled on similar commissions that had been created in New York City and elsewhere, and it took over the role of regulating streetcars and other public utilities in Washington. The three District commissioners were designated as the PUC’s commissioners, making the PUC a direct extension of the D.C. government. From this point forward, regulation of streetcar operations in the District would be the province of local officials.
The commission’s first act was to require air brakes on all of the larger streetcars, which were too big for the handbrakes used on older cars. The move improved safety and helped to reduce the noise problem.108 As it gradually became better
established, the PUC would go on to arbitrate changes in routes, the number and types of cars in service, how track was maintained, what fares could be charged and many other aspects of operating city streetcars.
How fares were collected was the subject of much tinkering. Street railways before the early twentieth century had collected fares the same way that regular railroads did, using conductors who would collect fares individually from passengers after they had boarded and taken their seats. This system posed problems for larger cars, which might carry upward of one hundred passengers during rush hour. Conductors simply could not monitor all the passengers, and the streetcar companies feared that they were losing significant revenue. The solution was to require passengers to pay their fares immediately upon entering the cars. In 1909, D.C. streetcar companies began introducing patented “Pay as You Enter” cars, which had been designed specifically for this purpose and were first used in Montreal, Canada. The cars had separate entrances and exits, with fare boxes manned by conductors at the entrances. A variation of this theme—called “Pay Within” because the conductor and fare box were stationed farther inside the car—was soon developed by rival manufacturers to compete with the patented Pay as You Enter concept.
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