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Show IN THE most recent issue of Kar- $; Fax, distributed gratis to the patrons pat-rons of the street cars, we find a childlike child-like wail that should make an insistent appeal to the tender-hearted, and we ' hope they will listen and Influence their friends to refrain from riding in automobiles and give the poor blind man a nickle. Below, we quote the absurdity in full: Gain or Lose? Man standing on the corner, waiting for the street car. Genial motorist drives up. "Want a ride?" "I'll say I do!" Waiting man hops in. Away they go! Man saves a nickel and gets to town quicker. Motorist warms all up and says: "What a nice man am I!" And tho street car company is short one nickel. Same thing happens again. It happens hap-pens not only at one corner but at several a dozen maybe twenty-five corners, on that street car line. And instead of one passenger, the various motorists pick up two, three and even half a dozen each. Over the whole course of a given line, it frequently happens that there are fifty or Bixty prospective street car passengers picked pick-ed up casually by motorists in one hour. It isn't always the same people nor at the same corners, but the average S remains the same. And the process is ' repeated at lunch time and in the evening. yg j There are approximately 12,000 automobiles au-tomobiles operating in Salt Lake county. coun-ty. Now, when you consider that a goodly percentage of them out of a spirit of accommodation are picking up passengers three times dally, you will realize that the nickels the company is out, soon amount up into hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Fifty passengers is an average carload. car-load. As a straight-away, cold-blooded business proposition, won't the street car company have to take off one car during a given hour, if, during that v hour, it continues to lose a carload of passengers, because of automobile pick-ups? If that happens, then the man who goes to the corner each day, reasoning: reason-ing: "Well, PYen if I'm not picked ' , up today, there's always the street car," is due for a sudden, rude jar - some morning. The car he figured on taking his ' regular car he discovers is not there that morning nor the next morning, , nor the next. And he finally wakes up &. to the fact that he must either leave T ' home earlier, or get to town later. Is it worth it to the individual to save those few nickels via the automobile automo-bile route to town? The motorist has even more at stake than the individual he accommodates. I The motor car owners are, as a rule, the property owners. They are also, in large numbers, the business men of the town. And there isn't anything that will hurt the value of their property, or cut X into the volume of their business more 7 quickly than infrequent, inadequate i street car service. Now, for the love of Mike, don't get "v us wrong on this thing. We're not criticising the sentiment that induces the offering or accepting of an automobile automo-bile ride. For the motor car owner a to offer the accommodation is an act of good fellowship, and to accept is the ' appreciative, human-nature thing to do. It's just a case of where sound economics once more clashes with sentiment. In the long run, the loss is bound to be felt by the car owner, the passenger and the street car company, com-pany, so that public opinion against the practice will prove an all-around advantage." We remember how the railway systems sys-tems assisted by the city and county commissioners, made it impossible for the jitney buss to run In Salt Lake, and after the above, we cannot see anything for the owners of automobiles automo-biles to do but to destroy them or send them to the scrap heap. The people who control our street railway system paid too much for it, and so we must pay them or they are liable to continue to turn on the tears with a series of appeals similar to that in Kar-Fax of the seventh instant. They have had their own way ever since the incident of the jitney bus. Free franchises, 6-cent fares, indlffer--" . ent service, skip stops and any old schedule, and now comes this heartrending heart-rending wail because a man may pick a friend up with his machine on the 1 way down in the morning. It is terrible terri-ble and the cry for help should be heeded. In the meantime would It not save and make the company some money if officials of the company rode on the street cars Instead of using automobiles, automo-biles, and picking up their friends on the way down town. Such an example might rapidly be followed by others. The company has been granted practically prac-tically everything asked for. In the name of heaven, what more do they ''p' want? The cry for help Is a great argument argu-ment against munlclnal ownership of street railroads, because If the railroad company cannot make money under , - present conditions why wish the citrus ' on the taxpayers? We hope, however, that the public will give heed to the Kar-Fax appeal which is as touching as the pleading of a little child hungry for its champagne cham-pagne and partridge. In this new drive for pennies and nickels everyone should steadfastly refuse to get in an automobile, even if the street car never nev-er comes, and they arrive down town the day after they have started. |