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Show AUTO LIES 01 PACIFIC COAST Other states have much to learn from California in the matter of making mak-ing money out of automobile stage lines. It was in California that the jitney bus was first heard of and that state has reached a degree of efficiency efficien-cy in handling passenger travel by auto probably greater than any other state in the union. Tho jitney bus business had its birth in Los Angeles. A street car company which ran a line to a certain suburb Insisted on charging an extra fare when the line was extended a short distance to a new suburb. There was an Immediate protest from tho public, and automobile owners living in the vicinity showed their sympathy with the objectors by picking up passengers passen-gers on the way to town, charging them only a nickel for the ride. Traffic became so heavy, that hundreds hun-dreds of persons owning automobiles saw an opportunity for making a living liv-ing and went Into the business of carrying car-rying passengers and' all the street car lines In the city were paralleled by the jitney lines. Business conditions throughout the country were bad at the time, and the success of the jitney bus in Los Angeles was such that within a few weeks jitney bus lines had sprung up all over the west. Much of the jitney bus activity proved to be of a mushroom nature and disappeared quickly, but in many localities it was put on a sound bus-ness bus-ness basis and continued to flourish. Its success greatly stimulated interest in the establishment of cross-country and interurban bus lines, and many routes of this nature are in operation in California. |