If a symbol of African American dignity and strength were needed, none better could be found than Sojourner Truth (circa 1797–1883), a prominent African American who made a stand for equal access in 1865. Truth was one of the most famous African Americans in the country, having established herself as a proselytizer for civil rights in the 1840s. Born into slavery in upstate New York, Truth’s original name was Isabella Baumfree. She led a harrowing young life as a slave before gaining her freedom in 1826 and moving to New York City, where she worked in the households of two Christian evangelists. By 1843, she felt called on to travel the country and preach about the evils of slavery. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and with the help of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, her memoirs, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, were published in 1850. The following year, she gave an extemporaneous speech in Ohio on women’s rights, known as the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, for which she became widely celebrated.
In 1864, Truth came to Washington to work for the National Freedman’s Relief Association, helping to distribute food, clothing and medicine to former slaves and working to find permanent homes for them outside Washington. However, despite being well known and respected among the reform-minded, on the streets of Washington Truth was just another elderly black woman. In 1865, she found herself facing as much difficulty as any African American in riding the city’s streetcars.
Truth’s memoirs contain several anecdotes about her run-ins with D.C. streetcar operators.46 On one occasion, she stood on the street signaling to several cars that refused to stop for her. When the next one came along, she “gave three tremendous yelps, ‘I want to ride! I want to ride!! I WANT TO RIDE!!!” Sympathetic onlookers helped her get the car to stop, and she quickly boarded and seated herself. The angry conductor ordered her to “go forward where the horses are, or I will throw you out,” but she replied that she knew the law as well as he did. Several soldiers on the car sided with her, and Truth was allowed to keep her seat. “Bless God! I have had a ride,” she said when she finally disembarked.
Sojourner Truth, 1864. Library of Congress.
On another occasion, she ran after a car in Georgetown that wouldn’t stop for her and managed to get aboard when it stopped for other passengers. “It is a shame to make a lady run so,” she told the conductor, who threatened to put her off the car. “If you attempt that, it will cost you more than your car and horses are worth,” she answered. Again, a man in military uniform intervened on her behalf, and the conductor left her alone.
A third incident proved more harrowing. Truth was out procuring supplies for invalids with a white friend, Laura Smith Haviland (1808–1898), a prominent social activist and former organizer of the Underground Railroad who had been named inspector of hospitals for the Freedmen’s Bureau. Truth was harassed by the conductor when she got on a streetcar with Haviland but didn’t run into real difficulties until the two of them transferred to a second car. As Truth described it:
A man coming out as we were going into the next car, asked the conductor if “niggers were allowed to ride.” The conductor grabbed me by the shoulder and jerking me around, ordered me to get out. I told him I would not. Mrs. Haviland took hold of my other arm and said, “Don’t put her out.” The conductor asked if I belonged to her. “No,” replied Mrs. Haviland, “She belongs to humanity.” “Then take her and go,” said he, and giving me another push slammed me against the door. I told him I would let him know whether he could shove me about like a dog, and said to Mrs. Haviland, “Take the number of this car.”
Truth’s shoulder was injured in the incident, and with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, she pressed charges against the conductor, John C. Weeden, for assault and battery. Haviland testified on her behalf, as did a doctor from the Freedmen’s Hospital, who stated that her shoulder had been “much swollen” from being “wrenched.”47 Although the charges against Weeden were eventually dropped, the court proceedings were covered by the local newspapers, and the publicity pressured the streetcar companies to do a better job of enforcing the law.48
By 1866, discrimination on D.C. streetcars had decreased noticeably. Without conductors and drivers actively harassing African Americans, intolerant white riders could do little more than silently fume. Washington, though far from stellar in civil rights matters, had become a leader in promoting equal access to public transit.
In February 1866, the popular news magazine Harper’s Weekly published a cartoon entitled “Holy Horror of Mrs. McCaffraty in a Washington City Street Passenger Car,” an image that stands as a strange final commentary on the streetcar crisis in the District. By that time, voting rights were a bigger issue, and a law had just been passed giving black Washingtonians the right to vote. The cartoon mentions that “Mr. McCaffraty voted against Negro suffrage,” apparently referring to an earlier non-binding citywide referendum in which D.C. voters overwhelmingly disapproved of black voting rights. Congress had ignored the referendum, passing the D.C. voting rights act and even overturning a veto by President Andrew Johnson.
“Holy Horror of Mrs. McCaffraty in a Washington City Street Passenger Car” from Harper’s Weekly, February 24, 1866. Library of Congress.
The cartoon expresses support for African Americans, implying that the real problem is with intolerant whites, but it does little to defuse racial hostility and prejudice. Instead, it redirects animosity toward Irish Catholics. The African American woman is well dressed and appears dignified and refined—implicitly the type of person who should be welcomed on city streetcars. Mrs. McCaffraty, on the other hand, is crude and animal-like, leering menacingly at the serene black woman. Perhaps this Irish termagant is the one who should be thrown off the car! She carries an overflowing market basket with fish dangling from the end, undoubtedly creating a stench throughout the car. Her uncouthness is further emphasized by the liquor bottles sticking out of her basket, emblems of the stereotypical Irish propensity for drink.
The conflicted message of this cartoon seems to sum up the state of civil rights in Washington and the country at large in 1866. Society still had a long way to go to achieve racial tolerance, and the right of African Americans to ride in peace on D.C. streetcars had not been settled and would be threatened repeatedly in the future.
Chapter 4
HARD CHOICES
MODERNIZING THE STREETCAR SYSTEM, 1888–1897
The shades of night were falling fast In one box car were fifty massed, While thirty more were packed outside, The tenor-voiced conductor cried, “Move forward, please!”
At every corner more piled on, Till every inch of space was gone, No nickel-bearer was denied, And still the meek conductor cried, “Move forward, please!”
The shivering shop girls stand in groups, Who fain would ride within those coops, To board the cars they vainly tried, And yet the slim conductor cried, “Move forward, please!”
To realize th’ ideal jam ’Twould need a big hydraulic ram To crowd the passengers inside Who heard not when the fellow cried “Move forward, please!”
One day a man of fearful might Packed all the people in so tight They stuck together in a lump, As solid as a hickory stump—“Move forward, please!” 49
By the late 1880s, Washington’s streetcars were perennially overcrowded and out of date. Although they were essential to the smooth functioning of the city—thousands of early commuters rode them every day—they were hopelessly outmoded. The fundamental problem was the continued reliance on horses. Why should D.C. streetcars still be horse-drawn when other American cities were rapidly converting to cable and electric?
Horses had never been an ideal solution. They were expensive, could only work a few hours a day, pulled cars slowly, needed lots of care and made a mess of city streets. Their limitations as locomotive engines had become painfully obvious as American cities grew in the 1880s. The population of the District of Columbia had more than doubled from 75,080 in 1860 to 177,624 in 1880, and it would continue climbing to 230,392 in 1890.
More than ever, these people lived in widely dispersed communities. Some form of “rapid transit,” as it was being called, was desperately needed.
Congress was key to making any improvements; it retained the power to charter streetcar companies and set requirements on how they operated. Congressional debates about the D.C. streetcar “problem” had been going on for years. In 1888, Senator George Graham Vest (1830–1904) of Missouri, one of the city’s severest critics, railed against the horse-powered D.C. network, calling it “the most infamous system of street railroads ever inflicted upon any people.” According to the Evening Star, he “condemned the entire system of streetcar service here, and declared that it ought to be abolished; that horse cars are obsolete, and it is time the national capital had a modern service.”50 Public sentiment was clearly in his favor. The following January, when he called the Washington system “the worst in the United States,” it led to a rare instance of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill. “There was a unanimity of Senatorial sentiment in this regard, which was surprising. Each Senator present was ready to say something on the subject and quietly awaited his turn to express himself,” the Washington Post reported.51 The time for modernizing the city’s streetcars had come. The only remaining issue—and it was a thorny one—was choosing which propulsion technology to use.
THE EVIL OF OVERHEAD WIRES
Controversy had erupted with the inauguration in 1888 of the Eckington & Soldiers Home Railway, a streetcar line that connected the new Northeast community of Eckington with downtown (the following chapter includes details of its development). The Eckington line was not only the first mechanized streetcar line in Washington, but it was also the city’s first electric trolley line—the word trolley referring to a streetcar that gathers electric power from overhead lines through a pole on the roof of the car. The way the pole reaches up to the overhead wires reminded people of a fisherman’s pole trolling in a stream, and thus the term was coined. For many Washingtonians, the revolutionary new Eckington trolley was a marvel to behold. But for other observers, notably Crosby S. Noyes (1825–1908), editor of the Evening Star, it was the incarnation of evil.
Under the editorial leadership of Noyes, the Star had already been waging an aggressive campaign against the use of overhead wires for the distribution of electricity to downtown buildings. The Star’s primary arguments were that the wires were unsightly, posed a danger of electrocution, would interfere with the operations of the fire department and would be impossible to eradicate at a later date if ever allowed to gain a foothold in the city. The worry about overhead wires in Washington was in keeping with rising concerns among civic leaders around the country about crowded, dirty, unsafe conditions in urban centers. These concerns were one of the chief drivers of the City Beautiful movement, which would gain prominence at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, just five years later. Eventually, the McMillan Commission would produce a grand plan to beautify Washington’s monumental core. But in the meantime, the proliferation of hundreds of tall wooden poles strung with colossal nests of wires was a particular evil that, in the view of Noyes and others, had to be stopped. Electric streetcar systems, adding even more wires strung out over the centers of major roads, would make matters that much worse.
When plans for the Eckington project were first made public in August 1888, the Star responded with a fierce editorial. “The reform of abolishing overhead wires in the District seems to be progressing backward,” it warned. “[N]ow the Commissioners add a new species of overhead wire to the existing network by permitting the Eckington railway to construct an overhead electric system.” They should instead be working to “secure to the city the benefits of rapid transit without aggravating the evil of overhead wires,” the Star insisted.52 To support its position, the newspaper cited a consultant’s report, prepared expressly for the D.C. commissioners, on how rapid transit should be introduced in the District. The report recommended that overhead trolley wires be banned within the city (i.e., south of Boundary Street) and allowed only in suburban areas of the District.53
The Star’s cause was quickly taken up in the Senate by George F. Edmunds (1828–1919) of Vermont. Edmunds had a reputation for being a biting inquisitor as well as a staunch champion of the status quo, always suspicious of new developments. The new electric trolley was a classic subject for his wrath. In a hearing just days after the Eckington announcement, he accused the D.C. commissioners of violating the law and defying the will of Congress in allowing the project to move forward. “Not for many a day have the District Commissioners had such a severe raking over as was given them in the Senate yesterday,” the Washington Post observed.54
An 1880s view of the Treasury Department building and Fifteenth Street. Horse-drawn streetcars still ply this route, and overhead power and telecommunications wires have been installed. They would soon be banned. Author’s collection.
The Eckington line’s defenders, including the Post, countered that the railway was essentially suburban in nature, and thus overhead wires were consistent with the recommendations of the city’s consultant. Further, the company had already made purchases and other contract commitments, and it would be wrong to force it to change after the fact. The irate senators backed down, and the Eckington line was allowed to proceed with its plans, but it would be only a temporary victory.
Spurred to action, Congress soon required D.C. streetcar lines to convert. In March 1889, it passed an act authorizing D.C. streetcar companies to “substitute for horses electric power by storage or independent electrical batteries or underground wire, or underground cables moved by steam power.” A year later, another law decreed that if downtown streetcar companies didn’t convert within two years, they would forfeit their corporate franchises.55 While deadline extensions and special accommodations were subsequently granted to various companies, the edict to move away from horsecars had been established. What to replace them with was not at all obvious. The law included an explicit prohibition against trolley systems using overhead wires after July 1893.
The city’s streetcar companies had their marching orders. They were required to mechanize their cars, but they were also prohibited from using overhead electric wires—the cheapest and most widely used propulsion technology of the day. Complying with the Congressional mandate would be a tremendous challenge, both financially and technologically, for every company operating in the District.
THE MOTOR OF THE FUTURE
The Washington & Georgetown Railroad Company—first, largest and most successful of the city’s streetcar lines—was a sound, conservatively run operation in the late 1880s. Knowing that it would sooner or later be forced to abandon horse-drawn cars, the company decided to take action. In 1887, the company’s board of directors commissioned board member Charles C. Glover (1846–1936) and company president Henry Hurt (1844–1916) to make a thorough study of advanced propulsion technologies and come back to the board with a recommendation on how to proceed.
Glover and Hurt were great friends. Glover was one of the city’s most prominent and influential business leaders. Born to a family who had been in Washington since its founding, Glover had joined the banking firm of Riggs & Company when he was nineteen years old and had risen to become one of its partners. He had been on the board of the W&G since 1875. Hurt, a Virginia native, had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, he started his career as a streetcar driver and gradually worked his way up through the ranks of the company. At six feet tall and weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Hurt was a commanding and assertive figure. He was confident that he knew the streetcar business inside out and understood which direction it was heading.
The two made a grand five-week tour across the country to observe streetcar systems in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When they returned to Washington in May 1887, Hurt announced that the W&G would convert to cable. “We are firmly convinced,” he told the Washington Post, “that the cable is the motor of the futu
re, and we will adopt it, even if it necessitates the discarding of all our cars, our tracks, our buildings—in fact, even if we have to begin over again with an entire new plant.”56 Hurt envisioned a thoroughly modern and luxurious new cable system in the District, including cars as elegant as those he saw in San Francisco. “They are beautifully finished in hard wood and brass and it is our intention to duplicate them for Washington when our cable road is started.”
An undated portrait of Charles C. Glover. Library of Congress.
At the time, it was hard to argue with Hurt’s conclusion. Cable was a tested and stable technology. In contrast, electric systems were still experimental and had a reputation for being unreliable. Andrew S. Hallidie (1836–1900), a wire-rope manufacturer, invented the first cable-drawn streetcar system in the early 1870s, demonstrating it successfully in San Francisco in 1873. For most of the 1880s, cable was the best available alternative to horse-drawn streetcars; electric wouldn’t become widely available until the end of the decade.
Cable systems are conceptually simple. Engines in a central steam-powered plant propel a looped steel-rope continuously through an underground conduit that extends the length of a cable car route. The cars are equipped with “grips,” powerful metal rods that reach down through a narrow slot in the street and clamp on to the moving steel cable, which then pulls the cars along the track.
The straighter the route, the better a cable system will work. The vast majority of the energy involved in running the system is actually spent in circulating the cable beneath the roadway, so the extra burden of the cars grabbing hold of it adds only a marginal load. Thus cable systems are especially efficient for hauling cars up steep hills, such as in San Francisco. Multiple cars can be carried at the same time without losing speed. And the cost of operating cable cars in the late nineteenth century was only about half that of horsecars—a fact that caught the attention of many streetcar company executives.
Capital Streetcars Page 6