Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/345

 I ceased to hear of the individual owner any more; I never saw him in his shirt sleeves in his little office at the end of the line counting up the nickels of those new families which each meant $73.00 per annum to him, and it must have been about the same time that I began to hear of the traction company. There had been probably intervening experiments with tough mules, whom no one pitied, as everyone had pitied the horses they replaced, and there were, in other cities, astounding miracles of cable cars and elevated railways. And then electricity came as a motive power, and the streets were made hideous by the gaunt poles and make-*shifts of wires, and the trolley cars came, and increased in size and numbers, and families swarmed, until out on those streets and avenues the great yellow cars went rushing and clanging by, with multitudes of people clinging to the straps and, toward evening, swarming like flies on the broad rear platforms, and the conductors in their blue uniforms shouting "Step lively!" with a voice as authoritative as that which the company spoke in the city councils. And the families continued to arrive, and to build houses, and to toil and to contribute each its $73.00 a year, though they did it with human reluctance and complaint, and grew dimly conscious that somewhere in the whole complicated transaction an injustice lurked. And finally this hidden injustice became the chief public concern of the people of the town, and an issue in local politics for more than a decade.