Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/48

 32 passenger cars, no smoking cars, bulky packages permitted in the trains, and want of attention to the needs of the people. Just two years later the first item was re-echoed, "dusty, musty, rickety old cars." The fault here was apparently simply a want of regular washing for the cars were only nine years old.

In the face of the gathering storm Messrs. Bowne and Smith retired from the management of the Flushing road in September 1864, and turned over the depreciated property to their successor, Mr. William Ebbitt, who had served for a decade as superintendent of the Sixth Avenue R.R. Co. in New York. It was Ebbitt's misfortune to arrive on the scene when the public outcry against the road reached a crescendo of sharpness; we can only speculate on the reasons why the Flushing R.R. was allowed to degenerate for so long a period and to such a low point. Probably one of the chief reasons for the situation was absentee ownership. Certainly the owners of the road in New York, all politicians and business men, knew nothing about the running of a railroad and believed that by entrusting the property to men with horse car experience like Charlick and Ebbitt, that all would be well. It is just possible that these men might have succeeded had it not been for the inadequate budget on which they were expected to run the road. The earnings of the property were milked for dividends and enough was allocated for minimal daily upkeep, but nothing for capital replacements or improvements. As a result, the road was producing a profit only at the price of an ever-increasing backlog of deferred maintenance. As the Civil War wore on, labor became scarcer and more costly than in the years before the war, but this scarcely explained the failure to clean the windows of the cars and wash out the floors, particularly in an age when spitting and expectorating of tobacco juice were commonplaces of American life.

The complaints against the condition of the cars became increasingly bitter in 1864. The following protests are typical: … "filth and squalor of the disgusting, worn-out, overcrowded cars" … "I call the attention of the owners to the absolutely filthy condition of their cars. The evil has been disgustingly obvious for a year past, but they are now so shamefully dirty that ladies in New York assign this as their only reason preventing them from visiting their friends in Flushing" … "Why are the cars permitted to run day after day with windows broken, ven-