The West Adapts the Automobile: Technology, Unemployment, and the Jitney Phenomenon of 1914-1917

The Western History Association

The West Adapts the Automobile: Technology, Unemployment, and the Jitney Phenomenonof 1914-1917Author(s): Carlos A. SchwantesSource: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Jul., 1985), pp. 307-326Published by: Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State University on behalf of The WesternHistory AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/969130 .

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The West Adapts the Automobile:

Technology, Unemployment, and the Jitney Phenomenon of 1914-1917

CARLOS A. SCHWANTES

n the winter of 1914-1915 a group of innovative westerners gave Americans something to talk about besides the Great War in Europe. These men and women were the pioneers of the jitney movement, adapting the

automobile for use as a common carrier. The result, if not actually a revolution in urban transportation, nonetheless permanently altered the think- ing of the electric railway industry and its patrons. The jitney represented a perfect marriage between changing technology and public perceptions and desires especially pronounced in the West. Here was a manifestation of the region's resentment of eastern financial interests, the "trolley trust" in particular. Although dismissed as a fad by some, the jitney was a technological innovation of social significance, introducing many an urban dweller to the pleasures of an automobile ride. For the jobless worker it represented a form of self-help and a continuation of the western tradition of active responses to unemployment-in this case the recession of 1914, which hit the West harder than other regions. The jitney movement ultimately reached far beyond the Pacific Slope where it originated, appearing in eastern seaboard cities like Providence and Norfolk and becoming a topic of conversation second only to the war as well as a fascinating etymological riddle, but its greatest impact remained in the urban areas of the trans- Missouri West. The phenomenon thus constitutes yet another example of how the West served as a pacesetter for the rest of the nation.'

Carlos A. Schwantes is visiting associate professor of history, University of Idaho, Moscow.

'On the West as pacesetter, see Gerald D. Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Cen- tury: A Short History of an Urban Oasis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1973). See also Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant, "Social Effects of the Automobile in Southern California During the Nineteen- Twenties" (doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, Berkeley, 1964). At- tempts to trace the origin of the term jitney, which the New York Times described as a "droll, queer-looking word which might have been used as appropriately for a cigar," sparked a good-natured war among etymologists. Although most agreed that jitney was a slang for nickel, they variously suggested that it was derived from a Yiddish, Russian, French ("jeton"), Japanese, Polish, or, perhaps, Irish word. Some of the explanations were quite imaginative:



308 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY July

For all the furor it caused, the jitney itself was neither impressive nor glamorous: "Anything that runs on four wheels and gasoline and 5 cents" qualified as a jitney, observed the movement's official journal. Usually driven by their owners, the ubiquitous machines operated along any quasi-fixed route likely to generate passengers. A majority of jitneys were Ford automobiles, but some were delivery trucks fitted with improvised bodies resembling washtubs. Yet no matter how homely it was, the jitney won the hearts of urban dwellers. Neither the automobile nor the bus was new to city streets in 1915, but the conversion of the automobile into a jitney popularized the "autobus" like nothing before and confronted street railways with their first significant rival as well as a stunning loss of revenue.2

Born in Los Angeles in mid-1914, the jitney attracted little attention outside southern California until January 1915. Then in the space of a few weeks, or sometimes a single day, jitneys by the hundreds crowded onto the downtown streets of western cities in the United States and Canada. In Kansas City, for example, during a two-week period the number of jitneys jumped from zero to two hundred cars, carrying nearly 25,000 passengers a day, and that was only the beginning. Two weeks later the number ofjitney patrons in Kansas City reached 45-50,000 a day. No reliable figures exist for electric railway industry losses or jitney profits during the height of the phenomenon, but in late January the estimated daily receipts of jitneys total-

one person suggested that jitney seemed derived from the southern black hack driver's "Git me, Boss." When an Oakland, California, savings bank sponsored a contest to discover the word's origin, it received scores of suggestions, all of which were discounted by language experts at the University of California, Berkeley. It remains today an etymological riddle. "The 'Jitneys,' " Literary Digest, L (February 13, 1915), 302; "The Wandering 'Jitney,' " Literary Digest, L (April 3, 1915), 774; New York Times, March 31, 1915; "The Jitney-Bus Competi- tion," Electric RailwayJournal (ERJ), 45 (February 13, 1915), 324; "Origin of the Word 'Jitney,' "

Jitney Bus, 1 (May 1915), 41; Clyde Lyndon King, "The Jitney Bus," American City, 12 (June 1915), 481; Hugh S. Fullerton, "The Jitneys Are Coming," American Magazine (May 1915), 67-69; "Putting the Brakes on the Motor Bus," Sunset, 34 (April 1915), 645; "The Jitney Bus," Nation, 100 (February 4, 1915), 142; "Against the Jitney," Nation, 100 (March 18, 1915), 304-5; H. L. Mencken, The American Language.: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York, 1936), 188-89; and The American Language.: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, Supplement II (New York, 1948), 726.

2Jane Dixon, "Jitneys Rise in Popularity," Jitney Bus, 1 (April 1915), 19 [quotation]. This periodical, the voice of the jitney movement, was published in Kansas City. An ex- cellent overview of the street railway era in American cities is Glen E. Holt, "The Chang- ing Perception of Urban Pathology: An Essay on the Development of Mass Transit in the United States," in Kenneth T. Jackson and Stanley K. Schultz, eds., Cities in American History (New York, 1972), 324-43. A basic study of the electric railway industry, although with em- phasis on the interurban systems, is George W. Hilton and John E Due, The Electric Interur- ban Railways in America (Stanford, CA, 1960). Emphasizing the regulatory problems raised by the jitneys is Ross D. Eckert and George W. Hilton, "The Jitneys," Journal of Law and Economics, XV (October 1972), 293-325. The Oregon Voter (Portland), which described itself as a weekly journal of current events, devoted an entire issue to the jitney question. It collected information from city officials, utility commissioners, and street railway executives in all parts of the United States, and it culled items on jitneys from the newspapers of every city with a population of 10,000 or more.



1985 CARLOS A. SCHWANTES 309

ed $8,400 in Los Angeles and $6,000 in San Francisco and the transbay cities. After taking the West "by storm," the jitney phenomenon spread rapidly through the South, and as soon as spring weather permitted, it invaded the upper Midwest and Northeast.3

Many who had complained for years about overcrowded streetcars during rush hour pushed eagerly into dangerously overloaded jitneys, even occasionally flirting with death by riding on the running boards. Anyone with access to an automobile or a truck could enter the business. Some operators picked up a few extra nickles while driving to and from their regular jobs. In Oakland, California, chauffeurs, after delivering their wealthy patrons to the theater, slipped around the corner, put a jitney sign on the wind- shield, and reaped a financial reward before returning at the end of the show. Occasionally there were setbacks, as when someone scattered carpet tacks on the streets of Seattle's university district and disabled more than fifty jitneys. Ever a resourceful lot, jitney drivers proposed to suspend magnets before their front tires to prevent future sabotage. By May jitney transport was a fact of urban life from coast to coast; at the peak of the phenomenon in mid-1915 an estimated 62,000 jitneys competed with streetcars. Never in American history had any mode of public transportation grown so rapidly.4

The jitney was quite clearly a concept right for the time, the product of a serendipitous union between widespread public desire for an alternative to the streetcar and opportunity as represented by the advent of inexpensive automobiles (many of them in used condition and available on easy credit), a large pool of unemployed workers willing to drive them, and a general lack of legal restrictions to commercial operation of rubber-tired motor vehicles. The catalyst that did most to unite desire and opportunity

3"The First Jitney Bus," Jitney Bus, 1 (July 1915), 92; E. L. Lewis, "The Rise and Decline of the Jitney in Its Birthplace," ERJ, 46 (Annual Convention Issue 1915), 500; "Jitney-Bus Competition," 324; "The Jitney Situation," ERJ, 45 (March 13, 1915), 494; New York Times, January 31, 1915, section 8; " 'Jitney Busses' in the Pacific Coast States," Electric Traction, 11 (February 1915), 78; Fullerton, "The Jitneys Are Coming," 67-69; and "Jitneys Carry 45,000 Daily in Kansas City," Automobile, 32 (February 18, 1915), 346. Estimates of jitney receipts are from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as quoted in "The 'Jitneys,' " Literary Digest, L (February 13, 1915), 302. The California Electric Railway Association calculated the losses suffered to jitneys by the state's electric lines during 1915 to be approximately three million dollars; the state's steam railways lost an estimated one million dollars to jitneys. West Coast lines in general suffered greater losses to the jitney than those elsewhere. "California Railways Lose More Than $4,000,000 Through Jitneys," ERJ, 47 (June 24, 1916), 1206.

4"The Jitney Invasion," Outlook, 109 (April 14, 1915), 854-55; Dennis C. Pillsbury, "The Jitney Bus, the People and the Portland Railway," Pacific Power and Light Company Bulletin (March 1915), 9-10; F. W. Doolittle, "The Economics of Jitney Bus Operation," Journal of Political Economy, 23 (July 1915), 663; Edward S. Mason, The Street Railway in Massachusetts: The Rise and Decline of an Industry (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 129; Isaac Don Levine, "The Jitney," Independent, 82 (May 31, 1915), 357; Delos F. Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem (New York, 1921), 103; "Who Are the Jitney Drivers?" ERJ, 45 (May 22, 1915), 967; New York Times, March 14, 1915, section 8; New York Times, March 21, 1915, section 8; and Eckert and Hilton, "The Jitneys," 295.




was the daily press, particularly the Hearst papers. In late 1914 and early 1915 newspapermen picked up the story of a transportation novelty in Los Angeles and soon made the jitney front-page news throughout the United States and Canada. In communities where either desire or opportunity was absent, the jitney movement quickly failed. That happened more frequently east than west of the Mississippi.5

For years the public had yearned for an alternative to street railways, or, at least for an opportunity to curb the arrogance of their owners. Dur- ing the golden age of the electric street railway from 1887 to 1914, when

they enjoyed monopoly status, companies frequently adopted a take-it-or- leave-it attitude that irked riders. The industry created a host of new millionaires and not a few political and financial scandals. The typical city dweller had a direct interest in such matters, for as urban historian Glen Holt has estimated, by the turn of the century every American "who lived in a city of 10,000 or more rode public transportation an average of 252 times a year." Especially resentful were residents of the many western communities where the local street railway was absentee owned. The Stone and Webster syndicate of Boston at one time controlled nearly thirty companies in cities as widely scattered as Dallas and Seattle, and that was only one of many such combines headquartered on the East Coast.6

One of the more execrable jitney jingles--doggerel recited for enter- tainment at the noon luncheons of realty boards and chambers of

commerce--appeared in a Dallas newspaper and dwelled upon the fact that the local street railway was controlled from headquarters on Boston's Milk Street:

Stone and Webster are raising a row; Something's wrong with their big Boston cow;

That little Ford jitney Got hold of her titney,

And they wonder who's milking her now.7

5H. S. Cooper, "Prospect of the Jitney," ERJ, 47 (January 1, 1916), 39; C. I. Palm, "The Jitney Bus," Electric Traction, 11 (May 1915), 316; Lewis, "Rise and Decline of the Jitney," 500; "Jitney-Bus Competition," 328; "Regulating the Jitney," Literary Digest, LI (July 3, 1915), 3; and Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 109.

6Mark Foster, "City Planners and Urban Transporation: The American Response, 1900-1940,"Journal of Urban History, 5 (May 1979), 372; Mark S. Foster, "The Automobile and the City," Michigan Quarterly Review, 19 and 20 (Fall 1980/Winter 1981), 462-63; "Why the Street-Railways of the Country Are Facing Wholesale Bankruptcy," Current Opinion, LXIII (November 1917), 350; E. J. Edwards, "The Street-Car Kings," Munsey's Magazine, 30 (December 1903), 383, 387; Daniel E. Turbeville III, The Electric Railway Era in Northwest Washington, 1890-1930 (Bellingham, WA, 1979), 47, 50; Holt, "The Changing Perception of Urban Pathology," 331, 334-38; "Growth of the 'Jitney' Bus Business," Literary Digest, L (February 27, 1915), 434-36; and "Better Transportation and Fair Play," Jitney Bus, 1 (April 1915), 1.

70Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 103 [quotation]; and "About Jitney Jokes," Jitney Bus, 1 (May 1915), 36.




The nation's progressive reformers, who had unsuccessfully challenged the "trolley trust" at the ballot box or in city council chambers, hailed the jitney as a new emblem of freedom. Radicals proclaimed it to be a "new phase in the old struggle between class and mass. On one side is capital, represented by the traction interests, and on the other side are the jitney owners and their patrons." For the Reverend Sydney Strong of Seattle, who provided eastern readers of the Survey a preview of the new mode of transportation, the jitney was "a return to the old social democracy of the country store when manager and customer shook hands and swapped stories over the counter." Corporations, declared Strong, "are bound to 'walk more humbly' and 'do righteousness' more spontaneously, when they reflect that in a day their income may be cut 50 per cent or almost annihilated." This conviction was shared by all jitney enthusiasts.8

The jitney, in short, was widely perceived as a liberating new form of transportation for the common man. It was, proclaimed one enthusiast, "a new page in the history of locomotion when convenience and economy came together for the first time." As he expressed it in doggerel,

There was a little man Had a wooden leg;

Hadn't any money, Didn't want to beg.

So he took four spools, And an old tin can,

Called it jitney And the blamed thing ran.

In full gear now he effervesced, "It's bound to run. Nothing can stop the jitney now, no corporation, no legislation. The era of extortion and of cor- ruption is over."'

Public hostility to street railways was not wholly a response to abuses of corporate power. In some communities, well-intentioned technological innovations proved a company's undoing. As diminutive trolleys evolved into longer and heavier streetcars, which were often coupled together in multiple units, companies sacrificed speed for efficiency. Because the big cars carried more passengers, they had to stop longer and more frequently en route to admit or discharge riders. The "cattle cars," as jitney enthusiasts labeled them, also ran at less frequent intervals. Thus the opportunity awaiting a speedy jitney carrying a handful of passengers was obvious: run-

8John Anderson Miller, Fares Please! From Horse-Cars to Streamliners (New York, 1941), 150 [first quotation]; New York Times, March 31, 1915; Bailey Millard, "The War on the Jitney," Illustrated World, 26 (October 1916), 180 [second quotation]; and Sydney Strong, "A Nickel a Ride-When the Jitney Comes to Town," Survey, 33 (March 13, 1915), 647 [third quotation].

9"Getting Rid of the Rails," Independent, 82 (May 31, 1915), 342.




ning every two to six minutes, jitneys lured away streetcar patrons accustomed to a much longer wait and delivered them to their destination in less than half the time formerly required. And neither fire hoses across the track nor a disabled streetcar on the line ahead slowed the rubber-tired carriers. "The average American," complained the Electric Railway Journal, the industry's semiofficial voice, "is careless and is usually willing to take a chance if he can save time."10

The aesthetic values that Americans associated with technology also worked to the advantage of the jitney: there were those who applauded any innovation that promised to remove tracks and overhead wires-the un- sightly encumbrances of the industrial age-from residential streets. In fact, a twenty-four passenger, double-deck bus began operating in New York City as early as 1905 because residents were reluctant to see rails laid on fashionable Fifth Avenue.1"

Given the often negative attitude of Americans toward street railways, the jitney was actually a surprisingly late arrival on the urban landscape. By 1914 most of the technological innovations that made the jitney possible were a decade or more old. Paved streets had been common in some areas since the bicycle craze of the 1890s. The double-deck buses on New York's Fifth Avenue had operated successfully for nearly a decade, but like the smaller buses that appeared from time to time in other communities they had generated little popular enthusiasm. In Europe, however, the situation was different. On the streets of London and Paris the motor bus had become quite a common sight by 1910. But not until two economic events happened almost concurrently during the period 1913-1914 did Americans finally discover the potential of the motor vehicle in urban transportation: at that time the moving assembly lines introduced at Henry Ford's Highland Park plant turned out reliable and inexpensive Model T's in numbers unimaginable just a few years earlier, and a severe depression idled thousands of workers, who for the first time perceived the automobile as a means to earn a temporary living.'2

'0G. H. Clifford, "Service andJitney Competition," ERJ, 54 (Annual Convention Issue 1919), 35-36; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 108 [first quotation]; Pillsbury, "The Jitney Bus," 12; "Pacific Coast States," 78; and "Why Jitneys Aren't Driven Out," ERJ, 55 (March 6, 1920), 463 [second quotation].

I "Getting Rid of the Rails," 342; George W. Hilton, "Transport Technology and the Urban Pattern," Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (July 1969), 128; Miller, Fares Please!, 153; William J. Locke, "The Jitney Bus and Its Future," National Municipal Review, 4 (October 1915), 610; and John P. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys. The Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe (Princeton, 1976).

12Clay McShane, "Transforming the Use of Urban Space: A Look at the Revolution in Street Pavement, 1880-1924,"Journal of Urban History, 5 (May 1979), 279-307; L. S. Storrs, "Competition of Motor Vehicles," ERJ, 54 (August 1, 1919), 184; Mason, The Street Railway in Massachusetts, 128; George W. Hilton, "Transport Technology and the Urban Pattern," 128; "The Jitney," World's Work, 29 (April 1915), 618; Miller, Fares Please!, 153-54; "Auto




When Ford introduced mass production of automobiles in 1913, it

dramatically altered the industry. During the years from 1913 to 1916, the price of a Model T touring car dropped from $550 to $360, and the total number of sales tripled. Ford sold more than one-third of a million Model T's in 1914 alone. The popularity of the Fords created a used car glut that lasted until the jitney boom emptied dealers' lots. The jitney business pushed automobile sales in some cities to record highs, and car dealers as a conse- quence emerged as some of its most influential backers. And so, too, ac- cording to popular accounts, did the nation's leading automobile and tire manufacturers and John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The street railway company in Portland, Oregon, in one notable instance, played on longstand- ing fears by calling attention to that supposed alliance during an election campaign to decide the fate of jitney regulations. Publishing a graph of a nickel to illustrate its claim that only one-fourth of the money spent for jitney transportation remained in Portland (as compared with three-fourths for the street railway), the company asserted that:

Little Johnnie Rockefeller gets a big slice of the nickel for gasoline and oil.

The Rubber Barons come in for another fat part of the coin (there are no tire factories in this locality).

Repair parts bought from the Eastern auto manufacturers absorb a little more.

Although the street railway won a temporary victory at the polls, it is unlikely that residents of Portland or anywhere else ever perceived the jitney as a pawn of big business. In the popular mind the jitney was with few exceptions the underdog, a spunky fighter against monopoly, a boon to the average citizen.13

In cities with high rates of unemployment the jitney might even serve as a sustainer of life itself. By late 1914 the depression that began the previous year had idled an estimated one million workers in the United States. Ac- cording to the rough calculations prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in mid-year, unemployment was highest in the cities of the West Coast and Rocky Mountains, ranging from 20 percent of all breadwinners out of work in Portland to 16 percent in San Francisco, 13 percent in Seattle, and 11

Snipers and Trolley Cars," Sunset, 34 (January 1915), 47; and James J. Flink, America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910 (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 90-91.

3John B. Rae, The American Automobile: A Brief History (Chicago, 1965), 61; "Jitney Situa- tion," 494; "Jitney Movement Reaches Eastern Cities," Automobile, 32 (March 4, 1915), 434; "Growth of the 'Jitney' Bus Business," 434-36; and F W. Doolittle, Studies in the Cost of Ur- ban Transportation Service (New York, 1916), 32 [quotation].




percent in Los Angeles. The average jitney driver was often yesterday's unemployed locomotive engineer, policeman, bartender, printer, barber, or clerk. In Los Angeles, streetcar motormen and conductors put out of work by the jitney craze took up driving jitneys themselves. In this way the unemployed satisfied a psychological need to fill their idle hours and to provide for their families, even if they were eating "at the expense of the autobus." That is, most failed to set aside funds to pay for the eventual replacement of their car. During a discussion of jitney regulations by the city council of Kansas City, several women testified that their husbands had mortgaged their homes to buy secondhand cars and were now "independent and doing a good business." Typical was the case of an unemployed mechanic who invested his life savings of about $200 in a jitney: combining his cash with credit extended by an automobile dealer, he purchased a used car for $350. During his first day behind the wheel, he worked eleven hours and netted $6.75-a sum that looked very good even to employed workers. 14

Street railway executives scoffed at such figures, resolutely maintain- ing that jitney drivers were doomed to failure by the inexorable laws of economics. The Electric RailwayJournal, which described the jitney as "one of the most interesting fallacies of modern times," argued that most operators were "unfamiliar with business problems and cannot grasp the principle of overhead charges, depreciation and similar invisible cost." Street railway executives brandished calculations suggesting that it cost significantly more to transport a person by jitney than by streetcar. When the number of jitneys on city streets continued to climb despite their economic calculus, traction officials asserted that new drivers were being swindled into a losing game by big business and deceitful newspaper stories that portrayed jitneys as a "gold mine." In the eyes of the street railway industry the jitney was a "gold brick whose gilding will soon wear off." Only slowly did it dawn on executives that jitney operators did not reckon expenses in the same way as industry accountants. " 'I don't have to figure that way,' he might tell you if you were to ride home with him to-night in his public car.'In the first place I have the car. And having stuck my $500 into it, it might just as well keep running.' " The jitney driver valued his modest income and independent status: "If I run a jitney I can be my own boss, and go home to lunch when I want to." He enjoyed taking passengers for pay in his car;

14"A Million Men Out of Work," Literary Digest, XLIX (December 26, 1914), 1264; Doolittle, "The Economics ofJitney Bus Operation," 664, 666; Unemployment in the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin no. 195 (Washington, DC, 1916), 93; Royal Meeker, "Some Recent Surveys of Unemployment," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, LXI (September 1915), 24-29; "Our Army of Unemployed," American Review of Reviews, 51 (January 1915), 112; "Digest of Oakland Jitney Report," Electric Traction, 11 (May 1915), 287 [first quotation]; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 107 [second quotation], 118; and Levine, "The Jitney," 356.




it gave him companionship and an opportunity to be out on the streets on pleasant evenings. He was, in short, more interested in satisfying his im- mediate financial and psychological needs than in wrestling with long-term business considerations.15

Despite their predictions that the jitney was doomed, street railway executives were often left dumbfounded and confused by jitney competition and other signs of public hostility. In the early months of 1915 the earnings of street railway companies dropped dramatically. Especially in the growing cities of the West, where many recent extensions into suburban areas in anticipation of settlement left companies saddled with a heavy burden of debt, the loss of revenue was little short of devastating. With so many city dwellers riding the jitney, streetcar conductors and motormen in many localities "looked as if they were running funeral cars, with few mourners." The Pacific, an organ of the Congregational church on the West Coast, observed that "suddenly, now and then great solid business foundations are shaken, just as those of the street railways are now by the jitney bus, and men long at the head of the business world find themselves at the tail."'6

The Electric RailwayJournal scoffed at alarmists who likened the jitney movement to the "death-knell" of the electric railway industry, but the new competition clearly took its toll. In city after city, dwindling patronage forced street railways to retrench, to reduce service and wages. The Puget Sound Traction, Light, and Power Company in Seattle, which in self-defense put into operation a fleet of fifty jitneys, warned that it would make motor per- sonnel and service cuts if independent jitneys continued to drain away its once lucrative business in the downtown area.17

Many wondered whether the jitney was a passing fad or the vanguard of a transportation revolution. Would it solve municipal transport problems or increase them? A lengthy list of unsettling questions sent industry and government prophets rushing to their crystal balls. Automobile entrepreneur John N. Willis predicted correctly that electric railways might use their political influence to thwart jitney competition through burdensome regula-

'5 "The Rainbow-Chasing Jitney," ERJ, 45 (April 24, 1915), 784 [first quotation]; "The Wane of the Jitney Bus," ERJ, 45 (February 13, 1915), 318 [second quotation], 324; "The Jitney as a Gold Brick," ERJ, 45 (May 15, 1915), 919 [third quotation]; "Who Are the Jitney Drivers?" 967; Lewis, "The Rise and Decline of the Jitney in Its Birthplace," 501; "The Jitney Unprofitable," Literary Digest, L (June 19, 1915), 1509-10 [fourth quotation]; Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem, 104 [fifth quotation]; Storrs, "Competition of Motor Vehicles," 185; and "Jitney Bus on the Wane," Electric Traction, 11 (March 1915), 171. Stone and Webster calculated that it cost two and one-half times more to carry a passenger by jitney than by streetcar. "Economics of the Jitney," ERJ, 47 (June 24, 1916), 1184.

16Strong, "A Nickel a Ride," 647 [first quotation]; and "Is the Jitney Bus One of the Signs of the Times?" Pacific, 65 (January 13, 1915), 2.

'7"Rainbow-ChasingJitney," 324 [quotation]; "The 'Jitney' Bus," ERJ, 45 (March 27, 1915), 649; "The Puget Sound Company'sJitney Service," ERJ, 46 (July 10, 1915), 83; Locke, "The Jitney Bus and Its Future," 606; " 'Jitney Busses,' " Electric Traction, 11 (February 1915), 78; and "Regulating the Jitney," Literary Digest, LI (July 3, 1915), 3-4.




tion but would never successfully suppress it. Traction spokesman Charles N. Black of San Francisco's United Railways warned that if jitneys represented a real advance in urban transportation, then existing street and interurban railways "will have to be discarded," but he doubted that the

jitney represented such an advance. Early in 1915 Seattle's mayor vetoed an extension of the short, municipally owned street railway, observing that if councilmen in the face of the new motorized competition spent money for additional streetcar lines, "we are fools rushing in where angels fear to tread." There were some who predicted correctly that both the streetcar and the jitney were doomed, soon to be replaced by large, rubber-tired motor vehicles carrying a dozen or more passengers and operating over regular routes. 18

For some prophets the most important issue was the jitney's likely im-

pact on urban development. There were few jitney enthusiasts in this group. At stake was the long five-cent fare, an institution hallowed by tradition and widely believed by Americans to have made streetcar suburbs

economically accessible to a large class of city workers. For years, passengers on downtown lines had in effect subsidized the more lightly patronized suburban extensions by providing the bulk of street railway revenue. People justified this subsidy by citing the prevailing notion that suburban life should be encouraged in order to relieve residential congestion in the central city. "No one factor in the development of American cities has had more influence . . . than the system of a flat street car fare," argued a San Fran- cisco traction manager. "It has enabled the working man to acquire a home in the suburbs at reasonable cost and has eliminated the congestion so common to cities of the old world, where the transportation systems have

developed on the so-called zone system." The jitney threatened the uniform fare by confining its operation within two or three miles of the city center, thus skimming off the "cream" of street railway revenue used to subsidize

lightly traveled suburban lines. Real estate promoters, long conditioned to believe that street railway extensions and rising property values in the suburbs were intimately connected, joined with traction officials against the jitney. 19

'8Fullerton, "The Jitneys Are Coming," 67-69; "Jitney Movement," 434; "Jitney-Bus Competition," 325-26 [first quotation]; "The Jitney Invasion," 854-55 [second quotation]; "Roping the Wild Jitney," Sunset, 34 (March 1915), 432; and "The 'Jitneys,' " Literary Digest, L (February 13, 1915), 302. At this time the city of Seattle operated two small streetcar lines

totaling thirteen miles in length. It was also served by an extensive private system that the

city acquired in 1919. William Anderson, "Seattle's Municipal Street Railways," National Municipal Review, 12 (November 1923), 663.

'9Sam B. Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (Cam- bridge, MA, 1962), 26; "The Jitney," World's Work, 29 (April 1915), 618-19; Foster, "The Automobile and the City," 461; Portland Oregonian, January 23, 1915, p. 10; "Jitney Bus Com-

petition," 327 [first quotation]; "Commissioner Makes Plea for Portland Company," ERJ, 48 (July 15, 1916), 114 [second quotation]; New York Times, March 21, 1915, section 5; Palm, "The Jitney Bus," 316; John Blair Mac Afee, "Result of Further Legislative Regulation




In West Coast cities special study committees sought to predict the jitney's impact on suburban home owners. A group appointed by the Oakland, California, Chamber of Commerce concluded that public support of the jitney would force street railways to adopt the zone system of fares, thus forcing suburban dwellers to pay a significantly higher price for streetcar transportation. Former Seattle mayor William Hickman Moore, chairman of a special study committee appointed by the Seattle city council, expressed a commonly held worry that adoption of the zone system would cause many suburban dwellers "to return to the congested districts to escape excessive transportation charges." Labeling such a system a "calamity" for the small property owner, Moore maintained that the street railway "must be regarded as the backbone of a dependable transportation system, and competition which will arrest the development of that system would, without question, retard the development of the city and stifle its growth." That argument had its most noticeable appeal in a few suburban areas: residents facing the imminent loss of streetcar service and unable to imagine a trustworthy alternative petitioned public officials to restrain the jitney by law. 20

Combining the direst predictions of the jitney's detractors was a lurid little essay entitled "Looking Forward" that appeared in a Seattle newspaper, the Argus, in early 1915. In the overstated scenario of the Argus, jitneys multiplied rapidly, defied all attempts to regulate them, and ultimately transformed the streetcar city into a very troubled place. Jitney accidents occurred almost hourly, and victims never secured compensation from the irresponsible drivers. Downtown traffic became so anarchic that the existing police force could scarcely maintain any semblance of order. Beset by mount- ing losses, the street railway system went into the hands of a receiver, who immediately reduced service. To keep the cars running, the receiver attempted to sell bonds, but the security was so poor that they found no market. The street railway then ceased operating altogether. Thousands of suburban residents, finding themselves with no public transportation, were often compelled to walk a mile or more to the terminus of the nearest jitney line.

of Electric Railways," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, XXXI (May 1908), 161-66; "Buses as Town Builders," Jitney Bus, 2 (June 1916), 444; David Ward, "A Comparative Historical Geography of Streetcar Suburbs in Boston, Massachusetts, and Leeds, England: 1850-1920," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 54 (December 1964), 477-89; and Clay McShane, Technology and Reform. Street Railways and the Growth of Milwaukee, 1887-1900 (Madison, 1974), 31-32, 35-36, 134.

20"Oakland Jitney Report," 286-87; "Preliminary Statement on Seattle Jitney Regula- tion," ERJ, 48 (September 9, 1916), 468 [quotation]; Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem, 103; and "Auto Snipers," 47. Real estate dealers in Fort Worth, Texas, on the other hand, regarded the jitney with respect. A number of them met in early 1915 to debate whether a jitney line was not justification for adding 25 percent to the price of a lot. "Growth of the 'Jitney' Bus Business," 435.




And when they got there no bus appeared, for drivers had discovered that

they need not go to the end of the line to get a full load. People who stuck to the streetcar lines because they benefited from the free transfer system discovered that they must now pay two fares to cross town. By noon the old signs on the jitneys had been replaced by new ones that read "Fare, 10 Cents." It was either pay or walk.

Everything was in a chaotic condition. Men were late to their work, or else they were compelled to arise an hour earlier than formerly for fear that they would not succeed in climbing aboard a bus. Busses frequently broke down half way to town. There were no convenient street cars in this emergency, and all other busses were crowded to the limit. Men missed business engagements. Women could not keep social engagements unless they owned their own car. It frequently happened that women, crowded in these little busses among a party of rowdies were insulted. Men frequently found themselves among a crowd of thugs, were driven to some out-of-the-way spot and robbed. By this time there were thousands of these cars and it was impossible for the police to detect duplications in numbers. The people were becoming desperate.

And just at this time a horrible thing happened. A beautiful young girl board- ed one of these cars. Its other occupants, beside the driver, were a suave appearing man and a painted and perfumed woman. The girl was uneasy, and after the car had driven a few blocks asked to be let out. The driver apparently did not hear her-or if he did, quickened his pace. The girl became panic-stricken. She was about to scream when a hand was placed over her mouth and she was forced back, the woman throwing a cloak over her unconscious body.

With the jitney driver as white slaver the melodrama ends.21 The jitney was unquestionably a mixed blessing, for in fact as well as

in fiction it did exhibit many reprehensible characteristics. Initially most drivers were unlicensed and uninsured, they followed no fixed route or reliable schedule, and they usually did not operate in bad weather. The

"jitneurs," as they styled themselves, frequently drove cars that bordered on junk. Those who were reckless or ill informed about traffic regulations contributed to a dramatic increase in motor vehicle accidents. Some Americans wondered not entirely in jest whether anyone would be left on

city streets besides the quick and the dead. In one western city, for exam-

ple, a jitney driver involved in a series of traffic accidents was found to be a deaf-mute, some drivers could not read English, and some were mere

boys. Not only did the jitney pay little or no tax to maintain the streets over which it traveled (unlike the street railway) but it also reduced the tax revenues that city and state governments collected from street railways. Jitney

21Seattle Argus, January 23, 1915. "In some of the California cities the serious menace of the 'jitneys' from the standpoint of morality has aroused the women of those cities to take urgent actions to safeguard girls and young children against the evils which have followed in their wake. Numerous items in the press cite instances of insult and mistreatment to girls in crowded 'jitneys.' " "Portland Company on 'Jitney' Bus," ERJ, 45 (February 20, 1915), 397.




competition seriously threatened the investments of a large class of stock and bond holders. And, finally, at least a few male jitney drivers were guil- ty of making sexual advances on their female passengers. In the light of the jitney's obvious failings, it is all the more noteworthy that so many urban dwellers rushed to embrace the new mode of transportation.22

Once it overcame the initial shock of jitney competition, the street railway industry fought back in various ways, some of which were obvious- ly more effective than others. Industry spokesmen compiled and published arguments why the jitney must fail. In some of these they called attention to the jitney's apparent threat to public safety and morality. In addition, they supposed the little cars to be no more than fair-weather friends: "With the advent of real cold weather it is safe to say that the average person would very much rather ride in a warm street car than in a dilapidated touring car of the vintage of 1910 with an extemporized cover." One spokesman imagined that the jitney's novelty would soon wear off, or that a publicity campaign could induce potential drivers to steer clear of the financial trap posed by the jitney: "Publicity, therefore, is clearly the most effective means for quickly ending the death struggles of this Frankenstein of transportaion."23

H. S. Cooper, secretary of the Southwestern Electric and Gas Associa- tion, a Texas organization, saw clearly that many of his colleagues and their New York City-based voice, the Electric RailwayJournal, were dangerously out of touch with reality. Gently mocking their assertions that the public would soon flock back to "old reliable" and the jitney would be a thing of the past, he urged them to open their eyes. Focusing on their argument

22 "Pacific Coast States," 78; Doolittle, "The Economics ofJitney Bus Operation," 222; "Jitney Bus Competition," ERJ, 45 (February 13, 1915), 329; "Jitneys in Los Angeles Los- ing," ERJ, 51 (March 9, 1918), 467; New York Times, March 21, 1915, section 5; "The Persis- tent Jitney," Literary Digest, LXV (April 3, 1920), 33; Portland Oregonian, December 14, 1915; Portland Oregonian, October 3, 1916; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 120; "Motor Bus as Scapegoat," Jitney Bus, 1 (January 1916), 301; and "Suburban Buses in California," Jitney Bus, 1 (June 1916), 453. Not all jitney drivers were men. Most communities had at least a few female drivers: Jennie Riemann, a mechanic who owned her own car, got into the business in Portland, Oregon, in early 1915. Although she observed that "the men drivers on the street do not like me," she enjoyed the work and was satisfied with her prowess as a driver. She reported that she got good tips and women liked to ride with her. Portland Ore- gonian, January 30, 1915. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, some jitneys were clearly marked "For Women and Children Only." Female operators there reported a brisk patronage not only from women and children but from men. New York Times, May 23, 1915, section 7. See also Livingston Wright, "Lady Jitney Driver," Jitney Bus, 1 (May 1915), 41.

23F. W. Hild, "Effect of Publicity on the Jitney Movement in Portland," ERJ, 46 (An- nual Convention Issue 1915), 560; "Jitney Situation," 494; "The Decline of the Jitney Bus," ERJ, 46 (November 20, 1915), 1019 [first quotation]; and "Wane of the Jitney Bus," 784 [second quotation]. The electric railway industry hoped that the rising price of gasoline would force the jitney off city streets. In early 1916 gasoline on the Pacific Coast reached 18 cents a gallon, but some jitney drivers simply purchased petroleum distillate, which sold for 8.5 cents a gallon, and mixed it liberally with gasoline to keep their fuel costs down. "Jitneys in West and South," Electric Traction, 12 (April 1916), 293.




that unpaved roads would limit jitney service to the suburbs, Cooper asserted that "if the public desires and demands jitney service to the suburbs, and the lack of proper roadways hinders the fulfillment of that desire or demand, the public will itself build the necessary.roadways and laugh at the cost." He challenged traction industry officials to examine the facts carefully: "If such proper investigation of the subjects tends to show the worst-that the day of the present street railway is coming to an end-is it not better volun- tarily to ascertain that fact and make preparation for it than blindly ignore it and have it come as an unprepared for catastrophe?"24

The industry tended to dismiss Cooper as an alarmist and prepared not for an uncertain future but to reassert its traditional hegemony over urban transportation. Street railway officials marshaled their considerable resources to win the battle for restrictive legislation. In the process the "hermit managers" of several traction companies discovered for the first time the value of good public relations and newspaper advertising. And an industry that had a history of bitter labor disputes successfully enlisted its employees and their families in campaigns to monitor government proceedings and circulate initiative petitions calling for jitney regulation. Labor unions and employees' associations used every opportunity to present their industry's case to the public. On a vacant lot opposite the Santa Fe depot, the San Diego Electric Railway Conductors' and Motormen's Conference Committee gathered an enormous pile of bridge steel and rails, painted it red, and erected a sign asking, "What is that red stuff?" It answered with these words:

That is the bridge steel for the extensions of the San Diego Electric Railway. All extensions and construction work have been suspended or abandoned on account of the competition of the unregulated jitney bus.

That's why it is here.

In Portland, Oregon, unionized street railway employees gathered 27,000 signatures on a petition urging city officials to control the jitney.25

By the fall of 1915 the number of jitneys on the nation's streets began to decline. A combination of circumstances helped to diminish the popularity

24Cooper, "The Prospect of the Jitney," 39-40.

25"Publicity and the Jitney," ERJ, 45 (May 29, 1915), 1013 [first quotation]; "Jitney and Election Issue at Los Angeles," ERJ, 45 (June 5, 1915), 1094; "San Diego Traffic Decrease," ERJ, 46 (July 10, 1915), 83; "Can the Jitney Be Revived?" ERJ, 47 (January 8, 1916), 68; "Employees War on Jitney," ERJ, 49 (May 5, 1917), 846; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 122 [second quotation]; Locke, "TheJitney Bus and Its Future," 607; and Hild, "Effect of Publicity on the Jitney Movement in Portland," 460-61. Organized labor in general was divided on the jitney question. Labor organizations and the Building Trades' Council in Kansas City opposed ordinances regulating jitneys, and the Central Labor Council of Portland, Oregon, pledged its support for a jitney men's union and battled against "astrin- gent" jitney regulations. "Jitney Bus," ERJ, 45 (March 27, 1915), 649; and Portland Oregon- ian, October 27, 1916.




of the streetcar's nemesis: irregular operation in bad weather, depreciating equipment, high-priced gasoline, the gradual return of prosperity, and adverse publicity all had an influence. But in the end the lawmakers did more than anything else to rein in the wild jitney. Lawmakers, like the street railway executives, had at first been caught off guard: the coming of the jitney was so unexpected that in most communities there were no regulations, fees, or restrictions of any kind to hamper its operation. Initial attempts at regulation usually provoked a storm of protest from jitney drivers and their many supporters. But after the first wave of public enthusiasm crested, which in some places happened within a month after the appearance of the jitney, and people began to reflect soberly upon such problems as traffic congestion and personal safety, an increasing number of citizens ac- cepted the need for some form of regulation. Politicians also came to see the jitney as a new source of tax revenue. Ultimately, each community ad- dressed the issues of taxation and regulation in its own way. Some concen- trated on improving the safety record of the jitney, whereas others attempted to force it out of business altogether. The strictness of any jitney ordinance tended to reflect the financial benefits a community received from its street railway system, popular perception of streetcar service in the past, the attitude of the press, and the political skills of the opposing sides. 26

Salt Lake City, hub of Utah's electic railway network, passed a jitney ordinance that was representative of the stringent measures designed to force all but the most determined drivers off city streets. It required that all jitneys follow regular routes and posted schedules, operate from 6 A.M. until mid- night, including Sundays and holidays, and provide interior illumination after dark. Drivers had to pay a substantial annual license fee and carry uniformed policemen, firemen, and public health officials free of charge. A Boise ordinance similarly designed to harry operators out of business required that drivers be able to "carry on an intelligent conversation" in English. 27

Various state governments also wrestled with the jitney question, but their actions were no more uniform than those of the municipalities. While some states shunned any responsibility in the matter, others became ac-

26"Special Message on the Jitney Bus," ERJ, 45 (January 2, 1915), 76; "Jitney Bus Competition," 327-28; "Review ofJitney Conditions in California," ERJ, 48 (August 12, 1916), 294; Levine, "The Jitney," 356-57; Palm, "The Jitney Bus," 316; Lewis, "The Rise and Decline of the Jitney in Its Birthplace," 501; H. C. Eddy, "The Street Railway Outlook," ERJ, 54 (October 4, 1919), 692; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 102; "The 'Jitneys,' " Literary Digest, L (February 13, 1915), 302-3; and Locke, "The Jitney Bus and Its Future," 607.

27"Jitney Bus Situation," 863 [first quotation]; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 121-22 [second quotation]; "Jitney Bus," ERJ, 45 (March 27, 1915), 648; "The Color Line and the Jitney," ERJ, 45 (June 26, 1915), 1189; "Jitney Regulation More General," ERJ, 49 (February 24, 1917), 366; and "Jitney Laws and Appeals from Austin to Zanesville," Jitney Bus, 1 (August 1915), 133-36. For a summary and analysis of jitney ordinances, see Eckert and Hilton, "The Jitneys," 293-325.




tively involved. The California legislature convening in January 1915 was

probably the first in the nation to enact jitney legislation. Spurred on by a powerful street railway lobby, it passed a stringent tax bill, but the state's

progressive governor, Hiram Johnson, refused to sign it into law. Legislators thereupon passed a stiff licensing measure that Johnson again blocked. By contrast, another West Coast state, Washington, took perhaps the most ex- treme position by mandating that every jitney driver be specially licensed and secure a liabilty bond of $2,500.28

Jitney operators, vulnerable as individuals, hastened to organize their movement to fight restrictive laws and to provide mutual assistance in such matters as insurance, lost and found, and transfers. They inaugurated the International Jitney Association in Kansas City, Missouri, in May 1915 and

supported a journal, The Jitney Bus. Both of these supplied useful information to individual operators. But it was most often at the local level that the jitney's battle for survival was won or lost. By 1917 communities generally had succeeded in rendering jitney competition relatively harmless or had eliminated it entirely.29

There were some notable exceptions, however. Seattle jitney drivers, in what was probably their industry's classic battle for survival, waged a

seven-year war that ultimately ended in the United States Supreme Court.

They battled state and local restrictions with injunctions, referendums, and

outright defiance. At one point they attempted to evade Washington's bond-

ing law by operating free buses and soliciting contributions from their riders.

Sympathizers came to their rescue on numerous occasions. Once when a driver was arrested for failing to secure a bond, a local judge fined him one cent, then paid the coin out of his own pocket. Mayor Hiram C. Gill did so little to enforce municipal anti-jitney provisions that the Puget Sound

Traction, Light, and Power Company, its Seattle division awash in a sea of red ink, threatened to hold city officials legally responsible for its financial troubles. The battle grew more complicated when the city purchased the ailing traction system in 1919, becoming the first metropolis in the United States to own and operate its streetcar lines in their entirety. In a curious

twist, people who had formerly championed the jitney with populist fervor now defended public ownership against jitney free enterprise, and the city council launched a vigorous new campaign to kill the diminutive carriers, which it claimed were costing the municipal railway as much as $350,000

28"Jitney Bus," ERJ, 45 (April 24, 1915), 817; "Jitney Jottings," ERJ, 46 (August 7, 1915), 251; "The Jitney Bus and Its Future," American Review of Reviews, 52 (November 15, 1915), 624; "West and South," 293; and Franklin Hichborn, Story of the Session of the Califor- nia Legislature of 1915 (San Francisco, 1916), 54-65.

29"The Jitney Convention," ERJ, 45 (May 8, 1915), 911; "TheJitney Convention," ERJ, 45 (May 15, 1915), 960; and "Pacific Coast States," 78. The Jitney Bus began publication in April 1915 and in September changed its name to Motor Bus.




a year. Only when the federal Supreme Court declined to hear the case of the jitney owners in 1921 did they finally abandon their struggle.30

Although by the mid-1920s the private jitney had disappeared from almost all city streets (San Francisco's Mission Street is today an excep- tion), no one could dismiss it as having had no lasting impact on urban life or American transportation. Any innovation that attracted such public enthusiasm and filled so obvious a need was bound to alter the attitudes of street railway officials and, even more important, of investors and riders. "What is good and useful in the jitney bus is due to survive," conceded the Electric RailwayJournal. Street railways, rediscovering the public's desire for speed and convenience, purchased a number of small "jitneyized" streetcars designed to embody the best features of their onetime competitor. These trolleys were operated by one person and capable of fast, frequent, and relatively inexpensive service. Some companies instituted the "skip stop," a practice that used two streetcars and alternated stops in an effort to reduce travel time. Employees became more solicitous of the goodwill of riders. Traction companies instead of laying rails into new suburbs utilized their own motor buses as feeders.31

The number of riders on electric railways actually increased during the years of World War I and the early 1920s. In 1923 they transported 15.7 billion patrons, an all-time high. Unfortunately, inflation before and during the war placed the companies in an impossible position. They desperately needed to raise fares in order to offset the rising cost of service, especially to replace their antiquated and inefficient equipment. But could they charge more than the traditional five cents a ride without resurrecting the jitney menace? Residents of Portland, Oregon, in a 1918 test case answered with a resounding no. When the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company increased its streetcar fares to six cents, angry patrons successfully promoted an initiative to remove most of the restrictions on jitney service.

30"The Jitney Situation on the Pacific Coast," ERJ, 47 (March 11, 1916), 497; "Washington Jitneys Without Bond," ERJ, 49 (June 9, 1917), 1069; "Seattle Fight Thickens," ERJ, 49 (June 16, 1917), 1115; "Jitney Injunction Made Permanent," ERJ, 50 (December 22, 1917), 1140; "Wants Jitney Menace Removed," ERJ, 55 (April 24, 1920), 873; "Jitney Battled for Five Years," ERJ, 58 (October 1, 1921), 571; "U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Seattle's Right of Regulation," ERJ, 58 (November 19, 1921), 926; Anderson, "Seattle's Municipal Street Railways," 664-70; and Paul H. Douglas, "The Seattle Municipal Street-Railway System," Journal of Political Economy, 29 (une 1921), 455-77.

3'Cooper, "The Prospect of the Jitney," 39; H. S. Cooper, "The Jitney and the Small Car," ERJ, 46 (July 19, 1915), 64; "Outjitneying the Jitney," ERJ, 46 (September 4, 1915), 403; "Decline of the Jitney," 1019 [first quotation]; "Jitney Regulation," 366; Eddy, "The Street Railway Outlook," 961; Clifford, "Service and Jitney Competition," 35-36; "Facing Wholesale Bankruptcy," 350-51; R. N. Harder, " 'Jitneyized' Street Cars," Illustrated World, 25 (August 1916), 748 [second quotation]; J. C. Thirlwall, "The Jitney Problem, I," Scien- tific American Supplement no. 2069 (August 28, 1915), 143-44; andJ. C. Thirlwall, "The Jitney Problem, II," Scientific American Supplement no. 2070 (September 4, 1915), 154-55.




Sobered by the overwhelmingly negative vote, the Portland Railway ordered twenty-five one-operator trolleys to beat the resurgent jitney. The industry's general inability to raise fares enough to compensate for inflation translated into substantially lower earnings. By 1917 the electric railway industry was

being described in some circles as the "sick man of American business."32 Optimists like Thomas Conway of the Wharton School of Finance main-

tained that the jitney dealt electric railway earnings only a temporary set- back and that they would resume their upward trend when prosperity returned to America, but even he had to admit that during the height of the jitney craze, "it was almost impossible for a large portion of the electric railways to do any new financing." Investors, it should be noted, continued to be wary of electric railway securities long after the depression ended. Thus operating after 1914 in the shadow of the jitney and the private automobile, electric railway companies were unable to obtain an infusion of capital at a time when they greatly needed to upgrade their properties and improve service. The financial health of the once mighty industry deteriorated so alarmingly that the federal government held four months of hearings on the subject in the summer of 1919. At that time nearlykfifty urban electric railways were in the hands of receivers, and many more teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.33

Even as the private jitney declined in importance in urban transportation, it asserted itself in the promising new field of intercity travel. There the "condemned jitney has at last come into its own." Called "super jitneys" and "fast-flying super stages," the high-powered, elongated touring cars became especially prominent in California, a state that pioneered the development of a network of paved roads and was blessed by a mild climate con- ducive to year-round operation of automobiles. Soon the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads, and not just the electric lines, lost money to jitneys. By 1916 an automobile could make the trip from San Francisco to Los

Angeles in three hours less time than the fastest passenger train, and soon the super jitneys provided that service-at a fare one-third the railroad rate! The Southern Pacific announced in early 1916 that it was discontinuing several passenger trains in southern California because of jitney competi-

32Storrs, "Competition of Motor Vehicles," 185; Mark S. Foster, From Streetcar to Superhighway: American City Planners and Urban Transportation, 1900-1940 (Philadelphia, 1981), 49-50; "Year's Effect of the Seattle Jitney," ERJ, 49 (February 10, 1917), 270; "Transporta- tion News Notes," ERJ, 51 (February 9, 1918), 298; "Portland Jitneys Win," ERJ, 51 (June 1, 1918), 1015; "Traffic Problems Confront the Rose City," ERJ, 52 (August 24, 1918), 330; and "Facing Wholesale Bankruptcy," 350 [quotation].

33Thomas Conway, Jr., "Current Tendencies in the Railway Business," ERJ, 48 (July 1, 1916), 10; Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem, 99, 112; and Proceedings of the Federal Electric Railways Commission (3 vols., Washington, DC, 1920). The hearings are conveniently summarized in Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem. For a discussion of the industry's financial troubles, see also Hilton and Due, Electric Interurban Railways in America, 208-22.




tion. Later, in the summer, Electric Traction reported that "all sections of the country are coping with the jitney situation quite successfully, except on the Pacific Coast, where the jitneys are now affecting the interurban steam line traffic to as great an extent as they have the electric lines." Again, developments on the Pacific Coast foreshadowed major changes in other parts of the United States.34

The jitney was not only significant economically, but commentators also recognized that the little machines had a social impact on urban dwellers. For example, some suggested that they contributed to the vogue of the fox- trot by "making dancing parties more convenient and less expensive to get to." Others worried about their general effect on public morality. Observers in some cities claimed that the jitney was a "masher's delight," in which "silly girls fall a ready prey for fellows seeking acquaintance." Jitneys were supposed to be "quite a convenience for immoral women. They find it easy to strike up an acquaintance in a crowded jitney, while a street car presents no such opportunity."

When they ride in a jitney bus; They do not hang onto a strap; They Ford right in and sit in your lap.35

Equally noteworthy was the jitney's stimulation of the American love affair with the automobile. Until the jitney, many urban dwellers had never experienced the sensation of riding "on rubber and air." Collier's observed that "most folks helped pay for our paved city streets; they like to ride thereon in autos, and the jitney gives them a chance as nothing else ever did." Another contemporary remarked that "one blessed feature of the jitney is that wherever introduced it gave poor women a chance to ride in an auto for a nickel, thus affording to thousands the opportunity for the first auto ride." Once experienced, it apparently became addictive.36

34Mark Wilcox, "California Capitalizes on the Jitney," Illustrated World, 29 (July 1918), 733-34 [first quotation], 736 [third quotation]; Millard, "The War on the Jitney," 182-83 [second quotation]; "Transportation Developments in California," ERJ, 47 (May 13, 1916), 928; "California Railroads Lose," 1206; "Jitneys as Steam Railway Competitors," ERJ, 48 (October 14, 1916), 857; "California Remains Black Spot on Jitney Map," Electric Traction, 12 (July 1916), 510 [fourth quotation]; "The Cross Country Jitneys," Jitney Bus, 1 (August 1915), 137; and "Motor Bus vs. Railroad," Jitney Bus, 1 (November 1915), 228.

35Portland Oregonian, February 24, 1915; and Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 124 [all quotations].

36Doolittle, "The Economics of Jitney Bus Operation," 668 [first quotation]; Foster, "City Planners and Urban Transportation," 372; Oregon Voter, May 22, 1915, p. 98 [second and third quotations]; and James J. Flink, The Car Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1975), 29-30. On America's changing attitude toward the automobile, see Reynold M. Wik, Henry Ford and Grass-roots America (Ann Arbor, 1972), 14-33; and Michael L. Berger, The Devil Wagon in God's Country: The Automobile and Social Change in Rural America, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety- Three to Nineteen Twenty-Nine (Hamden, CT, 1979).




At the very least, traction executives hoped that the jitneys had stimulated a riding habit in Americans that would benefit the streetcar as well as the automobile industry, but it was clear to many that once the jitney accustomed city people to the convenience and speed of the automobile they would find it difficult to return to the streetcar. The automobile rather than the jitney thus emerged as the streetcar's real nemesis: "The jitney competition you can control. The private automobile competition you cannot control." By 1919 the automobile's impact on electric railway profits had become so obvious that financial analyst Roger B. Babson told federal in- vestigators, "It is Henry Ford who hit the street railway industry a blow between the eyes. If he had only been bright enough to sell street railway securities short when he was building his plant, he would have been making double the money that he is making now."37

The jitney had indeed brought trouble to streetcar city, but who could have imagined when the little machines first appeared on city streets of the Pacific Slope that they would prove such giant killers? Probably not the many jitney drivers simply trying to earn a meager living during a period of hard times, nor patrons attracted by the price, convenience, or thrill the jitney offered. Yet after that first jitney appeared in downtown Los Angeles in 1914, neither urban mass transit nor the political and social attitudes associated with it would ever be the same. Westerners had adapted automotive technology to remedy problems connected with streetcar transportation, especially the constraints it placed on personal mobility, but in the process they brought a host of new problems to the city and intensified old ones, with the chief problems being air pollution, traffic congestion on downtown streets, and suburban sprawl. The next step would be to adapt urban space to the automobile, and here again Los Angeles and the West would serve as pacesetters.3"

37Wilcox, Analysis of the Electric Railway Problem, 101, 108 [first quotation], 105 [second quotation], 109, 111; "The 'Jitneys,' " Literary Digest, L (February 13, 1915), 303; Storrs, "Com- petition of Motor Vehicles," 184; and Foster, "City Planners and Urban Transportation," 375. See also Paul Barrett, "Public Policy and Private Choice: Mass Transit and the Automobile in Chicago between the Wars," Business History Review, XLIX (Winter 1975), 473-97.

38David Brodsly, L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay (Berkeley, 1981), 82-89; and Nash, The American West in the Twentieth Century, 84-87, 223-27.



Documents

The West Adapts the Automobile: Technology, Unemployment, and the Jitney Phenomenon of 1914-1917