Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1756-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more
Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL
Newspaper Page Text
Cor and two smaller companies the right to get together and appoint a committee to run all the car lines of the city. This committee is the Chi cago Surface Lines. It is purely an operating arrangement The C. S. L. has no treasury. Old signs which tell whether cars are owned by the C. C. Ry Co. or the C. Ry. Co. have been painted over with C. S. L., which means that no body that can be sued in court fori overcrowding, bad ventilation or anything else wrong with a. car. Walter L. Fisher, personal attor ney of Bion J. Arnold, and Aid. Henry D. Capitain, both on the payrolls of the city, were hit by Hoyne yesterday in a statement which points to these two men as willing workers and han dy helpers of the street railway com panies. This statement by Hoyne was issued in typewritten form to the City News Bureau and all the trust newspapers. The newspaper refer ence was-, generally neglected by every paper in town with the single exception of the Journal. The state ment says: "There was a symposium in one of the evening newspapers yesterday concerning the unification ordinance and containing criticisms of my course by AW. Henry D. Capitain, chairman of the city council local transportation committee, Walter L. Fisher anal L. A. Busby, president of the Chicago Surface Lines. Mr.- Bus by, who is most interested, defends the ordinance from his viewpoint in a temperate manner. Aid. Capitain rushes to the defense of the traction companies and finds it necessary to indulge in personalities. Many who have observed Aid. Capitain's con duct at the meetings of the local transportation committee recently and listened to his speeches have re marked their surprise, in view of the same, that the traction companies found it necessary to send Mr. Busby, Mr. Gurley or other counsel to these meetings to represent them. Why should Mr. Capitain at this season of the year become overheated at any attack upon the street railway com panies? His reference in his inter view to Chester and Kankakee are al most identical with similar utteranc 'es made-during my administration by some of his fellow citizens who have unwillingly removed their residence to Will county. "Mr. Fisher charges politics. There is no" basis for the charge. Brother Fisher, it will be remembered, while representing the city of Chicago drew the traction ordinances in 1907, prob ably the most vicious pieces of public utility legislation extant. It was promised that ultimately the city would be able to own its street oar system under these ordinances. Every lawyer who has examined these ordinances knows that the city wDl never be able to obtain the trac tion Tines under these ordinances for physical and financial reasons, due to their provisions. The constitution limits grants to street railway cor porations to a term of twenty years. But the price to be paid will be so high when that term expires that neither the city nor company could afford to pay it for the properties then existing-. "If there ever is a real settlement of the traction troubles, out of which the public is to get anything, it will be necessary to throw the traction ordinances of 1907 on the scrap heap. "I would suggest, if we are to have a discussion of the traction ordi nances, that Mr. Busby and Mr. Fisher furnish prior to one week from Sunday to such Sunday newspapers as will publish it, his defense of the 1907 ordinances and the unification ordinance, and permit Mr. James J. Reynolds, former president of the subway commission, Mr. Glenn E. Plumb or myself to make our criti cisms of those ordinances, if such newspapers will agree to allot us an equal amount of space."