In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

19 Gasoline Rail Car Detroit truly could be described as having rapid transit when the electric streetcar replaced the horse car on Jefferson Avenue beginning on August 23, 1892. Twenty years earlier, the pokey horse-car system had left commuters completely stranded for several days when an epidemic of epizootic, the dreaded horse disease, struck Detroit and no horse cars were in service. Now, with the electrics, the daily ride was more sanitary, faster, and much more thrilling. A multitude of small horse-car lines were converted to electricity during the period from 1892 to 1900. Although most of them thrived financially, riders constantly complained about service and exorbitant fares of as much as five cents. Public transportation had become a sizzling political issue with the election of Hazen S. Pingree as mayor in 1889. Pingree was a shoe manufacturer who campaigned on a threecent maximum fare platform. There was persistent pressure on car line management to extend lines, upgrade equipment, improve service, and lower fares or else lose their franchises. In 1901, the ambitious Cleveland-based Everett-Moore syndicate, of which Detroit Citizens Railway was a part, formed the Detroit United Railway and took over five of the independent lines running into the city. (This same company took over the Detroit, Ann Arbor & Jackson Railway from the Hawks-Angus syndicate in 1907.) This mammoth DUR network, centered in Detroit, reached from Port Huron and Flint to Toledo, Cleveland, and Kalamazoo. H. Everett believed that there would be practically one solid city from Port Huron to Buffalo within a decade. But the syndicate had overextended itself, and the entire property was soon in the hands of Canadian investors, “the Gray Nuns of Montreal.” The DUR, operating essentially all of the car lines in the city of Detroit, could not satisfy the people. Each city administration tried to analyze the problems, propose changes, and threaten operators of the lines. In 1909, the city established a “Committee of Fifty” to study tran147 Previously published in the Dearborn Historian, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1986. sit needs. The committee reported, among other things, the need for a nucleus of a subway. In 1913, the voters approved a charter amendment providing for municipal ownership, and the Detroit Street Railway Commission was appointed. This three-man commission included two men, John Dodge and James Couzens, who were engaged in the manufacture of automobiles. Over the years, automotive interests continued to be exceptionally well represented. Again, in 1914, a report to the commissioners recommended a subway and rerouting of several lines in the downtown area. In early 1915, the city tried to buy the DUR holdings for $23,285,000; the DUR refused the offer. Couzens, while general manager of Ford Motor Company, was a strong proponent of municipal operation of the city streetcar system. He became involved in city affairs to the extent that Henry Ford took issue with the way he was spending his time. Differences on political matters resulted in Couzens’s resigning from Ford Motor Company on October 13, 1915. He ran for mayor of Detroit in 1918 on a platform of municipal operation of the streetcar lines. His campaign was successful, but a proposal on April 7, 1919, to purchase the DUR for $31,500,000 was rejected by the voters. His railway commissioners, favoring a subway plan that Couzens had vetoed, resigned en masse on November 19, 1919. Henry Ford had now entered the city’s political picture. He placed his chief engineer, William B. Mayo, on the three-man board of railway commissioners. He was no longer an ally of Couzens. Perhaps he was somewhat jealous of Couzens’s political success. (Henry Ford had lost the U.S. Senate race to Truman H. Newberry the same year Couzens became mayor of Detroit.) Ford had decided to torpedo Couzens’s plan to purchase the DUR by announcing that electric streetcars were obsolete . The torpedo was launched by means of a widely publicized speech given by Charles Sorensen, Ford’s production manager, on April 1, 1919, just one week before the vote rejecting municipal ownership. Electric streetcar obsolescence was based on an idea of Ford’s that a gasoline-powered car could be operated more economically than an electrically powered car. This premise he immediately set out to prove. Colonel Hall of the Hall-Scott Motor Car Company of California — builder of gasoline-powered rail cars — was hired as a consultant. Design work, which was started in March 1919, was done at...

Share