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EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS

BEFORE THE

"

COMMITTEE ON HORSE RAILROADS OF THE
LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS,

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WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, No. 79 MILK STREET.

1872.

TRANSP.

HE

4476

.872

1372

THE PROPOSED HIGHLAND RAILWAY.

FEBRUARY 6, 1872.

The Legislative Committee on Horse Railways gave a hearing this morning in the Green Room to the petitioners for the incorporation of the "Highland Railway Company." They ask permission to construct tracks in Shawmut Avenue and other streets, and to run cars over the tracks of the Metropolitan Railroad. The green room was filled with ladies and gentlemen, and many of the leading and most wealthy citizens of the Highlands were present. The petitioners were represented by Messrs. Moody Merrill, T. W. Clarke, John L. Swift and Horace T. Rockwell, and S. W. Bates, Esq., appeared for the Metropolitan Railroad.

OPENING ARGUMENT OF THOMAS W. CLARKE, ESQR.

Mr. Clarke said they appeared in behalf of the people of the Highland district. The gentlemen who petitioned for the road had placed their entire interest in the hands of a committee appointed by the people at a mass meeting. This committee of the people discovered a great deficiency in the laws regulating horse railroad companies. By the Act of 1871 the penalty for not providing proper accommodations upon horse railroads, instead of being made a forfeiture by the company, became a fine for the Commonwealth. Several hundred circulars were sent to residents of the Highlands, containing queries about the accommodations which were furnished by the Metropolitan Railway Company. Some three hundred replies had been received. An abstract of the replies showed that 47 per cent. of all never rode except when there are standing passengers, and the other 53

per cent. very seldom rode when there were not standing passengers. The average number of standing passengers was from nine to twenty-two, or an average of half as many as the cars ought to carry. Some replied that it was common to have seventy or eighty passengers in a car at the same time. It was common to find fifteen passengers on the rear platform, and ten or more on the front platform. The Metropolitan Railway now had an exclusive right to run cars to the Highland district upon their promise to accommodate the public. Was it accommodation of the public to carry people as cattle, and crowd people on the platform to the risk of life and limb? They would not accommodate the public, and they were not willing to let any one else accommodate the public, and he read from an agreement by which the proprietor of Hathorne's line of omnibuses, for a consideration of $6,600 a year, agreed not to run over a fixed number of omnibuses annually. The capital stock of the Metropolitan Railway was a million and a half, and on this the people of Boston were expected to pay a dividend of ten per cent. When extra cars were provided to carry the school children to festivals, the company expected from sixty to eighty to ride in a car. This company had no right to the monopoly, unless it accommodated the public-and it did not. An opposition line was needed to spur up the Metropolitan Company to run their road on Christian principles. It mattered not to the public whether the capitalists who put their money in the road made anything or not, although he was satisfied the proposed road would pay. The speaker then exhibited a plan of the proposed road to the committee, and explained the same. He said they wanted to run their road on moral and Christian principles. The petitioners for the charter were all large proprietors of real estate at the Highlands, and were deeply interested in the welfare of that portion of the city. They proposed to embody in the bill a provision that the platform of the cars should be securely railed and the steps covered with an apron while the cars were in motion, so that the platform could not be used for standing

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