diameter. These dimensions were adequate for the transmission of virtually any amount of energy. Originally only from 200 to 300 K.W. were provided but I intended to employ later several thousand horsepower. The transmitter was to emit a wave complex of special characteristics and I had devised a unique method of telephonic control of any amount of energy.
GENERAL MOTORS
Why do the cities of America have no streetcars, let alone streetcars named Desire, running along them?
In 1974 one Bradford Snell, a staff attorney for the US Senate antitrust subcommittee, advanced the startling claim that General Motors had, in alliance with Standard Oil, Firestone, and Phillips Petroleum gone into cahoots to destroy the energy-efficient streetcar in forty-five cities, so as to pave the way for the triumph of the internal combustion engine. Which they all had a big stake in. According to Snell, GM and the other firms set up a holding company, National City Lines, that bought up electric trolley systems, dismantled them and replaced them with buses. In his report to the US Government, “American Ground Transport—A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus and Rail Industries” (see Document, p.176), he stated that General Motors was “a sovereign economic state whose common control of auto, truck, bus and locomotive production was a major factor in the displacement of rail and bus transportation with cars and trucks”.
Snell’s claim received a turbo-boost in 1988, when it formed the sub-plot of the movie
So, were the citizens of US cities taken for a ride by GM and its corporate pals?
There
• Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines.
• Conspiring to acquire control of transit companies with a view to forming a transportation monopoly.
The defendants were aquitted on the second count of trying to form a monopoly (although no one disputed that GM and its allies were engaged in all out war to create a transport environment favourable to its gas-powered products). GM, though, was convicted on the first. That is to say, they were guilty of conspiring to have GM companies buy only GM buses and spares.
It is not pretty, it is not ethical, but it not quite the same as maintaining that GM killed the streetcar. The streetcar was dying in its tracks before GM came along, because the rival bus was cheaper and more versatile (especially in a rapidly growing city like LA). Even transit systems which the NLC did not buy up, such as Pacific Electric, were dismantled in favour of the rubber-wheeled alternative.
Scott Bottles,
DOCUMENT: BRADFORD C. SNELL, “AMERICAN GROUND TRANSPORT”, WASHINGTON: US GOVERNMENT PRINT OFFICE. A REPORT PRESENTED TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE JUDICIARY, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ANTITRUST AND MONOPOLY, UNITED STATES SENATE, 26 FEBRUARY 1974 [EXTRACT]
N.B. Snell is erroneous in claiming that GM were convicted “of having criminally conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others to replace electric transportation with gas- or diesel-powered buses”, as explained above.
After its successful experience with intercity buses, General Motors diversified into city bus and rail operations. At first, its procedure consisted of directly acquiring and scrapping local electric transit systems in favor of GM buses. In this fashion, it created a market for its city buses. As GM General Counsel Henry Hogan would observe later, the corporation “decided that the only way this new market for (city) buses could be created was for it to finance the conversion from streetcars to buses in some small cities.” On June 29, 1932, the GM-bus executive committee formally resolved that “to develop motorized transportation, our company should initiate a program of this nature and authorize the incorporation of a holding company with a capital of $300,000.” Thus was formed United Cities Motor Transit (UCMT) as a subsidiary of GM’s bus division. Its sole function was to acquire electric streetcar companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell the properties to local concerns which agreed to purchase GM bus replacements. The electric streetcar lines of Kalamazoo and Saginaw, Mich., and Springfield, Ohio, were UCMT’s first targets. “In such case,” Hogan stated, GM “successfully motorized the city, turned the management over to other interests and liquidated its investment.” The program ceased, however, in 1935 when GM was censured by the American Transit Association (ATA) for its self-serving role, as a bus manufacturer, in apparently attempting to motorize Portland’s electric streetcar system.
As a result of the ATA censure, GM dissolved UCMT and embarked upon a nationwide plan to accomplish the same result indirectly. In 1936 it combined with the Omnibus Corp. in engineering the tremendous conversion of New York City’s electric streetcar system to GM buses. At that time, as a result of stock and management interlocks, GM was able to exert substantial influence over Omnibus. John A. Ritchie, for example, served simultaneously as chairman of GM’s bus division and president of Omnibus from 1926 until well after the motorization was completed. The massive conversion within a period of only 18 months of the New York system, then the world’s largest streetcar network, has been recognized subsequently as the turning point in the electric railway industry.
Meanwhile, General Motors had organized another holding company to convert the remainder of the Nation’s electric transportation systems to GM’s buses. In 1936, it caused its officers and employees, I. B. Babcock, E. J. Stone, E. P. Crenshaw, and several Greyhound executives to form National City Lines, Inc. (NCL). During the following 14 years General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and two other suppliers of bus-related products, contributed more than $9 million to this holding company for the purpose of converting electric transit systems in 16 States to GM bus operations. The method of operation was basically the same as that which GM employed successfully in its United Cities Motor Transit program: acquisition, motorization, resale. By having NCL resell the properties after conversion was completed, GM and its allied companies were assured that their capital was continually reinvested in the motorization of additional systems. There was, moreover, little possibility of reconversion. To preclude the return of electric vehicles to the dozens of cities it motorized, GM extracted from the local transit companies contracts which prohibited their purchase of “any new equipment using any fuel or means of propulsion other than gas.”
The National City Lines campaign had a devastating impact on the quality of urban transportation and urban living in America. Nowhere was the ruin more apparent than in the Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. Thirty- five years ago it was a beautiful region of lush palm trees, fragrant orange groves, and clean, ocean-enriched air. It was served then by the world’s largest interurban electric railway system. The Pacific Electric system branched out from Los Angeles for a radius of more than 75 miles reaching north to San Fernando, east to San Bernardino, and south to Santa Ana. Its 3,000 quiet, pollution-free, electric trains annually transported 80 million people throughout the sprawling region’s 56 separately incorporated cities. Contrary to popular belief, the Pacific Electric, not the automobile, was responsible for the area’s geographical development. First constructed in 1911, it established traditions of suburban living long before the automobile had arrived.
In 1938, General Motors and Standard Oil of California organized Pacific City Lines (PCL) as an affiliate of NCL
