When
the Spectator carried an article in August, 1907about the trials of Hamilton
Street Railway conductors, the sub-headline indicated that public hostility to
those public servants was not as pronounced in Hamilton as in some of the big
American cities
The
article reprinted below indicates that the Hamilton Street Railway conductors
had a lot to contend with in carrying out their duties:
“Public
hostility to street car conductors as a class is very pronounced in large
cities, but in Hamilton, the antagonism is on a very reduced scale, because of
the comparative smallness of the place. The why and wherefore of this seemingly
strange and unaccountable hostility are things that are hard to understand, for
while in large cities it is not difficult to realize why the public heartily
detests street car conductors because of their universally curt answers and
grudging information to strangers, together with their eagerness to seize every
opportunity for a show of their petty authority – in Hamilton the conductors
are, as a rule, fine fellows and some of them are decidedly popular. Not all
the public is hostile; in fact, there are thousands of citizens who take
pleasure in being in the company of some of the local conductors. But the fact
remains that here, as elsewhere, there is an undercurrent of feeling against
the knights of the fare-boxes – a feeling which too clearly manifests itself
sometimes on the slightest provocation and very frequently makes the conductor’s
life anything but a bed of roses.
LOOKED
ON AS A THIEF
Frequently
he has the unpleasant experience of knowing that some people think he is a
thief. It is a common occurrence for passengers to leave a purse or some
article in the car, and in some cases these articles are found by the conductor
and left at the street railway office, where the lost articles are claimed. But
it is often the case that some dishonest passenger on a car picks up the
articles left behind, and when the owner discover the loss and reports it to
the company, the missing things cannot be found. Then the owner, while giving
voice to his suspicions, covertly suspects the conductor of being the thief,
and that unfortunate man must take the unspoken blame as philosophically as he
can. As a local conductor said recently, it is one of the hardest trials in a
conductor’s life.
WHEN
HE CAN’T MAKE CHANGE
Some
people never mi8ss an opportunity to abuse a conductor, and a refusal to give
change often calls forth unmerited maledictions on his devoted head. According
to the way things are run in this city, a conductor pays 75 cents per year for
the loan of $25 from the company in tickets and change, and this he keeps up,
with the result that he invariably has sufficient on which to run his car. But
very often passengers want a $5 or a $10 bill changed for their fare, and in
these cases the conductor is up against a rather hard proposition. A conductor,
if he does want to, need give change for nothing larger than a $2 bill. That is
because he carries a fare box, but in Pittsburg and other large American cities,
where the conductor carries no box and where no tickets are sold except in book
form, change will be given for anything up to $5, although it is often a tight
squeeze for the conductor to do so. This relates particularly to Pittsburg, and
the change proposition there is not so acute as it is here. In Hamilton,
passengers frequently become insolent because a conductor cannot give change
for large bills, and are not pacified when it is explained to them that certain
rules prevail or that he is unable to accommodate. Thus is given another
example of public antagonism.
WOMEN
CAUSE MUCH TROUBLE
Then
there is the class of people who are always carried past their destination. And
in very many cases, it is not the conductor’s fault at all. A woman will be
sitting in the car and unconsciously pass the street at which she wished to
alight. Then, in a state of great excitement and brindling anger, flavored with
remarks concerning the stupidity of the conductor, she will demand to know why
the car was not stopped there. It makes no difference that the conductor
truthfully tells her that she had not asked to have the car stopped and that
she had not said a word about where she wanted to get off. She persists in
having things her own way and trundles off the car vowing black and blue
vengeance against the unfortunate ticket-taker. And the irony of fate is that
in such cases the woman usually alights in a pile of mud or near a pool of
water – a thing which does not tend to decrease her anger.
THE
TRANSFER PROBLEM
Expired
transfers are another source of worry to conductors. These transfers, as
expressly set forth on them, are good only at the point of exchange and on the
very first car leaving such point. Very frequently, however, transfers,
sometimes half an hour and even an hour late, are presented, and if the fraud
is detected the passenger usually forks up without more ado. But there are some
people, and this, if anything, shows how far the antagonism is sometimes
carried, who object to paying a fare, claiming that their expired transfer is
all right and believe that the conductor is showing his authority, when, in
fact, he is simply doing his duty by the company.
DO
NOT OPERATE HERE
Short
change artists work in profusion in large American cities, but the local
conductors say there are none here. The way it is done across the line is for a
crooked passenger to give a nickel and then persist that he had given him a
twenty-five or a fifty-cent piece, demanding his 20 or 45 cents change. The
bluff has to stick to work, and must be kept up even in the face of the fact
that the conductor holds the nickel in his hand. In this city, that game cannot
be worked, for here, fare boxes are used and the conductor, if you give him a
quarter to change, hands back the full amount and allows you to put the fare in
the box yourself. It is said that short change artists across the line make a
good living on the street cars by putting up a mighty bluff and practically
forcing conductors to give them change for money they had never tendered him.
BLAME
HIM FOR EVERYTHING
And
there are many, many people in this city who blame the local conductors for the
condition of the street cars. It does not appear to strike them that a
conductor is not responsible for the condition of the upholstering, or whether
the wheels are squared or the tracks kinked. Sufficient it is that the cars are
in bad condition, and, therefore, the poor conductors must be totally and
absolutely to blame. This is, perhaps, one of the hardest blows which the
unfortunate conductors have to suffer, but when these complaints are made, they
usually smile, knowing that they are in no way to blame and that a report to
Supt. Miller would not affect them in the least.
EXPECTED
TO KNOW EVERYTHING
The
problem of a conductor being a city directory and a map of the world combined
is not very pronounced in Hamilton. Most of the local conductors know the
streets fairly well and can usually give strangers any desired information. In
large cities, however, different conditions prevail, and if the conductor does
not know what he is asked, he is at once branded the height of stupidity and a
man that should be plowing instead of running a car. There have been cases in
Chicago where passengers have boarded a street car and have asked to be put off
at Buffalo. Some passengers even expect a conductor to know the address of
almost every person in the city, but ths is such a long stretch that only the
most irascible find fault when they cannot be given the desired information.
TOO
FAST OR TOO SLOW
Complaints
on speed are quite frequent, for the average passengers demand to know from the
conductor why the car is not going faster. It should be known that street cars,
the same as railroad trains, run on a schedule, and are due at certain places
on schedule time. If they are ahead of their schedule, they run slowly,
although this is rarely the case in this city. A street car ahead of time in
this city would cause nervous prostration to all who knew it.
Various
passengers also seem to think that a street car conductor should have the same
business as the conductor of a parlor car – the assigning of passengers to
seats. As a rule, the conductor fights shy of this, for it is none of his business
and he lets the people shift for themselves. There are some people, however,
who think he should exert a fatherly interest over them and make it his
particular duty to see that they get seats.
HIS
TRIALS ARE NUMEROUS
The
matter of ventilation is also a source of worry to the conductor, for while
some are hot, others are cold. Many other things could be written about the
trials and tribulations which a conductor experiences in his daily duty, and
the whole question has been summed up very neatly who aptly puts it as follows
:
To
please the public, a conductor must blow both hot and cold, be both white and
black, red and yellow, and, in fact, everything to everybody. He must flatter Smith,
please Brown, satisfy Jones, and fire Murphy off the car. People never seem to
imagine that we are human beings, with the same feelings as themselves, and
wish to get our work done with as little friction as possible.
