Historical October 1983 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Erastus Wells is probably best known as the founder of the city of Wellston because that is where his country property was.
When he arrived in St. Louis in 1843, he immediately got into the omnibus business.
Until that time only horse-drawn hacks were available along the riverfront at the price of 25 cents a mile per person. Wells’ bus cost 12.5 cents to ride and his regular schedule attracted riders and competition.
In 1850, he formed a partnership with three other men including Robert O’Blenis, the king of Battle Row, and they bought out all competition and received special licensing from the Board of Aldermen.
With ninety buses, the vehicles ran every four minutes along four major lines.
The only complaint was the quality of the ride — it was bumpy and crowded.
In 1859, the firm opened their first horse-drawn streetcar line.
The buses now traveled on rails.
The regular horsedrawn street buses continued to be used, but the rail streetcars clearly were here to stay as they carried more passengers with less horsepower and a smoother ride. Wells was president of the Missouri Railway Company from 1868 to 1876, during which time he was also alderman and congressman from the Missouri First District.
The transportation monopoly had really come to an end in 1855 when one of Wells’ partners had died and O’Blenis had been jailed for murder. Competition grew after the Civil War as the city expanded. Cable cars were introduced in 1886, and electric streetcars replaced the horse-drawn and cable cars during the 1890s.
In the late 1880s, three street railways were authorized: the Lindell Railway Company had the central corridor to the west end; the Union Depot Railway Company covered the south side; the Mound City Line covered most of the north side.
In 1899, these three were consolidated into one operation, the St. Louis Transit Company, and a universal transfer system was initiated.
The coming World’s Fair was part of the motivation for the consolidation.
The streetcar, especially the electrical version, brought swift and regular transportation throughout St. Louis.
By the start of the twentieth century, the public system of the city was a national model of efficiency and profitability.
The rich were constantly building westward to escape the very transportation system which made many of them wealthy. Vandeventer Place, laid out in 1870 west of Grand Avenue, grew to magnificent proportions until the streetcar was electrified. Grand Avenue changed at that point from a residential street to a commercial zone.
The residents of Vandeventer Place had to contend with growing crescendos of noise, smoke, and residential squalor along nearby public streets.
By 1910, the exodus had begun and the street eventually was replaced by a hospital complex.
In addition to its efficiency, the public transportation system of St. Louis had its share of corruption.
The “big cinch,” under constant attack by Joseph Pulitzer’s Post-Dispatch, included a number of men who had wealth because of their role in the streetcar system.
The transportation utility involved the same men who controlled the other utilities as well as the banks.
They received their “boodle” from the local public officials they put in office until Joseph Folk was elected circuit attorney in 1900.
The cinch did not want him mayor and thought he would be relatively harmless in the secondary position.
During that same time, the streetcar system employees struck the system demanding a restoration of wage cuts given during a period of economic down turn which had since reversed itself. Folk was investigating the operation of the transit company during this strike period when he tricked C.H. Turner, president of the Suburban Railway Company, and Philip Stock, lobbyist for the St. Louis Brewing Association, into owning up to some of the corrupt practices in which they had taken part.
One specific deal had included a Kansas City speculator named Robert Snyder who had tried to muscle into the decentralized transit business in St. Louis in 1898.
In 1899, the three systems mentioned above were consolidated into one in response to this attempt by Snyder — who was paid to leave town after he himself had paid a quarter million dollars in bribes to various aldermen to get a transit license.
He netted over $1 million in just a few weeks work within the system of the cinch in St. Louis.
With this information, Folk broke the back of the cinch.
At the same time, the efficiency of the St. Louis transit system was as much due to greed as to public spirit.
After World War I, the automobile brought the decline of the street railway system.
The noise and clatter of the streetcar was replaced by the family car. Residents wanted none of the noise of the rails.
As the car and autobus developed, it was clear the streetcar was less preferable — and also more dangerous.
The bus came up to the curb to pick up passengers; the streetcar had to be boarded by getting into the street.
By World War II, the streetcar was all but past history.
The control of the transportation system passed to a quasi-governmental monopoly replacing the privately controlled, corrupt monopoly of the nineteenth century. What had been profitable became in need of public subsidy.
The changes over the past 140 years were largely mandated by public demand for comfort, reliability, low cost, low noise, and low visibility of the ugly features of mass transit. Corruption was tolerated as long as the system was comfortable, reliable, and not too visible.
Originally published in The Paper, October 1983.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Streetcar chronology, corruption allegations and claims about the end of streetcar service are the author’s historical account, not independently verified findings. The original final sentence was reconstructed from the visually verified column ending displaced by OCR.
Original source: SD_Times1983_10.pdf, printed page(s) 5; PDF page(s) 5.
