USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley, Connecticut, Volume I > Part 14
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THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE TROLLEY
In 1893, when the Waterbury Traction Company, which from its inception in 1882 to that time, had been known as "The Waterbury Horse Railroad," asked for permission to change its motive power to electricity, there was a storm of protest.
At Hartford, the State Railroad Commission was seriously interfering with the beginnings of this new mode of street travel. In fact, in its early reports, dated during this formative period, it absolutely refused to grant any electric road the right to cross the tracks of a steam road.
The Waterbury Traction Company, however, submitted to the mayor and the Court of Common Council of Waterbury its plan for changing the motive power, and a committee of the Court of Common Council submitted a report recommending the granting of the application upon certain terms and conditions, including the following conditions :
"Section 6. That said company shall indemnify and save harmless the said city from all loss, cost, damage or expense of every kind, nature or description by reason of the operation of its cars in the streets of said city arising or growing out of the use of electricity as a motive power.
"Section 8. That said Waterbury Traction Company shall pay to the City of Waterbury, for the use of said city, in the month of January in each year a sum not exceeding two per cent of its gross receipts, to be determined as follows :-
"The gross receipts for the purpose aforesaid, consist of all fares not exceed- ing five cents (and five cents of each and every fare exceeding five cents) and the City of Waterbury at some time during the month of January in each year shall examine the books of said company and thus ascertain and determine such gross receipts.
"When and after such time as the net earnings of said company shall exceed the sum of six per cent on the capital actually invested in said company, in stocks or bonds, or both, said company shall pay to said city such excess to the amount of two per cent in the same manner aforesaid.
"If at any time hereafter the statute laws of this state shall make said company liable to local taxation, the provisions of this section shall be null and void during such time as said company shall be liable to local taxation and no part of said receipts shall be paid to said city during such time by reason of anything herein contained."
This permit is quoted in some detail here, as it later became an important issue in the city's contest for the collection of its two per cent of earnings.
The capital of the new company was placed at $1,000,000. This stock increase prepared the way for the absorption of the Connecticut Electric Company and for the control of the electric lighting of the city.
The power house for the new company was built on Bank Street, as an extension of the old electric station. Work began March 1, 1894. The first five electric cars were run July 28, 1894, from the Center to Naugatuck. The West Main Street line was opened with electric power August 3, 1894, the East Main Street line on August 22d, and the North Main Street line on September Ist.
The first report of the street railway companies in Connecticut to the State
WATERBURY UNION STATION AND APPROACHES FROM LIBRARY PARK
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Railroad Commission was made in 1895. At that time there were in round numbers 300 miles of street railways within the state, with a stock and bonded debt of $17,700,000, gross earnings of $2,200,000, operating expenses of $1,500,000, paying taxes amounting to $76,500, carrying 38,000,000 passengers, with 250 accidents to persons, 12 of which were fatal.
In 1910 there were 921 miles, with a reported capitalization and debt of $79,000,000, gross earnings over $8,000,000, operating expenses nearly $5,000,000, taxes $452,000, passengers carried 151,000,000, with 2,278 casualties to persons, 397 of which were fatal. This gives some conception of the tremendous growth of the trolley transportation in its first active fifteen years.
In 1916 the total mileage of single track road in Connecticut was 1,543.8. The total assets of all the street car lines in the state had reached on June 30, 1916, a total of $115,737,721.36. The passenger revenue for the year ending June 30, 1916, was $15.336,166.41, with a net operating revenue of $5,841,512.05; taxes to the state for the period, $971,753.53.
The first officers of the Waterbury Traction Company were: D. S. Plume, president ; J. E. Sewell, general manager ; J. R. Smith, treasurer; A. M. Young, secretary.
In the year ended September 30, 1895, the road earned $124,566.92, and expended $75,948.64, giving it net earnings of $48,618.28. It owned eighteen closed cars and twenty-six open cars, eight of the latter trailers. Its length was 9.15 miles.
On September 30, 1896, it reported earnings for the year $137,273.69, and expenses $64,994.91. The electric light department's income for that year was $105,661.38. The road had seventy-five employees. It was selling tickets at four cents and ticket fares to Naugatuck at eight cents; school children were carried for three cents.
In 1897 it added the Waterville division and owned 12.18 miles of single main track.
By 1899, the trolley business had come under the closer observation of the larger interests of the country and one of their first purchases was the Waterbury and Norwalk systems. In June, 1899, the transfer was officially made to what was then known as the Connecticut Lighting and Power Company. Its president was R. A. Smith of New York. Its directors were R. A. Smith and W. F. Sheehan of New York, H. G. Runkle of Bloomfield, N. J., A. M. Young of Branford, Conn., and P. H. Hampson of Brooklyn, N. Y. Thus the Waterbury traction system passed out of local control in 1899. The company which made the purchase had been first incorporated on July 2, 1895, as the Gas Supply Company. On November 2, 1899, it changed its name to the Connecticut Lighting and Power Company, and on January 10, 1901, the name was again changed to the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company.
In 1902 this company began its fight for control of the Connecticut field with the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company, which under the name of the Consolidated Company, was starting on its long line of trolley purchases. In that year the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company pur- chased in addition to the Waterbury Traction Company, the Bridgeport Traction Company, the Shelton Street Railway Company, the Milford Street Railway Company, the Westport and Saugatuck Street Railway Company, the Derby Street Railway Company, the Norwalk Tramway Company, the Norwalk Street Railway Company, the Central Rrailway & Electric Company, the Greenwich Gas & Electric Lighting Company, the Naugatuck Electric Light Company, and the Southington & Plantsville Tramway Company.
Vol. I-7
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Its first contest with the City of Waterbury came during this period when it applied to the selectmen for an approval of the extension from Oakville to Watertown. The consent was given, but with it a proviso demanding the "removal of all embankments and abutments now situated on the highway under the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railway; the erection of electric arc lights at those points, and the construction of a new and substantial iron bridge."
This became a famous contest, in which the city was defeated, first of all by the decision of the state railroad commissioners, and finally in an adverse decision by the Supreme Court on an appeal by the company from a favorable decision in the lower courts.
In 1902, the directors of the company were as follows: A. M. Young, Branford, Conn .; R. A. Smith, New York City; George E. Terry, Waterbury ; Randall Morgan and Walton Clark, both of Philadelphia ; H. G. Runkle, Plain- field, N. J .; David S. Plume, Waterbury ; W. G. Bryan, Waterbury; A. W. Paige, Bridgeport, and M. J. Warner, Branford, Conn.
Beginning with 1902 reports were consolidated for its entire single main track length of 151.720 miles.
In 1904 the road from Waterbury to Cheshire and Mount Carmel was com- pleted and the mileage in Waterbury was also slightly extended. The work on the Baldwin Street line began in this year.
On August 1, 1906, the entire holdings of the Connecticut Railway & Lighting Company were leased to the Consolidated Company, thus passing into the pos- session of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railway. At this time the total length of main track in Connecticut was 625.307 miles. Of this the two companies now consolidated controlled 440.419 miles.
The Connecticut Railway & Lighting Company owns 170.987 miles of single track in Connecticut which is leased to and operated by the Connecticut Company under a sub-lease dated February 28, 1910, from the Consolidated Railway Company, by the provisions of which the Connecticut Company assumes all the obligations and undertakings as to street railways assumed by the Consolidated Railway Company under its lease of December 19, 1906, from the Connecticut Railway & Lighting Company. Both the original and the sub-lease expire August 1, 2005, the rent paid by the Connecticut Company being $1,049,563.50 for the year. The lessee received all the income and profits from the leased premises and in consideration thereof pays the rental and taxes and maintains the property in good order and repair.
Two lines which were under construction in 1906, the Waterville and Thomas- ton line, and the Oakville and Watertown line, were completed in 1907 and became part of the new system.
On December 19, 1910, the company started to extend the line to Town Plot from the junction of Bank and James streets, and in 1912 it opened the loop through Meadow Street passing the Union Station.
In October, 1914, after the drastic action by the Government, the company and the Department of Justice agreed that the trolley properties among other holdings should be put into the hands of trustees for management and sale at the proper time. Under this and a previous order of court, the profits of the Connecticut Company are turned over to the New York, New Haven & Hartford in repayment for expenditures made out of its funds or as profits accruing from the trust holdings.
In March, 1915, the dissolution had proceeded far enough so that the directors of the New York, New Haven & Hartford were able to inform the Public Service Commission of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island,
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that in compliance with the decree of the Federal Court, control of the Boston & Maine, the Rhode Island and Connecticut trolley lines had already been placed in the hands of trustees.
It was stated by President Hadley of Yale, when first made a director of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, that the company had expended approximately ninety million dollars in the purchase of trolleys during the decade ended in 1913. "As for the trolleys about which so much has been said in criticism, there was except in the Rhode Island and Berkshire enterprises, little that could be called recklessness."
One of the most notable trials in the history of the country grew out of the Government's charge that the directors of the New York, New Haven & Hartford had conspired to monopolize the common carrier transportation of New England by acquiring and combining steam railroad, trolley lines and steamship companies. The trial lasted three months, ending January 9, 1916, in an acquittal of most of the defendant directors, and in a few instances in a disagreement. The trial is said to have cost the Government $200,000, and the defendant $575,000.
Howard Elliott, now chairman of the board of directors, in a recent address at Norwich said that "there is enough value in the great terminals to offset losses that may be sustained in selling certain of its properties under the decree of the Federal Court."
In October, 1914, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York placed the trolley system of Connecticut in the hands of five trustees, with an order to dispose of these properties in two years. This time has now been further extended.
The present trustees are as follows :
Walter C. Noyes, New York, chairman ; Charles Cheney, South Manchester ; Leonard M. Daggett, New Haven ; Morgan B. Brainard, Hartford; Charles T. Sanford, Bridgeport.
For the year 1917, the trustees have deemed it wise to declare no dividend.
Waterbury, in August, 1915, after defeat in the courts in its fight to collect the 2 per cent under the old written agreement with the Waterbury Traction Company, settled the case on the payment to the city of a lump sum of $75,000.
In July, 1917, the company announced that it would no longer sell trolley tickets at 4 cents on its Waterbury lines, and later that on October 1, 1917, it would charge on all its lines 6 cents where cash fares of 5 cents had been collected previously. The effort to stop this by injunction failed, as there never had been a written agreement on rates, and the new fares are now in effect, although hearings are being held before the Public Utilities Board as to the right of the company to raise the rate.
In 1899 a corporation known as the Woodbury & Southbury Electric Railway Company endeavored to secure the right to use the city streets for the operation of an electric line to suburban points, but this was never pressed to any practical end. It was, however, the occasion of a long contest with the existing trolley system.
The trolley connection to Woodbury was not secured until 1908, when the line was run via Middlebury and past Lake Quassapaug, making this a great popular summer resort. For years the talk had been that the line to Woodbury would run through Watertown.
Various plans to connect the terminus of the Watertown trolley line with Litchfield and Thomaston have been mooted, but never reached the practical stage.
In 1916, the company completed and opened what is popularly known as the Chase trolley line, proceeding from North Main Street to Waterville via
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Perkins Avenue and connecting the North Main Street plants of the Chase inter- ests with the railroad tracks at Waterville and the Chase Metal Works north of Waterville.
THE "GREEN" LINE
In 1913, a small group of Waterbury and Southington men started the Water- bury and Milldale Tramway Company, better known as the "Green" line. This project had been under way for more than seven years, having originated among the business men of the Town of Southington, who desired closer connections with Waterbury. C. H. Clark, the bolt manufacturer of Southington, was the mainspring behind the project. An appeal being made to the Waterbury Business Men's Association for co-operation, several of the officers and directors of the association joined in the petition for the charter. Among them were John R. Hughes and John H. Cassidy, who was at that time secretary and counsel of the business men's association. They are still directors of the company and Mr. Cassidy is its managing director.
The work proceeded slowly owing to the difficulties of construction and of securing capital, but finally the line was operated first to Mill Plain, then extended to Hitchcock Lakes, thus making another agreeable summer resort for Waterbury people, and finally to Milldale, making connections there with the Connecticut Company's lines to Meriden and Southington. By a traffic agreement the "Green" line uses the Connecticut Company's tracks in this city from the corner of East Main Street and the Meriden Road to the Center.
The line extends from Waterbury to Milldale, a distance of 81/2 miles, and now operates six cars.
Its general manager is John H. Cassidy, and its directors are: Charles H. Clark, Roswell A. Clark, Richard Elliott, John R. Hughes, and John H. Cassidy.
EXPRESS COMPANIES
The two companies operating in Waterbury under traffic arrangements with the New York, New Haven & Hartford System are the Adams Express Company and the American Express Company, both with offices and warehousing arrange- ments in the Union Station.
The business of these companies after the introduction of the parcel post was run at first at a heavy loss, amounting in 1913 for the Adams in the State of Connecticut to $204,598.88, and for the American for the same period in the state to $281,892.44.
There has now been a complete rehabilitation and adjustment to new condi- tions, and both companies are doing a profitable business in Waterbury.
The trolley express, established in 1899, is one of the activities of the Connecticut Company.
TELEGRAPH COMPANIES
The two telegraph companies, the Western Union and the Postal Telegraph, have confined themselves during the past twenty-five years to keeping up with the growth of Waterbury. In the past three years alone the telegraph business in this city has doubled. The Western Union now has 120 wires, including trunk lines, running out of its Waterbury offices, while in 1893 it had but three. It now employs fourteen clerks and operators, where three men did all the work
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in 1893. Its most famous manager during this period was W. A. Sawyer, who is now district commercial superintendent with headquarters in New York. The present superintendent is A. C. Wardell.
The Postal Telegraph Company has shown a similar growth. At the begin- ning of the twenty-five year period, it had but two wires ; now it has twenty-five wires running out of the city. Its growth, too, has been continuous. Its present manager is Margaret M. Hunter.
THE TELEPHONE IN CONNECTICUT
It is now, at the end of 1917, forty years since the telephone was first com- mercially introduced into Connecticut on a then large scale. Since that time tremendous expansion of the service has placed the telephone in the forefront of the most serviceable public utilities. From the little exchange established in the City of New Haven in January, 1878, the business has grown with rapidity, until at the present time it is almost impossible to enter even the most remote farming communities, or sparsely settled districts in the state, without finding a telephone handy in the event it is needed.
Pioneers in the telephone service in Connecticut agree that what were probably the first telephones brought into this state made their appearance in the City of Bridgeport in the latter part of June, 1877. These instruments were brought to that city for demonstration purposes, as the incident is remembered, and were presented to the directors of the Hartford Alarm Register Company, with which Thomas B. Doolittle of Pine Orchard, a pioneer telephone man and famous as the inventor of hard drawn copper wire, was identified.
Mr. Doolittle was present at the meeting of the directors of the Register Com- pany when these telephones, four in number, were shown to the directors. He borrowed two of these old-time telephone sets and showed them to a number of his business friends in Bridgeport during the next few days. At that time the study of telegraphy was quite a fad among men of an inventive turn of mind and several of them, living in Bridgeport, were members of what was called the Bridgeport Social Telegraph Association. By means of this association, when one member wished to call another, he would sound that member's call and sign his own. The operator, hearing this, would so adjust the plugs in the switchboard that a connecting line was established between the calling and the called stations. In this way telegraphic communication could be established in much the same way as a telephone connection is made today.
Brief experiments were carried on by members of the Social Telegraph Asso- ciation with the old telephone sets and it was proved that the telephone could be used on this system. The association, through its members, at once adopted the telephone in place of the telegraph.
At this time tests were made from various stations in the association's service and conversations were sucessfully carried on as far out as Black Rock, about four miles from the operator's switchboard. All interest in the telegraph system was lost and Mr. Doolittle at once began soliciting subscribers for a telephone system. P. T. Barnum, of circus fame, was the first subscriber signed by Mr. Doolittle.
A company had been formed in New England to lease instruments and plans were being made for using them at various points. W. H. Haywood, who was secretary of the Hartford Register Company, appplied for and secured the agency of the telephone in Fairfield and New Haven counties. Later Mr. Hay- wood secured the agency for Hartford and Litchfield counties.
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With the development of the association's service in Bridgeport promising well, Mr. Doolittle went to New Haven with the object of interesting capital in that city in the project of establishing a similar association there. It was through Mr. Doolittle's efforts that the New Haven District Telephone Company was formed and the preliminaries to the opening of the first commercially oper- ated telephone exchange were carried out. But, telephone history shows, Mr. Doolittle was left out of this business arrangement.
David S. Plume of Waterbury played a prominent part in the advancement of telephony in this state. He was a close friend of Mr. Doolittle and had often tried to persuade the latter to devote his attention to manufacturing rather than to the development of the telephone, which was not then regarded as a safe and sound business enterprise. Finally Mr. Plume sensed the great possibilities of the telephone and provided financial backing for some of the work Mr. Doolittle then had in mind.
In November, 1877. a telephone line was built connecting the mill and offices of the Ansonia Brass and Copper Company. These works adjoined those of Wallace & Sons, who were also manufacturers of copper wire. Mr. Doolittle was associated with this enterprise and it was in this work that he acquired his knowledge of wire drawing which led, some time later, to his invention of hard drawn copper wire which made possible the modern long distance telephone service.
At this time Mr. Doolittle was getting along well in the plans for an exchange in Bridgeport. Then the Western Union Telegraph Company entered the tele- phone field and seemed to direct all its energies toward upsetting Mr. Doolittle's business plans in that city. It is reliably recorded that Mr. Doolittle was beset by many difficulties, financial and otherwise, in his efforts to put through his plans. One hard blow at Mr. Doolittle came through William D. Bishop of Bridgeport, then president of the New Haven Railroad. He ordered all of the telephones furnished by Mr. Doolittle taken out of the railroad, steamboat and express offices. Mr. Bishop, by the way, was a member of the board of directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company at that time.
The first commercial telephone exchange in the world was opened in New Haven, January 28, 1878, and the switchboard was located in the Boardman Building, still standing at State and Chapel streets. A little later an exchange was opened in Meriden and the switchboard used there was supposed to be an exact duplicate of the one used in New Haven. By February 28, 1878, the ex- change in New Haven had grown so that there were fifty subscribers connected therewith and a list of these subscribers was prepared and printed, this being the first telephone directory in the world.
The early exchanges were naturally far different from the marvelously equipped central offices of the present day. The apparatus was crude and the boy operators not only were untrained, but the quality of their work was lowered by their desire to experiment with the apparatus which was a great novelty to them.
With the New Haven and the Meriden exchanges operating successfully, the Bridgeport exchange was soon opened by Mr. Doolittle. Ellis B. Baker, for many years with the Southern New England Telephone Company, was the man chiefly instrumental in establishing the exchange at Meriden. At that time Mr. Baker was but twenty-four years of age.
With these three exchanges finally established and with telephony recognized as a modern aid to all business enterprises, it was not long before an exchange was established and in working order in the City of Waterbury. This was the period of telephone infancy, to be sure, but for an infant it displayed remarkable
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facilities for proving its real service to the people, in consequence of which, exchanges were within a few years opened in practically all of the larger cities of the state. Today every city, town, village and hamlet and the obscure places in the backwoods of this and every other state are now accorded telephone service.
The first Waterbury office was located in a building in Phoenix Avenue, the second home being in a building in North Main Street. From there the Waterbury office was moved to the old site of the Manufacturers' National Bank and then to the Masonic Building in Bank Street. Later the office was located at 282 Bank Street, this being the first central office building the Southern New England Company built in Waterbury. It moved into its new building on Leavenworth Street in 1914.
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