DISHONEST TRAM CONDUCTORS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9148, 18 May 1908, Page 7

DISHONEST TRAM CONDUCTORS.

NEW YORK’S EXPERIENCE. New York, March 26. The tram proprietors of New York —and their experience is far from unique—estimate that they lose over £200,000 yearly because of the dishonesty of conductors, and to remedy this they now propose to establish automatic machines into which you drop your fare as you enter. During the last fonr years they have discharged on an average 8700 conductors annually, and last year nearly 6000. As there are about 8000 conductors in the employ of the New York City Tram Company, the 1907 figures represented the discharge of the entire force twice during the year for the cause mentioned. It is an axiom amongst tram proprietors here and the public that all conductors are more or less dishonest, and although some remain in the company’s service for upwards of a year, this is not on account of their integrity, hut because they have avoided'detection by the big army of inspectors employed to watch them. The conductors receive fairly good wages, but it is complained that there is something so utterly demoralising in the collection of fares from the public for eleven or twelve hours at a stretch that it destroys the morality even of collegians, who in America are not above earning their university fees by taking a job during the long vacation on the trams. The public are absolutely without sympathy with the tram companies, and have come to regard the peculations ofthe conductors as lightly, for example, as certain expositions of high finance in America which the law-allows to go unpunished. It is not certain that slot machines for fares will he completely successful, because conductors will still be necessary, and when prosperous times come again it is questioned whether conductors will he available under a system which’excludes what they now seem to regard in New York and other big cities, not as plunder, hat as legitimate perqnisites.