DISHONEST TRAM CONDUCTORS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9091, 18 May 1908, Page 3

DISHONEST TRAM CONDUCTORS.

NEW YORK'S EXPERIENCE.

The tram proprietors of New York —and their experience is far from unique— estmaite that they lose over £2C0,000 yearly because of the dishonesty of conductors, and to remedy this they now propose to establish automatic machines »nto which you drop your fare as you enter. During the last four years they have discharged on an average 8,700 conductors annually, and last year nearly, 6,000. As there are about 3,000 conductors in the employ of the New , York City Tram Company, the 1907' figures represent the discharge of the e.itire force twico during the year for the cause mentioned. ' j It is an axiom amongst tram pro- J prietors in New York, says a New j York paper, and the public that all conductors are more or less dishonest, arid although some remain in the \ company's service for upward* of year, this 13 not on account of their integrity, bub 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 fears 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 feas by taking a job during the long vacation on the trams. Tho public are absolutely without sympathy with the tram companies, and now come to regard the peculations of the conductors aa 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 be completely successful, because conductors will still be necessary, and when prosperous times come again it is questioned whether conductors will be available under a sytsem which excludes what they now i seem to regard in New York and other big cities, not as plunder, but as legitimate perquisites.