DISHONEST TRAM CONDOCTORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13745, 9 May 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

DISHONEST TRAM CONDOCTORS.

iW YORK'S EXPERIENCE. New Yobk, March' 26.—The tram proprietors of New York—and their experience is far from unique— that . they Jose 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 four years they' have discharged on an average 3700 conductors annually, and last year nearly 6000. As there are about 3000 conductors' in the employ of the New York City Tram Com. pany, the 1907 ligures 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 conuuuiors are more or Ices dishonest, and although some remain in the company's service for upwards of a year, this is not on'account of their integrity, but 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 now come to regard the peculations of the 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 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 system which excludes what they now seem to regard in New York and other big cities, not as plunder, but as legitimate perquisites.