Mass Transit and Private Ownership: An alternative Perspective on the Case of Toronto

Davis, Donald F.

doi:10.7202/1019407ar

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…The switch from horse‐drawn carriages to electrified streetcars in the 1890s further increased the capital cost of the system, as did its extension to suburban areas. Labor costs were by far the largest variable cost, and thus street railway owners soon learned that the profitability of their operations depended to a great extent on their ability to keep labor costs under control (Davis 1979; Cheape 1980; Armstrong and Nelles 1986, 40–41). For the most part, street railways sought to achieve this objective by keeping wages low and hours long, imposing strict discipline on employees, and, if employees tried to organize a union to improve their conditions, fiercely fighting to keep their workplaces union free 9 .…”

Section: Working On the Street Railway: The Struggle To Change The Womentioning

confidence: 99%

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

Tucker¹

2010

Law soc. inq.

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Street railway strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were frequently the occasion for large‐scale collective violence in North American cities and challenged the capacity of local authorities to maintain civic order. However, this was only the most visible manifestation of the challenge that street railway workers' collective action posed to the order of liberal capitalism, an order constructed on several intersecting dimensions. Using the example of Canadian street railway workers from 1886 to 1914, a period of rapid urbanization and industrialization, this article explores the ways the collective action by workers and their community sympathizers challenged the workplace, marketplace, and “streetplace” orders of liberal capitalism. It discusses how those challenges were met through political and legal processes of resistance and accommodation, taking into account the fragmentation of state power, hostile public opinion toward the street railways, and conflicting views over the legitimate scope for workers' collective action.

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Section: Working On the Street Railway: The Struggle To Change The Womentioning

confidence: 99%

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

Tucker¹

2010

Law soc. inq.

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“…As the city grew, especially after the turn of the century, there was an increasing demand for the TRC to extend its lines outward. This it was very reluctant to do, recognizing that newer routes at the fringe of the built-up area would be less profitable and might even show a loss (Armstrong & Nelles, 1986;Davis, 1978;Doucet, 1977;Frisken, 1984Frisken, , 1991. The TRC argued that legally it was only required to provide service within the city limits as they had existed in 1891.…”

Section: The Use Of Public Transitmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the Past Matters: North American Cities in the Twentieth Century

Harris

Lewis

1998

Journal of Urban Affairs

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The past matters because it affects the present, and we can make serious errors of judgment when we ignore this fact. In studying the past, however, we should try to view it in its own terms and not simply in the light of current concerns. This will not only make for better history, but may be useful in broadening the terms of contemporary debates. These themes are illustrated in terms of the twentieth-century North American city. The influence of the past, and the errom of judgment caused by ignoring its effects, can be seen in Toronto. There, in the postwar era, the health of the central city and the viability of public transit have been attributed to good planning and urban governance. In fact, these features are partly the unintended consequences of the way the urban area developed in the first half of this century. The limitations of viewing the past in terms of the present are illustrated by the way that scholars have allowed current concerns to shape our conception of cities in the first half of this century. For example, the sharp distinction of city from suburb and the search for the origins of the modern land development industry have narrowed our vision of urban areas before World War II. The case of housing policy indicates that this narrowing has not only distorted our view of the past, but also has compelled us to reinvent mechanisms of housing provision, such as cooperatives and self-help, that had been attempted decades ago and subsequently forgotten.The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present. E. H. Carr, What is History?As urban historical geographers, we regularly find ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we like to tell our colleagues, who are mostly interested in what is happening now (or tomorrow), that the past matters. We are convinced that the history of any city has shaped its present form and, hence, the types (and degree) of problems it faces. With this understanding, we would like to offer useful insights and tips about current urban problems. The problem is that we are wary of claiming that history offers obvious precedents or lessons. After all, the past is not just a prologue to the present; it is, as L. P. Hartley once observed, "a foreign country" where people do things differently (cf. Lowenthal, 1985). If it is unwise to ignore the past, it is surely foolish to copy it or to draw simple-minded inferences from earlier mistakes. What, then, can it teach us? Does it matter, and if so, how?These are large questions of broad relevance, and they can be answered in various ways. Focusing upon the experience of Canadian and US cities in the twentieth century, in this article we make a two-stage argument that may appear paradoxical. We claim that the past matters for the present, but often not in ways that can be captured by present-day assumptions and categories. Our first point-that the past matters-is the more straightforward, and in the first half...

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“…Torontonians' apparent desire to spread, which made TRC's tight-fisted, anti-expansionist policy unpopular even in the 1890s, 60 was postponed by the two-fare system, and from 1921 to the end of World War Two by the Toronto Transporation (later Transit) Commission's adopting a version of its predecessor's policy of serving only densely populated areas with streetcars. With the coming of Metropolitan Government in 1954, which shifted power from the municipality of Toronto to suburban municipalities, a one-fare zone covering a vast area finally removed all constraints and the Los Angelization of outer Toronto began in earnest.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894

Fleming¹

1991

Urban History Review

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Canadian historians of electric street railways have focussed on a variety of issues: patronage, corruption and Sunday cars (Meen, Armstrong and Nelles); financial investment (Armstrong and Nelles, Bliss, McDowall and Hall); competition from jitneys (Armstrong and Nelles, Doucet, Linteau and Davis); traction methods (Nelles and Armstrong and Due); civic populism and the municipalization of transit (Nelles and Armstrong and Frisken); costs of electricity and fluctuations in demand (Spry); company strategy, political lobbying, the expansion question and urban reform (Nelles and Armstrong, Davis, Doucet, Roy, Weaver and Rutherford); factors shaping street car networks (Selwood); radial railways (Salmon, Wickson and Due); workers and strikes (Nelles and Armstrong, Piva and Kealey and Palmer); and survey histories (Pursley, Filey, Blake and Baker). American and British street railways have been dealt with in similar ways by historians including Warner, Cheape, Ward, McKay, Taylor and Smerk.

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Mass Transit and Private Ownership: An alternative Perspective on the Case of Toronto

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

Who's Running the Road? Street Railway Strikes and the Problem of Constructing a Liberal Capitalist Order in Canada, 1886–1914

How the Past Matters: North American Cities in the Twentieth Century

The Trolley Takes Command, 1892 to 1894

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