Excerpt from Additional Burdens Upon Street Railway Companies: Before the Central Club Somerville, April 30, 1891, and the Roxbury Club, Boston, May 9, 1891

Now, the city of Somerville 1s a city of very rapid growth. I congratulate you and every citizen of Somerville on your magnificent showing for the last twenty years, and especially for the last five years. The growth is something perfectly astonishing. It is paralleled only by the suburbs surround ing Boston - West Roxbury and Brighton and Everett and it compares with the cities of the West and South. But along with this growth, and as a very important, if not the most important, factor in the growth and prosperity or com fort of the people that are to occupy these homes in the future, is the question of how they shall get back and forth to and from their business. We live in a most surprising age. When I see the very great difference between the wages paid abroad and the wages paid at home, I wonder if this condition of things can continue. I know that the fare between the city of Somerville and the city of Boston to most of you gentlemen here is of very small consequence. I know that very many of you would be perfectly willing to pay ten cents for a seat in and out of Boston, if thereby you could get it and if it were possible to arrange, a system of transportation which should give the people who are willing to pay this ten cents back and forth a class of cars by which it could be done. I know that would be very satisfactory to great numbers of your people. But that is impossible: I apprehend that the day may come when the difference between five cents and ten cents will be a very great factor in determining the question where people shall live.

Now, then, how can we improve this system? How can we shorten the time without increasing the cost? That is the next problem with which we and this community have to deal. I have, personally, no desire for anything that I canmake out of the elevated road or the underground road, to undertake it. The pecuniary compensations have not the slightest temptations for me, because rt is such a tremendous question, so full of possibilities, it is true, but so full of dangers to any concern that undertakes it, I am free to say to you that I shrink from the task. I know there are plenty of men who will come into your hall to-day, or will go to the legislative hall, who will tell you that if you will give them a charter they will build the elevated or underground railroad for you, but it is perfect nonsense to listen to any such talk as that. The granting of any charter to anybody at this time would simply be an embarrassment of the whole question, for this is a question that will task the utmost ca pacity, in my judgment, of this community and Cambridge and Boston and all the communities that desire to see this thing done. I desire to see it done, because, seeing how the people live abroad, and seeing how important it is that the people shall continue to go to the suburbs, in order that they may live in this healthy way, I say that there is no question of equal importance which confronts these communities. I shall do what I can to point out the proper way, but if any other man or set of men are willing to undertake the solu tion of that problem, and will build that underground or elevated road, and will give us at each end of that line a con nection which will permit us to carry you to your homes and the people on the other side of the city of Boston to their homes, I shall be very glad of it. I believe that it will require some aid, some relief from taxation, instead of added taxation, in order that the thing may be done, and I hope this Association will give to. That question, when it comes up, careful consideration.

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