Straphanger's Lament

In spite of the New Deal, in spite of the all-powerful political boss who is their mayor, Chicago's traction system will still be visited on the children of Chicagoans, even to the second and third generations. That was the news that depressed Chicagoans last week.

Their elevated, emanating from the famed "Loop" around Chicago's business center, was built for a city of 1,700,000 (present pop. 3,400,000), is now in receivership. Its last big purchase of new equipment was made just before the U.S. entered World War I. Their streetcars, owned by four different companies (all in receivership) and operated by a fifth, are oldfashioned, high-riding trolleys ("antediluvian arks"), 75% of which were built before Harding campaigned on his front porch. And they are so crowded that many Chicagoans cannot even reach a strap to hang on to.

When Mayor Ed Kelly wangled an $18,000,000 PWA appropriation in 1938 to help build a subway, one of the strings attached was the unification of all city transportation facilities. His City Council passed a unification plan, voters adopted it 10-to-1 in a referendum. All bondholders approved the plan; so did the Federal Court which handles the receivership proceedings.

But the plan ran into a new stumbling block: after a year of listening to arguments, the Illinois Commerce Commission rejected the plan as financially "unsound" and containing insufficient guarantee of improved service.

Chicago's newspapers (except the Tribune) pointed out that the State Commission was appointed by Republican Governor Dwight H. Green, who might conceivably hate to see Democrat Ed Kelly get credit for untangling the transit tangle. Mayor Kelly shouted: "An outrage. . . ." But the Commission's decision was final.

The only immediate loophole was suggested last week by a city attorney: perhaps, since all the lines were in receivership in Federal Court, the State Commission had no jurisdiction. The receivership judge, Michael L. Igoe, clutched at this straw. Said he: "If the Commerce Commission has no jurisdiction, and you can prove it to me, no one will be happier than this Court."

But it appeared that the attorneys, who argued before the State Commission for a year without questioning its jurisdiction, would have a hard time making a case. Said the Chicago Sun: "The net result ... is to leave Chicago's traction muddle exactly where it was when the fight for unification started 15 years ago, except that it costs more (8-c- instead of 5-c-) to ride the streetcars now."

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