Turmoil in Traction

"What the hell was that?" asked the Mayor of Philadelphia last week.

"That" was a heavy curtain which had fallen backstage at the Locust Street Theatre, where Mayor Samuel Davis Wilson was addressing some 1,600 employes of Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. Informed that a mere curtain had caused the disturbance, Mayor Wilson remarked: "I thought it was some of those gunmen

I am driving out of the city."

The meeting of P. R. T. employes, who are also P. R. T. stockholders, was called to discuss the continuation of a voting trust agreement through which P. R. T. affairs have been managed by three trustees appointed in the spring of 1931. The trustee agreement expires May 15. Mayor Wilson argued that the trustees' work had been completed, that they should disband. Aligned with the Mayor was Dr. Arthur Alan Mitten, 47-year-old son of the late Thomas Eugene Mitten, who managed P. R. T. from 1911 until his death in 1929. Opposed to them was P. R. T.'s President Ralph Townsend ("Rapid Transit") Senter, who thought that the trustees had done a good job, should be continued in office. Since P. R. T. was before Federal Judge George A. Welsh on an application for 77-6 reorganization, the Court remained the final authority on the direction of P. R. T.'s perplexed affairs. But the meeting's real issue last week was not so much the continuance of the trustees as the type of reorganization plan that P. R. T. would eventually submit to its stockholders and creditors. The P. R. T. trustees and management had a plan which was satisfactory to the Court and which would probably be satisfactory to the creditors. But, under the P. R. T. system of stock-owning employes, the P. R. T. workers controlled about 44% of the company's stock. And Mayor Wilson had a plan, with which Dr. Mitten agreed, that was much more pleasing to the employe-stockholders, though it seemed likely that the Delaware River would run upstream before the creditors would accept it. So Mayor Wilson and Dr. Mitten wanted the employes to get rid of the trustees and put the Wilson Plan before the Court, whereas President Senter wanted them to prolong the trustee ship and accept the Company Plan.

Odd was the alliance between Mayor Wilson and Dr. Mitten. As Deputy Controller, Mayor Wilson had forced P. R. T. into the trusteeship and driven Dr. Mit ten's father out of the company. Well aware, therefore, was the Mayor that the Wilson-Mitten alliance might be interpreted as a step toward the return of dis credited Mitten Management.

"I am not talking for Mitten Manage ment," he shouted. "I have been damn ing it for years. ... I'd hook up with the Devil if that would help in this situa tion." Realizing that the reference to his new ally was hardly complimentary, Mayor Wilson hastily explained that he meant no disparagement of Dr. Mitten.

As the paunchy, red-faced, cigar-sucking Mayor became hoarse from his oration, someone shouted "Take a drink of water!"

Dr. Mitten poured, Mayor Wilson lifted the glass, gestured toward his audience:

"Here's how." He then digressed to com ment on the quality of Philadelphia's water supply and how he intended to improve it.

"You don't have to drink water," cried a wit in the audience. "Take a nip out of that bottle Senter's got in his pocket." President Senter rose, slapped his pockets to demonstrate that no bottles were on his person.

"If Mr. Senter had a bottle," went on the Mayor, magnanimously, "it would be for medicine. Mr. Senter is a sick man."

Settling down to his main argument, Mayor Wilson expounded the Wilson Plan. Major knot in the P. R. T. tangle is the existence of what are known as "underlying companies." A considerable portion of the trackage over which the P. R. T. runs its cars is not owned by P. R. T., but by some 20 companies to which the original franchises were granted many years ago. Stock in these companies is owned by the Wideners, the Elkinses and other First Philadelphia Families. For the privilege of using these rights-of-way, P. R. T. pays annual leases which amount to some $7,000,000. In good times,, when revenues were as high as $58,000,000 a year, P. R. T. absorbed the leases and still made money. In Depression, with revenues down to less than $35,000,000, the burden of lease payments resulted in a series of deficits.

The Mayor's solution was to have the City of Philadelphia institute condemnation proceedings against the underlying companies, buy in their securities and eliminate the lease payments. The Mayor figured that so much money would be saved on fixed charges that the company could put a two-man crew on every car (which pleased employes) and could also operate on a 5-c- fare (which pleased car-riders). Present Philadelphia streetcar fare is 7 1/2-c- in tokens or 8-c- in cash, with added charges for transfers.

The Company Plan also provides for elimination of the leases and unification of the transit lines in a bigger & better P. R. T. But the Company Plan offered underlying security holders some $87,000,000 in bonds of a new P. R. T. The Mayor protested that the "underliers" had already collected $250,000,000 in rentals, that their securities had a market value of not more than $30,000,000 and that they did not even claim a total investment of more than $53,000,000. Although the bond interest would not be as great as lease payments, the Mayor nevertheless thought that interest payments would exhaust operating profits. "You will be left," he told the employe-stockholders, "with scraps of paper." At that the audience cheered.

Next speaker was Mr. Senter, who seemed most disturbed over the circumstance that the P. R. T. Co-operative System had been, as he said, "put on the spot." This system provided, among other items, that employes should have a voice in the company's affairs. But the voice was to be expressed through duly elected employe representatives. For the employes to go over the heads of these representatives to hold mass meetings and cast secret ballots, was a resounding slap at Cooperation. "I believe in the Cooperative System," said Mr. Senter solemnly, "as much as I do the Bible which my mother gave me." Employe-stockholders booed. Mr. Senter reminded the men that the trustees had restored wages to pre-Depression rates and warned them about the inadvisability of changing horses while crossing a stream.

Third speaker was Dr. Mitten, still popular with many employes despite the scandals associated with his father's management. He is board chairman of P. R. T., but his $50,000 salary has been cut to $25,000 and few Philadelphians credit him with much authority in the company. Dr. Mitten said his only interest in the situation was to see that the employes "regain control of their property by regaining the ability to vote their stock." Where Mr. Senter had said that the Co-operative System was as sacred as his Bible, Dr. Mitten said that the Co-operative System was his Bible, hoped that the P. R. T. workers would continue to "direct the destinies" of their workshop which was also their property.

With a whoop that was audible a block away, the employe-stockholders voted to empower election-commissioners to arrange for balloting on the trusteeship's continuance.

After the meeting Mayor Wilson, accompanied by Bodyguard John Murphy, met in the corridors of the Federal Building one Richardson Dilworth, attorney for the P. R. T. Cooperative.

"You're trying to head this company into bankruptcy," shouted Counselor Dilworth.

"You're right, I am," agreed Mayor Wilson. "I'm going to wipe out the whole rotten system and I'll take no more from you. I'll give you a punch in the nose." Bystanders intervened before the two men could start fisticuffing.

"It would have been a shame," said Bodyguard Murphy, ''to have hit Mr. Dilworth."

Samuel Davis Wilson, who switched back to the Republican Party last year and got himself elected Mayor of Philadelphia (TIME, Nov. 18), is a loud, boisterous friend-of-the-people and baiter-of-the-utilities. For many years the P. R. T. was his favorite target. He once accused the company of carrying among its assets 4,200 horsecar horses which, he said, had been made into glue in 1874.

He has also referred to his present ally, Dr. Mitten, as a man who might know everything about flat feet but who knew nothing about flat wheels.

President Ralph T. Senter, who looks something like the late Warren Gamaliel Harding, began his streetcar career 38 years ago, counting transfers on a Min neapolis street railway. He came to P. R. T. in 1911 as superintendent of rolling stock and buildings. He is a thoroughly practical, expert streetcar man, never closely identified with the more dubious aspects of the late Mitten Management. He is firmly convinced that a 5-c- fare would be an economic monstrosity. At last year's Pastime Exhibition of the Philadelphia Art Club, Mr.

Senter's oil painting, Meditation, was voted most popular picture by visitors to the show.

Dr. Arthur Alan Mitten, whose diminutive mustache is waxed and spiked, studied surgery at Yale Medical School.

During the War he served in the Ambulance Corps, was twice gassed, and wounded, ended up in a German prison camp. After the War, he became secretary of the P. R. T. Co-operative Association. He was made P. R. T. president in 1929 after his father was found drowned. At his Wissahickon Valley estate, "Dunroamin," Dr. Mitten has 150 of the world's finest English setters, which have won a long string of best-in-show, best-of-breed and best-of-bitches prizes.

In his "Dunroamin" gardens he has one of the finest U. S. assortments of irises and peonies. He has encouraged his staff of Japanese servants to build their own garden in a secluded corner of "Dun roamin." It is complete with traditional Japanese gate, bridge & temple.

No heavy drinker, Dr. Mitten is none the less proud of his rathskeller and bar, which he built himself, and of his card index containing recipes for several hun dred assorted tipples. He long boasted that he could supply any visitor with any drink asked for. Once an Englishman stumped him by calling for a brandy tonic.

The tonic, explained the Englishman, involved the addition of quinine-water. Not possessing this strange, tropical ingredient, Dr. Mitten was nonplussed. He has since added quinine-water to his stock, still believes his boast holds good.

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