1874.] OF THE SENATE. 249

Your Memorialist was further required, under heavy pen-
alty, to run cars from terminus to terminus, at frequent in-
tervals, during the whole year.

It is further provided by said ordinance that the fare for
each passenger shall not exceed the sum of six cents, and of
the gross receipts from passenger travel on its said line of
Railway, your Memorialist is required to pay quarterly to the
City Register, for the Park Fund, the large amount of one-
fifth. In addition to this heavy tax of twenty per cent, of
the gross receipts, your Memorialist was required to pay an
annual license of twenty dollars for each car in daily use,
(since reduced to $5 for each car,) and was subject besides to
State taxation.

Your Memorialist represents that its line of Railway grew
rapidly into favor with the public, both because of the new-
ness of its cars and the frequency and rapidity with which
the same were run, and numbers of passengers have sought
its accommodation to whom either of the older lines would
have been nearer. Under these circumstances your Memori-
alist had reasonable ground for expecting a fair business profit
on its outlay of capital, and such certainly would have been
realized, but for the fact, as your Memarialist believes, that
the system of taxation imposed by the City is utterly vicious,
and calculated to cripple and ultimately destroy one
of the most useful enterprises of modern times ; one,
indeed, on which greater numbers of the general public
depend in our daily city life than any other, and, therefore,
one which peculiarly calls for such liberal legislation as will
ensure the fullest development of its usefulness.

The experience of your Memorialist coincides entirely with
that of the Baltimore City Passenger Company, set forth in
its Memorial to your Honorable Body, and is well calculated
to discourage any effort towards supplying additional facilities
to the public. Indeed, it is manifest that with the present
system of taxation, the traveling public will soon be deprived
of a portion of the facilities they now enjoy, inadequate as
these are believed to be, since the Companies will be forced to
curtail expenses by reducing the number of cars, and to run
these at the longest intervals permitted by the ordinance.

Your Memorialist believes that the importance of the ques-
tion now presented, and its true relation to the public at
large, has been somewhat overlooked, and all effort at a fair
and judicious investigation of the subject prevented, by
simply representing the whole as an attempt to escape the
plain operation of a contract, and to aggrandize the Com-
panies at the cost of the city. In fact, however, no such at-
tempt has ever been made by any of the Street Railway Com-
panies, and no one of them has ever denied its obligation to

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