Street Car Conductors

Yon often think it's hard for the passenger conductor of an accommodation train whicíi stops at two or three stations to the mile to tell wbo has paid his fare and who has not. The conductor of a short run accommodation train especially must be a pecnliarly gifted man. He must be at once both cool headed and even tempered, or if not he is a total failure. But if the requisites of a railroad conductor are such, what are the requirements of the man who runs a common street car? Why, as much as those of the railroad man and several times more. The railroad accommodation conductor on one of the short run trains which leave the big cities has little more work, little more responsibility and requires less real skill thau the man who by grace is called "conductor" on a trolley car of one of our cities. Both men, of course, have thousands of cares. The railroad man has a certain number of stops to rnake and a certain schedule time allowed for getting over his run of the railroad. The street car conductor has an uncertain number of stops to make, yet he still has his certain scheduled time to make on bis run, and he must make it, too, or be able to give an "A No. 1" excuse for failure. The railroad conductor is always the biggest man on his train. Ia ever the street car conductor the biggest, unless every 'passenger is off and the motorman also? These things make it hard for the patiënt man, who must be polite and who is expected by the company for which he works and spurred on by a dozen or so sharp eyed "spotters," or "street car detectives," as they cali themselves, to feel as lovely as a spring morning, and they make his already nervous work doubly so. The railroad conductor doesn't meet that phase of existence once in a decade, or if so not any oftener. No one presumes to expect so much froni the knight of the ticket punch as he does from the knight of the trolley rope. Every one who travels ou street cars expects the conductor to know every cross street on his line and just where it strikes that street, and, indeed, he should know this much, but in addition he is expected to kuow every one who lives on the streets along which his line runs, every one who lives on all the countless streets which cross the route of his car and theu all the immediate streets and their inhabitants the whole length of his line. The street car conductor is expected to be porter as well on his car. He must help people on and off, lift up and lift down huge baskets and bundies, never get tired of all the questions which only the city directory, could answer, and then, in addition, keep all of the trict rules of the compauy for which ie works and see to it that all of his jassengers do so too. For this work he ;ets $2 or $2.25 a day, while the raiload conductor, who is a very king in oinparisou, draws his $5 or f 6 per day, or SI 25 a month, and is not classed as