← Harold's Old Time Radio
Harold's Old Time Radio
Better Living Radio Theatre 53xxxx 08 The Magic Broomstick
00:14:47
Better Living Radio Theatre 53xxxx 08 The Magic Broomstick
Loading summary
Transcript108 lines
- [00:05]
A
The Electric Company's public information program brings you your Better Living Radio Theater in its salute to the American home, its family and its way of life in this bright American future. The tubes in your radio. The power behind this station which brings you this program. The night light at your child's bedside. The giant motors that drive the machines to mold our steel and power your production lines. The current that pops your family toaster, foods, aircraft, railroads, automobiles and ships. Electricity always at hand, day or night, with its economy for lower cost to you. With rising efficiency through its own research, with its growth to match the nation's needs at all times, the electric industry strives day and night to bring you better living. This is your narrator, Wendell Niles. And our youy Better Living Radio Theater brings you the Magic Broomstick. This is the eighth in a series of broadcasts at this time to show you how Americans in a free nation have worked to bring you better living today, in fact, the highest standard of living in the world. Later, you will hear from today's guest, Mr. William W. White, president of the New York Central System. Now our drama, titled the magic broomstick. To Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, informed you have written a poem entitled, quote, the Broomstick Train or the Return of the Witches, unquote. Stop. We are printing a Sunday article on electric streetcars and would like to include your poem, with your permission.
- [01:48]
B
Stop.
- [01:49]
A
Please reply by telegraph. Stop. The New York star. It was 1889 when Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote his rollicking verses about the broomstick train, likening the curious pole atop every electric streetcar to a witch's broomstick, but to the use of the people that the famous poet sought to praise, even in humor. The coming of electricity to the railroads was a stroke of good fortune, for in those days the iron horse was king and experiments with electricity and railroading were frowned on in many quarters.
- [02:25]
C
You know, Mother, that's a very funny poem Mr. Holmes wrote about the electric cars.
- [02:30]
D
Don't let your father hear you reading it.
- [02:32]
E
What is the boy reading? That he shouldn't marry.
- [02:34]
C
Oh. Did you have a good night's sleep, Father?
- [02:37]
E
A splendid rest, thank you, boy. My eyes are ready to see around.
- [02:41]
F
Any curve in the track.
- [02:42]
E
And whatever it is you're reading in yesterday's newspaper.
- [02:45]
C
Oh, boy, it's nothing. Nothing.
- [02:48]
E
You're wasting your time over that idiotic poem Now, Father.
- [02:51]
C
Just because you've lived with steam engines.
- [02:53]
E
Grew up with them, you think anyone who rides in an electric conveyance is caught in sure death.
- [02:58]
F
Peter Hatton, would you like riding on a car filled with electric Sparks.
- [03:01]
G
Well, it's no worse than riding into New York City every day with your cab filled with smoke and soot and steam whenever you go through that tunnel.
- [03:07]
F
Pulling eight cars behind me, I am.
- [03:10]
E
Show me an electric engine that can pull its own weight without breaking down.
- [03:14]
F
Oh, there's the 640.
- [03:16]
E
I'd better be eating my breakfast.
- [03:17]
G
Wouldn't you like to stay here and do my Monday washing? Trying to keep it clean with the soot and ashes from your precious engines.
- [03:23]
C
Oh, now, Mother, that's not Dad's fault.
- [03:25]
E
It's like a gun at my head. Your mother's washing.
- [03:28]
F
I'm afraid we'll have to move to keep the peace.
- [03:31]
E
And eat your breakfast, boy, and not another word. Electric cars are fit only for poetry. Writers like Mr. Holmes.
- [03:45]
A
Thomas Edison, Charles van der Poel, Frank Sprague and other pioneers of electricity soon became active in the field of railroading. The electric motor was still very primitive. So, too were the sources of power. The running of live electric wires over or in channels along a street alarmed the average citizen. Five years later, in 1894, our friends the Hattons have moved away from their apartment near the railroad yards. Mrs. Hatton has no worries about her washing now. But there's something new for her to think about.
- [04:15]
C
Hello, Mother. Did you have a good day? What time is it?
- [04:19]
D
It's 11:30.
- [04:21]
C
Why are you up so late? Has something happened to Father?
- [04:25]
D
He's in there in the bedroom. Poor dear.
- [04:28]
C
His cough again.
- [04:29]
D
It's getting worse day by day.
- [04:31]
C
Well, as long as he keeps that tunnel run.
- [04:34]
H
With the smoke and the gases flooding his engine cab.
- [04:37]
D
They shouldn't build tunnels, Mother.
- [04:39]
H
They have to when they can. Railroads are a necessity now.
- [04:42]
D
The doctor says your father won't live long unless he stops working.
- [04:45]
E
The doctor?
- [04:46]
H
I didn't know he'd been to see the doctor. Well, I've got a solution for that.
- [04:50]
D
What can you do?
- [04:51]
H
I'll give up going to college. I'll go to work.
- [04:53]
D
You can't. Your father won't let you.
- [04:55]
H
I'm 19. It's time I went to work anyway.
- [04:57]
D
Your father's so proud you're going to college.
- [04:59]
H
Well, I'll study nights. He probably wouldn't approve of what I was going to study in college anyway. Mathematics, physics, electricity.
- [05:06]
C
Maybe I'll go down to Baltimore and.
- [05:08]
H
Study electric engines at first hand.
- [05:18]
I
You say you grew up on a railroad, eh?
- [05:21]
C
Yes, sir. My father is. I mean, was an engineer.
- [05:24]
I
Dead, eh?
- [05:25]
H
Oh, no, sir. Return.
- [05:27]
I
You work for the B and O?
- [05:28]
H
No, sir.
- [05:29]
C
New York Central.
- [05:30]
I
Why are you looking for work with us?
- [05:32]
H
I've got a very good reason for being interested in electric locomotives.
- [05:36]
I
Roll up your sleeves. I'm gonna put you to work with the line crew.
- [05:45]
A
A new day had come for the electric railway. Suddenly it had jumped from the street railway systems to consideration by the great Crime country lines. In 1892, the B& O was faced with a problem that steam locomotives seemed only to aggravate. In Baltimore, a tunnel was built more than a mile long. It cut considerable time between Washington and New York. But the smoke and gas in the tunnel were unendurable. So the officials turned to the young electric industry, asking for electric locomotives far beyond any yet built in power and size. In the middle of August, 1895, Mr. And Mrs. Hatton received a letter from George down in Baltimore.
- [06:25]
E
Not a sputter, not a spark, not a slip of the wheel has turned up in this first week. And I'll vouch for the fact that none will appear within the year. It was a tremendous showing for the electric locomotive. Why, the boy is dreaming.
- [06:42]
F
Imagine one of those witchcraft thingama jogs pulling an honest engine.
- [06:46]
G
Now, be careful, Peter. You're getting red in the face.
- [06:49]
F
It was my lungs, not my heart at all gave out.
- [06:51]
E
I've got a right to get rid. I'm going down to Baltimore and make.
- [06:55]
F
George show me an electric thingama.
- [06:58]
G
Thingamajog, I think you call it.
- [07:00]
E
Whatever it is, he's got to show me it. Put on a steam engine, I hope.
- [07:04]
D
I like Baltimore. I've heard they're very nice girls in Baltimore. George should meet one of them.
- [07:22]
I
Well, what do you think of her now, Mr. Hatton? Still think young George is bewitched when he writes to you?
- [07:27]
F
It's hard to believe, Mr. Bailey. It's so different. I can't get used to her cleaner. Oh, yes, yes, I have to admit that.
- [07:35]
I
Economical, too, and easier to control.
- [07:37]
F
Oh, yes, I noticed you eased her out of the Camden station just now.
- [07:42]
I
That's just the way we do it. Just easier into full speed.
- [07:45]
F
Well, suppose you applied full speed right away.
- [07:48]
I
I've never tried it that I know of. Ha, ha. What do you mean, ha ha?
- [07:53]
F
I was telling George the same thing last night. Your electric engines are cleaner. Yes, and maybe they're economical too.
- [07:59]
E
But they haven't the drawbar pool equal.
- [08:02]
F
To a steam engine.
- [08:03]
I
You mean this hasn't the power right at the start of a run a steamer has.
- [08:06]
F
You're an engineer as I am.
- [08:08]
E
You know what I mean by drawbar pole.
- [08:10]
F
Suppose you opened her up full throttle to start with the loaded freight behind us. I've done it with a steamer.
- [08:17]
I
Well, by golly, I'll show you what happened. Tell me what's happened.
- [08:33]
F
You've pulled the whole end out of the box car full of old oats. They're showering all over the track behind us.
- [08:38]
I
No drawbar pull, huh? No drawbar pull. Wait till I tell George and Lucy.
- [08:45]
F
Who's this Lucy? Who's Lucy?
- [08:47]
I
My daughter and your daughter in law. Say, I'll have to get those oats cleaned up before somebody hollers get a horse.
- [09:02]
A
The 1890s saw new miracles of electricity on every hand. In the large factories of New England, motors were beginning to turn the looms and lathes in many an American city. Architects and builders were dreaming of new towering shafts of offices soon to be known as skyscrapers because of the electric elevator. The improvements in dynamos, the first tapping of America's vast water supplies, the development of the motor itself and the beginnings of standardization in equipment due to mass production found electricity taking a firm grip on the American scene and in Chicago.
- [09:35]
H
It's going to be exciting out there, Father. This man, Frank Sprague, has done pretty well in the elevator business, especially with automatic controls. The Chicago Elevated people have asked him to design a multiple unit system for them.
- [09:46]
E
And what is that, boy?
- [09:47]
H
Well, here's a pencil. Hand me that sheet of paper. Now, it works like this. Each car on the L will have its own motor and controllers.
- [09:55]
D
I see.
- [09:55]
H
They're going to make your city of the future quiet, clean suburban trains, faster schedules. Fitting the number of cars to the number of passengers. Say, would you like to go out with Lucy and me?
- [10:07]
E
Well, you're. You're going to work with this this.
- [10:11]
H
Spring as a line boss. I've been studying nights and I can get you a job. That is, if you work on an electric railway.
- [10:18]
E
Will I? Well, I would. Well, why not? Your mother says it's time I went back to work and stopped knocking my cigar ashes over her clean clothes.
- [10:34]
A
Electric service in Chicago began in December 1920. A few years later, two more trademarks of a great city were stamped on the face of New York. At a cost of $40 million, Grand Central Terminal rose in mid Manhattan, a monument to railroad electrification. Then came another challenge to the electric locomotive.
- [10:53]
J
We're moving to California.
- [10:55]
H
Oh, not California. To Seattle.
- [10:57]
J
Well, why Seattle?
- [10:58]
H
The company's got a new assignment. The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul line wants to try beating the Rockies with electric engine.
- [11:04]
J
Oh, but George, you've never worked on Anything like that.
- [11:07]
H
That's the fun of it. The line goes past St. Paul to the Continental Divide. Crosses that penetrates the Rockies. Winds up through the Sierras. And then has to cross the Cascade Range. Before it stops short at the Pacific. Oce we'll not only have to beat grades and mountains and gorges. We'll have to lick snows 20 and 30ft deep in some parts. I wish Father and Mother was still alive.
- [11:30]
J
Of course, dear.
- [11:33]
H
I remember how she used to get him out shoveling snow. So she could hang up her clothes on Monday morning. They'd set a pace for my cruise.
- [11:48]
A
An inheritance from all the electrical pioneers. Was embodied in the motors that set out to conquer the Rockies. The 42 freight locomotives, each weighing 280 tons. Were as large as the stoutest steam hauler on any road. And when they started their job conquering the Rockies. Each pulled the trains weighing 2,600 tons with ease up the steepest grades. The last great barrier in the nation had fallen before the witchcraft engines. And now here is today's guest of our Better Living Radio Theater. Mr. William W. White, president of the New York Central System.
- [12:29]
B
It's a pleasure to take part in this program. Marking America's high standard of living and productive genius. This is founded on a peculiar know how a genius for organization. A burning urge to do it better, do it faster, do it right. People who can remember when the average factory. Looked like an overgrown forest of cumbersome leather belts and pulleys. Do not have to be reminded how much human effort was saved when the transformer made it easy to transport and apply electric power where it was needed. When it became possible to build electric locomotives. And put electricity on individual machines. On hoists and conveyors and all sorts of hand tools to help lift the burden from workers. It played, and still is playing. An important part in the development of the railroad industry. Which in turn has also contributed much to our high standard of living. It's a pleasure for me at this time on behalf of the railroad industry. To help point up this theme of better living. Thank you. And now back to our program.
- [13:29]
A
Thank you, Mr. White. You have been listening to Mr. William W. White, president of the New York Central system. Mr. White was today's guest of our Better Living Radio Theater. Today's drama, the Magic Broomstick. Was the eighth in a series of broadcasts at this time. Presented by this station and the electric company's public information program. Now, this is your narrator, Wendell Niles. Inviting you to be with us again at the same time next week. When your better living Radio Theater will present another program in this series. Until then, wishing you better living.
- [14:30]
E
Sam.