London Evening Advertiser
- Fairlie Sets Even Million as L.S.R. Purchase Price
- Fidelity Co. Is Sold for $145,000
- Coolidge Cuts Tariff on Paint Brush Handles
The London Evening Advertiser of October 15, 1926, led its front page with the city's long-running streetcar question. T. U. Fairlie, the expert hired by London council, put a tentative purchase price of $1,060,000 on the London Street Railway, below the $1,112,000 the city had been working from, and urged $600,000 in immediate rehabilitation, including 17 new cars, as aldermen hurried to get the question ready for a ratepayers' vote. The page also reported that the Fidelity Trusts Company, one of London's oldest financial houses, had been sold to a Toronto group headed by J. A. C. Cameron, K.C., for about $145,000, and that President Coolidge had halved the U.S. duty on paint brush handles after a Tariff Commission comparison of American and Canadian production costs.
This reading covers three front-page items: the lead report on the street railway valuation, which breaks off mid-sentence and is followed by a stray headline; the opening of the Fidelity Trusts sale story, which breaks off in the middle of the price; and the Coolidge tariff item, preceded by the end of a transit paragraph and followed by the next headline. The source OCR is heavily corrupted. One digit of the lead story's valuation is blurred in the page image, so the $1,060,000 figure, which the headline rounds to an even million, is uncertain. Two words after "CAMERON" in the Fidelity subhead are illegible, and several columns are clipped at the tile edges. The commentary does not cover the later history of Fidelity Trusts, because no supporting source was available.
Translation
Fairlie Sets Even Million as L.S.R. Purchase Price
CLERK SAYS TIME SHORT TO INFORM PUBLIC
A valuation of $1,060,000, as a price of purchase, is placed upon the London Street Railway Company by T. U. Fairlie, employed as an expert by the city to bring in a report which may form the basis of negotiations between the city and the company, eventually leading to a plebiscite vote and solution of the city's transportation problem.
Mr. Fairlie yesterday presented a tentative report to the council at a special session. Details which he revealed, according to his appraisal and survey of the road, were startling. His price of purchase is considerably less than that formerly mentioned during negotiations between the council and the company. The city has heretofore been considering $1,112,000 as a basic valuation, taking the capital stock at $637,000 and the bonded indebtedness of the road at $475,000.
Urges New Equipment.
Mr. Fairlie recommended the immediate rehabilitation of the railway at a cost of $600,000. This includes the purchase of 17 new street cars at $17,000 per car, and an expenditure of $260,000 on track and other improvements. His
Thanksgiving Is November Eight
Fidelity Co. Is Sold for $145,000
CAMERON [?] [?]
Trust Company Was Founded Many Years Ago by T. H. Purdom.
One of London's oldest financial institutions, the Fidelity Trusts Company, has been sold, with the ownership passing from the city to Toronto. J. A. C. Cameron, K.C., of Toronto, who was formerly master of chambers in Osgoode Hall, and who recently retired from his law practice and entered the bond business, together with his associates, is reported to be the purchaser. The price paid is reported to have been in the neighborhood of $145,-
Coolidge Cuts Tariff on Paint Brush Handles
as possible can the transportation question be in fit condition to turn over to the ratepayers, and everything, aldermen feel, depends upon the work accomplished over the forthcoming weekend.
COOLIDGE CUTS TARIFF ON PAINT BRUSH HANDLES
Washington, D.C., Oct. 15. — By proclamation, President Coolidge has sliced the duty on paint brush handles in half. The action was based on a tariff commission report which found the 33 1/3 per cent duty now charged did not equalize the cost of production here and in Canada, the United States' principal competitor, and that 16 2/3 per cent would be a fairer figure.
GAS FROM REFRIGERATOR BRINGS DEATH TO TWO
Context
A fifty-year franchise and a city weighing purchase
The London Street Railway was a private company. It was incorporated in 1873, began running in 1875, and that year the City of London council granted it the right to "build, maintain and operate a street railway" for 50 years. Counting from 1875, that term ran out around 1925, which places the bargaining in this article just after the original grant lapsed, although the sources consulted neither give the exact expiry date nor tie it directly to the 1926 talks. The city and the company had already reworked their relationship once: in 1895 council ratified an agreement under which the company modernized and switched to electric power. By the early 1920s the city was helping the company hold down costs, authorizing one-man cars in 1922. Against that background, Fairlie's tentative figure of $1,060,000 mattered because it came in below the $1,112,000 the city had been using, which was simply the company's $637,000 in capital stock plus its $475,000 in bonds. The headline's "even million" is the paper's rounding of Fairlie's figure.
The buyout that came a quarter-century later
The city purchase that Fairlie's report was meant to prepare came roughly a quarter-century after this article. The London Public Library's history says the city acquired the system from the London Street Railway for $1,000,000 in 1950, after a ratepayers' referendum had turned down the company's previous asking price of $1,325,000, and that the Ontario Legislature passed the City of London Act establishing a city-owned system in 1951. London Transit dates the purchase itself to 1951, when the city formed the London Transportation Commission to run the service. The library also records a referendum, undated in its account, that rejected building an entirely new system for $1,895,000 in favour of buying the existing railway. The eventual price thus matched the round million in this 1926 headline, but the sources consulted do not say whether the plebiscite anticipated in this article was held in 1926 or 1927, or what it decided.
From new streetcars to buses
Fairlie's rehabilitation plan assumed that the railway's future lay with streetcars: 17 new cars at $17,000 apiece plus $260,000 for track and other work. By the article's own figures those items come to $549,000 of the $600,000 total, and the surviving text does not itemize the rest. The proposed price per car was far above the $3,338 each the company had paid in 1913 for five pay-as-you-enter cars, though the article gives no specification for the new ones. Buses were already in the picture. In 1923 the company agreed to let a third party run a gasoline bus along the Quebec Street corridor; in 1928 competition from independent bus operators cut steeply into ridership and revenue on the Springbank line; and in 1929 the company itself bought five gasoline buses at $7,700 each to link North London with the streetcars. London's streetcars stopped running in 1940. London Transit gives November 27, 1940, as the last day, while the library says a heavy snowstorm that damaged power lines advanced the end of service to November 29.
How Coolidge could halve a duty by proclamation
Coolidge acted under the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, which empowered the President to change duties within limits of 50 per cent. As the article explains, the cut rested on a Tariff Commission finding that the existing 33 1/3 per cent rate did not equalize American and Canadian production costs, Canada being the main competitor in paint brush handles. Time magazine, reporting the proclamation in its October 25, 1926 issue, said it capped a two-and-a-half-year investigation and was only the second reduction Coolidge had made, the other being on live bob white quail. By the same report he had raised duties on seven commodities, including straw hats and wheat, so by Time's count he had used the power to raise rates far more often than to lower them. Time printed the old rate as 33 1/2 per cent, but the paper's 33 1/3 is the figure that halves to 16 2/3.
Original
Fairlie Sets Even Million As L.S.R. Purchase Price
CLERK SAYS TIME SHORT TO INFORM PUBLIC A valuation of $ 1, 060, 000, as a price of purchase, is placed upon the London Street Railway Company by T. U. Fairlie, employed as an expert by the city to bring in a report which may form the basis of negotiations between the city and the company, eventually leading to a plebiscite vote and solution of the city's transportation problem. Mr. Fairlie yesterday presented a tentative report to the council at a special session. Details which he revealed, according to his appraisal and survey of the road, were startling. His price of purchase is considerably less than that formerly mentioned during negotiations between the council and the company. The city has heretofore been considering $ 1, 112, 000 as a basic valuation, taking the capital stock at $ 637, 000 and the bonded indebtedness of the road at $ 475, 000. Urgs New Equipment. Mr. Fairlie recommended the immediate rehabilitation of the railway at a cost of $ 600, 000. This includes the purchase of 17 new street cars at $ 17, 000 per car, and an expenditure of $ 260, 000 on track and other improvements. His Thanksgiving Is November Eight
Fidelity Co. Is Sold For $145,000
CAMERON [?] [?] Trust Company Was Founded Many Years Ago by T. H. Purdom. One of London's oldest financial institutions, the Fidelity Trusts Company, has been sold, with the ownership passing from the city to Toronto., J. A. C. Cameron, K. C., of Toronto, who was formerly master of chambers in Osgoode Hall, and who recently retired from his law practice and entered the bond business, together with his associates, is reported to be the purchaser. The price paid is reported to have been in the neighborhood of $ 145, -
COOLIDGE CUTS TARIFF ON PAINT BRUSH HANDLES
as possible can the transportation question be in fit condition to turn over to the ratepayers, and everything, aldermen feel, depends upon the work accomplished over the forthcoming weekend. COOLIDGE CUTS TARIFF ON PAINT BRUSH HANDLES Washington, D. C., Oct. 15. - By proclamation, President Coolidge has sliced the duty on paint brush handles in half. The action was based on a tariff commission report which found the 33 1-3 per cent duty now charged did not equalize the cost of production here and in Canada, the United States ' principal competitor, and that 16 2-3 per cent would be a fairer figure. GAS FROM REFRIGERATOR BRINGS DEATH TO TWO
Source: Holding institution