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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 20, 2016)
4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL January 20, 2016 O PINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Goodbye, Pepper I enjoyed another delightful column of Pet Tips "N" Tales (Jan. 6, 2016), but on the same page was the obituary of Pepper. Pepper was my friend. I loved Pepper. She was crushed by a car at Sixth and Main on New Years Eve. She was on a leash and was crossing on a green light. People rushed to help. Compassionately and expe- ditiously a member of the Cottage Grove Police Department did all he could to save Pepper, but Pepper is gone. Too often, cars race carelessly along Main Street and all over town. Cars can be lethal weapons and too often are. Fortu- nately Pepper's friend Steve did not meet the same fate. Goodbye, Pepper. Many will miss you. Duane Raley Cottage Grove CORRECTION An obituary in the Jan. 13, 2016 edition of the Cottage Grove Sentinel listed Jim and Sue Bailey and LaVina Spare- hawk as the deceased grand- parents of Kyle Ledford. The Baileys and LaVina Sparehawk have not, in fact, passed away. The Sentinel regrets the error and any consequences it has caused. Offbeat Oregon History Portland’s Jitney Wars pitted entrepreneurs against monopoly BY FINN J.D. JOHN For the Sentinel T he working stiffs, lunch pails in hand, shiver in the chill of an early January working morning. The streetcar is late, again; and when it ar- rives, they’ll pack aboard to be taken slowly and uncomfortably to work. When they get there, they’ll still have to walk half a mile to their jobs from the nearest station. They’re not complaining; a working man with a job in the slow 1915 econo- my wasn’t in the habit of griping about stuff. But still, all of them would ad- mit that it would be nice if the streetcar company, the ponderous local monop- oly Portland Railway, Light and Power Co., were a little more responsive to its customers’ needs. Then the sound of a crude four-cyl- inder automobile engine breaks the morning stillness. It’s a man in a red driving-cap behind the wheel of a shiny new Ford Model T. “Say, brothers,” he calls out. “Any of you gents care to ride with me this morning? Same 5 cents gets you there quicker and I’ll drop you off at your factory gate.” Soon he’s puttering off with four grateful pipefi tters crammed into his car, and with another two standing on the running boards. Ten minutes and 25 cents later, he’s coming back for another load. He passes another couple of horseless carriages on the way. All of them are loaded with workers grate- ful to skip the long lines, slow travel and inconvenient routes of the monop- oly streetcar operators; he exchanges cheerful waves with each. He also passes the streetcar itself, only half full of passengers; the streetcar’s engineer, his face a mask of fury, shakes his fi st. “Damn you, you socialist Jitney cream- skimmers!” he shouts as they pass. It was just another morning in the front lines of Portland’s Jitney Wars. “Jitney” is a term most Oregonians today know as a vague slang term for a piece of logging equipment — if they know it at all. But in the years just be- fore the First World War, the term was as familiar — and as controversial — as the name “Uber” is today. And indeed, there are some striking similarities between the modern phe- nomenon of ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and the pre-First-World- War phenomenon of jitneys. There are some signifi cant differences, too — dif- ferences that have been overlooked by most of the authors of recent newspa- per features about them. The jitney phenomenon got started in 1914. At the time, most major cit- ies had streetcar services — many of them still horse-drawn, but some with fancy new electric systems. A streetcar service is something of a natural mo- nopoly; it’s hard to have competing light-rail systems, so a city typically gave a franchise to one private opera- tor. The operator was protected from competition; in exchange, it agreed to be regulated as to rates and service by the city. Of course, that regulation typically started out lax and got more so as the big-shot businessmen in charge of the streetcar companies got progressively chummier with local political elites. Certainly that was the case in Portland. So, protected from either competition or serious pressure from the city, the streetcars in Stumptown delivered in- creasingly desultory service even as the city’s growing population taxed their capacity to its limit and occasion- ally beyond. Meanwhile, the Ford Model T had a few years before made private auto- mobiles easy to afford. And it wasn’t long before one of the new car owners tumbled to a great scheme to make a little extra money: Troll the streetcar lines offering cus- tomers personal service, for the same nickel they’d pay to pack aboard a slow, smelly, inconvenient streetcar. Now, the fact that a private motorist could make a worthwhile profi t selling individual car rides for the same price as streetcar fare clearly says something about the state of the streetcar industry at the time. Profi t margins for street- car companies were enormous. And in Portland, there was not much love lost between streetcar riders and the Port- land Railway, Light and Power Com- pany — which, as most of them knew, was backed largely by out-of-town capital and had been created through merger and consolidation specifi cally to eliminate competition. So when streetcar monopolies around the nation found themselves compet- ing with hundreds of private motorists picking up a little extra drinking money at their expense, they naturally turned to their local city governments with de- mands that this behavior be stopped. Their case was a textbook argument from a licensed monopoly: Their deal with the city required them to run many different lines, some of which lost money and some of which made mon- ey. The winners offset the losers. Now, they cried, here came these jitney-driv- ing jackals to “skim the cream” off the lucrative routes, leaving them with nothing but the losers. It wasn’t fair — it was unfair competition. And if it were allowed to stand, they claimed, they’d have to cut back service. In other cities around the west, this claim resonated strongly. Cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles laid down expensive licensing laws and spe- cious requirements. Then they put their police forces on the job, performing sting operations and writing fat tickets to unlicensed jitney drivers. In Portland, though, the jitney drivers — who had wisely formed an AFL-af- fi liated labor union just as soon as they realized which way the wind was blow- ing, much to the dismay and consterna- tion of the streetcar company’s friends at the Morning Oregonian — had a key friend in Councilor Will Daly. Daly was, unusually, a union offi cer who had gone into business successfully for Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A The three habits of health BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD For the Sentinel T he way you take care of yourself is a more crucial determinant of your future hap- piness as your savings account. Many people invest in their fi - nancial future, but they never consider their health future. A large nest egg is of no use to you if you’re not there to spend it! $ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM 116 N. Sixth Street · P.O. Box 35 · Cottage Grove, OR 97424 ADMINISTRATION: JOHN BARTLETT, Regional Publisher.............................. GARY MANLY, General Manager................942-3325 Ext. 207 • publisher@cgsentinel.com ROBIN REISER, Sales Repersentative...............942-3325 Ext. 203 • robin@cgsentinel.com E. SCURRY ELLIS, Sales Repersentative......... 942-3325 Ext. 213 • esellis@cgsentinel.com SPORTS DEPARTMENT: SAM WRIGHT, Sports Editor...................942-3325 Ext. 204 • sports@cgsentinel.com CUSTOMER SERVICE CARLA WILLIAMS, Office Manager.................942-3325 Ext. 201 • billing@cgsentinel.com LEGALS.............................................................942-3325 Ext. 200 • legals@cgsentinel.com NEWS DEPARTMENT: JON STINNETT, Editor......................................942-3325 Ext. 212 • cgnews@cgsentinel.com GRAPHICS: RON ANNIS, Graphics Manager (USP 133880) As you plan for your health future, you must con- sider the three im- portant compo- nents that pay the biggest dividends: nu- trition, exercise and positive mind-set. Nutrition Make every calorie count as you strive for lifelong health. Eat lots of foods that are rich in nutrients and low in calories—and remember my health equation, H (Health) = N (Nutrition) / C (Calories). Also remember to regularly include foods that have spe- cial cancer-protective features, notably the G-BOMBS, Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries and Seeds. Exercise Exercise regularly. Make it a part of your daily routine. A gym membership is nice, but there are plenty of other oppor- tunities to work out your body over the course of an average day. Take the stairs, for instance, instead of the elevator. Walk or ride a bike instead of driving. Take frequent exercise breaks and do something active for just three to fi ve minutes, then go back to work. Positive mind-set A healthy mind-set is a pre- requisite for a healthy lifestyle. The best way to develop one is to be optimistic and surround yourself with people who en- gage in and support your health. Show people you care about them with your actions, not just with words. A positive mind-set results from your goodwill to others. It is like putting deposits in your lifespan account. These are the three essential habits of health. The more you practice them, the more routine they become. You won’t want to act any other way. Many people—healthy and unhealthy people alike—are of- ten obsessed with food. The goal is to live a fully balanced life where people, food and exercise are all in the right place. The key to fi nding food’s place in this delicate balance is by prac- ticing the three habits of health until they all become a natural part of your life. Balancing your diet style for optimal health is part of, and most natural and effective when it is connected to, balancing your life between exercise, rest, sleep, recreation, work, family, friends and intel- lectual pursuits. Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and a family physician special- izing in lifestyle and nutritional medicine. His newest book, The End of Dieting, debunks the fake “science” of popular fad diets and offers an alternative to di- eting that leads to permanent weight loss and excellent health. Visit his informative website at DrFuhrman.com. Submit your questions and comments about this column directly to news- questions@drfuhrman.com. Subscription Mail Rates in Lane and Portions of Douglas Counties: Ten Weeks ............................................. $9.10 One year ..............................................$36.15 e-Edition year .......................................$36.00 Rates in all other areas of United States: Ten Weeks $11.70; one year, $46.35, e-Edition $43.00. In foreign countries, postage extra. No subscription for less than Ten Weeks. Subscription rates are subject to change upon 30 days’ notice. All subscritptions must be paid prior to beginning the subscription and are non-refundable. Periodicals postage paid at Cottage Grove, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to P.O. 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