Horses and mules, in many cases hideous physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power.

The cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often than not in a desperate state of disrepair.

In many cities the driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box.

At night tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed themselves by pulling their coat collars and furs closely about their necks and thrusting their lower members into a heap of straw, piled almost a foot deep on the floor.
Who would have thought, forty years ago, that the lighting of these dark and dirty streets and the modernization of these local railway systems would have given rise to one of the most astounding chapters in our financial history and created hundreds, perhaps thousands, of millionaires?
When Thomas A.Edison invented the incandescent light, and when Frank J.Sprague in 1887 constructed the first practicable urban trolley line, in Richmond, Virginia, they liberated forces that powerfully affected not only our social and economic life but our political institutions.

These two inventions introduced anew phrase--"Public Utilities." Combined with the great growth and prosperity of the cities they furnished a fruitful opportunity to several particularly famous groups of financial adventurers.