It’s not Beyonce or Lady Gaga. A crowd outside Los Angeles City Hall for the unveiling of the advanced new PCC streetcar in 1937.
There’s big bucks in smog and sprawl. Nobody did more to cash in than Alfred Sloan. Sloan created modern General Motors, and was the company’s president, CEO and chairman for more than three decades. He should have gone to jail for his anti-streetcar conniving, but he never faced a prosecutor. Other GM executives were lashed with wet noodles in 1949 sentencing.
Executives of co-conspirators – Mack, Standard Oil of California (Chevron), Firestone Tire and Rubber, and Phillips Petroleum – were also handed token penalties.
Sloan was masterful at marketing cars, but GM”s Yellow Coach bus manufacturing division was a money-eating dud until the firm started playing dirty on a large scale in 1935.
SINNERS AND SAINTS
The finger-wagger is Barney Larrick, who GM vice-president Roger Kyes sent to the Twin Cities. Second from right is mob lawyer Fred Ossanna. Both went to jail on fraud and conspiracy charges.
This vast story goes way beyond Alfred Sloan. Tentacles extended all over corporate America – the huge Boston-based Stone and Webster engineering firm, Ford, Greyhound, Citgo and many individuals and smaller companies. Everyone had their snout in the trough. Others saw what was happening, and fought the destruction.
GIVE ME VISUALS!
Washington DC had a huge fleet of PCC trams, including this sightseeing model.
Other books and articles on this subject have very few photos or graphics. A Streetcar Named Conspire is packed with ‘em – 28 pages in full color. Plus maps, drawings, tables, charts …
