Winter workshop

On March 3rd, 1865, Congress passed and President Lincoln signed into law, a bill calling for "In God We Trust" to be inscribed on U.S. coins. Upon reading this piece by John Murray in the Wall Street Journal this morning, I immediately recalled a brief historical vignette, my Grandpa, my mom's dad, told to me.

Back in the really old days, when cities like Cleveland Ohio were platted; ie, surveyed and laid out into city blocks with long extending roads leading from Public Square, East, West and South, public transportation took the form of "Street Cars". This light rail system moved on parallel tracks in the center of the street. Initially these streetcars were pulled by horses and after the turn of the 20th century, by electic motors, obtaining electric power from overhead wires. These streetcars ran from center city to rural communities. (There was a light rail system with regular service from Public Square to the community Chagrin Falls 20 miles out of town). Automobiles were rare, especially in the defined ethnic clusterings, like the Czech ghetto, and almost everyone used these streetcars to get to and from work, clothing and grocery stores, and services like doctors and dentists, insurance agents, etc. Work and life services were organized along these public transportation corridors. As a fluid immigrant community, the Czech ghetto, as was the Hungarian community on the North of it, and Romanian to the South, had immigrants who came almost on a daily basis from impoverished countries ("Give us your tired and poor, its huddled masses yearing to be free") whose people, many of whom were refugees from subsitance farms, were unfamiliar with living in cities, let alone in a "modern" city with streetcars. Therefore, when there was a need to get from one's particular ghetto, one had to ride the streetcar. One of the problems the immigrants encounted with the streetcar system, was paying for the ride with the correct coinage.  Some people did not know what the fare was, ie did not read or speak English. They would put multiple coins in their hands and have the streetcar conductor pick out the right fare from the outstretched hand. Or, not having any coins at all, offer some personnel object as price for the ride. As opposed to kicking them off the streetcar, the conductor would solicit someone else who got on at the same stop, to speak to the person who didn't have the correct fare, in their native language, about how the system worked. 

Grandpa related one incident where a lady ahead of him was bewildered by the streetcar system, seeing others ahead of herself offer coins for the fare, she having none, and, with some reluctance, took off her rosery and offered it as fare. The conductor, refused the rosery, speaking through a nearby interpreter, that the fare needed to be in money and not her religious object. The lady did not have the correct fare, but rode to her destination anyway. The next day, Grandpa got on the same streetcar with the same conductor and saw a hand printed sign in English and Czech: "In God we Trust, all others pay CASH."