ABSTRACT
Electric traction has been studied primarily as a form of transportation without recognizing that it also became a vehicle of political ideologies. Henry Edwards Huntington's interests in electric traction were straightforward: he saw the PE largely as a means of enabling the sale of homesites in subdivisions he owned all over the region, the Los Angeles Railway as a moneymaking venture in and of itself. A newsman in Los Angeles who wanted to do a nostalgia piece on the Big Red Cars of the Pacific Electric never had any trouble locating quotable old-timers with fond memories of Paradise Lost. In real life, LA's streetcars, whether red or yellow, ended up stacked like cordwood, awaiting dismemberment at a Terminal Island scrapyard. By the early 1920s, nearly half the people entering the central business district did so in private cars. By the 1930s, the proportion approached two-thirds. Enthusiasts might claim all sorts of communal bounties from 'those streetcars made of wood'.
