ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersection of space and class by showing how the electric streetcar became a lightning rod for social conflict in the opening decades of the twentieth century. It focuses on a central paradox—a privately managed, foreign-owned public utility that served the needs of urban masses and stockholders—and demonstrates its differing impacts on a reformist government, a rapidly changing working class, and an evolving middle class that sprang from the expanding state bureaucracy. The chapter also examines the development of the streetcar as a public space in its own right, the scene of mixing between different social groups as well as the locus of political and commercial interactions. Lastly, the chapter details the 1918 general strike and the consequent emergence of the streetcar as a contested terrain between its workers, the two foreign companies that owned the network, the city government, the police, and the public.
