The Streetcar Decoy Scam
When the local transit company tried to goose ridership by planting actors on the streetcars, Everett's working class saw right through the performance.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The railway company is resourceful, to say the least. One of their stunts is to place two or three women on a car and have them ride up and down the line continuously. The idea is that women, seeing their sisters riding, will muster up the courage to patronize the cars. Women were seen all day Wednesday on the Colby Avenue line riding back and forth, back and forth, from one end of the line to the other. But the trick won't work. The women of Everett are as determined as the men and are not fooled by any such palpable trick.
“The women of Everett are as determined as the men and are not fooled by any such palpable trick.”
Public transit agencies still struggle with ridership perception, but today's 'stunts' have moved from physical decoys to social media influencers. The skepticism of the 1911 Everett public remains a timeless check on corporate manipulation of civic spaces.
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