Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company stock certificate 1920 (Pennsylvania) 

Philly streetcars! Nice vignette of one of the company's trolley cars. Issued and cancelled.   Dated 1920 on the cert.  Approximately 11 x 8 inches.

Philadelphia's public transportation systems were owned and operated by numerous, independently owned companies until the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT) consolidated their responsibilities and resources upon its founding in 1902. Its projects began with electric streetcar lines into West Philadelphia, and soon completed what would become the Market-Frankford subway line in 1907.

The PRT had a long history of disputes between its unionized workers and upper management. Tensions hit a boiling point in 1910 when the president of the PRT, Charles Kruger, fired more than 170 transit workers who he believed were the ringleaders of the Amalgamated, the primary union of PRT employees. The rest of the Amalgamated went on strike to protest the firings, and Kruger brought in scabs to run the street cars. Mobs of people protested the imported drivers and destroyed their cars, causing the strike breakers to retaliate by driving through crowded streets and firing guns from the windows of trolleys. The police eventually stopped the violence, and the Amalgamated were able to enter arbitration with Kruger and the PRT.

Until the late 19th century, Philadelphians relied on horsecar trolleys to move about the city. In 1885 the Philadelphia Traction Company, responding to public demand for a faster, more efficient mode of transportation, installed a cable car line on Market Street. Several other lines followed, though cable cars were not widely adopted in the city. In the early 1890s, several independent companies experimented unsuccessfully with storage battery cars. After 1892, following the lead of the Philadelphia Traction Company, the city’s independent transportation companies outfitted their lines with overhead electricity wires for trolleys. Consolidation of the city’s independent transportation companies, including the Philadelphia Traction Company, resulted thorough various acquisitions and mergers in the creation of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company.

The transportation lines the PRT built and maintained eventually became property of its modern incarnation, the South Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) in 1968.

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