Ninety years after
the American
Street Railway As-
sociation held its
first meeting in
Boston, a train of
contemporary
rapid transit cars
heads out of the
Hub en route to
Quincy.

steamboats for the long ride home. The New York Times gave
the creation of the American Street Railway Association
some attention, and quoted at length from Moody Merrill's
welcoming speech. Two weeks later the year 1882 came to
its ordained end, a year that saw, in addition to the inception
of a new organization of street railway companies, the birth
of James Joyce, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Igor Stravinsky,
the death of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and Charles Darwin, and the formation of a
different kind of organization from a street railway trade
association. For 1882 was also the year that Germany joined
the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and Italy to form the
Triple Alliance. In very different ways, each of these organi-
zational events would have an important effect on the North
American street railway industry as the nineteenth century
evolved into the early years of the twentieth.

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