GM Trolley-cide

meikle at mail.utexas.edu meikle at mail.utexas.edu
Wed Aug 7 21:33:24 CDT 1996


The whole sad horrendous story of how GM, Esso, and (I think) Firestone
(but maybe Goodyear--does it really matter?) demolished the streetcar
systems of a dozen or so U.S. cities is told in Bradford Snell, "American
Ground Transport," a long congressional report in _The Industrial
Reorganization Act:  Hearings before the subcommittee on Antitrust and
Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate...on S.1167_
(Washington:  GPO, 1974).  Their jointly owned holding company bought up
healthy streetcar companies, scrapped the cars, tore up the tracks,
introduced GM buses with Esso fuel and Firestone/Goodyear tires, then sold
these new improved bus lines to new owners (or, in some cases I think, the
former owners).  For GR fans, an even juicier part of Snell's report
details how GM played both sides as WWII approached, illegally building
military truck plants for the Nazis and continuing to operate them without
Nazi takeover until after Pearl Harbor (that is, while Roosevelt was
pursuing an official American readiness program).  GM's American director
of overseas operations was decorated by Hitler in about 1938, and
communications between Allied and Nazi GM components continued through
neutral countries throughout the war.  And, oh yes, GM (and Ford as well)
later collected millions in reparations from the U.S. government for their
German plants destroyed by Allied bombing.  (So much for patriotic
sacrifice.)  Opel, of course, didn't do too badly as the German "economic
miracle" got under way afterward.  (What was that about some oil refinery
bombed into twisted wreakage, its only apparently random forms calibrated
precisely to serve Their vampiric purposes?, GR, Viking, 520-521.)  Snell
summarized his report in a _Ramparts_ magazine article at about the same
time, but I don't have the exact reference.  He planned an investigative
book on the auto industry, but so far as I know it never appeared (hmmmmm).

Cheers,
Jeff Meikle







More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list