Coordination or Competition: State Regulation of Motor Buses under Private Ownership and the Decline of Mass Transit in Pittsburgh

In 1973, Allegheny County’s public transit agency, the Port Authority, declared bus driver Leonard Bruno “Driver of the Year.” A decade earlier, Bruno was not a government employee, but an entrepreneur who drove and maintained his own bus in a one-man operation,Carnegie Coach Lines. However, like all transit frms in Pennsylvania, his company was not free from government oversight. Te route he drove, the fares he charged, and other aspects of Bruno’s business were regulated bythe state Public Utility Commission.Te commission relinquished regulatory control when the Port Authority bought Carnegie Coach Lines and thirty-two other privately owned transit companies in Allegheny County in 1964 and 1965

Back Matter

This is the back matter for the issue, listing the contributors and advertising a call for proposals for the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association

Front Matter

This is the front matter for Volume 139, No. 2 of the Pennsylvania Magazine History and Biography

Book Review: Government by Dissent: Protest, Resistance, and Radical Democratic Thought in the Early American Republic by Robert W. T. Martin

If the old cliché that history is written by the winners is true, then it should be no surprise that a legacy of dissent should become buried after two centuries. In this impressive account of dissent in the early American republic, Robert W.T. Martin resurrects the ideas of those in early America who opposed the majority and fought the status quo. Dissent, for these objectors, was not merely disagreement; it was a central component of the democratic process. Martin aims to restore a lost understanding of “dissentient democracy,” a “democracy that values dissent as an essential core element.". This is not an argument for mere toleration of dissent; dissentient democracy embraces dissent itself as essential to the legitimacy of government

Democratic Anti-Federalism: Rights, Democracy, and the Minority in the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention

The debate over the ratification of the Constitution began in Pennsylvania essentially at the moment the Philadelphia convention adjourned in September 1787. Within a few weeks, the newspapers in the state were filled with often acrimonious arguments for and against ratification, replete with biting satire, dire predictions, and creative name-calling. Among those who opposed the Constitution, none spoke with a louder voice than that of Centinel, a Philadelphia writer who published more essays against the Constitution than any other. Samuel Bryan, the author behind the pseudonym Centinel, was a radical democrat even by the standards of majoritarian Pennsylvania

Book Review: Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America by Daniel Richter

In Trade, Land, Power, distinguished colonial historian Daniel Richter brings together eleven essays focused on the relationship between native peoples and European colonists in the mid-Atlantic region. Most have been published previously, but Richter argues that combining the essays into a single volume allows readers to better grasp the complexity of several interconnected themes at work in colonial-era cross-cultural encounters: trade, land, and power. While Richter acknowledges that we may never fully understand the intricacies of native-European interactions, he “is more convinced than ever that we need to probe those mysteries, to trace the roles of trade, land, and power in the conquest of North America.

Abundance, Dependence, and Trauma at Philadelphia’s Point Breeze Petroleum Refnery: A Mirror on the History of Pennsylvania’s Oil Industry

Catastrophic fre struck the Atlantic Refning Company petroleum refnery at Point Breeze on June 11, 1879. Lightning sparked this f rst confagration at the plant, and it was devastating. The blaze destroyed twenty-fve thousand cases of petroleum stored at Atlantic’s Schuylkill River docks, as well as fve foreign ships. Six other ships were towed away before they ignited. Fire destroyed virtually every structure at the works, including the offce and the superintendent’s house, the cooperage, the tin shop (which made cans for shipping oil), and ref ning equipment. Fueled by oil that saturated the ground, the fre continued to burn long into the night. Two days later, lingering fames from one of the burning ships at the wharf spread under increasing winds to more of the oil company’s waterfront property. In total, about a half mile of Philadelphia’s waterfront was destroyed. Amazingly, fremen, sailors, workmen, and nearby residents escaped injury, but an estimated two thousand men were thrown out of employment, most sailors lost all their belongings, and some houses were destroyed. Rather than marking an exception, however, this fre highlights Pennsylvania’s often traumatic relationship with the commodity that it introduced to the world in 1859

Review Essay: Energy in Pennsylvania History

Energy represents a lens through which some of the most unique and compelling insights about human life in the commonwealthmay be viewed. Every type of American prime mover—the power to do work—has been harvested and used in Pennsylvania and, in the process of its use and management, has defned entire regions of the state. Exciting new scholarship—as well as new readings of existing literature—is teaching us much about this important history while also pointing us to promising areas for future inquiry

Locating Philadelphia’s Water-Powered Past

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, watercourses were critical to processing and power for manufacturing, and Philadelphia County once had numerous creeks that mill proprietors exploited. A series of scaled surveys undertaken by Philadelphia County offcials when new roads or alterations to existing roads were proposed provides visual documentation of the importance of rivers and creeks to early industry. These records, part of the holdings of the Philadelphia City Archives, begin in the early years of the county. Much of the collection predates detailed, large-scale maps and thus is a unique record of the region’s development as well as a vital adjunct to textual material such as deeds and newspapers. Captured on a number of surveys are the dams, millponds, and raceways that became the power systems of early endeavors in textile and paper production, among other industries. The plans, drawn by district surveyors, also boast a certain degree of artistry; color washes and outlines or generic sketches of houses, stables, barns, inns, bridges, and the occasional church are common features. Striking on some of the plans as well are the topographical details that signal a county once flled with hills and valleys, its varied terrain making even small rills powerful when water descended. Surveyors mapped the land to facilitate the construction of county infrastructure, simultaneously documenting the landscape that such construction helped to obliterate

Newly Available and Processed Collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

What follows are descriptions of some of the collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that have either been acquired within the past year or more fully processed and therefore made more available and accessible to researchers. Full f nding aids and catalog records for these processed collections, and many others, can be found online at http://hsp.org/collections/catalogs-research-tools/ fnding-aids and http://discover.hsp.org