NEWS AND ITEMS. 
77 
ical Association held at the University of Pennsylvania, Phila¬ 
delphia, March 5th and 6th, as well as several other well known 
practitioners of New Jersey. President Lowe, of the u Veter¬ 
inary Trust,” was also a visitor at Philadelphia during the meet¬ 
ing and told of some of the interesting features of the forthcom¬ 
ing National Convention of the American Veterinary Medical 
Association to be held at Atlantic City the first week in Sep¬ 
tember. The attractions of Atlantic City as a seaside resort 
alone will undoubtedly draw a large attendance. He said that 
it is expected that the Atlantic City meeting of the A. V. M. 
A. will be the largest attended meeting of any ever held in the 
history of the national organization, and the profession of New 
Jersey is proud of the honor of welcoming the veterinary hosts 
within its borders. 
To Give up Autos. —After seventeen months’ trial by the 
Illinois Electric Vehicle Transportation Company the electric 
cab, as a public conveyance, is declared to be a failure, and the 
directors of the company have voted to go into liquidation and 
sell their assets. The directors reached this conclusion a week 
ago last Saturday, and have called a special meeting of the 
stockholders, to he held in Jersey City, April 4, when it is ex¬ 
pected the action of the directors will be ratified. The official 
reason given for going out of business is embraced in a para¬ 
graph in a notice sent by President Insull to the shareholders, as 
follows : “Your board is of the opinion that, owing to local 
conditions and the consequent high cost of maintenance, the 
vehicles now owned by the company cannot now be operated in 
the city of Chicago on a profitable basis.” The local conditions 
referred to are the streets of Chicago. The heavy vehicles, in 
lurching about through ruts and rotten pavement, poundtd the 
machinery to pieces. There are not miles enough of good pave¬ 
ment in Chicago to render profitable electric transportation. 
The cost of operation was extraordinarily large, being equal to 
194 per cent, of the gross receipts. So that for every $1 taken 
in the company had to spend $1.94. It began doing business 
Sept. 13, 1899, and up to Feb. 1, 1901, the operating results 
were as follows : Gross receipts from passengers, Sept. 13, 1899, 
to Feb. 1, 1901, $137,106.90 ; operating expenses, $265,885.37 ; 
expenditures over receipts, $128,778.47 ; percentage of expenses 
to receipts, 194. The showing of total receipts and expendi¬ 
tures in addition to operating expenses indicates that the ex¬ 
periment of running electric cabs in Chicago has cost local and 
Eastern capitalists about $475,860, this being a dead loss. The 
