IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. 9 
ton and other cities, and lines were built to accommodate local 
travel within the settled areas, and in some cases these roads 
were extended to reach suburban districts tributary to these 
cities. 
As long as the only available motive power was horses 
drawing small cars at an average speed of less than seven 
miles an hour, it was impossible to establish systems of street 
railways connecting the larger towns with one another unless 
these were grouped closely together. After it had been 
clearly demonstrated that electricity could be safely and 
economically employed for traction purposes, companies were 
organized for the distinct purpose of connecting the smaller 
towns with the cities, and the street railway running in or by 
the side of the country highways became an important factor 
in interurban transportation. This type of street railway each 
year has gained in importance, and in the last five years 
practically all of the companies organized in Massachusetts 
have been for the purpose of building roads belonging to the 
class of interurban street railways, and the extensions of the 
older roads have been largely of the same nature. 
Electric street railways as they exist to-day within the Com- 
monwealth of Massachusetts, may be classified as belonging to 
three types. The first of these, the urban roads, are confined 
to the thickly settled areas, and depend for their patronage on 
local travel, passengers taking the cars in order to reach 
quickly some point within the same settled district. The 
second class, that of the distinctly interurban roads, is com- 
posed of roads whose principal object is to connect two or 
more settled areas which are separated from one another by 
thinly settled stretches of country. On such a road the traffic 
returns from local travel are insignificant, and the income 
must be mainly derived from those who travel long distances 
in going from one town to another, and this revenue in the 
majority of cases comes from those who desire to reach the 
larger towns in which these roads have their termini. 
Intermediate between these two types of road, and more