Taken for a Ride (1996)

Bradford Snell: Self

Quotes 

• Bradford Snell : At that time Alfred P. Sloan said "Wait a minute. This is a great opportunity. We've got ninety percent of the market out there that we can somehow turn into automobile usage. If we can somehow eliminate the rail alternative, then we will create a new market for our cars. If we don't, then General Motors' sales are gonna be level." They had to get rid of the streetcars. They wanted the space that the streetcars used for automobiles. They had to find something that they could put in place of the streetcars. Sloan at the time thought that he wanted to somehow motorize all the major cities of the country and then replacing all the street railways with buses, and ultimately thinking that no one would want to ride the buses and therefore they'd buy General Motors automobiles.

• Bradford Snell : The key lawyers involved in the case told me there was not a scintilla of doubt that these defendants, General Motors and the others, had set out to destroy the streetcar system. But since there was no antitrust law on the books at that point saying, 'Thou shalt not destroy streetcar systems,' the best way, the only way they could get them on a violation was to proceed along the criminal antitrust, conspiracy route. And that's what they did.