Click on the picture to see a larger version.
Police lines keep the cabby where he belongs. Photo by Arthur Hewitt.

The picture shows two types of cabs in common use in New York – the four-seat "hack" and the two-wheeled hansom. In addition there were open, four-seat cabs called "victorias". The hansom itself became extinct with the arrival of the motor cab, but the name became attached to the horse drawn cabs that now drive tourists around Central Park.

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. XLIX no. 2, November, 1906, p. 130.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 30

The New York Cab Driver and his Cab / 2

"The New York Cab Driver and His Cab" by Vance Thompson
Outing, vol. XLIX, no. 2 (November, 1906) pp. 129-138.
Photos by Arthur Hewitt

The cab is no integral part of New York life. Venice without the gondola were as unthinkable as a woman without hair. No little of London's compelling charm is in its swift-rolling hansoms. These things we know. But one can't think of New York in terms of cabs. Once upon a time I was an exile; only in memory did the great city rise before me and what I saw was this: Huge caρons of stone an steel – filled with noise and darkness – through which great yellow worms crawled, one after another, in mid-air. That is the picture of New York that haunts the exile, even as the outlawed Venetian is obsessed by slim, black gondolas cutting across lanes of moonlight. Your true New Yorker is a steam-projected, electrically-carted person; only in exceptional moments of gloom or gayety does he ride "in a carriage and pair." He is carriage-ridden to a funeral; he cabs it in winey moments on dark errands, when the fear of God is not in him. The cab-instinct is but faintly developed in him. There are only two thousand licensed cabs and hacks on the island of Manhattan. Others there are, of course, plying piratically in the dark quarters; but even with these thrown in the reckoning is small. No, the New Yorker is not a cabby person.

And that is a pity.

Riding in cabs does much to soften the rudeness of the unintelligent man. It gives him a chance to commune with himself. Away from the swaying mob of an elevated train, away from the jostling democracy of the cable or trolley car, he has a chance to isolate his emotions and get acquainted with himself. The cabbies of New York are a small race, but when you come to know them you will discover that they are an efficient race, and efficient whether it be for business or pleasure. I have thought over this a great deal. In fact, the problem fascinates me. Why is it that the cabber – and by that I mean the man in whom the habit is strong – why, I say, is he usually a better man than his non-cabbing fellow? He may be no richer. He may have no more brains. Yet he is the man who accomplishes things. You will find that he is the kind of man who gets what he wants out of life. Faith, he whistles life to heel and makes it follow like a dog. I daresay the masterfulness was in him originally. The cab-habit has only brought it out more strongly. The cabber – the study of a few specimens will convince you – has a huge quantity of self-respect. He will not permit the body that incloses him to be elbow-rubbed and knee-kneaded in publicly promiscuous vehicles. And so he cabs it. Fat with pride and self-respect, he is bowled along through what the old stage-directions used to call the populace; and we, trudging afoot or jolted along by electricity, give him the right of way. It is natural enough; intuitively we feel that the man who so evidently respects himself deserves a measure of respect from us. Thus he cabs himself into the good things of this earth.