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Patrolling Fifth Avenue for victims. Photo by Arthur Hewitt.

"In a word, the whole business here is loose and lawless.... The pirates rob at will. And the public pays."

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. XLIX no. 2, November, 1906, p. 132.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 32

The New York Cab Driver and his Cab / 4

Upon the whole the New York cab strikes me as stylishly humourous. It is exotic, like the English rose and the French lily. It has not made itself at home yet. Indeed, the cab has not yet become an essential part of city life. It is casual. Nor is there any definite system, such as you find in older cities abroad. You see a wayfaring vehicle – it may be a public cab, duly licensed by the mayor's marshal, it may be a pirate, it may be a prowler from a livery-stable; there is no way of telling. Oh, there are laws and regulations enough! The city has ordained what fares shall be paid; it has enacted laws for the licensing of drivers and public vehicles; it has schemed out the prettiest plan in the world for regulating the cab service – only it has provided no method for enforcing its laws. It has designated certain public hack-stands. Having done so, it said that all was well; and rested. The cabs stood where they pleased, or crawled unconcernedly in the avenues. One amiable pirate whom I know has taken out ten licenses; upon these ten licenses he sends out one hundred cabs to ply for hire. Let us descend to figures; he pays the city $2.50 a year; he should pay $25 – and the difference seems wide enough to drive six grafts abreast.

In a word, the whole business here is loose and lawless. It is neither well-ordered nor well-kept. The private stables pay no heed to the legal rates. The hotel-cabs, upon the pretense that they are not "public hacks" within the meaning of the law, charge twice the legal fare. The pirates rob at will. And the public pays. It was brought out in court not long ago that during the first year of the existence of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the cabs – and only those standing on the Thirty-third Street side – paid $14,000 in commissions to the hotel. Now it is not easy to understand why the public should be fined that amount for using public conveyances. The cab-privileges all around that gilded block will bring in a sum in thirty years or so sufficient to pay for the initial cost of the hotel.Quid absurdum est, as the children say. In every street the unlicensed cabs of the great stables go to and fro; their charges are exactly double that permitted by the law. Unless you have a fairly good cab education you will not often cab it at the legal rate of fifty cents a mile. And the fault lies not so much with the negligent public – not so much with the rapacious cabby – as it does with the city officials who are responsible for the slack enforcement of the law.