60,000 Hackmen
Personnel Director, TerminalTransportation Co., New York City
PROBABLY FEW INDUSTRIES in the world are as colorful as the New York taxicab business. With its 60,000 hackmen and 14,000 cabs of many shapes and shades it is a grave economic and traffic problem and its unusual labor setup makes it an intensely interesting social study. It is a complete paradox—"Hardboiled" clear through but romantic; aggressive and progressive in its attempt to secure its share of business it is, with few exceptions, decadent and archaic in its public, industrial and management problems. It is unstable, as records of its hundreds of insolvencies bear evidence, yet in 1929 this industry grossed in receipts more than all the surface, elevated and subway lines in New York combined.
To elaborate any one of these ramifications would be a long treatise in itself, impossible to cover in this brief article, but in every case a tie-up can be found with the history of taxicab operation in New York and particularly the labor situation.
Just a little over a decade ago taxicabs were largely controlled by racketeers who possessed "strongarm" squads. The owners were Czars in their little kingdoms with practically no police interference. Discipline, little that existed, was maintained by "guerrilla" tactics—the use of lead pipe and rubber hose. Naturally unethical practices flourished.
Many drivers of that era are still at the steering wheels of cabs but since 1929 this group has been greatly augmented and outnumbered by the influx of hackmen from all trades, professions, and yes—colleges.
The taxicab business has become a haven for the labor drifter and agitator, the seasonal worker, pre-depression clerical and skilled help, disbarred lawyers and medicos, unfortunate emigre's—in short a true hodge-podge of the Melting Pot.
Our company has faced this low morale situation along many fronts. Welfare plans, house organs, bonuses for safe driving, pro. motion from the ranks, special awards and vacations with pay, lectures, a centralized personnel office, trials before discharge, and medical treatment have all played a part in bolstering up to a higher plane the conduct of our employees and teaching them responsibility to the public. We are far from the millenium but the actual progress made would hearten the most cynical observer. The great decrease in labor turnover and the loyalty of our employees in serious labor disturbances has definitely proved the worth of our personnel policies.
To laymen the most fascinating thing about the industry is the human interest angle. It is a fact that more drama is enacted by our 3,000 drivers in one day than most people witness in a lifetime. Passengers have been known to leave as high as $100,000 worth of jewelry in cabs—five to ten thousand not infrequently. Thieves use cabs to make getaways forcing drivers at pistol point to "step on it"; every so often taxicabs become impromptu maternity wards. (Some day I hope to witness a selfmade man pointing with pride to one of our cabs and saying, "There, sir, was my birthplace!") Hackmen are often the Good Samaritans of the alleys, picking up freezing or injured strangers and rushing them to hospitals, with no thought of reward; nightly, petty gunmen ride them to dark spots and take their few dollars in recepits known as "bookings"; often they are commandeered by the police to give chase to bandits. They live a life of excitement but most of them become oriented and make themselves believe it is a humdrum existence.
Good hackmen are opportunists and plan on being at the proper place at the right time; uptown in the morning to take passengers to work and downtown in late afternoon to reverse the process; the Broadway area at "showbreak"; the night club neighborhoods still later, and so on.
Studies of the "hardboiled" attitude of the average driver have convinced me that it is a defense mechanism brought on by the unchanged attitude of a public that for years has regarded hackmen as the toughest clan in the world. The great majority of present day drivers are decent, honest, hardworking family men. Most of the "gyps," "steerers" and "guerillas" of ten years ago have been weeded out by the police department and the bigger companies have developed a fairly efficient "selective process." But the very nature of hacking makes cabmen a shrewd, suspicious group. They see too much of graft, suffering, prejudice and immorality to worry over social ethics. They are a queer medley of the self-preservation philosophy, maudlin sentimentality, and the Golden Rule They can be very friendly and loquacious aS Sean O'Casey and Abbe Dimnet only recently testified to the press. They are a blunt lot and their language is descriptive jargon. Money is spoken of in the English system of "pounds"; a reckless speeder is a "cowboy"; a long call is a "rip"; a non-tipper is a "skunk"; "getting the needles" is having a tire punctured by an unfriendly soul; dismissal by an employer is being "marked lousy." This gives some idea of their vernacular.
There are numerous interesting individuals driving taxicabs in New York today. Recalling only a few who have graced my office in the past few months bring to mind a former well-known middleweight champion boxer; an author whose work can be found on drug store bookshelves; a former Russian Colonel who was Chief of Communications on the Turkish front and later was a special emissary to Istanbul for the White Army; a university graduate with a Phi Beta Kappa key, and a former secret agent for the British government. However it should not be construed that men of this caliber make up most of the driving personnel of the cab business. They are in a small minority but they add much to its romance. The great number of hackmen still come from the lower East side, the "Red Hook' and Brownsville districts of Brooklyn and the distant corners of the Bronx.
They are a unique group, indeed. Every race and nation is represented among them -every political dogma-every religious creed. But they are all pagans when it comes to one thing—rain and sleet always double their earnings—so they worship at the Shrine of the Goddess of Bad Weather.
Author on the Job
