The Shortage of Taxi-drivers.
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Our demand that moremen should be attracted to the occupation of taxi-driving has met with hearty endorsement in the Press. It is, as we anticipated, most unpopular with the men who already hold licences. We certainly did not expect drivers and their several organizations to welcome our steps to secure much-needed publicity for the fact that more men are badly wanted, but we hardly thought the consequent furore in " motorcabland " would bring about. the protest meetings which have resulted. We regard these as part and parcel of the campaign by which the existing body of drivers hopes to make good its present advantageous and independent position, but for which effort failure must result. The men have made a fatal mistake in placing their own leisure and their own creature comforts before the reasonable convenience and service of the cab-using public. For that reason, if for no other, at the present moment, whatever change of attitude their later behaviour may induce, they have sacrificed the only potent and effective support which better counsels might have enabled them to claim as an asset—that of public approval. We cannot pretend that we are sorry. An early readjustment will be hastened. The public has been awakened to the fundamental cause of the shortage which has caused grave personal inconvenience and much damage to clothing during the past few months, and the public will now help to set in motion that much-needed influx of new men from whose accession to the ranks of cab-drivers the true remedy can alone be found. Now, a taxicabby can loll into a yard at his own time of day : he knows he will find a cab. We trust that, by or before April next, the situation will be reversed, and that the late-corner will find himself cabless. Then, and then only can the proprietors hope to give to the public that 24-hour supply of hackney carriages for which the Metropolis now cries out in vain. To give this continuous supply, it may be necessary to revise fare schedules, but that proposition cannot be taken seriously at the moment.