Bus conductor

“ Of course they pay the second fare without a murmur, and if any other passenger does not follow their example they express great astonishment that any one could be so mean as to attempt to swindle a poor 'bus conductor. ”

“ That night the ambitious clerk wallowed in an atmosphere of profanity. He cursed the 'bus conductor and the 'bus driver, and the passengers, according to their size and fighting weight. He swore at every one who pushed against him, and a good many who didn't. ”

“ It had a lady conductor, and she was poised expectantly, one hand on the bell and the other beckoning to Mr. Russell. His nature was docile, and the 'bus was bound for Chancery Lane, his destination. He mounted the 'bus.
I need hardly tell you that a 'bus that makes deliberate advances to the public is the rarest sight in London. The self-respecting 'bus looks upon the public as dust beneath its tyres. Even a Brigadier-General with red tabs, on his way to Whitehall, looks pathetically humble waggling his cane at a 'bus. All 'bus-drivers have a kingly look; it comes from their proud position. ”

“ It could not hope to be a thoroughly reliable bus and a library at the same time. I therefore determined to forfeit several divisions of my ticket, and give my "season" one more chance. I got up and struck the bell once. As the driver didn't know it was just an ordinary passenger that struck it he pulled up immediately. I had got halfway down the staircase when somebody—it must have been that offensive conductor—- gave the game away, for the bus jerked badly and started off again at a rare pace. ”

“ The conductor, testing it with the aid of his teeth, announced he was able to make nothing of it; he doubted whether the owner would succeed. Alarmed, the rest of the passengers searched muffs and pockets; three purses were missing, and some articles of less value. Frantic inquiries for the nearest police-station. A man who had lost nothing said he suspected the country lady all along.
“What we ought to be uncommon thankful for,” said the conductor, stopping near Edgware Road, “is that she didn’t pinch the blooming ’bus!” ”

“ Some are merely disgusting, such as the bus-conductor. I have met a civil bus-conductor; I have even met an optimistic one, but nowadays, especially, he stands exposed by comparison with the girl-conductor. Oh, it is natural enough that the girl should have been friendly, civil, clean, obliging, for to her the job was new, varied, faintly exciting, probably better paid than her previous work. But still, she made the man terrible. He seems to be nearly always a rather grimy, ill-shaven, misanthropic man ”

“ If he be overtaken by a drenching shower, he covers his head and shoulders with his empty basket, sticks his hands in his pockets, and goes on his way singing in the highest of spirits, but if the day be warm he travels on the steps of a'bus when the conductor is on the roof, or on a lorry, if the driver be not surly. ”

“ On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the passers-by, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers. If the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to do with the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits above the thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted and even 'conducted' by the Tycoon. ”

“ And the conductor writes and one of the policemen writes, and they keep on writing, while the traffic makes beautiful curves to avoid them.
The still increasing crowd continues to stare in the pure blankness of pleasure. A close-shaved, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with a copy of The Sportsman in his podgy hand, who has descended from the motor-bus, starts stamping his feet. ”

“ You will not fail to observe that the knifeboard has not yet been invented. There are twelve passengers inside and none out. The conductor is already remarkable for his truthfulness, his honesty, and his readiness to take up any lady and to deposit her within ten yards of wherever she wishes to be. The fare is sixpence, and you must wait for ten years before you get a twopenny ’bus.
THE PARISH ENGINE
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank in ‘Sketches by Boz’)
Now let us resume our walk. ”

“ On some lines they use tickets showing the amount each passenger pays, but a conductor sometimes forgets to hand you a ticket. An Inspector will occasionally mount a ’bus to see that all the passengers are supplied with tickets, and then the conductor with a treacherous memory has reason to be sorry. ”

“ One mounts and alights from the middle of the rear of the vehicle, the opening being guarded by a chain controlled by the conductor—a method offering less opportunity for dropping off before the 'bus has come to a standstill. ”

“ When the 'bus is empty, these persons are sympathetic and friendly to one another, almost to tenderness; but when there is much traffic, a tone of severity is observable upon the side of the conductor. ”

“ However that may be, out of his own wits John Grey conceived this felonious means of inexpensive travelling--absolutely the most inexpensive I ever knew.
You are going from Holborn to Victoria Gate in the Park railings--very well. You must mount the first 'bus which you see going in the direction you require; grasp the railings--and mount slowly to the top, having first ascertained that the conductor himself is on the roof. By the time you have reached the seat upstairs, if you have done it in a masterly and approved-of fashion, the 'bus has travelled at least twenty yards or so. ”

“ On a wet day a little girl or a cripple has merely to tear off one of these slips of paper, and when the 'bus arrives the conductor takes up his passengers in the numerical order of their tickets—all unfair hustling being thus eliminated. ”

“ The omnibus conductors are generally uncommunicative, and often morose—perhaps, from too frequent digs in the ribs from fussy old ladies and choleric old gentlemen. Some of them, too, refuse to wait for you unless you pretend to have a broken leg, or at least to be half-paralyzed; yet, even among 'bus conductors, there are still occasional pearls to be met with. In one thing they show remarkable aptitude ”

“ The dissipated down-at-heel gentleman, of the type which sometimes drives a cab, never becomes an omnibus conductor, for the very good reason that no company or proprietor would employ him. But the unfortunate gentleman often does. An Oxford graduate was the conductor of a West-End omnibus for some considerable time, and a man who was once the secretary of a flourishing literary society, and a church organist, is and has been one for some years. ”

“ I want a man who's had plenty of practice at getting horses up. Mine are always falling down."
About this time, the latter part of the thirties, omnibus conductors began to fall into disrepute. The chief complaints against them, apart from their ordinary rudeness to passengers, were that when they were wanted to stop the omnibus they were always busy talking to the coachman along the roof, and that they banged the doors too violently whenever a person entered or got out. ”

“ The ’buses do not confine themselves to the middle of the roadway and allow passengers to pick and fight their way through a crowd of vehicles, New York-like; they pull up to the curb to allow passengers to enter or leave without the least possibility of danger or trouble. Conductors will also leave their perch, approach the sidewalk (Anglice, pavement) to consult or advise with a prospective passenger who is in doubt as to which ’bus he should take. Time seems of no importance: they are not in such a rush or whirl of excitement as we are. ”

“ On the basis of the average number of persons actually travelling in a motor-bus at one time, it would probably require 4000 motor-bus journeys to bring even the Great Eastern suburban passengers to town each day if they discarded train for bus, and the same number to take them back in the evening. ”

“ I fancy many of them were railway directors in the memorable year of speculation, and have known better days. The driver of a buss is a prince of good fellows compared with a cabman. The former has no pecuniary anxieties to weigh him down, he is full of fun in a quiet way, and in case of a quarrel he has his conductor to take his side—he has his regular employment and his regular pay; the cabby is alone, and has to do battle with all the world, and he has often horses to drive and people to deal with that would tire the patience of a Job. ”

“ They shout, they curse, they put their hands to their mouths trumpet wise and bellow at each other, these cabbies, vanmen, busmen, all angry at the block in the narrow way. The 'bus-driver, with London stout, and plenty of it, polishing his round cheeks like the brasswork of a locomotive, his neck well wound and buttressed with thick comforter and collar, heedeth not, but goes on his round, now fast, now slow, always stolid and rubicund, the rain running harmlessly from him as if he were oiled. ”

“ Cross-country motor service has proven quite feasible and scores of buses now leave every large city for the surrounding smaller towns. The bus seems to negotiate a 50-mile trip very easily at a speed of approximately 20 miles per hour including stops. These buses or stages carry from 12 to 20 passengers and are operated by one man; they are well sprung and equipped with pneumatic tires. For country traffic seats cross ways of the car are much more comfortable to the rider than lengthwise seats. ”

“ Motor Bus Traffic. —Suburban and interurban motor bus passenger service is growing rapidly. Buses accommodating as high as sixty persons are being used on the haul where the roads are well paved, but twenty to thirty seems more popular. At present these buses seem to be well patronized, usually bringing their passengers to the larger city in time for business or shopping and returning them home in the afternoon or evening. The rates of fare for bus travel are about the same as those for steam car travel, or approximately 4 c. per mile. ”

“ They had electric trolley buses (like street cars) running between the camp and town. Going to town one day the bus driver pulled over to the curb to pick up a passenger. Another bus behind us decided to go on past, forgetting that his overhead trolley pole was on the same line as ours, causing the fire to fly from the trolley line, and from our bus driver, also. He called the other bus driver names I had never heard of before. ”

“ And here, sitting enthroned above it on the front seat of a swift-going motor-bus, he, a man who on the right side of middle age, had become almost famous, went happy and unrecognized, his hat drawn low over his eyes, his coat collar turned up to meet it, absorbing that large life of the crowd with which so deeply and instinctively he felt himself to be one. ”

“ Buses pass like big squares of honeycomb on wheels, crowded with pale, tired bees—the stars march slowly from the western slope to their light viewless pinnacle in the center of the heavens, walking brightly like strong men in silvered armor—the stars and the buses, the buses and the stars, either and both of as little and much account—it would not really surprise either Oliver or Nancy if the next green bus that passes should start climbing into the sky like a clumsy bird. ”

“ Some of these cars are almost luxuriously fitted with fine cushions and special lighting. They have speaking tubes or electrical devices to signal the driver. The drivers for the large companies wear the livery of the company. Taxis, as may be inferred, have no established routes, but go wherever the passenger may desire.
The motor-bus is well established both in city and cross-country traffic. As at first made motor-buses consisted of special bodies with seats placed upon freight truck chassis. ”

“ No less than thirty road services are in operation, and their number is being steadily augmented. In fact, it looks as if in the near future the motor service will largely supplant the branch railway, blessed with very few trains a day. A motor bus service plying every half-hour between a town and the nearest important main-line station would be more valuable to the inhabitants than half a dozen [145] trains a day, especially if the passenger vehicles were supplemented by lorries for the carriage of luggage and heavy goods. ”

“ It met the competition of the gasolene locomotive upon the highroad, how? By cutting its all-the-year train service to two trains a day and gradually raising its fare to five cents a mile. People who have to go from one end of its main line to the other, about 110 miles, are still likely to patronize it. The motor-bus is hardly more effective in the long haul than is the motor-truck. And in the really bleak days of winter its snug little passenger-cars, well lighted and warmed, have more appeal than the poorly lighted and heated motor-buses that traverse the State highway. ”

“ If you are one of those lucky people whose motor is not numbered (as mine is) 19 or 11 or 22, it does not really matter where your host for the evening prefers to live; Bayswater or Battersea or Blackheath--it is all the same to your chauffeur. But for those of us who have to fight for bus or train or taxicab, it is different. We have to say to ourselves, “Is it worth it?” ”