Private car

“ If the motor-car in the guise of a private carriage has developed at an astonishing rate, its adaptation to the needs of the community, as a public service vehicle, has been even more rapid. The first cabs placed on the streets of London in 1903 were by no means a success, but the cabs constructed by the French house of Renault and first introduced in London in 1906 rapidly effected a revolutionary change in the means of individual transport. ”

“ The practice of hiring and using private cars by railroad has been recognized and accepted by both Congress and the Commission. It has enlarged the total number of cars available for use and thereby aided all shippers. Those who provide private cars take nothing from any other shipper, but heretofore have secured the use of such cars for themselves although, because of temporary shortage, the system cars were insufficient to meet the demands of others. ”

“ But the fact remains that the average citizen, when he is felled by an intermittent attack of the private-car mania, is content to hire one of the very comfortable equipages that the Pullman Company keeps ready at big terminals at various points across the country. The arrangements for these are exclusive of the price paid to the railroad companies for their haul. A complete private car, equipped with staterooms, baths, private dining-room, observation parlor and the like, costs seventy-five dollars a day. ”

“ Sometimes a party of sportsmen will charter a car and hie themselves off to a secluded spot where the railroad roams through the forest, find an idle siding and use their car for a camp for a week, a fortnight, or even a month. Cities and States use private cars as travelling museums to exploit their charms, some of them are travelling chapels for religious propagandism. The uses of the private car are nearly as manifold as those of the railroad itself. ”

“ Concurrently with its development into a reliable, silent, odourless and smokeless power-propelled vehicle, the motor-car gradually came into more general use. It no longer appealed only to a few but gained converts daily, and its final triumph came when it began seriously to displace the horsed vehicle. becoming the private carriage of the wealthier classes to be used on all occasions. ”

“ Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested in me by the foregoing resolutions and statute, and by virtue of all other powers thereto me enabling, do hereby, through Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, take possession and assume control at 12 o'clock noon on the twenty-eighth day of December, 1917, of each and every system of transportation and the appurtenances thereof located wholly or in part within the boundaries of the continental United States and consisting of railroads, and owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland transportation, engaged in general transportation, whether operated by steam or by electric power, including also terminals, terminal companies and terminal associations, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars and private car lines, elevators, warehouses, telegraph and telephone lines and all other equipment and appurtenances commonly used upon or operated as a part of such rail or combined rail and water systems of transportation, to the end that such systems of transportation be utilized for the transfer and transportation of troops, war material and equipment to the exclusion so far as may be necessary of all other traffic thereon, and that so far as such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such systems of transportation be operated and utilized in the performance of such other services as the national interest 140may require and of the usual and ordinary business and duties of common carriers. ”

“ So you might order a vehicle which with small trouble could be entirely changed in appearance. The older dignity, moreover, was giving place to a new smartness. “Carriage people” still formed a class, but families which before had been satisfied to use such public conveyances as there had been, now drove forth in one or other of the cheaper private carriages which257 were being constructed particularly for their convenience. The dog-cart, for instance, had become common and was undergoing various metamorphoses, and the brougham was rapidly becoming the most popular of all town vehicles. ”

“ When automobiles [Pg 99] have become very much more numerous, and local authorities find that the settlement of wealthy or comparatively well-to-do families in their neighbourhoods may depend very largely upon the question whether light road-motor traffic may be conveniently conducted to and from the nearest city, an immense impetus will be administered to the reasonable efforts made for catering for the demand for tracks for the accommodation of automobiles, both private and public. ”

“ Street cars are not needed in the city. Nearly all London streets are in as good condition for driving as our Central Park roads. There are eight thousand hansoms, four thousand four-wheelers, and two thousand omnibuses, so that you are not obliged to walk on account of the absence of cars. The four-wheeled cabs, or “growlers,” as they term them, are dilapidated, uncomfortable vehicles, which lack new springs, and are dirty both inside and out. The horses and the drivers are old and superannuated; they have all seen better days in private carriages or hansom cabs. ”

“ The public vehicle comes in much at the same time as the private vehicle, developed by the new great landlord class for their convenience in their country rounds. As has been the case with the internal combustion engine in our own time, the instrument preceded the change in the road. As wheeled traffic for passengers becomes more common you get increasing complaints on the condition of the roads and increasing motive for improving them, and out of that grows the turnpike system, which, with its later development, has carried us on to the present day. ”

“ During sixty-two years of sullen toleration on the part of the public, the growler has improved but little, and it remains a mystery why in the streets of the world’s metropolis{213} comfortable and comely private vehicles cannot be hailed for hire, as in other cities. ”

“ They must permit their hand cars to be used only in the service of the company, and no one will be allowed to ride on these cars except employees in the performance of duty, unless provided with a written order from the proper authority. When two or more hand cars are following each other they will keep at least 300 feet apart. Hand or velocipede cars belonging to private parties will not be allowed on the track except by order of the Superintendent. ”

“ So the cars were built by private companies and used by the railroads on a mileage basis. The fact that such special cars are needed in different parts of the country at different seasons, their use in any large numbers being confined on some roads to a few weeks in each year, [261] makes the local ownership of such cars by the several railroads, less convenient and economical than their ownership by car companies able to distribute the cars to advantage throughout the country so that each section may have the cars it needs, at the proper time, without unnecessary duplications of equipment. ”

“ It is as a two-seater, however, that the small car bases its claim to popular favour. In the majority of journeys by any sort of private vehicle two is the number for which accommodation is most frequently required. Many owners of large cars have discovered that the occasions on which a two-seater would not serve their motoring purposes are comparatively few. ”

“ Congress, in subjecting 'private' motor carriage only to safety regulation, did not mean otherwise to regulate interstate transportation by persons of 'their own goods in their own vehicles for commercial purposes' (79 Cong.Rec. 5651 (1935) , remarks of Senator Wheeler, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce) ; [30] (2) one engaged in the business of leasing motor vehicles for commercial carriage is not by that fact alone made a 'contract carrier,' subject to full Commission regulation; in other words, equipment rentals as such are not reached by the statute. ”

“ Unquestionably appellants contemplate that those hiring their cars will operate them upon the streets. In fact, such use of the streets is essential to appellants' business. It is a special and extraordinary use materially differing from operation of automobiles or trucks by owners or their chauffeurs in the usual way for private ends. The running of automobiles necessarily is attended by danger to persons and property in the vicinity; and, when they are negligently driven upon city streets, the peril is great. ”

“ Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies—unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand—unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances through its ordained routine at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements. ”

“ The tolls for the maintenance of a high road cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons. ”

“ As a matter of law, the automobile is a vehicle, and has precisely the same rights on the highway that a bicycle or a carriage has. The horse has no monopoly of the highway, it enjoys no especial privileges, but must share the road with all other vehicles. Furthermore, the law makes it the business of the horse to get accustomed to strange sights and behave itself This duty has been onerous the last few years; the bicycle, the traction engine, and the trolley have come along in quick succession; the automobile is about the last straw. ”

“ Until the horse is accustomed to the machine, it is the duty—by law and common sense—of the automobile driver to take great care in passing; the care being measured by the possibility and probability of at accident.
The sympathy of every chauffeur must be entirely with the driver of the horse. Automobiles are not so numerous in this country that they may be looked for at every turn, and one cannot but feel for the man or woman who, while driving, sees one coming down the road. The best of drivers feel panicky, while women and children are terror-stricken. ”

“ Everyone knows that on vehicles meeting the law is, Keep to the Left. Now Great Britain and Ireland are the only countries in which, so far as I am aware, this is the rule. In France, Germany, America, &c., vehicles meeting keep to the right, and until I took to driving an automobile I never gave the matter a thought, but now the reason is obvious. Take, for instance, a man leading a stallion or other horse on the public highway. ”

“ The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present-day life. It long ago ran down Simple Living, and never halted to inquire about the prostrate figure which fell as its victim. With full recognition of motor-car transportation we must turn it to the most practical use. It can not supersede the railway lines, no matter how generously we afford it highways out of the Public Treasury. If freight traffic by motor were charged with its proper and proportionate share of highway construction, we should find much of it wasteful and more costly than like service by rail. ”

“ The people who use cars ought, I think, to remember that it is not sufficient merely to obey the letter of the law, but that they ought to use their motor-cars as they would use any other portion of their property, no doubt for their own advantage and enjoyment, but also with due regard to the comfort and convenience of the rest of the community. ”

“ On the other hand, an anecdote is told of a cab-driver in whose vehicle a gentleman chanced to leave his pocket-book, containing fifty thousand francs which he had just won at play. He traced his cabman to the stable, where he was in the act of feeding his horse, opened the carriage-door, and found his pocket-book lying untouched upon the floor. On learning what a prize he had missed the coachman incontinently hung himself.
The great source of supply for public vehicles in Paris is the Compagnie Générale des Voitures, one of the most gigantic of the great enterprises of Paris. ”

“ I regard the motor-car as a source of intense enjoyment. Allow the owners greater freedom, but take care that in return they loyally observe the regulations which are framed by competent authorities for the safety of the public. ”

“ Vast and important as may have become the business passenger motor traffic, purely pleasure travel by automobile probably exceeds it. Of the more than ten million motor cars licensed in the United States perhaps 80 per cent of them were purchased not for their use in the business of the owner, although that might have been the final excuse that consummated the deal, but for the pleasure the purchaser and his family would get from owning a car. ”

“ And the chauffeur worked readily with the wealthy man, often advising the purchase of the foreign machine upon which Uncle Sam collected a very large duty. But the foreign made car had its stamp of distinction, perhaps much easier to utilize in the form of extravagant, even snobbish, style of life that the owner of the foreign car elected to affect, and the United States manufacturer of cars was not at all prepared to put out a car that would correct the desire of Americans to drive around in an imported article. ”