The Sun.
London, England, 1851-11-26 00:00:00

THE CAB EXTORTION.

A short time ago an advertisement appeared in this
paper, announcing that from and after the third day
of the present month a certain cab proprietor would
commence running his cabs at the rate of sixpence a
mile for two persons. Before the time arrived, how-
ever, a second notification was issued, also through
our columns, to the effect that the advertiser had been
prevented, by menaces of violence and insult, from
executing his project. Threatening notices had
been served upon bis premises, assuring him of every
species of illegal opposition. His drivers were to be
hustled, his horses maltreated, his vehicles damaged,
and all imaginable annoyance exercised against him-
self and servants. In consequence of these warnings,
he reported himself as desisting from his scheme, not
doubting either its propriety or its prospects, but de-
terred from his speculation by the jealousy and terror-
ism of the trade. We are at some loss to imagine
how in the year 1851, and under the protection of the
A division, any man of business could entertain the
dread of being impeded in his lawful calling in the
streets of London. No doubt the conductors of our
public carriages are remarkably skilled in the
exercise of annoyance and abuse, and as far
as a little ingenious botheration could go,
zealous service might of course be expected
from parties combining in their own proper
persons the qualities of protectionists and cabmen.
Still the opposition, it might have been thought,
could be little worseithan that encountered and sur-
mounted every week by all candidates for public
support on the ground of small profits and improved
economy. Nevertheless it has been averred by
numerous correspondents that the scheme was a bond
fide conception, that the calculations on which it was
based were undeniably sound, and that nothing but
the desperation of endangered monopolists put a stop
to so desirable an experiment.
Without entering too particularly into these de-
tails, we venture to affirm, on the grounds of obvious
probability, that, whether the plan was projected or
not, it most certainly might have been, and with
equal advantage to the proprietary and the public.
If Bd. per mile was a remunerative rate of cab hire
at the time the tariff was determined, it is perfectly
clear, from a concurrence of considerations, that 6d.
per mile would be a sufficient return in the present
day.. Oats, corn, wages, workmanship, and mate-
rials, the cost of man and horse, of construction and
repair, are all cheaper by 30 or 40 per cent. at the
very least than they were twenty years ago. All
competing trades, too, have lowered their prices ; thus
not only evincing the practicability of such reduc-
tions, but forcibly suggesting the extension of the
same principle to other pursuits. When omnibus seats
were 6d. a piece, and oars is. a pair, there was no-
thing unconscionable in asking Bd. for the compara-
tive lu,xury of a cab ; but now that penny fares are
prevailing both by land and water, now that London-
bridge or the Bank can he reached for 3d. from any
suburb of the metropolis, it is no less unreasonable
than unwise to maintain cab fares at an exceptional
height of extravagance. No person could doubt
that cabs, built, horsed, and driven according to
the present scale of market prices, supported by a
sufficient capital and managed with ordinary
judgment, would return a remunerative income to
the proprietors at the rate of 6d. a mile. The fact,
indeed, has been repeatedly confessed in practice, for
over and over again have we received prospectuses of
companies proposing to start on these terms, but some
" dark influence," as Mr. Grantley Berkeley would
say, has invariably interposed and driven us back to
the hard bargains of monopoly and combination.
Certainly the cabowners must be extremely clever
people, and protectionists of more pretension might
well take a lesson from their doings. Without any
bustle or clamour they have contrived to keep their
ground, while every other " interest" has been forced
to succumb. They make no noise about their work.
We read no inscriptions on the walls of " Cheap cabs
and starvation." Their Bookers and Chowlers per-
form their business with a wholesome dislike to prattle
and exposure. They never openly proclaim that
England's greatness is wrapped up in eightpenny fares,
or that people will be driven to walk about barefoot if
" native industry" is discouraged in Pentonville and
Bethnal-green. They say nothing, they have no
public meetings and no discoverable organization, but
they very quietly contrive that their profits shall not
be touched, and that no man shall ever get into a cab
and pay less than a shilling for it.
Of course it is quite notorious why this stand is so
desperately made, and why in this one "department
of industry" alone there should be so obdurate a reso-
lution to fight for every inch of margin. It is not the
lawful profit but the incidental facility of extortion for
which the cab owners are stickling. A change of fare
from Bd. to 6d. would involve the loss, in ordinary
cases, not of 2d. only, but of thrice that sum. As
things go at present, Bd. practically means a shilling ;
Is. 4d., eighteenpence ; and 2s. 4d., half-a-crown.
Reduce the fare to 61, and fid. would be the whole
amount paid, so that the loss to the cab-owner would
not be confined to the original retrenchment, but
would include the handsome percentage now thrown
in for want of change. Under the new system, in-
deed, it is hardly too much to hope that a cabman
might be found with sixpence in his pocket, and that
change might be given by these gentlemen from their
seats as promptly as by their brethren on the steps of
the omnibuses. At present, the gratuitous overplus,
almost universally paid, is actually reckoned by cab-
owners as their legal perquisite. The other day a
cabman plainly acknowledged before the magistrate,
that if his receipts were confined to the Parliamen-
tary Bd. he could never .take enough home in the
evening to satisfylis master's demand.
Now, this is all exceedingly admirable, and no
persons applaud a good fight with more sincerity than
Englishmen, but we cannot support the nuisance any
longer. We want all the sixpences we have got and
cannot afford to pay two for one even to a cab-owner.
In the name of the public, therefore, we invite our
economic speculators to step forward once more. We
promise them a faithful and zealous support as long as
their practice squares with their professions, and we
undertake to say that Sir Richard Mayne will gua-
rantee them in the undisturbed exercise of their vo-
cations over any street, road, lane, or passage, within
the circuit of metropolitan jurisdiction. More than
that, they will have every bystander to back them,
and if any little affair should ensue an "eightpenny"
cabman would stand no more chance than a Popish
bishop. It is amusing enough to be sure that this
phalanx of street heroes should actually have done
what neither the Great Exhibition, nor the Chartist
meetings, nor the " foreign conspirators," could ever
succeed in effecting. Our cabmen have literally out-
run our constables. The police are considered to
afford an effectual sec'►rity against thieves and vaga-
bonds, Socialists and democrats, men in armour and
men in beards, but not against cabowners and their
servants. At that point the civil force of England's
metropolis is thought to fail, and even the spirit of
commercial enterprise cannot urge men to a step be-
yond. This is very striking—perhaps very charac-
teristic—but we must once more express our hopes
that the thing may be again brought to trial.—Times.

THE AUSTRIAN LOAN.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
• About three months ago the Austrian Government
appearedti
atea l
oofa itnnh
the applicants
fha
aep
bp
olmoneyeightw man: a
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great,
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sterling. ng.Europe tTo
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ur-
gency-
infinite inge-
nuity was called into requisition to procure them suc-
cess. The attempt, however, was a failure. In this
country not a single farthing was subscribed; and
at Amsterdam, Hamburgb, and some other of the
leading Bourses of the Continent—where it was, an-
nounced by the Imperial Government that large por-
tions of the loan hadbeen taken—it now turns out
that the subscribers were, in a majority of instances,
neither more nor less than agents of the Austrian
Treasury, dispatched from Vienna for the purpose of
supporting its credit by the philosophical process of
buying its own securities on its own account, and
with its own money. However, on the 11th of Oc-
tober last, the Austrian Ministry deemed it high time
to place before the world, in an official form, a state-
ment of the success which had attended their finan-
cial experiment ; and, accordingly, in the Vienna
Gazette of that day, future historians will read a
State paper of which it is difficult to say whether the
folly or the falsehood is the most repulsive.
The nominal amount of the loan was 85 millions
of florins, and it is boasted in the announcement to
which we refer, in proof of the unbounded confidence
of European capitalists in the Imperial faith and re-
sources, that not only had the whole of the original
subscription lists been filled up, but that the excess
of the applications beyond the amount desired was not
less than 2k millions of florins—or, in other words,
ullmiopnlbstawnwetarmse offered whilst only 85 could be
received.Btdh ffiils eanasiyfeseton,abuugthittohwasritbeeeanndexctirrceumlaeltye
difficult to find people ready to believe it. In fact it
is not often that official mendacity so soon and so
pthr fatallyees Ae nut
cteraci
saoeni s
Exchequer,
e justiqt its ear
pu,
ot
shesoni rbtslrei
eats%
ai tn hai a d
yns
the
en inbe
appearoo the
k sfoorf
87k millions of florins of subscriptions to the new
loan ; but how were those entries made up ?
What do they represent ? Are they facts, or merely
figures ? Is it true that money to the extent
of 87k millions, or of one-half, or one tithe of that
sum, nes been really placed at the disposal of the
Austrian Government ? Let us see. In the first
place, the Bank of Vienna was compelled to subscribe
for ten millions of the loan—no choice being allowed
to it in the matter. The governor of that institution
(Pipitz)—a dependent, of course, of the Crown—re-
tused to liberate the directors from their board-room
until that amount of subscription had been taken.
What may be the exact commercial value of such an
engagement, by such an establishment as the Bank of
Vienna, we need not pause to consider minutely. In
the next place, a nominal sum of 30 millions of florins
was wade up by certain intricate maniplatioas of