TAXI-CAB TARIFF.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 26, 31 July 1911, Page 8

TAXI-CAB TARIFF.

XO THB EDITOR. Sir,— Would you kindly afford epaco fof an opinion re the proposed tariff for taxi-Cabs. It is surprising how anxious some of uur popnlarly elected city governors ar« to protect the people with money to burn (who mainly patronise taxi-cabs) and how tight a hold they keep i on tho city purse when a slight addition tothe wages of corporation labourers is proposed. Svirely councillors could find _ mafctef for their attention more conducive to the geneTa-1 welfare than that ot imposing iimits on the profits of private enterprise as legitimate as a-ny of the businesses Conducted by the august civic authorities individually. _ Here in tnp city are numerous taxi-cab drivers and owners, the men plying for hire under conditions which, if experienced by any o{ our worthy councillors, would be deemed by them to constitute a dog's life; yet, because there is likely to be slight opposition from the cabmen, they possessing neither organisation nor" power, their freedom of competition and trade is to be restricted by a body of men who, at the mere mention of similar interference in their own private businesses, would raise such a howl of indignant protest as would affright the gods. Say, for instance, any of our councillors were shareholders i,n the newest butler company (they may possibly be so) and Government proposed to fix a maximum price per lb for butter, would it not be in the minds of ("T civic authorities, versed in politicoeconomic lore, an unwarrantable interference with the law of supply and demand, and I see slight difference in the two rases except that the cab-driven) ,ia.TO not.an influential body, and possibly illiterate. There is ample competition amongst them, aA the number of cabs and owners witnesses, and> if certain people are unwilling to pay the men for ml© risks they tun with their delicate mechanism and for the hours day and night spent out in aJI weathers, let them hire an express'^-a vehicle more ars>ropfiate to their vulgar " would-b©ism.""-I am. etc., E. MORTON.