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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 11, 1908)
r - i J 6 PORTLAND, OREGON SUNDAY ' HORNING, OCTOBER I f, JJ hi HP ' in. Li-' At V X km X Oil Xfrn 1 - '.'---2Anc?: v -X ft' Y 1 VI tHave : Become ' SJaVcs of the otbieir y. 1 i .NJ' s-?" mi, f I1 7 tr nl and- woe. h A MERICA, the land of tlSffiec i tyrant. He is the. chauffeur.. Like all autocrats he has many vi confers many boons, when he is in his best estate, But, in his worst, he rules his subject peofl of iron; and from his power, used for weal'o appears to be no escape. Europe, land of effete nobility and of hapless peasan has its chauffeurs prone under the chassis, groveling without a thought of rebellion, and biting the dust every" few minutes just to show they're tamed beyond the last spark of resent- v tnent. . " , j A merica's new tyrant lords it over the auto, the roadway, the owner, and the general population. The difference is so vasi that it has become dismaying. The consequences have become so huge that the question is being continually debated, Whyt Why is the United States, as a whole, at the mercy of the new Oligarchy of the Chauffeur's f. Mm r 1"' 'Is: 1 Fi. One of Dodge's friends, Noyes i 8W1 V (, nil all the other - into the blind Dodge . unconscious iinself three ribs' brokenA r , Early last summer Mrs. J.'Elebash, of Hew lor, vV,v. 1 e6ifsw53jiLJb' married with in a' WeckP-tcrtiJcdell-lir-lIarne J.'TtBMiIaflecre esJLO-x. rank jrtwuccTxnrnniff tzm ,ping tnp7'bbBtK,c.(Lth a t L?rhHfitur was wet with the ram. She tieturn4jp9 uua irom some ance pact tore a Jirea lcnirth; but so r built - that is su: car, througH the a oad It Mi f s, B ECAUSE, reply the members if on' con tingent, the reall excellent chauffeur is like the 'woman for whom the Scrip tares reserve their loftiest encomium a pearl beyond price, a possession above rubies. Because, reply others, the owners of motors Are so utterly careless of their own rights and so indulgent of the chauffeur's privileges, that practically no rights remain and all1 privileges have become prerogatives. ' Because, still others affirm, the owners themselves are so little fit to be masters in their own house, that . their- chauffeurs are largely their dictators, the nominal masters being actu ally afraid to administer the rebukes which alone can effect emancipation from the yoke. As for the public and-the public's opinion, great as the automobile industry has grown to be, and numerous as are its patrons, all motor ists recognire the fsct that no development in locomotion can proceed ina manner wholly irrespective of existing conditions; and the large majority recognize the desirability of maintaining the entente cordiale with the pe destrian population at as high a level aa their Pegasus will admit. ' Xor is it a fact that the chauffeur, as a class, is given over to the tyranny for which he is becoming notorious. Owners are far "more numeroTiily responsible for the usurpation of -public roadways; and those chauffeurs who do. emulate their masters on their own hook are ' emphatically in the minority. - But the. sensational features of the esca pades indulged in by thoe chauffeurs who' art prone to assume all the license that is forbid- den to owners ,have brought-upon the entire craft the odintri of Uara for universal tyr anny such as has attached to so other body of Americans, even in poiic. of public and private rights is the now notori ous "joy ride," already legislated against in sev eral states with special laws made necessary by the habitual reluctance of owners to employ ordinary precautions .and- to act under the common law. The moto car is still .too recent a factor in our civilisation for the assemblage of reliable. general statistics, except on the most haphaz ard scale; and "joy riding," as a special factor in accidents, is an element that has come into prominence so lately that there are no statis tics at all. :' As early as three years ago, in New York city, a four months' comparison showed twelve killed and sixty-one injured in auto accidents, against only thirty-one killed and 323' injured by all the horse-drawn vehicles of the great city, and ninety-seven killed and 173 injured by all its street cars. CAUSMANY ACCIDENTS ' The percentage of those auto accidents that was due to the . heedlessness of drivers other than their owners cannot even be guessed at, any more than the total number of "joy rides" can be surmised in comparison with the runs made by cars occupied by the persons who hare a right to be in them. Even at that time, Winthrop E. Searritt, formerly president of te Automobile Club of America, declared that careful - investigation would prove four-fifths of all fatal accidents doe to irresponsible chauffeurs. , The "joy ride" is the inveterate foe of sta tistics, for the. very essence of its astonishing extension, ss a practice, bas been evasion of Mly cares, or both. But the individual trwktt which have been incident to "joy riding" have startled every large community with such frequent repe tition that the term haa already become, synony mous with a recklessness which falls short of homicide only when it is suicidal. ' In the public imagination, the irresponsible chauffeur looms up like a man, drunk with some occult drug, seizing upon a modern war chariot of , irresistible power and driving it madly onward and onward, running amuck over highways and byways until disaster intervenes. Those disasters have been appallingly nu merous. Their various measures of blame have ranged from cases where the chauffeur was only slightly reprehensible to where he was abso lutely reckless. Often, if not usually, by some peculiar 'fitness of punishment, the chauffeur has been among those who psid most heavily for the rashness. Such a disaster was that which occurred three years ago in New York, when the term joy riding had not yet been coined.- Edward H. Graves, of South Orange, owned, a 40-horse-power touring car. His chsuffeur,' Arthur Dodge, took a party of half a dozen men to the Empire City race track, saw the races, had dinner at a road house, and "whooped things" up to a dizzying rate of speed on the return, towards midnight. On Jerome awenue, passing Woodlawn Cemetery, where the road turns sharply. Dodge, knowing the turn perfectly well, disregarded the obvious precaution of applying his brakes. The tires failed toehold; and . the machine, skidding furiously, hurled itself arainst a trol- owners wihen by the offending chauffeurs and' ley pole. The seven men were scarcely soaring a biff, "powenioi macnina nd burMi it, like the pro normou gun, straight at ardin the cliff. The im in it half way across its unchlv . Had the fence been ed to check the flight of the into trbich its chauneur naa launched it. -nimsier zence, anty n mu 'cmu mivin it fall ta clear the southbound i.9L tracks belojrChecked as it was, it droppea Gould garage; here the car waa-suaJUy thirty feet, directly ; change his. clothing, and then" take the aut3jUnwtha rails..; . ' once to a repair shop, because the top leaked. . s ';:TlIe7TowmaBA-ai-tiIo tumult of shriek - V 'that? followed thAcrinB. acted with ugntning set the signal against tn . . -l jA rss due to pass in less mau . But it was too late. ' r0RS MERE WRECKS ' . ThoTrftHiffenr. i instead.' invited a party b 1 his riends toYtake ride i with hinj. He de-Vi ' J lard, afterwatd,tnattl5JhraWfaaed M 1 ""It was late in the afternoon w1n"rt-4he-xjai$Vi ing helplessly hither and yon, yet making stead ily toward the North river. As it reached the stringpiece of the wharf one of the men jumped, landing safely, and ran away. All the others went down with the ma chine into the river; and all, except the. driver, were drowned. The chauffeur, carried down with it, was the only one able to. free himself and swim to the pier. One of the most terrible tragedies known in the history of "joy riding" was that which first centered . public attention upon the now common evil. It contained all the features characteristic of the practice in its most aggra vated form, from the hilarity with which it be gan to the horrible deaths in which it ended. A TERRIBLE ATONEMENT At 11 o'clock on an October night four years ago Albert Noyes. a chauffeur, drew up at the doors of the Biverside Casino, in the dance resort near Xew York known as Little Coney Island. He drank with a party of men and women whom he, met in the hall ; about mid night, four men and five women piled into the big red automobile and started a noisy, mad race foT the Bronx. Swift as the pace was, it was interrupted ir in and again for additional drinks at road- houses, until the route neared the old Maleomb The express, its way barely lessened at the flash of the signal light, thundered down upon the doomed party. The chauffeur, caught up with the wreck of his machine, was found dead on the engine's pilot when the train came to a stop. One woman, dragged by her long auto mobile coat 200 feet, was then dropped under the train wheels and cut exactly in half. Three of the party, in all, were corpses when the train halted, one of them Xoyes, the others women. The rest were more or less mangled, yet able to survive, mere wrecks of the humanity they had been when they em barked upon the mad, clamorous dash from the dance hall. ' Owners who have had the self-assertion and the moral courage to set their faces aternly against liberties taken by their chauffeurs are few. In Pittsburg, James II. BeaL formerly lsw partner of Senator Knox, had a chauffeur who ran over and killed a boy. The man wss arrested, but could bsve been admitted to baiL Mr. Beal had made inquiries, and felt con vinced that the killing was an accident. Never theless, he refused to go bail for his chauffeur. I am satisfied that there is too much care lessness by chauffeurs," be explained. "lier a life has been lost, and some one wss to blame. So far as I srn concerned, my ehauSeur i. dam bridge, at 161st street, near Jerome and. remsin in jil on the charre tl murder ucui complete indifference to the chauffeurs actions en the part of owners. Throughout, it hss The first, andxnost objectionable, invasion -been a ease of either nobody knows, or nobody into the air when the tank of gasoline exploded with "terrific force, leaving the car ia frag ments and setting them on fire. Sedgewick avenues. From Jerome, avenue a blind road led that ended at the railroad embankment, a city preci- ' pice over a railway cut,' amply guarded for all ordinary needs with a stout paling fence. Thirty feet below lay the southbound track : 200 feet above the bridge stands the signal tower. ' ' - L.l tK rvt.-rL" When Frank C. Focte. the chauffeur ef Jamee J. Dill,, the railroad magnste, -lj.-lp.-t himself to bis employer's Whorr""' '" cedes and killed a woman while " t cu h way to one f the "Sew York eour- Jt trul for exceeding the. speed limit on a jrni (COXTmiD OX XSflDK rAGE)
