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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
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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)