Incorporated in 1837, the city of Chicago had a booming economy and experienced massive growth in
the run-up to the turn of the 20th century. In 1840, Chicago was the 92nd most populous
city in the United States, by 1870 it was the second most populous city in the United States,
and by 1900 it was the fifth most populous city in the world behind only London, New York, Paris and
Berlin. Between 1890 and 1900 the population of Chicago doubled, between 1900 and 1920
it doubled again. An industrial center, it attracted not just mass emigration from Europe,
but also from african-americans from the deep south in what was called The Great Migration.
The population of african-americans in Chicago in 1910 was around 44,000,
by 1930 if that population was around 234,000. And that spurred an explosion in african-american art,
literature, and music that was called the Chicago Black Renaissance, but also drove racial tensions
that resulted in the terrible 1919 Chicago race riots in which 38 people were killed.
And then the passage of the 18th amendment in 1919 brought the nation into the era of prohibition,
and Chicago became notorious worldwide as a center of gangland violence as
rival gangs competed over the control of liquor imported from Canada in the Bootlegging Wars,
in the gangster era. The murder rate in Chicago increased 250% between 1923 and 1928. And it is
therefore not surprising in this huge, growing, sprawling city that was roiling with tensions
at the sort of typical conflict that cab drivers might have over places to pick up fares was taken
to unbelievable Heights. The Chicago TaxiCab Wars of the 1920s deserves to be remembered.
John Daniel Hertz was born in the austro-hungarian Empire in 1879, and his family emigrated to
Chicago when he was 5 years old. He was a successful prizefighter in his youth,
and then managed prizefighters, but by 1904 he was selling cars, a job at which he excelled. In 1907,
he became part owner of an automobile dealership with a friend named Walden Shaw when he struck
upon a business idea. The dealership was making good sales but much of their resources were tied
up in the cars traded in. The used car market had not developed yet and these represented a
financial liability. He was later quoted as saying, “As my customers weren't buyers of
secondhand cars, I had to put on my thinking cap to find some ways of disposing of them,
or making them earn their keep.” His idea was to use the surplus to get into the relatively new
business of renting pay-as-you-go taxicabs. At the time, horse-drawn Hansom cabs were still the norm,
and there were few motorcar taxi cabs operating in Chicago. But Chicago, where numerous railroads had
terminals, was a prime location for taxicabs, as there was considerable need for on-demand,
point-to-point, chauffeur driven transportation. Hertz's brainchild, the Walden W Shaw Auto Livery
Company, quickly developed into one of the top motor cab companies operating in Chicago. In
1910 rates were 30 cents for the first half mile, and ten cents for each quarter mile thereafter.
The company was innovative in a number of ways, for example, paying drivers by commission rather
than salary. And in 1912, hiring women drivers as that was supposed to address problems associated
with men driving cabs, including impertinence to customers, overcharging for their own benefit,
recklessness and fast driving, and inattention to the company's business.
And those were just some of Hertz's innovations. Another one, for example,
was that he, at his own expense, installed traffic lights on Michigan Avenue between
Randolph and 12th Street. The resulting improvement in the flow of traffic was
so impressive that the city of Chicago decided to expand the system, and to reimburse Hertz.
But Hertz’s real innovations came in 1913 after visiting Paris and learning about their successful
taxicab service. Their Parisian cabs were solid black making them easy to recognize, unlike
the large touring cars that they were using in Chicago. They were small purpose-built vehicles,
allowing lower upfront costs, and lower operating expenses. And Parisian cab drivers were more
polite than those in America spurring Hertz to limit his hiring only to the finest grade drivers
who would be trained in courtesy and rewarded with higher wages, more respect from the company,
and unusual for the day, company paid health care. The company started using purpose-built
cabs built around a four-cylinder continental engine all painted yellow. Hertz claimed the
color was based on a university study that he commissioned that determined that yellow was
the easiest color to spot, although there had been Hansom cabs painted yellow in other cities
at least since 1798. The color not only made it easier for customers to identify taxis, but
the visibility of the color reduced accidents. The company was reorganized as The Yellow Cab Company.
Notably, The Yellow Cab Company operated on the European model. Previously,
livery cabs had operated under contracts with clubs and businesses, paying a fee
to those businesses. The Yellow Cab company instead would pick people up on the street,
forgoing those fees. The new model allowed them to offer better service for a lower price. The
Yellow Cab company found great success, not just dominating the Chicago taxicab market,
but also selling their purpose-built cabs and licensing franchises in other cities.
Unexpectedly, Hertz's innovation had set the stage for the Chicago Taxi Wars.
Hertz was a hard businessman and noted for using heavy-handed tactics to put
pressure on competitors to go out of business, or to sell out
to him. By 1920 The Yellow Cab company had a virtual monopoly in the city of Chicago.
The Yellow Cabs biggest competition were the lime green and cream-colored taxis of the Checker Cab
company. Unlike Yellow Cab, the Checkered company was an association of independent
cab owners and operators who used a single livery. Competition for fares was always rough and tumble,
with cab drivers pushing hub cap to hub cap at prime locations. But Hertz had pulled
political strings to get the city to pass a cabstand permit law. A deliberate attempt
to shut out Checker drivers. Reportedly Yellow Cab drivers got permits quickly,
but Checker Cab drivers always faced delays. Checker complained,
and when a councilman investigated, bad words were exchanged between the two companies. Many
of the Checker drivers had been former Yellow Cab drivers, and Hertz considered them bad
seeds. Yellow Cabs lawyer called the Checker drivers, “An irresponsible bunch of hoodlums.”
But the bad blood between the two companies turned violent on July 27th 1920. It started
when a fist fight erupted between cabbies of the two companies jockeying for position on a
prime spot in front of a theater on The Loop, the central downtown business district. By evening,
the fight had turned into a running gun battle that the Associated Press described as,
“A battle between fleets of taxicabs, in which the vehicles were maneuvered according to the
best strategy of tank warfare. With their drivers firing hundreds of shots at each
other.” At one location, a dozen cabs in close formation roared by the branch garage
to the other company with pistols of the occupants crackling like machine guns. The
garage defenders replied with several volleys and sent a fleet of cabs in pursuit. Amazingly
there were no casualties. The goal seems to have been property damage and intimidation,
but soon casualties started occurring. A driver was wounded in the foot by gunfire on August 5th,
and two more on August 7th. By the end of August 1920, ten employees from the two
companies had been wounded in gun battles that erupted nearly every night. At one point city
council minutes referred to the situation as, “A war of terrorism on the streets of Chicago.”
In response, police stepped up their presence and the Taxi Cab War simmer down. But it escalated
again in June of the next year. On June 7th 1921, a car drove by a loop taxi stand and men inside
fired 25 shots. One struck a Yellow Cab driver named P.A. Skirven above the heart killing him.
John Hertz told the Chicago Tribune, “It has only been comic opera warfare until tonight. But from
now on, it is going to be a fight to the finish.” The murder of Skirven had been the culmination of
a violent day. A passenger in the Checkered Cab was injured on June 9th when Yellow Cabs forced
it into the curb. Fights erupted throughout the day. A Checker Cab rammed a Yellow Cab
starting a brawl in which several drivers were injured. A group of Yellow Cab drivers
overturned a Checker Cab starting a gunfight in which a driver was wounded. Later that evening,
another driver was wounded when he was hit in the head with a brick. The murder of Skirven,
who was shooting the breeze with other drivers was found to be in retaliation
for the driver hit with a brick. The shooting itself was perpetrated by three mob enforcers,
but the drivers of the cab carrying them were identified, and in 1925,
were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Their family still insists that they were
fall guys for the mob, and their sentences were commuted by Illinois Governor Len Small in 1928.
Again the City Council intervened, having the police search all cabs for weapons,
and threatening to pull both company's operating licenses. But violence erupted again in 1923 as
men in the Checker Cab fired shots at a Yellow Cab superintendent, and then fired at the police
pursuing them. In the midst of it all were charges of political and police favoritism,
corruption, and mob involvement. In 1924 the Cab War started a new phase as a violent union
dispute started within the Checker Cab company. At first Checker Cab was a non-union operation,
and then his drivers started to unionize, the organization broke down into violence. Mobsters
were trying to control the unions and joined in the fray. At one point in an act of intimidation,
four masked men assaulted a Checker Cab headquarters and put a group of non-union
drivers against a wall, threatening to kill them. A police protective detail
that was supposed to be protecting the building, and those within it,
had been mysteriously pulled away moments before the attack. The next morning the
men made good on their threats, as a drive-by shooting killed one of the non-union drivers.
The fight between Checker Cab and Yellow Cab erupted again in 1928,
when an argument over Loop location turned into a general brawl, and a Checker driver named Eugene
Thivierge was shot dead. A yellow cab driver was arrested. Within a week bombs exploded
the two Yellow Cab car garages destroying 17 cabs. Police theorized that the bombings were
revenge for the shooting of Thivierge. Then the war turned directly against John Hertz.
He bred racehorses and in October 1928, a fire burned out his stable killing eleven
racehorses worth an estimated $200,000. A prosecutor was assigned to investigate
Checker and a grand jury was impaneled over the incident. Then Hertz received death threats,
and was told that his grandchildren would be kidnapped. A few days later another bomb was found
at a Yellow Cab facility before it could detonate. Apparently getting the message, in 1929 Hertz sold
his stock in Yellow Cab and left the business. Ironically Yellow Cabs fleet merged with Checker.
Eventually the City Council was able to tamp down the Taxi Wars by limiting the number of
medallions, or permits, to legally operate the taxicab and thus reducing competition. There
were still some violent incidents over union contracts, but today the IRS considers taxi
cab drivers to be independent contractors, and that put an end to most union disputes. Things
like rates and pay are usually regulated by the cities, and the last major taxicab drivers strike
in Chicago was back in 1980. In many ways the TaxiCab Wars of the 1920s represented
the stresses that were in Chicago, and the nation generally at the time. Things like modernization,
massive demographic changes, the economic dislocation of the recession that followed the
First World War, and of course the coming Great Depression. The violence of the Prohibition era,
rampant corruption among city officials and police departments put the taxicab drivers,
which is a natural point of job entry for new immigrants, on the front lines of social conflict.
John Hertz did not stay retired for very long. In 1924 he had acquired a different business which
he had sold to General Motors, but in 1953 he purchased that business back from General Motors.
It was of course a competitor for taxicabs. Drive your own rental cars. And that company, Hertz
Rent-a-Car still bears his name, and appropriately still uses the color yellow in all its marketing.
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