Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

328 BRITAIN very seldom drive. Finally, allowance has to be made for a percentage of drivers whose temperament does not harmonise with un- remitting attention to duty. It would con- sequently be quite erroneous to infer that many willing hands must of necessity be idle all the year round. The trouble with cabmen is not that work is difficult to get, but that it is often unremunerative. The London cab service employs almost twenty thousand horses, the hansom requiring at least two horses, while one is generally deemed suffi- cient for the more cumbrous four-wheeler. It is a striking fact, full of meaning for the economist, that the extension of railways and the multiplication of omnibuses and trams has done little or no injury to the cab trade. The number of vehicles in London is not diminishing, and their quality is on the whole improving rather than deteriorat- ing, a state of things which bears but one interpretation. The largest proprietor of cabs in the United Kingdom is the London Improved Cab Company, which is a joint-stock concern giving employment to eight hundred men AT WORK. and more than a thousand horses. None of its rivals attempt business on so comprehen- sive a scale. At its premises in Pakenham Street it builds its own vehicles and equips them down to the smallest detail. It makes its own harness and lamps, and shoes its own horses. Its really splendid stable ac- commodation includes a hospital, which is attended by the company’s own veterinary surgeon. Even the indiarubber tyres for the wheels and the brass mounting for the harness are made by the company’s work- men. The London Improved Cab Company’s place being so entirely self-contained, it affords an excellent idea in miniature of the industrial importance of the cab industry and the numerous trades that derive some degree of sustenance from it. The layman has but a vague notion of the serious part played by the coach-painter in the production of a hansom. When the “ body-maker” has completed the shell, layer after layer of paint is laid on until about twenty coats have been applied. Besides the highly skilled artisans employed in the trade, and the large number for whom it provides clerical occupation, “ CHANGING HORSES ” (LONDON IMPROVED CAB COMPANY’S DEPOT).