Abstract
During the interwar period, illegal shared ride sedans (known as ‘wildcat sedans’) appealed to a significant fraction of travellers between Los Angeles and San Francisco, defying California’s ethos of regulated rail and bus monopolies. Several historians documented the urban jitney phenomenon, but none examined California’s wildcat sedans. This paper attempts to fill that void. It examines how private automobiles posed a challenge to corporate interests in the intercity public transportation, investigating the structure and economics of the wildcatters, how wildcatters exploited the legal ambiguities of private motor vehicles to challenge those corporations, and the public welfare consequences of this defiance of the regulatory state.
Keywords
Introduction
Decades before Uber and Lyft devised smart phone apps to fill shared ride autos inside of cities, illegal shared ride autos, which the press called wildcat sedans, appealed to a significant fraction of travellers between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Instead of apps to coordinate supply and demand, loosely affiliated bands of sedan owners, drivers, and hotel clerks matched demand for cut-rate travel with supply of shared ride autos. They did so for over twenty years during the interwar period in defiance of California’s regulated rail and bus monopolies.
California’s wildcat sedans lasted much longer than urban jitneys. The latter first appeared in Los Angeles in 1914 and then rapidly spread to major cities throughout the United State and Canada. Urban jitneys defied established streetcar systems, were popular, and perhaps for that reason were rapidly shut down by urban elites who fought to preserve heavy capital investments in the street railway systems. By 1920 few urban jitneys remained, while California’s wildcat sedans soldiered on. 1
Several historians documented the urban jitney phenomenon, but none examined California’s wildcat sedans. This paper attempts to fill that void. It first examines growth of the legitimate intercity bus industry under the ethos of regulated monopoly. It then examines how private automobiles posed a challenge to corporate interests, which lobbied for restricted entry to the field of intercity public transportation. 2 Presenting the structure and economics of the wildcatters, the paper describes how wildcatters exploited the legal ambiguities of private motor vehicles to challenge those corporations for so many years. The paper concludes with reflections upon the public welfare consequences of this defiance of the regulatory state. Primary sources include Annual Reports and Opinions and Orders of the California Railroad Commission as well as the case file for the Commission’s Santa Fe Case. 3
The birth of California’s legal intercity bus industry and its early regulation
In 1910 passenger travel within California was booming from the influx of population and the state’s surging economy. Passengers using the state’s rapidly growing steam and electric rail systems had increased by 300 per cent since the end of the economic depression in 1897, and new modes of transportation were appearing. 4 That year California voters approved an US$18 million bond (equivalent to today’s 549 million US$) to establish a state highway bureaucracy funded to connect all state population centres with paved trunk highways. Counties already were paving local roads. Auto ownership was increasing rapidly and in 1910 reached eighteen autos per thousand residents. 5
The precursor to intercity buses also began in 1910, when one George Tatterson modified a touring automobile to transport fare-paying passengers between Stockton and nearby towns. Tatterson made money from his interurban jitney, and his success spawned imitators. 6 The California Railroad Commission estimated that in 1915 about five hundred interurban jitneys operated in the state in addition to the approximately two thousand urban jitneys that had mushroomed into existence just since the previous year. Two years later interurban jitneys numbered about 1700, whereas urban jitneys had declined to eight hundred due largely to local government efforts to regulate them. Many urban jitneys moved into the interurban jitney service, which was beyond municipal control because it typically operated through several municipal jurisdictions. 7 In the infancy of auto adoption in California, it seemed that anyone with an auto could make a living transporting others along state highways for a fee.
This situation quickly changed, however, as ever more Californians preferred to buy motor vehicles for their private use rather than for sharing rides with others. California auto ownership soared, reaching 54 cars per thousand capita in 1915 and then 164 five years later, while the initial brisk demand for collective transportation sagged. In response, around 1915 owner-operators of interurban jitneys began coalescing into larger organisations, some of which began building larger vehicles. 8 New organisational forms included multiple ownership of cars by one owner, associations of operators, and small corporations. 9
The larger operators also formed the Motor Carriers Association (hereafter MCA) in 1915. ‘The membership of the association … included only a few of the larger and better established intercity bus operators who were as concerned as the interurban electric railway companies over the cut-rate intercity “jitney” service.’ 10 The MCA was the first state-wide intercity bus association in the US, whose purpose was to, ‘… maintain a continuous lobby before state and federal legislative bodies for more adequate regulation of the industry’. 11
The MCA and the Western Association of Short Line Railroads, apparently representing interurban electric railways, lobbied the state legislature to bring the nascent interurban jitney services under regulatory control of the California Railroad Commission so as to outlaw new entrants into the field. While rate regulation was the major concern with freight carriers, service regulation was foremost in the minds of the passenger carriers, who were alarmed by loss of passengers to private automobiles. 12 Suppliers wanted to limit competition: 13 the bus and rail interests finally agreed to jointly support a draft bill proposed by the Railroad Commission, which the legislature adopted in 1917 as the Auto Stage and Truck Transportation Act. 14
The ethos of regulated monopoly
The act regulated safety, fares, and entry into the business. There was little controversy over safety and fares: California fare practice mirrored that in most other states. That was to peg short distance bus fares above rail fares, because buses were considered superior to trains for short haul travel, while holding long-distance bus fares somewhat below rail fares. 15
Control of entry was the major concern. The California act regulated the right to operate common carrier bus service by requiring intercity bus operators to obtain certificates of public convenience and necessity from the Railroad Commission. Certificates permitted holders to provide and advertise service between specified terminals along specified roads in accordance to specified departure and arrival times and fares. The act grandfathered the roughly 1700 interurban jitneys then in operation with certificates. Newcomers were required to buy out certificates of existing operators. Commission policy prohibited competition. A new operator could enter service only where no service existed or where the existing holder of a certificate was not serving public convenience and necessity. 16
This ethos was known as regulated monopoly, the demand for which came from the larger firms in the industry and not from passengers. 17 Regulated monopoly characterised state regulation of intercity buses throughout the United States until Congress’s adoption of the federal Motor Carrier Act of 1935. The assumption underlying regulated monopoly was that an investor was more likely to buy into a protected monopoly with healthy profits than into a competitive enterprise. 18 The result in California was rapid consolidation of the state’s intercity bus industry, as persons with capital bought up certificates and consolidated them into regional monopolies with the Commission’s blessing. Waves of consolidation continued through the 1920s, culminating in 1929–30 with a West Coast intercity bus monopoly called Pacific Greyhound Lines (hereafter PGL). By 1933 PGL was jointly controlled by the Greyhound Corporation and the state’s largest railroad, the Southern Pacific Company. 19
National regulation of motor carriers came later in response to the rapid development of long-distance trucking in the 1920s and a 1925 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Kuykendall. The decision prohibited states from regulating interstate motor carrier passengers and freight. The decision precipitated rate wars amongst interstate truckers and between them and railroads, destabilising both industries, particularly with the onset of the Great Depression. There was too much capacity for too little demand, thus depressing wages for truckers and threatening investors in the capital-intensive railroad industry. These concerns led eventually to the 1935 Motor Carrier Act. 20
Intercity bus operations, which were small compared to trucking, played a secondary role in debates leading up to the Motor Carrier Act. 21 Because bus fares were pegged to rail passenger fares, fare stabilisation was not an issue. Buck v. Kuykendall also affected intercity bus systems less than interstate truckers, because in 1925 most intercity bus passengers rode less than 50 miles. In large and populated states, like California, relatively few crossed state lines. 22 Later as bus companies extended routes through multiple states, state commissions could deny interlopers the right to carry intrastate passengers. The California Railroad Commission did this as competitors to PGL extended routes into California. Without intrastate passengers, the extensions were unprofitable, and PGL retained its dominant position within the state. 23
While exempting private trucking and the carriage of unprocessed agricultural products, the 1935 Motor Carrier Act brought most interstate trucking and bus companies under jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission (hereafter ICC). The act eliminated freight rate competition by pegging common and contract carrier truck rates to rail rates. To stabilise wages, the act required common carriers to obtain certificates of public convenience and necessity, and the ICC policy was to reduce capacity by restricting entry. The act also required the ICC to regulate equipment standards and employee qualifications. The act grandfathered motor carriers in common carrier interstate operation on 1 June 1935. 24
The ethos of regulated competition
The main effect of the Motor Carrier Act for intercity bus development in California was the creation of a competitor to PGL. Debate leading to the act spurred the Santa Fe Railway to purchase independent bus lines prior to 1 June 1935. The railway reorganised its bus assets into a network serving its rail territory between Chicago and California, including routes linking California’s major population centres. The Santa Fe Case was all about the railway’s bus subsidiaries, soon to be known as Santa Fe Trailways, petitioning the Railroad Commission for certificates to carry intra-California passengers in competition with PGL. After listening to witnesses testify for and against regulated monopoly over a two-year period, the California Railroad Commission surprisingly ruled in favour of the Santa Fe bus system and issued it permits to carry intra-California passengers. The Commission thus replaced its ethos of ‘regulated monopoly’ with ‘regulated competition’. 25 It would tolerate two large-scale bus systems competing with each other, but it would not tolerate owner-operators competing.
Wildcat sedans in California
Not all would-be bus entrepreneurs observed the regime of regulated monopoly in California. After 1917 – and in defiance of the Railroad Commission – new entrepreneurs set up jitney-like services which undercut the rates of the certificated carriers. They operated in California long-distance service, with both intrastate and interstate destinations.
Remarkably, the operations of the two types of services were almost entirely separate, in terms of vehicles, drivers, owners, and booking agents. 26 Additionally, the interstate service was not illegal: they connected Los Angeles with Midwestern cities. Thus, being interstate, they were not under Railroad Commission jurisdiction, and the federal 1935 Motor Carrier Act excluded them from ICC jurisdiction. 27
On the other hand, California intrastate operations were not legal. While the operators were registered with the State Board of Equalization (which collected income taxes), the sedans were registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the drivers held California drivers' licenses, the wildcatters lacked certificates of public convenience and necessity. That shortcoming made them illegal. They also did not carry liability insurance for their passengers. 28
In this paper, we focus on the latter Californian intrastate service.
In 1938 about forty sedans, mostly second-hand, modified Cadillacs and Packards, provided low cost transportation between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Wildcatters were not serving other markets in California, nor did they typically cater to intermediate traffic. Typical sedan modifications included the addition of three jump seats as well as baggage racks on the rear or roof, yielding seven seats for passengers and accommodation for their baggage. The typical sedan and driver made two round trips per week. On any given day about 20–25 sedans made the trip (10–13 in each direction), yielding about 5.8 million annual kilometres (3.5 million miles) in sedan service. The service attracted 120–150 passengers (60–75 in each direction). The average load for a sedan was 5.5 passengers, a load factor of 79 per cent. 29
Most sedans followed the 657 km (408 mile) US 99 Valley Route between the two cities rather than the 715 km (444 mile) Coast Route along US 101 and made the run in about 12 h. Usually the trip included three 30 min breaks at restaurants that provided free meals to the drivers. Sedans typically left either city either around 11:00 a.m. or around 5:00 p.m. 30
Organisation of wildcat sedan services
Through the Depression California’s private auto ownership hovered around 350 autos per thousand population, reaching four hundred by the end of the decade. Wildcat sedan operators could not have attained high load factors in such a thin market without a mechanism for matching passenger demand with drivers and vehicles. Travel bureaus and their bookers, located primarily in second class hotels of Los Angeles and San Francisco, were the means for such coordination.
Bookers placed ads in the classified pages of phone books, distributed business cards advertising the services, and placed advertising both inside and outside of hotels. Placards and cards generally advertised two departures daily and provided a travel bureau phone number. Bookers also arranged shuttle automobiles to pick up passengers at remote hotels in downtown areas and suburbs and then take them to sedans. If sedans at one hotel filled up, bookers would redirect passengers to other sedans with empty seats loading at other hotels. Bookers representing competing sedan operators cooperated with each other to achieve full loads while not leaving passengers behind. 31 Some operators, particularly those who owned several sedans, set up their own travel bureaus; other travel bureaus were independent and served several operators. Typically, sedan owners rented space in hotel lobbies, where their bookers worked at a desk, and the lobby itself served as a waiting room.
A description of how the Analora brothers of Los Angeles arranged their wildcat sedan and booking business illustrates its many coordinated aspects. 32 To attract passengers to the several sedans that he owned, Sam Analora rented two ground floor rooms in the Mercer Hotel on South Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles. One room served as a travel bureau for his booking agents, one of whom, Joe Analora, owned five sedans of his own. Joe Analora also picked up and delivered passengers to a travel bureau in the Port of Los Angeles in suburban San Pedro, managed by Iva McGlynn. McGlynn collected fares and deposited them into a joint account that she maintained with Sam Analora. Joe Analora sometimes also drove sedans to and from San Francisco (as did Sam himself and another Analora, John). The other room served as a waiting room and had a door to a side parking lot where sedans loaded. Each day 8–10 persons entered the hotel seeking transportation to San Francisco, according to the hotel manager, who directed passengers to the booker on duty. Other passengers were brought in by shuttle autos. 33
Sam Analora also ran a travel bureau out of another Los Angeles hotel, the Huntington Hotel at 752 South Main Street (not to be confused with the famous Pasadena resort hotel), and still another out of the Blackstone Hotel in San Francisco, where he employed Theron Gittons as a booker. Gittons directed pickup services for southbound passengers coming from various addresses in San Francisco, directed Analora’s sedan drivers while they were in San Francisco (including renting rooms for drivers to get 8 h of sleep), and collected fares from passengers and divided fares between drivers and Analora. In return for their services, travel bureaus retained US$1.00 (equivalent to today’s 14US$) of every US$5.00 fare when the fare was US$5.00, and they continued to receive US$1.00 of every fare after the fare was reduced to US$4.00. 34
The appeal of wildcat services
Around 1937 John F. Kelley, who had been in the business since 1919, described passengers that he encountered over the course of his career as coming from all walks of life. 35 Railroad Commissioner Wallace Ware lent some credence to Kelley’s observation when he noted, ‘Witnesses testified that they preferred sedan service to other forms of transportation … because it was more chummy; rates were lower, a better opportunity was afforded to see the territory traversed; inability to ride trains and busses on account of car sickness; and a general preference for sedan service.’ 36
Other witnesses, however, stressed low fares as the primary appeal of the wildcatters. Based on experience with the Los Angeles Board of Public Utilities prosecuting sedan operators, H. F. Bassett opined that almost all sedan passengers chose the sedans because of the low fare. He added that a large part of the passengers were salesmen traveling on their own account, and many used the services regularly. Another category included unemployed men who often were friends with drivers. He also described one occasion when a US fleet arrived in San Francisco and sent 150 sailors to Los Angeles in sedans. 37 A pioneering interurban jitney operator, Tom Morgan testified that employment agencies in the industrial districts of both metropolitan areas also supplied passengers destined to jobs in the other metropolitan area. 38
A young lawyer for the Passenger Carrier’s Association, Orla St Clair painted a darker picture of wildcat sedan passengers. He based his picture on a trip he made in a wildcat sedan, apparently between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1937, but to which he added sensational generalisations apparently taken from interstate shared ride services: Wildcat sedans make excellent conveyances of bootleg liquor and stolen merchandise. Gun battles between wildcat travelers and unsuspecting traffic officers give irrefutable proof that the wildcat sedans are a much-used means of transportation for the fleeing criminal or escaped convict. And although wildcatters vehemently deny that their sedans are used for running dope, an occasional arrest reveals that the industry is one of the principal channels through which narcotics are distributed over the country from the seaboard points of entry.
39
St Claire’s recollections raise the question of gender in the world of wildcat sedans. Unfortunately, little additional evidence emerges. Passengers themselves provided little insight, because they would not testify against wildcat sedan operators. 41 We are left with Kelley’s and Bassett’s characterisations of passengers, which suggest a largely male-dominated clientele. Newspaper stories referring to interstate shared ride sedans do mention female passengers, however, including four friends traveling together who were seriously injured in a wreck. 42 A number of women also worked in the wildcat industry. Of the approximately forty persons who testified before the Railroad Commission about their roles in wildcat sedan operations, seven were women. One owned two cars and drove one while hiring a driver for the other. Five managed travel bureaus, including directing drivers who were away from their home terminals, as well as directing the flow of money from passengers to drivers and owners. One worked primarily as a driver. 43
Wildcat sedan economics
Throughout their history, wildcat sedan operators steadfastly undercut fares offered by the certificated carriers. Bassett testified in 1936 that as recently as the late 1920s the typical wildcat sedan fares between Los Angeles and San Francisco was US$10.00, but in early 1936 it stood at US$5.00, substantially undercutting PGL’s one-way fare of US$8.00 and round-trip fare of US$13.35. 44 In mid-1936 PGL reduced its fares again, to US$6.25 one-way and US$11.25 round trip. In response, wildcatters dropped their fares further to US$4.00 and occasionally US$3.50 and remained at that level through at least 1940. 45
On dimensions other than fares, the regulated carriers generally provided superior service to the wildcatters. Regulated carriers provided liability insurance, more comfortable accommodations, and likely were more reliable. They also generally were as fast or faster. 46
Public transport market share between Los Angeles and San Francisco, c. 1939.
Author’s elaboration based on Thompson,46 Table 25, p. 133, 147 and 195, and W. A. Snell.36
Note on Assumed Percentage of Passengers: The Daylight catered primarily to passengers between SF and LA, though it stopped at five intermediate towns. The Lark did likewise; the percentage of assumed through passengers is higher because of its overnight schedule oriented to business travel between SF and LA. The Sunset Limited connected San Francisco to New Orleans, but it ran overnight in both directions between SF and LA not far removed from the Lark and also attracted SF-LA business traffic.
An income statement for California’s wildcat sedans may be approximated from a 1939 proposal to operate a legitimate sedan service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. W. A. Snell argued that the popularity of wildcat sedans indicated a market for second class service between Los Angeles and San Francisco that regulated buses ignored. He proposed serving the market legally and petitioned the Railroad Commission for a permit of public convenience and necessity to do so. There would be no cost associated with the permit if the Railroad Commission chose to issue one, but if it chose not to issue one, Snell could not initiate service. There was no option of purchasing a certificate.
Snell proposed operating two round trips daily via both the Coast and Valley routes, using twelve Cadillac sedans, eight of which he would use in daily service, while holding four in reserve. The operation would provide 2.00 million kilometres (1.24 million miles) of service annually, roughly one-third of the amount of service that the wildcatters then provided. Snell proposed purchasing sedans that were two to three years old for US$850 each, modifying them with air conditioners (US$35 each) and installing three jump seats (US$25 per car). The total capital investment of US$10,920 would yield seven passenger seats per sedan. Snell estimated that he could attract on average 5.5 passengers for every schedule (as the wildcatters were doing) with a US$4.50 fare (US$0.50 higher than the wildcat fare). Presumably his drivers would make two round trips per week, as was the practice with wildcat sedans. 47
Estimated income statement for Snell proposal.
The figures in bold are from Snell's proposal, while those in lighter type indicate the authors' efforts to break down Snell's US$48,177 operating expenses into their constituent parts.
Subtracting estimates for gas and oil; tires, tubes, and parts; and repairs from Snell’s estimate of US$48,177 for operating expenses leaves US$28,634 for drivers. Given that one driver was to make two round trips per week, and assuming that each driver would have two weeks of unpaid vacation results in a projected need for 14.6 full time equivalent drivers. Dividing the US$28,634 left over for drivers by fifteen yields a wage for a full-time equivalent driver of US$1909. That figure compares favourably to the average wage for a full-time employee in the United States in 1940 of US$1368, when the unemployment rate was around 18 per cent. 50 It also compares favourably to the 1939 average unionised railroad worker wage of US$1877 and that for a unionised local bus driver or streetcar motorman of US$1569. 51
The US$3400 depreciation entry indicates that Snell intended to replace his vehicles roughly every three years. Over time, his fleet would have contained sedans between two and six years old, which likely would have been a reliable fleet. There also is a line item for liability insurance and another for licenses. Office expenses presumably included rented terminal space as well as bookkeeping. Projected net revenue of US$2323 indicates a 21 per cent return on investment, very handsome, indeed. It appears that Snell could have met criticisms made of the wildcatters while still operating a useful and profitable venture.
Overall, these results indicate that there was a strong market for the type of low-fare service that Snell proposed. It appears that it was possible to pay the drivers well, while maintaining the vehicles and providing Snell with a healthy return on investment. The California Railroad Commission denied Snell’s application, however, because the commissioners agreed with PGL’s position that Snell was proposing ‘cutthroat’ competition to PGL that did not further the public’s convenience and necessity.
Estimated annual income statement for wildcat sedans.
The figures in bold are from Snell's proposal, while those in lighter type indicate the authors' efforts to break down Snell's US$48,177 operating expenses into their constituent parts.
The lower fare, the higher rates for maintenance expenses of Table 3 compared to Table 2, along with the high cost of bookers, left less income for drivers in the wildcat industry. The possible average wage for a full-time driver of US$1248 was considerably lower than that of a unionised railroad or transit worker, but it was not much below the US$1368 average wage in the United States. Given the high unemployment rate of around 18 per cent, many potential drivers would have been happy for the work, but it is possible that had wildcatters not existed, PGL and Santa Fe Trailways might have employed a few more drivers at higher wages. At the same time the profit per sedan suggests an excellent return on investment for those owning several.
Fighting California’s wildcat sedans
Wildcatters were operating by 1919 almost as soon as the Railroad Commission began regulating intercity buses, 53 and the MCA led efforts to stamp them out. In 1921 in response to MCA complaints, the Commission asked newspapers to censor wildcat ads, and it asked police departments in San Francisco and Los Angeles to arrest drivers. Police in Los Angeles did arrest drivers and obtain convictions, but a year later wildcatters still were in business. 54
The authors could find little about the MCA, but a 1938 internal report on corruption in the state legislature offers some insight. 55 A nearly penniless Arthur Samish, who in later years was known as California’s most notorious lobbyist, organised the MCA to make money. He thought that he could do so by offering representation to a promising new industry, which he judged intercity buses to be. As the intercity bus industry consolidated under the protection of regulation, membership in the MCA dropped but became more distinguished. The final bus merger of 1929–30 left the MCA with only PGL as a member and Samish as secretary. From 1935 to 1938 Samish received about US$61,000 from the MCA, about a third of the income he received from established associations during those years. He presumably used some of the MCA income to promote the interests of PGL, including elimination of the wildcat sedans. 56
The MCA, for example, hired Tom Morgan in the mid-1920s to direct a group of eight undercover operators to gather data on wildcatters. Morgan pioneered in the interurban jitney business and became president of United Stages, one of the first bus corporations. A major bus merger in 1926 left him unemployed, however, and available to the MCA. 57 The MCA or PGL also hired an E. H. Douglas some twenty times between 1934 and 1937 to investigate wildcatters. 58
The legislative corruption report identifies another lobbying group, the Passenger Carrier’s Association, as ‘embracing’ the MCA, but did not further define the relationship or who belonged to the PCA. It does reveal, however, that since 1934 Orla St Clair served as PCA’s general counsel, and that, ‘… it was [St. Clair’s] function as an attorney to protect the Association’s bus line members from competition from “wild catters”’.59 St Clair was only 31 years old in 1934. This is the same St Clair who wrote the sensational 1937 Scribners article about depredations of wildcatters on their passengers. St Clair continued with the PCA into Second World War. 60 After the war he and his wife rose into the ranks of San Francisco’s social elite. 61
This information suggests that the anti-establishment patina of the wildcatters as well as their competition with PGL and later Santa Fe Trailways was responsible for their persecution. Several points stand out. One is the sensationalism of St Clair’s Scribners article in the absence of supporting evidence. Another is his collaboration, beginning as a young attorney with a notorious lobbyist whose stock in trade was back room deal making, some of which apparently led to bus industry consolidation. Another is St Clair’s subsequent trajectory into the elite. There also is the precedent of the elimination of urban jitneys after 1914, which arose from urban elites who viewed the jitneys as anarchistic threats to their investments in large streetcar corporations. 62 Independent truckers in the 1970s harboured populist feelings to the effect that truck regulation benefitted no one other than the cabal of corporate leaders, labour bosses, and bureaucrats who created it. 63 Wildcatters were in a similar position with respect to regulation as were the independent truckers and could have felt similarly. Although the wildcat sedans never threatened the existence of PGL or Santa Fe Trailways or investments in the major railroads, it is probable they, with their anti-corporate structure, made established interests uncomfortable.
The City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times, another bastion of the establishment, 64 also vigorously fought the wildcatters. Los Angeles adopted an ordinance in the 1920s outlawing wildcat sedans from operating within its borders, 65 and its Board of Public Utilities tried to enforce it by censoring wildcat ads and arresting drivers. 66 Articles in the Times suggest concern for passengers left stranded by drivers who took their fares and then drove off, by broken down vehicles, or who were seriously injured in accidents for which the sedan services had no insurance. 67 All but one of the stories were based on hearsay, however. It was not until 1939 that the Times presented specifics of an actual accident (of an interstate shared ride sedan in Arizona) in which four women were severely injured. The women had purchased transportation from a Los Angeles travel bureau. 68
Enforcement was difficult, though, as illustrated by Congress’s reluctance to prohibit private auto owners from carrying friends and relatives and sharing expenses. Where the California Legislature drew the line in 1917 was prohibiting an auto owner from providing common carrier transportation, unless they were issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity. That seems clear enough, but how could regulators detect whether an auto driver with seven passengers was not in fact an owner carrying friends and relatives on a trip? And if they exchanged money, that they were in fact not friends and relatives sharing expenses? 69 Enforcement required passengers willing to testify against drivers or for undercover agents paying fares and using the services. Passengers refused to testify, however, so enforcers used undercover agents.
H. F. Bassett directed wildcat investigations and arrests for the Los Angeles Board of Public Utilities from about 1927 to 1935. He and his staff purchased wildcat sedan transportation and then obtained arrests of about 150 drivers during his tenure at the Board. Although about 80 per cent of those arrested were convicted, Bassett lamented that those convicted drove their sedans to the East, where they remained for several months before reappearing. 70
Before 1935 the Railroad Commission did not pay much attention to wildcatters. Its 25-person Truck and Stage Department, based in Los Angeles, was fully occupied with the approximately 150,000 trucks in the state, many of which lacked permits. 71 The Commission’s stance changed in 1935, however, when it opened an investigation into the comparatively small wildcat sedan business. 72 Why it did so is not clear. Congress’s adoption of the Motor Carrier Act or the petition of Santa Fe bus subsidiaries to compete with PGL may have influenced the Commission. In any event, the Commission hired Bassett away from the Los Angeles Board of Public Utilities to lead a campaign against wildcatters. 73
The Commission, with cooperation with the Board of Public Utilities, documented relationships between travel bureaus and auto owners in providing common carrier transportation. The investigation led to arrests in Los Angeles and San Francisco in June 1938 of thirty-five travel bureau operators and owners of wildcat sedans (rather than just the drivers). 74 Two and a half years later, city detectives arrested sixty-two additional bookers and wildcatters in downtown Los Angeles in two raids on the grounds that travel bureaus in that city were selling uninsured transportation to unsuspecting passengers. Most of those arrested were convicted. 75
Despite the arrests, wildcat sedan services continued between Los Angeles and San Francisco into the early war years. A Railroad Commission decision in June 1938 and another in July 1940 note the near impossibility of stamping out wildcat sedans within their budgets. 76 An early 1942 decision shows that the problem was not resolved by then. 77 However, the authors could find no further reference to wildcat sedans after 1942.
Ironically wildcat sedans apparently disappeared just when demand for collective transportation soared. The war brought severe gasoline and tire rationing and imposition of a 35 mile/h speed limit. These measures crippled private auto use and threw demand too large to handle onto trains and buses. Wildcatters should have flourished, but two conditions kept them from doing so. Wildcatters likely were as crippled as private motorists from gas and tire rationing and speed restrictions. Labour also became scarce. As late as 1940 US unemployment stood at 14.6 per cent, falling to 9.9 per cent in 1941. In the first war year of 1942 unemployment fell to 4.7 per cent and the next year to 1.9 per cent. At the same time, wages rose. By 1941 the average railroad wage was US$2030, rising to US$2303 in 1942 and US$2585 in 1943. 78 By 1942 and certainly 1943, if not in the armed services, wildcat drivers and bookers likely found more remunerative ways of making a living than working in the wildcat sedan industry.
After the war, however, as most of the traveling public returned to private automobiles, wildcat sedans failed to return. Real income was growing and California’s auto ownership, which stood at 357 autos per capita in 1930, 345 in 1935, and 400 in 1940, immediately began climbing again. 79 Apparently no demand remained for wildcatters.
Conclusion
California’s wildcat sedans exemplified an alternative means for organising intercity public transportation compared to the regime of regulated monopoly. Lacking internal bureaucracies, wildcatters matched passenger loads with seats through bookers. This method proved remarkably efficient, achieving load factors of 70–80 per cent. Even as California society approached mass motorisation with auto ownership reaching 400 autos per thousand capita in 1940, wildcatters through their efficiency served a demand for low-cost, second-class transportation that private automobiles and the certificated collective carriers missed.
Had wildcatters not defied the ethos of regulated monopoly, roughly 120–150 daily travellers would have been forced to either pay higher fares to use the regulated modes or to not have travelled. Either way, the wildcat users would have experienced worsened mobility, perhaps leading to their own unemployment, inability to see family or friends, or other misfortunes of reduced mobility.
Regulated monopolies were justified in additional ways, however, including protecting passengers from fraud or physical injury, protecting transportation investments, and protecting worker wages. Watchdogs of the established order, including the Los Angeles Board of Utilities, the Los Angeles Times, and stakeholders, like lawyer Orla St Clair, professed outrage at alleged wildcat passenger victimisation. Professed outrage, though, could have been a smokescreen for restricting competition. Passengers were not outraged. None could be persuaded to testify against the wildcatters. 80 Tom Morgan opined, ‘I consider any law impossible to enforce where the people who patronise it will render assistance to the person committing the unlawful operation so as to escape punishment.’ 81
There were some instances, though, where passengers were victimised, such as the four women injured in Arizona in a car that had no liability insurance. Had the regime of regulated monopoly been able to suppress the wildcatters, it would have saved society or the passengers this cost. It does not appear to have been a large cost, however. Protecting transportation investments, particularly in railroads, was a major justification for regulated monopolies, as exemplified by the Motor Carrier Act in regulating trucking. However, the California public’s mass adoption of private automobiles rendered this justification moot for passenger transportation. To have protected the large rail passenger investments in California c. 1910 people would have required restrictions on private auto ownership or use.
The remaining area of possible social harm stemming from the wildcatters defying regulation was labour exploitation. Examination of the industry’s economics does not support this accusation. In a time of high unemployment, still in the range of 14–18 per cent in the later 1930s, wildcat workers could earn close to the average wage of the time. Vehicle owners also could get a good return on their investments. Those who both owned and drove their vehicles could both pay themselves a decent wage and also reap a return on their investment.
That the California wildcatters challenged the ethos of regulated monopoly through the interwar period seems to have improved the public welfare a small amount. Users benefitted from low costs that improved their mobility, opening opportunities for employment and for seeing friends. Those providing the service also benefitted from gainful employment providing a needed service.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to the following for generously reading and commenting on earlier drafts: Dr Elizabeth Deakin, Dr Robert Post, Dr George Carl, and three anonymous referees.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.