It was in January of 1940 that a friend of my schooldays came to visit me at a time that I was out of work and offered to get me a job driving a hack and to teach me the business. I gave it a try and I did fairly well at it. I rode with him for three nites and felt I was read and I was!

At State Cab, they rented you the cab for twelve hours for six cents a mile and the driver paid the gas and oil. There was very little business till after 12 midnite when the city busses stopped running and we had only 6 hours a nite to make any money and even then if you weren’t lucky and picked up a couple of "Joint trips" we didn’t make very much.

At that time the going rate of prostitution was $2, Cab dates were $3 and the driver got $1 plus what he charged the customer to get him into the "Joints" and the procedure was to make sure that the man wasn’t a cop. If he spent $5 or over the driver got his 40% which is why the title of this story!

Personal calls were the backbone of the hack and I proceeded to build my business on that basis by giving the customer who tipped well my card with my name and number on it. I will never forget the first nite I worked for myself. After the sleeper train came in at 5:15 in the morning I went home with 100 and 2 bucks for a net profit, and I began to wonder how long this deal had been going on, as that was more money than I’d had in my pocked for a long time!

The first nite hooked me for 22 years at State Cab as my wife and I were able to have something else to eat besides wild rabbits which I killed with a club in the snow banks because I didn’t have the scratch to buy a shotgun. My wife and I had two children at that time and lived rent free for keeping an eye on a herd of steer and 300 acres. The landlord also furnished the coal and electricity. I bought milk fresh from the cow for ten cents a gallon from Frank Turner who owned the farm about 5 miles south of Princeville, IL. He also lent me a horse and a one-man plow to put our garden in and he taught me how to do it!

As I stated before, that first nite in the hack business got me hooked and I continued till I got enough scratch to buy a good used car and move to Peoria proper. A 12 hour nite we worked and some were good ad some were bad, but I hung in there and learned all the tricks of the trade. About half of the cab owners had at least one girl working on the "line" and merely kept the cab on the street for the purpose of proof of income on their own.

I could never understand why the girls found a pimp necessary except for the fact that when they did sleep with them they could always look over in bed and see someone lower than themselves! The oldest profession was a rough life at its best, but there was always money in it. Peoria at that time was the most well known city in this part of the country and the butt of a joke to the entertainment world. I have heard many a time, "How did it play in Peoria?" Our mayor was supposed to work in the dime store in the song about Peoria! I can remember when we had more saloons than Churches, more strip shows, more gambling, slots in ever store of any size, more joints, more corrupt police, more corrupt aldermen, more muggers than any city of its size, and I’ve been around nearly very state we had at that time.

One day the baggage man at the bus depot hailed me into the curb, proceeded to open my trunk and filled it with luggage, and opened the door for my passenger who tipped him a deuce! She had me pull up ahead of the cab stand and I flipped the meter.

She proceeded to inform me that she was looking for a job as a whore, her first name and that she had been working in the state of Washington and didn’t know a soul here. She asked what the minimum rate was here and I told her a deuce and all she could get above that.

She promptly told me that she was the best two dollar whore and the fastest that had ever hit Peoria! Get me a job with the largest joint in town with the most traffic!

I promptly shook down her baggage and purse to make sure she wasn’t a female cop and took her to a joint at 606 S. Jefferson which at that time had six work rooms and a crew of at least 10 broads at all times. I enquired first whether they needed any help and the madam said she sure did as they come and go all the time. I unloaded the baggage as soon as the trip talked to the madam and charged the trip a sawbuck and she told me to keep the change when she handed me a double which made me a fast buck. I took her about ten personal trips the first week and she worked there, and she lived in.

With the half yard I got when she stayed a full week from the madam and the 40 percent on her trips I brought her, I made three full yards that first week. She didn’t believe in pimps and neither did I! After she had worked three weeks there she told me to find a joint she could buy on her own, and I turned her over to a buddy of mine who knew a lot more about those things than I. She finally married the guy, and they set up in business.

That was only one experience of that kind that I ever had and all I wanted. I took care of the baggage man at the bus depot, and we are still friends today long after I have retired from the business. In those days, that was hack business money and still is from some of the old heads. It’s a changing world now and all the prostitution is in the massage parlors now and the call girl system. The broads hustle the streets and bars and get busted pretty regular as the Peoria P.D. assign all the rookie cops to the vice squad as they still do till the broads get to know them for what they are. The busts don’t stop them as they make bond and go right back to work as soon as they get out on bond. The whole deal only takes about 15 minutes so they don’t lose very much time. When we had the J.P. system, the fine was only half a yard so they accepted it as part of the business.

They finally abolished the J.P. system and the broads have to go to a higher court and the fee has doubled like every thing else. At the time I first started the fee for a hack drivers city license was in the neighborhood of a sawbuck including doctor’s exam, and the city license for the owners was half a yard plus cab insurance plus five yards to a councilman between Christmas and New Years each year for every cab he had on the street, and it had to be paid or else. Now it is higher I guess, everything else is! The meter rate is higher, too, so it is not very cheap for cab fare any longer.

At that time abortions were illegal by they could be had if you knew where and when and how much, which most of the taxi drivers knew and got well paid for knowing! I knew one legitimate doctor who did nothing else and was busy all the time. His assistant was a customer of mine and told me all about the operation. The price was at that time $500, and he paid the cabbies $50 for bringing them to him. I got a lot of those trips off the trains and busses. Also, there was a woman who was in the business who didn’t charge so much but she did not pay off like the doctor. I always charged her trips a sawbuck to take them there, though. I found out after a while that she was a hat pin artist, and a few deaths resulted, so I quit taking here any trips.

After working two years nites, I decided that I was a little ashamed of myself for all the things I was doing and changed over to day work where the profit wasn’t so good, but at least I could look in the mirror when I shaved without seeking a pimp, abortionist, and thief. And my kids where starting to school, and I didn’t want any cracks made to them about their father’s occupation at least!

I had saved a little scratch and bought a partnership in a pie business and went to work legit till about a few months after Pearl Harbor. One day soon after that, I enlisted in the Army having previous experience as a mess sergeant, and I wanted to get plum out of the taxi business as well. I, at one time, was in charge of feeding thousands of men in the C.C.C. and felt that I just might do some one some real good! I sold my interest in the bakery business but retained the six cabs I owned, and my wife ran them while I was in the service. I finally disposed of them, too, as I was making good money in the Army, owned my home, taxes were low, we had a good roof overhead, good income and my wife was needed to raise the kids.

I was injured and given a medical discharge and sent home on crutches. I took a job as a nite dispatcher as I could do no physical labor and back in the hack business I was! The office was right next to the Faust Club and business was GOOD! We had drivers who were making a grand a week, but I did not do so bad either.

It was the custom then to tip the dispatcher when they checked in as most of them did. A nearby Army camp supplied us all with a lot of joint trips and nobody was making cars then so we didn’t suffer for scratch! We had cars but couldn’t get drivers. I hired some bus drivers to do work after midnite to hall the out of town trips for half of the fare and soon I was making more than the ordinary drivers, but I still was missing something out of life!