A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Drivers of Vehicles in San Francisco From Being A Burden to The People or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

It is a melancholy object to those who drive through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and highways, crowded with drivers of each sex, followed by three, four, or six drivers, all in vehicles and importuning every passenger for patience. These drivers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in traveling to beg tolerance from their helpless fellow travelers: who as they travel either turn poor drivers for want of such patience and tolerance, or leave their dear native San Francisco to fight for the Pretender in Los Angeles, or sell themselves to the New Yorkers.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of drivers in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their freeways, and frequently of their avenues, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these drivers sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the drivers of professed ignorance; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of drivers at a certain stage who are born of an infratstructure in effect as little able to support them as the CHiPs who demand our ability in the streets.

...to be continued