In the early 1900s, taxi cabs were hit or miss. Drivers could charge you whatever they wanted, so you couldn't really trust the person behind the wheel — even ex-convicts could become taxi drivers.
But that story changed with a grudge. In 1907, Harry N. Allen, a 30-year-old businessman, was charged $5 for a three-quarter-mile ride in Manhattan (a $128.50 fare by today's estimates). He then bought a fleet of 65 red French Darracq taxi cabs and hired a team of drivers. It was the first modern taxi fleet.
While taxis were still only affordable for the well-to-do at 50 cents per mile ($12.80 today), Allen's system was much better than the former one, since it eliminated price gouging. And when the taxi medallion system was instated in New York in 1937, the government began regulating who could own or operate taxis.
Today, taxi cabs make get nearly 400,000 trips a day in New York, twice as many as Uber and Lyft combined.