ABSTRACT
From a period when proprietors of taxi-dance halls seem to have been chiefly concerned with the reactions of patrons, politicians, police, other law-enforcing agencies, and the general public, the proprietors have now swung to a third stage in the institution's natural history in which intense competition, specialization, and other accommodations are the chief interest. This period of ruthless competition seems to have been brought about by the increasing movement of patrons and taxi-dancers from dance hall to dance hall and by the general recognition on the part of proprietors that all the taxi-dance halls could not survive. It was seen, apparently, that under the policies and practices then in vogue there would not be sufficient patronage for all and that in the end competition would make inevitable a bitter struggle for survival between establishments. Even the fact that all but two or three of these proprietors were of the same nationality—Greek-American—does not seem to have been sufficient to have restrained them. More recently, as an accommodation to the struggle there can be seen a strong tendency toward specialization in function and patronage among the taxidance halls. This whole development can best be seen by a review of the events themselves.
