The porter also receives his uniforms free after ten years of service, and in some cases of long service his pay may reach forty-two dollars a month.  The rest of his income is in the form of tips.  And Mr. Lincoln testified that during the past year the total of these tips, to the best knowledge and belief of his company, had exceeded two million three hundred thousand dollars.

The Pullman Company is not an eleemosynary institution.  Though it has made distinct advances in the establishment of pension funds and death benefits, it is hardly to be classed as a philanthropy.  It is a large organization; and it generally is what it chooses to consider itself.  Sometimes it avers that it is a transportation company, at other times it prefers to regard itself as a hotel organization; but at all times it is a business proposition.  It is not in business for its health.  Its dividend record is proof of that.  All of which is a preface to the statement that the Pullman Company, like any other large user of labor, regulates its wage scale by supply and demand.  If it can find enough of the colored brethren competent and willing and anxious to man its cars at twenty-seven dollars and a half a month—­with the fair gamble of two or three or four times that amount to come in the form of tips—­it is hardly apt to pay more.

No wonder, then, the tip forms the nub of the situation.  To-day all America tips.  You tip the chauffeur in the taxi, the redcap in the station, the barber, the bootblack, the manicure, the boy or girl who holds your coat for you in the barber’s shop or hotel.  In the modern hotel tipping becomes a vast and complex thing—­waiters, doormen, hat boys, chambermaids, bell boys, porters—­the list seems almost unending.

The system may be abominable, but it has certainly fastened itself on us—­sternly and securely.  And it may be said for the Pullman car that there, at least, the tip comes to a single servitor—­the black autocrat who smiles genially no matter how suspiciously he may, at heart, view the quarter you have placed within his palm.

A quarter seems to be the standard Pullman tip—­for one person, each night he may be on the car.  Some men give more; some men—­alas for poor George!—­less.  A quarter is not only average but fairly standard.  It is given a certain official status by the auditing officers of many large railroads and industrial corporations, who recognize it as a chargeable item in the expense accounts of their men on the road.

A man with a fat run—­lower berths all occupied, with at least a smattering of riders in the uppers, night after night—­ought to be able easily to put aside a hundred and fifty dollars a month as his income from this item.  There are hundreds of porters who are doing this very thing; and there are at least dozens of porters who own real estate, automobiles, and other such material evidences of prosperity.