man stood at your elbow in the dining rooms of the greatest of our
hotels; when a colored butler was the joy of the finest of the homes
along Fifth Avenue or round Rittenhouse Square. Transplanted, he quickly
became an American institution. And there is many a man who avers that
never elsewhere has there been such a servant as a good negro servant.

Fashions change, and in the transplanting of other social ideas the
black man has been shoved aside. It is only in the Pullman service that
he retains his old-time pride and prestige. That company to-day might
almost be fairly called his salvation, despite the vexing questions of
the wages and tips of the sleeping-car porters that have recently come
to the fore. Yet it is almost equally true that the black man has been
the salvation of the sleeping-car service. Experiments have been made in
using others. One or two of the Canadian roads, which operate their own
sleeping cars, have placed white men as porters; down in the Southwest
the inevitable Mexicano has been placed in the familiar blue uniform.
None of them has been satisfactory; and, indeed, it is not every negro
who is capable of taking charge of a sleeping car.

The Pullman Company passes by the West Indians--the type so familiar to
every man who has ridden many times in the elevators of the apartment
houses of upper New York. It prefers to recruit its porters from certain
of the states of the Old South--Georgia and the Carolinas. It almost
limits its choice to certain counties within those states. It shows a
decided preference for the sons of its employees; in fact, it might
almost be said that to-day there are black boys growing up down there in
the cotton country who have come into the world with the hope and
expectation of being made Pullman car porters. The company that operates
those cars prefers to discriminate--and it does discriminate.