and some other people have been saved from similarly embarrassing
situations through the intuition and the resources of the Pullman
porter. The conductor--both of the train and of the sleeping-car
service--is not permitted to exercise such initiative or intuition; but
the porter can do and frequently does things of this very sort. His
recompense for them, however, is hardly to be classed as a tip.

The tip is the nub of the whole situation. Almost since the very day
when the Pioneer began to blaze the trail of luxury over the railroads
of the land, and the autocrat of the Pullman car created his servile but
entirely honorable calling, it has been a mooted point. Recently a great
Federal commission has blazed the strong light of publicity on it.
Robert T. Lincoln, son of the Emancipator, and, as we have already said,
the head and front of the Pullman Company, sat in a witness chair at
Washington and answered some pretty pointed questions as to the division
of the porter's income between the company and the passenger who
employed him. Wages, it appeared, are twenty-seven dollars and a half a
month for the first fifteen years of the porter's service, increasing
thereafter to thirty dollars a month, slightly augmented by bonuses for
good records.

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