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