Chapter 13. The Sleeping-Car Phase

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XIII. THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE

The Pullman company stands in the public mind as the leading exponent of tipping. It certainly is the largest beneficiary of the custom, as a simple calculation will show.

The company has about 6,500 porters, who receive $27.50 a month in wages. Suppose the porters received no tips. The company then would have to pay living wages. Assuming that the long hours of work would not attract desirable porters under a straight wage system without at least $60 a month pay, each one of the 6,500 would have an increase of $32.50 a month, or $390 a year.

This would mean an increase in the company's annual pay-roll of $2,535,000!

In other words, the company saves about two and a half millions a year through the tips given to its porters. What part of the large annual dividend is furnished by this saving is a secret of the company's books.

Some of these porters after many years' service receive $42 a month in wages, and this would bring down the foregoing estimate, though not to any radical extent. The tips bring their incomes to $100, $150, $200 and more a month! There are, of course, many runs on which the porters derive smaller amounts in gratuities, and the best runs are given as a reward for long and faithful service.

WHAT THE PULLMAN MANAGER SAID

The Walsh Commission, appointed to investigate industrial conditions in the United States, in 1915 singled out the Pullman tipping practice for investigation. Some of the testimony given by the general manager of the company follows:

"The company simply accepts conditions as it finds them. The company did not invent tipping. It was here when the company began."

"What do you say to making tipping unlawful and paying employees a living wage?" Chairman Walsh asked.

"If such a condition arises, I presume we would have to pay wages necessary to get the service."

* * * * *

"Do you get your negroes in the South?"

"Yes, we have been looking after them in the South. The South is a bigger field and the men there are more adapted for the work than the Northern negroes."

"Well, be plain," Chairman Walsh said, "are the negroes from the South more docile and less independent than those from the North?"

"Well, no, but the Southern negro is more pleasing to the traveling public. He is more adapted to wait on people and serve with a smile."

* * * * *

"Can a man live on $27.50 a month and rear a family?"

"Really, I don't know. He might."

"Does the Pullman company have in mind the liberality and kindness of the public when it fixes that rate of pay?"

"Well, I should say that tips have something to do with it. I didn't make the rates of pay."

* * * * *

"A porter must call passengers during the night, polish shoes, answer bells, and look after the safety and comfort of the passengers at all hours, must he not?"

"Yes. He is reprimanded, suspended or discharged for infractions of the rules."

"What is your attitude toward the question of an organization among your employees?"

"I felt that the movement to form a federation of our employees was a selfish one on the part of a few."

WHAT THE PORTERS SAID

The Commission also called several porters to testify. They stated that they could not live without the tips. One porter with twenty-one years' service behind him testified that he receives $42 a month in wages, while the tips averaged about $75 a month, or $117 income from the company and the public.

Another porter receiving $27.50 a month testified that his tips averaged about $77 a month. He was described as wearing two diamond rings and being tastefully dressed.

The conductors receive from $70 to $90 a month in salary, and it was brought out before the Commission that many do not consider it dishonest to "knock down" on seat sales. This is accomplished partly at the company's expense, and partly at the expense of patrons--especially unsophisticated travelers who buy a whole seat but have other passengers sit beside them, the conductor pocketing the extra payment. This practice is limited to day runs. There is also the opportunity to overcharge.

That the Pullman company gives the public good service through its porters is indisputable. The only question is whether the public should pay extra for this service. If a porter with an income of $117, say, receives only $27.50 from the company, the public is paying three-fourths of his wages and the company only one-fourth. Where the porters have incomes of $150 to $200 a month the company pays one-fifth to one-eighth of the amount and the public pays from four-fifths to seven-eighths!

SERVICE INCLUDED

The price of a ticket on a sleeping car is as much as a patron should pay the Pullman company, and it should carry with it adequate porter service.

A passenger enters a car in spick and span condition as a rule. At the end of the journey, through no fault of his own, he may be dusty, and it becomes the obligation of the Pullman company to discharge him in as good condition as when he entered the car. The porter is there for this service. Hence, to give him a tip for a "brush," or for any other service he may have rendered to make the use of the company's property comfortable, is a superfluous payment.

The company has a school for training a porter in which he is taught a rigid discipline of attentions to passengers, all of which tend to create in the passenger a sense of obligation toward the porter. Yet not one of these attentions calls for a gratuity if they are examined fairly.

The porter is psychologist enough to know that to create the illusion that he has rendered an extra service is as good for producing a tip as actually to do so. Hence he will come around with a pillow, or shine your shoes during the night unsolicited, or execute some other maneuver that arouses a feeling of obligation. The shining of shoes is outside his ordinary duties, but he has no valid claim for compensation unless specifically requested to perform this service. In his mind is the constant reminder that if the passenger does not make a donation his pay envelope from the company will not meet his bills.

WHAT THE PRESS SAID

Among the many editorial comments that the disclosures of the Walsh Commission evoked is the following from the St. Louis Republic:

The most captious critic of the Pullman company cannot deny that it merits a unique distinction. Other corporations before now have underpaid their employees ... but it remained for the Pullman company to discover how to work on the sympathies of the public in such a manner as to induce that public to make up, by gratuities, for its failure to pay its employees a living wage.

It began this forty years ago, when the "plantation" darky of ante-bellum days was still abroad in the land. It used him, his pathetic history, his peculiar attitude toward the white man, for the accomplishment of its purpose. There at the end of the journey, after the traveler had paid $2, $2.50 or $3 for his berth, stood the porter with his whisk broom and his smile.

And back of him was the pathetic fact, industriously circulated, that "the company" did not pay him enough to live on, so that he was dependent on the gratuities of passengers who had already paid full price for accommodations and services. We were expected to pay him simply because the Pullman company didn't. And we paid him. Tens of millions of passengers have paid him millions of dollars.

It wasn't really philanthropy to the porter; it was philanthropy extended to the Pullman company, which was glad to have the fact of its meanness in its relations to its colored employees--ill-informed of the rights of workingmen and dependent by instinct--published to the world.

It was the Pullman company which fastened the tipping habit on the American people and they used the negro as the instrument to do it with.

It may be remarked in closing this phase of the discussion that an act of Congress forbidding tips on inter-state carriers would effectually reach the Pullman situation. _

Read next: Chapter 14. The Government And Tipping

Read previous: Chapter 12. One Step Forward

Table of content of Itching Palm, A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book