usly 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.

XIV

THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING

It has been asserted in this discussion that tipping is incompatible
with a democratic form of government. Yet we find officials of our
Government following the custom and allowing tips as a legitimate item
of expense of traveling to be paid out of the public treasury.

FREE AND EQUAL

This state of affairs proves that the work of 1776 and 1787 was limited
practically to one phase of democracy, namely, the political. Washington
and Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the passionate
ideal. This they and their associates achieved in ample measure. They
gave the waiter or the barber or the bootblack an equal voice in
government with themselves.

Let those Americans who think that the abolition of tipping would be too
radical a step toward social democracy consider how repulsive the
attitude of Washington and Jefferson was to the aristocratic thought of
their day. No matter what arguments the aristocrats presented against
political democracy, their real objection was just this granting of
voting equality to persons whom they rated as socially submerged.

But having founded our government upon political democracy, the straight
line of development is toward social and industrial democracy, in order
to complete the ideal entertained by Washington and Jefferson. That both
of these idealists tipped servants and that Washington owned slaves is
indisputable, but they left records