Show Tho Sleeping Car Condnctor Then you think you would like to be a sleepingcar conductor do you 1 said the lord of the palace car to one of his guests Well my advice to you is dont try it It is a life slavery How would you like two round trips from New York to Chicago every week125 hours travel Thirtyseven hundred miles a week I dare say you wouldnt like it While we I are on the runs we are supposed to get I some sleep but it is precious little we get We have to be up nearly every hour of the night for something or other and the I best we are able to do is a nap of an hour I or two at a time For this we get the I I princely sum of f45 n month Beds are I furnished us of course but we have to buy most of our meals away from home I And if you could see the list of rules we have to obey it would make you laugh It makes me shudder for every violation I is a fine and so much less salary to draw at the end of the month For instance I t the erasure of a figure in our report calls for a fine We arc fined for little timings I that really amount to nothing for insignificant insig-nificant mistakes which every man will I make once in awhile Then if there is a comb or a brush or a pillowslip or a blanket missing when we have finished a run the porter has to pay for it and the price put on is usually two or three times I the real value of the articles The Pullman Pull-man Company seems to manage its men j on the theory that it is a fine thing to get from ten to twenty per cent of their salaries I sala-ries in the shape of fines Do these fines I go into a fund for the benefit of those of us that get sick or be injured 1 No indeed I in-deed They go into the coffers of the i companya concern that has expenses of 200000 a year and receipts of 4 I 500000 Naturally the men dont like these fines and impositions They look jon Ion I-on them as robberies And the fact is thecompany doesnt come out much ahead in the long run What do I mean by this I mean that some conductors stand in with their porters and proceed to get even with the company It is not I easy to do but it is done Our sheets and I pillowcases are all counted out to us when we begin a run and by counting I the number of soiled ones at the end they have a check on the number of passengers I passen-gers But there are plenty of ways of getting over that A tired sleepy man I who gets on in the middle of the night I and pays cash fare never stops to look if the sheets and pillows are perfectly clean I when he rolls in And I know of more than one conductor who gets a small Supply I sup-ply of clean linen at a place on his run and throws it off at another after it has been used Of course the porter has to I have his divy but he is usually decent I about it as he can afford to be He gets is the best 15 a month salary hut he I paid man on the train on the best runs i by the time he has counted up all his I I dimes and quarters |