I kept an accurate itemized account of my living expenses, including six dollars per month for a room in Chicago, and economize as I would, making one uniform and cap last a whole year, I could not get the monthly expense below forty dollars—fifteen dollars more than my salary, and surely the company must have known it and condoned any reasonable amount of "knock down" on the side to make up the deficiency in salary. The porter's "knock down" usually coming through the sympathy, good will and unwritten law of "knocking down"—that the conductor divide equally with the porter. All of which, however, is now fast becoming a thing of the past, owing to recent legislation, investigations and strict regulation of common carriers by Congress and the various laws of the states of the Union, with the added result that conductors' wages have increased accordingly. Few conductors today are foolish enough to jeopardize their positions by indulging in the old practice, and it leaves the porters in a sorry plight indeed.

All in all, the system, while deceptive and dishonest on its face, was for a time a tolerated evil, apparently sanctioned by the company and became a veritable disease among the colored employees who, without exception, received and kept the company's money without a single qualm of conscience. It was a part of their duty to make the job pay something more than a part of their living expenses.

Ignorant as many of the porters were, most of them knew that from the enormous profits made that the company could and should have paid them better wages, and I am sure that if they received living wages for their services it would have a great moralizing effect on that feature of the service, and greatly add to the comfort of the traveling public.

However, the greedy and inhuman attitude of this monoply toward its colored employees has just the opposite effect, and is demoralizing indeed. Thousands of black porters continue to give their services in return for starvation wages and are compelled to graft the company and the people for a living.

Shortly before my cessation of activities in connection with the P——n company it had a capitalization of ninety-five million dollars, paying eight per cent dividend annually, and about two years after I was compelled to quit, it paid its stockholders a thirty-five million dollar surplus which had accumulated in five years. Just recently a "melon was cut" of about a like amount and over eight thousand colored porters helped to accumulate it, at from twenty-five to forty dollars per month. A wonder it is that their condition does not breed such actual dishonesty and deception that society would be forced to take notice of it, and the traveling public should be thankful for the attentive services given under these near-slave conditions. As for myself, the reader has seen how I made it "pay" and I have no apologies or regrets to offer. When that final reckoning comes, I am sure the angel clerk will pass all porters against whom nothing more serious appears than what I have heretofore related.