Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief--until comparatively recently, and then in only a few cases, have they represented any difference in the railroad's income account. For our railroads, with a few exceptions, long ago bartered away one of the large functions of their passenger business. I am referring to the building and operation of the sleeping and the parlor cars--a business carried forth today almost exclusively by the Pullman Company. Great reticence is shown by the railroads in speaking of their contracts with the Pullman Company, yet it is generally known that, save in a few notable cases, that company pockets the entire seat-and-berth revenue of its cars. The railroad derives no income from hauling them. And it is not so long ago that most of our railroads paid the Pullman Company an additional toll of from three to five cents a mile for hauling each of its cars over their rails. It is hardly fair to scold the Pullman corporation for having driven a shrewd bargain years ago, when it was far-sighted, with a generation of railroaders, now almost past and gone, who were very near-sighted about the steadily growing taste of Americans for luxury in travel. It is only fair, in addition, to state that it has been generally progressive in the maintenance of its service and equipment; it has been in the front rank in the substitution of the steel car--which the modern traveler demands and which has been a definite factor in creating the definite plight of our great sick man today--for the wooden coach. If the Pullman Company has moved slowly in the retirement of the barbaric scheme of upper and lower berths giving into a common center aisle, that is not to be charged against it either. This is not the time nor the place to discuss these cars in detail. But it is pertinent to make a brief comparison of them and the compartment cars of England and the Continent. "Are you willing to pay the price for them--all of you travelers, I mean?" says the big railroad traffic-man blandly when you go to him about the matter. "It costs you almost twice as much for a stateroom from Paris to Marseilles as from New York to Buffalo--two journeys of approximately the same length. Are you willing to stand for an increase in railroad rates instead of paying the European charges for sleeping-car staterooms?"