The Conductor's Hands

Persons who have noticed how greatly In need of being laved the hands of cable-car conductora invariably are have possibly rushed to unjust and uncharitable conclusions, says the New York Post. Those begrimed palms ticged with yellowish green are a decisive demonstration that money is indeed "filthy lucre." "It don't do no good to wash lem," j said one of the conductora to whom the matter had be3n as delicately broached as possible. "In the flrst place, you couldn't get 'em real clean iL you tried, [ after they've got stained in with all them ooppers and nlckels and dirty silver and bilis. It is a cautlon how that greenish stuff do ge through your hands and stick to 'em. Talk about bot water and scrubbing brush and soap- they can't budge it. You can take the skin off, but there's that ooppery color all the same. I don't expect ever to get my hands clean ag'ln- 'specially my right one. toben I first come on 'the road I washed my hands at the end of every run, but beiore I'd finish half the trip back they'd be as black and yellow and green as they had been before. I didn't get no credit for having washed 'em; it didn't do no good; it was a lot of bother, and so I give it up. I see people looking at my hand when I hold it out for fare, as if they was cogitatin' where I come f rom, and delicate folks - 'specially ladies - fairly shrlnks, and Is so afraid of touchlng my palme that they drops their oontributlons from a lofty dlatance, and sometime3 onto the floor. Then they expect me to piek the money upk I can't help wondering if theyre Chrlstian folk and if they ain't sensible enough to see tbat It ain't my fault that my hands is eo unpresentable. But they donV-they seem to condemn me from the word go, and never ima;rine that I might keep my hands as clean as theira if I only had the chance. "Nobody knows how dirty money is uctil he takes It on a car. I guess the coppers is about the worst. Most of the stain comes from them. but the silver helps along powerful, and the billa, too. gome o'f the dollar bilis I have to tajte is horrible, for all they ain't been out so long; they fairly reek; you oould use 'em 'stead of graphite to grease up your bicycle cnain. Then the nlckels and silver - they'e about a$ bad, I don't know how they get so much dirt on 'em. If you ain't handilng small money all the time- runnin' your fingers through it constant - you might not flnd it's so fllthy; but just be a conductor on this road for a week and nee If you don't almoet have a turn oí the stomach ag'in' money. Seems to me sometimes as If I'd like to go where there ain't no money. This ain't no business for a genuine American and I aint in it for keepa, you bet I ain't. Soon's something decenter turns up, I take it, and I hope my hands'll bleach out some time."