During hearings held by the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in 1915, commission chair Frank Walsh asked railway sleeping-car porter G. H. Sylvester about opportunities to sleep on his overnight run on the Twentieth Century Limited from New York to Chicago. Sylvester was responsible for preparing the berths for a carload of passengers and for meeting their many needs related to getting a full, comfortable night’s rest. But he had no such expectations for himself or his coworkers. Sylvester’s employer, the Pullman Company, which held a virtual monopoly on the sleep services business on the nation’s railroads, chose not to...