{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33170/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33170","id":"gutenberg_33170","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33170","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Economics","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Tipping"],"text":"Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n    _The Itching Palm_\n\n    A STUDY OF THE HABIT\n    OF TIPPING IN AMERICA\n\n    _By_\n\n    WILLIAM R. SCOTT\n\n    _Author of_\n\n    _\"The Americans in Panama,\"\n    \"Scientific Circulation Management,\" Etc._\n\n    THE PENN PUBLISHING\n    COMPANY PHILADELPHIA\n    1916\n\n\n\n\n    COPYRIGHT 1916 BY\n    THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY\n\n    The Itching Palm\n\n\n\n\n    THE AUTHOR WILL BE PLEASED TO CORRESPOND WITH ANY READER WHO\n    APPROVES OF, OR HAS COMMENTS TO MAKE UPON, THE ATTITUDE TAKEN\n    IN THIS BOOK TOWARD THE TIPPING CUSTOM.\n\n        WILLIAM R. SCOTT.\n\n    PADUCAH, KENTUCKY.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    CHAPTER                                    PAGE\n\n       I FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA                     7\n\n      II ON PERSONAL LIBERTY                     10\n\n     III BARBARY PIRATES                         15\n\n      IV PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION              19\n\n       V THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING                26\n\n      VI THE ETHICS OF TIPPING                   36\n\n     VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING               47\n\n    VIII THE LITERATURE OF TIPPING               58\n\n      IX TIPPING AND THE STAGE                   68\n\n       X THE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT                  73\n\n      XI THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT                  88\n\n     XII ONE STEP FORWARD                        97\n\n    XIII THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE                 105\n\n     XIV THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING             113\n\n      XV LAWS AGAINST TIPPING                   122\n\n     XVI SAMUEL GOMPERS ON TIPPING              144\n\n    XVII THE WAY OUT                            158\n\n         INDEX                                  169\n\n\n\n\nTHE ITCHING PALM\n\nI\n\nFLUNKYISM IN AMERICA\n\n\n\"Oliver Cromwell struck a mortal blow at the universal heart of\nFlunkyism,\" wrote Carlyle of the execution of Charles I.\n\nYet, Flunkyism is not dead!\n\nIn the United States alone more than 5,000,000 persons derive their\nincomes, in whole or in part, from \"tips,\" or gratuities. They have the\nmoral malady denominated The Itching Palm.\n\nTipping is the modern form of Flunkyism. Flunkyism may be defined as a\nwillingness to be servile for a consideration. It is democracy's deadly\nfoe. The two ideas cannot live together except in a false peace. The\ntendency always is for one to sap the vitality of the other.\n\nThe full significance of the foregoing figures is realized in the\nfurther knowledge that these 5,000,000 persons with itching palms are\nfully 10 per cent of our entire industrial population; for the number of\npersons engaged in gainful occupations in this country is less than\n50,000,000.\n\nWhether this constitutes a problem for moralists, economists and\nstatesmen depends upon the ethical appraisement of tipping. If tipping\nis moral, the interest is reduced to the economic phase--whether the\nremuneration thus given is normal or abnormal. If tipping is immoral,\nthe fact that 5,000,000 Americans practice it constitutes a problem of\nfirst rate importance.\n\nAccurate statistics are not obtainable, but conservative estimates place\nthe amount of money given in one year by the American people in tips, or\ngratuities, at a figure somewhere between $200,000,000 and $500,000,000!\n\nNow we have the full statement of the case against tipping--five million\npersons receiving in excess of two hundred millions of dollars\nfor--what?\n\nIt will be interesting to examine the ethics, economics and psychology\nof tipping to determine whether the American people receive a value for\nthis expenditure.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nON PERSONAL LIBERTY\n\n\nThe Itching Palm is a moral disease. It is as old as the passion of\ngreed in the human mind. Milton was thinking of it when he exclaimed:\n\n    \"Help us to save free conscience from the paw,\n     Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.\"\n\nAlthough it had only a feeble lodgment in the minds of the Puritans,\nbecause their minds were in the travail that gave birth to democracy,\nenough remained to perpetuate the disease. In Europe, under monarchical\nideals, a person could accept a tip without feeling the acute loss of\nself-respect that attends the practice in America, under democratic\nideals. For tipping is essentially an aristocratic custom.\n\n\nTIPPING UN-AMERICAN\n\nIf it seems astounding that this aristocratic practice should reach such\nstupendous proportions in a republic, we must remember that the same\nrepublic allowed slavery to reach stupendous proportions.\n\n\nIF TIPPING IS UN-AMERICAN, SOME DAY, SOMEHOW, IT WILL BE UPROOTED LIKE\nAFRICAN SLAVERY\n\nApparently the American conscience is dormant upon this issue. But this\nis more apparent than real. The people are stirring vaguely and uneasily\nover the ethics of the custom. Six State Legislatures reflected the\ndawning of a new conscience by considering in their 1915 sessions bills\nrelating to tipping. They were Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska,\nTennessee and South Carolina.\n\nThe geographical distribution of these States is significant. It is\nproof that the opposition to the practice is not isolated, not\nsectional, but national. North, Central, South, the verdict was\nregistered that tipping is wrong. The South, former home of slavery,\nmight be supposed to be favorable to this aristocratic custom. On the\ncontrary the most vigorous opposition to it is found there. Mississippi,\nArkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina simultaneously had laws against\ntipping--with the usual contests in the courts on their\nconstitutionality.\n\nThe Negro was servile by law and inheritance. The modern tip-taker\nvoluntarily assumes, in a republic where he is actually and\ntheoretically equal to all other citizens, a servile attitude\nfor a fee. While the form of servitude is different, the slavery\nis none the less real in the case of the tip-taker.\n\nStrangely enough, bills to prohibit tipping often have been vetoed by\nGovernors--notably in Wisconsin--on the ground that they curtailed\npersonal liberty. That is to say, a bill which removed the chains of\nsocial slavery from the serving classes was declared to be an abridgment\nof liberty! \"Oh, Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!\"\n\nThe Legislature in Wisconsin almost re-passed the bill over the\nGovernor's veto. In Tennessee and Kentucky bills have been vetoed for\nthe same given reason, though Tennessee in 1916 finally had such a law\nin force. In Illinois, the law was framed primarily with the object of\npreventing the leasing of privileges to collect tips in hotels and other\npublic places, and not against the individual giver or taker of tips.\n\n\nSHORT-LIVED LAWS\n\nThe courts have negatived such laws on much the same grounds, so that\nanti-tipping laws thus far have been, generally, short-lived. The reason\nis, of course, that popular sentiment has not been behind the laws in an\nextent sufficient to give them power. Judges and executives simply have\nyielded to their own class impulses, and the pressure from organized\ninterests, to suppress the legislation. When the public conscience finds\nitself and becomes organized and articulate, they will have no\ndifficulty in finding grounds for declaring regulatory laws\nconstitutional. The history of the prohibition of the liquor business is\na parallel.\n\n\nPERSONAL LIBERTY\n\nPersonal liberty is a phrase that is being redefined in America in every\ndecade. In its broadest sense it is interpreted to mean that a man has\nthe right to go to perdition if he so elects without neighbors or the\ngovernment taking note or interfering.\n\nAnti-liquor laws in the early days of the temperance movement fared\nbadly from this interpretation, just as anti-tipping laws fare to-day.\nBut as public sentiment crystallized, and judges and executives began to\nfeel the pressure at the polls, a new conception of personal liberty\ndeveloped. In its present accepted sense, as regards liquor, it is\ninterpreted to mean that no citizen may act or live in a way that is\ndetrimental to himself, his neighbor or his government, and his\nprivilege to drink liquor is abridged or abolished at will.\n\nThe right to give tips is not inalienable. It is not grounded on\npersonal liberty. If the public conscience reaches the conviction that\ntipping is detrimental to democracy, that it destroys that fineness of\nself-respect requisite in a republic, the right will be abridged or\nwithdrawn.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nBARBARY PIRATES\n\n\nThe American people became fully aroused on one occasion to the iniquity\nof tipping--on an international scale.\n\nIn 1801 President Jefferson decided that the United States could\ntolerate no longer the system of tribute enforced by the Barbary States\nalong the shores of the Mediterranean.\n\nBefore our action, no European government had made more than fitful,\nineffectual attempts to break up a practice at once humiliating to\nnational honor and disastrous to national commerce. Candor requires the\nadmission that we, too, submitted for years to this system of paying\ntribute to Barbary pirates for an unmolested passage of our ships, but\nthe significant fact is that American manhood did finally and\nsuccessfully revolt against the practice.\n\nBy 1805 our naval forces had brought the pirates to their knees and all\nEurope breathed grateful sighs of relief. Even the Pope commended the\nAmerican achievement. The practice was contrary to every dictate of\nself-respect.\n\n\nTRIBUTE\n\nThese pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli did not pretend to\nhave any other right behind their demands for tribute than the right\nthey could enforce with cutlass and cannon--a right ferociously\nemployed. It was not robbery in the ordinary sense of the word. They\ndemanded a fee based on the value of the cargo for the privilege of\nsailing in the Mediterranean, and this being paid, the ship could\nproceed to its destination. Ship-owners soon began to figure tribute as\na fixed expense of navigation, like insurance, and passed the added cost\nalong to the ultimate consumer.\n\nThis practice of paying tribute was a system of international tipping.\nThe Barbary pirates granted immunity to those who obeyed the custom, but\nmade it decidedly warm and expensive for those who dared to protest\nagainst it--just as do our modern pirates in hotels, sleeping cars,\nrestaurants, barber shops and elsewhere.\n\nIf a ship refused to pay tribute it was sunk, and the sailors went to\nslavery in the desert, or to death by fearful torture. President\nJefferson could not see any basis of right in the position of the\nBarbary States that the Mediterranean was their private lake through\nwhich ships could not pass without paying toll. He sent Decatur to\nregister our protest.\n\nWith the Pinckney slogan: \"MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE--NOT ONE CENT FOR\nTRIBUTE!\" the American naval forces made good our position. The tips\nthat skippers of our nation had been paying to the pirates were saved\nand the custom soon was abandoned by other nations.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo-day, the old battle cry is reversed to read: \"Millions for\ntribute--not one cent for defense!\"\n\nIt is certain that a greater tribute is paid in one week in the United\nStates in the form of tips, than our merchantmen paid during the whole\nperiod that they knuckled to the Barbary pirates.\n\nIn New York City alone more than $100,000 a day is paid in gratuities to\nwaiters, hotel employes, chauffeurs, barbers and allied classes. But\nNew York has reached a subserviency to the tipping custom that is\namazing in a democratic country.\n\nThis vast tribute is paid for not more real service than the Barbary\npirates rendered to those from whom they exacted tribute. It is given to\nworkers who are paid by their employers to perform the services enjoyed\nby the public. If the Barbary pirates could see the ease with which a\nprincely tribute is exacted from a docile public by the tip-takers, they\nwould yearn to be reincarnated as waiters in America--the Land of the\nFee!\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nPERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION\n\n\nThe Itching Palm is not limited to the serving classes. It is found\namong public officials, where it is particularized as grafting, and it\nis found among store buyers, purchasing agents, traveling salesmen and\nthe like, and takes the form of splitting commissions. There are varied\nmanifestations of the disease, but whether the amount of the gratuity is\nten cents to a waiter or $10,000 to a captain of police, the practice is\nthe same.\n\nThis is a partial list of those affected:\n\n    Baggagemen\n    Barbers\n    Bartenders\n    Bath attendants\n    Bellboys\n    Bootblacks\n    Butlers\n    Cab drivers\n    Chauffeurs\n    Charwomen\n    Coachmen\n    Cooks\n    Door men\n    Elevator men\n    Garbage men\n    Guides\n    Hatboys\n    Housekeepers\n    Janitors\n    Maids\n    Manicurists\n    Messengers\n    Mail carriers\n    Pullman porters\n    Rubbish collectors\n    Steamship stewards\n    Theater attendants\n    Waiters\n\nThe foregoing list is not offered as a complete roster of those who\nregularly or occasionally receive tips. Nearly every one can think of\nadditions, and at Christmas the list is extended to include money gifts\nto policemen, delivery men and numerous others.\n\n\nTHE TIP-TAKING CLASSES\n\nAt the last Census, in 1910, there were 38,167,336 persons in the United\nStates, out of a total population of ninety-odd millions, who were\nengaged in gainful occupations, that is, who worked for specified wages\nor salaries. Of this number, 3,772,174 persons were engaged in domestic\nor personal service, or practically ten per cent. of the industrial\npopulation.\n\nThis means that in round numbers 4,000,000 Americans of both sexes and\nall ages were engaged in the lines of work specified in the foregoing\nlist, with certain additions as mentioned. These are the citizens who\nprofit by the tipping practice.\n\nSince 1910 the growth in population to one hundred millions, and the\nsteadily widening spread of the tipping practice will increase the\nbeneficiaries of tipping to 5,000,000. An idea of the relative\ndistribution of the total may be obtained from the statistics of fifty\nleading cities. The numbers represent the tip-taking classes in each\ncity.\n\n    CITY              NUMBER\n\n    Albany             8,000\n    Atlanta           23,000\n    Baltimore         48,000\n    Birmingham        16,000\n    Boston            61,000\n    Bridgeport         5,200\n    Buffalo           25,000\n    Cambridge          7,500\n    Chicago          135,000\n    Cincinnati        30,000\n    Cleveland         31,000\n    Columbus          14,000\n    Dayton             6,500\n    Denver            17,000\n    Detroit           26,000\n    Fall River         4,000\n    Grand Rapids       5,500\n    Indianapolis      19,000\n    Jersey City       14,000\n    Kansas City       24,000\n    Los Angeles       26,000\n    Lowell             5,500\n    Louisville        23,000\n    Memphis           19,000\n    Milwaukee         22,000\n    Minneapolis       19,000\n    Nashville         15,000\n    New Haven          9,000\n    New Orleans       37,000\n    New York         400,000\n    Newark            17,000\n    Oakland           11,000\n    Omaha             10,000\n    Paterson           5,000\n    Philadelphia     105,000\n    Pittsburgh        41,000\n    Portland          17,000\n    Providence        14,000\n    Richmond          15,000\n    Rochester         13,000\n    St. Louis         56,000\n    St. Paul          16,000\n    San Francisco     44,000\n    Scranton           6,000\n    Seattle           19,000\n    Spokane            7,000\n    Syracuse           9,000\n    Toledo             9,500\n    Washington        43,000\n    Worcester          9,000\n\nIn all other cities, towns and hamlets there are proportionate quotas to\nbring the grand total to 5,000,000. Any estimate of the daily tipping\ntribute for the whole country necessarily is only an approximation, but\n$600,000 is a conservative figure. At this rate the annual tribute is\naround $220,000,000.\n\n\nIN NEW YORK ALONE\n\nTaking New York with its 400,000 persons who profit from tipping, the\nleading classes of beneficiaries are as follows:\n\n    Barbers        20,000\n    Bartenders     12,000\n    Bellboys        2,500\n    Bootblacks      3,500\n    Chauffeurs     12,000\n    Janitors       25,000\n    Manicurists     4,500\n    Messengers      1,500\n    Porters        15,000\n    Waiters        35,000\n\nThe tipping to these and other classes varies both in amount and\nregularity. Waiters and manicurists in the better-class places receive\nno pay from their employers and depend entirely upon tips for their\ncompensation. Barbers and chauffeurs are classes which receive wages and\nsupplement them with tips. Sometimes the employer will pay wages and\nrequire that all tips be turned in to the house.\n\nIt is a common feature of the \"Help Wanted\" columns to state that the\njob is desirable to the workers because of \"good tips.\" Thus the\nemployers are fully alert to the economic advantage of tipping, and\nwherever it is practicable they throw upon their patrons the entire cost\nof servant hire.\n\nThe extent to which employers are exploiting the public is realized\nvaguely, if at all. The vein of generosity and the fear of violating a\nsocial convention can be worked profitably, and they are in league with\ntheir employees to make it assay the maximum amount to the patron.\n\nIn a restaurant where the employer has thus shifted the cost of waiter\nhire to the shoulders of the public, the patron who conscientiously\nobjects to tipping has not the slightest chance in the world of a square\ndeal in competition with the patron who pays tribute, although he pays\nas much for the food.\n\nA waiter, knowing that his compensation depends upon what he can work\nout of his patron, employs every art to stimulate the tipping\npropensity, from subtle flattery to out-right bull-dozing. He weaves a\nspell of obligation around a patron as tangible, if invisible, as the\nweb a spider weaves around a fly. He plays as consciously upon the\npatron's fear of social usage as the musician in the alcove plays upon\nhis violin.\n\nThis is a particularly bad ethical and economic situation from any\nviewpoint. The patron, getting only one service, pays two persons for\nit--the employer and the employee. The payment to the employer is fixed,\nbut to the employee it is dependent upon the whim of the patron. To make\nthis situation normal, the patron should pay only once, and this should\ncover both the cost of the food and the services of the waiter.\nTheoretically this is the present idea under the common law, but\nactually the patron is required, through fear of well-defined penalties,\nto pay twice.\n\nNaturally, if the $200,000,000 or more annually given to those serving\nthe public should be withdrawn suddenly, employers would face the\nnecessity of a radical readjustment of wage systems. In many lines wages\nwould be increased to a normal basis, either at the expense of the\nemployer's profits, or through additional charges to patrons. Before\ngoing further into the employer phase of the practice, the economics of\ntipping in individual instances will be an interesting study.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING\n\n\nThe basic question is, does tipping represent a sound exchange of\nwealth? Do the American people receive full value, or any value, for the\n$200,000,000 or more given in tips?\n\nValues, of course, may be sentimental as well as substantial and, so far\nas tipping is concerned, it can be demonstrated that if any values are\nreceived they are sentimental. The satisfaction of giving, the balm to\nvanity, the indulgence of pride, are the values obtained by the giver of\na tip in exchange for his money.\n\nIt is a stock argument for tipping that the person serving frequently\nperforms extra services, or displays special painstaking, which deserve\nextra compensation. Only an examination of individual instances can\ndetermine whether this is true. The proportion of the tipping tribute\nwhich really pays for extraordinary service is negligible. A brief\ninquiry into a few of the more prominent instances of tipping follows.\n\n\nTHE WAITER\n\nIf food is sold undelivered, then the waiter in bringing it to the\npatron and assisting him in its consumption does perform an extra\nservice for which payment is due.\n\nBut this is not the fact, any more than that a shoe clerk should be\ntipped for assisting a customer in the selection of his employer's\nfootwear. In both instances, the cost of the service is included in the\nprice of the article--food or shoes.\n\nThe prices on the bill of fare have been figured to include all costs of\nserving it, such as cook-hire, waiter-hire, rent, music, table ware, raw\nmaterials and overhead charges. If a sirloin steak costs seventy-five\ncents a definite part of that amount represents the wages of the waiter\nserving it.\n\nThus the waiter has no claim upon the patron for compensation, because\nthe patron, in paying for the food, provides the proprietor with funds\nfrom which the waiter's wages will be paid. If the patron, in addition,\ngives the waiter a tip it is clearly a gift for which no value has been\nreturned. The waiter is paid twice for one service.\n\n\nECONOMIC WASTE\n\nThe question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic\ntransaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound\nwhich does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five\ndollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer\nand the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a\nwaiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives\nnothing in return--nothing of like substantiality.\n\nThe patron may justify the gift from sentimental considerations, of\npride, generosity or fear of violating a social convention, but no\nsophistry of reasoning can prove that a substantial value has been\nreceived.\n\nOf course, a waiter may give a patron more than the proprietor agrees to\ngive in the bill of fare, and this undoubtedly is an extra service--_but\nit is also a dishonest service_. Every extra service to one patron means\na deficiency of service to other patrons. It is a common experience\nthat liberal tipping obtains special attentions which non-tipping\npatrons miss, but, being dishonest, such a condition is outside the\nscope of this inquiry. When a patron pays for food he is entitled to\nadequate and equal service, and no largess by other patrons should\ninterfere with this basic right.\n\nOn its economic side, then, tipping is wrong. Wealth is exchanged\nwithout both parties to the transaction receiving fair values. The\npsychology and ethics of the transaction will be considered in other\nchapters.\n\n\nTHE BARBER\n\nNo tipping is so inexcusable as that which is done to a barber. The\ntrade is highly organized and the workers are well-paid under good\nworking conditions. There is not the slightest chance for the barber to\nserve a patron in a way for which the patron does not pay in the shop\ntariffs.\n\nIf a haircut costs thirty-five cents, the patron is entitled to just as\ngood a hair-cut as the barber can give. The patron enters the shop upon\nthe assumption that he is entitled to a satisfactory service. Hence, in\ntipping a barber a patron is yielding in a peculiarly timid way to the\nmesmeric influence which the tipping custom exerts over its devotees.\n\nIt is a wanton waste of wealth, an unsound business transaction, because\nmoney is given where charity is unnecessary and where absolutely nothing\nis given in return. \"But my barber takes lots of pains with my hair,\"\nthe patron exclaims in justification of the tip. As in the instance of\nthe waiter, if he takes more than a normal amount of pains with your\nhair he is dishonest to his employer and to other patrons whom he must\nneglect to pay you special attention. Your right is to a satisfactory\nservice, and this you pay for in the regular charge. Any extra\ncompensation is unearned increment to the barber.\n\nThe unctuous manner he employs to arouse a sense of obligation in a\npatron, when stripped of disguises, is a plain hold-up game. This will\nbe shown in the consideration of the psychology and ethics of tipping.\n\n\nTHE HOTEL\n\nThe attitude that hotel employees have been allowed to develop toward\nthe public is a blot upon professional hospitality.\n\nEvery one of them takes the hotel patron for fair game. And the hotel\nproprietor, with a few notable exceptions, encourages this despicable\nattitude. The assumption is that the patron pays at the desk only for\nthe privilege of being in the building.\n\nHence, they will not cheerfully move his baggage to his room unless he\npays to get it there. He cannot have a pitcher of ice water without\nbeing made to feel that he owes for the service. The maid who cares for\nhis room exacts her toll. The head waiter demands payment for showing\nhim to a seat. The individual waiters at each meal (and they are changed\neach meal by the head-waiter so that the patron has a new tip to give\neach time he dines) require fees. If he rings a bell, asks any\nassistance, goes out the door to a cab, in short, whichever way he\nturns, an itching palm is outstretched!\n\nJust think for a moment of the real significance of this state of\naffairs. Hotel hospitality? Why, the Barbary pirates would have been\nashamed to go it that strong!\n\nTo ignore this grafting spirit means insulting annoyance. The suave\nhotel manager listens to your complaint and smiles assurance that his\nguests shall have proper service, but underneath the smile he has a\ncontempt for the \"tight-wad,\" and instructs the cashier always to give\nthe waiters small change so as to make tipping easy for the patrons.\n\nIn truth, what does a hotel guest pay for when he registers? Certainly\nfor the service of the bell-boy who carries his suit-case to his room;\nfor the keeping of the room in order; for water, clean towels and other\nnecessities for his comfort; for the privilege of finding a seat in the\ndining room; for the right to use the doors--all without extra charge.\n\nBut the hotel manager admits this in theory and outrageously violates it\nin practice. All tipping done to bell-boys, porters, maids, waiters,\ndoor men, hat-boys and other servitors in a hotel is sheer economic\nwaste. When the guest pays his bill at the desk he pays for all the\nservice they perform.\n\nThe hotel manager protests that the money that passes between his guests\nand his employees is not his affair. But he proves his insincerity by\nadjusting his wage scale on the estimate that the guests will pass\nmoney to his employees!\n\nProfessional hospitality as \"enjoyed\" by Americans is a travesty on\ndemocracy. That Europe should have such a system and spirit is\nhistorically understandable. Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it\nexemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the\nbreast of democracy.\n\n\nTHE CHAUFFEUR\n\nIt would be possible to run through all the classes tipped and prove\nthat the extra compensation is unearned. The chauffeur is a latter-day\ninstance of the itching palm. Like the barber, the chauffeur is paid\nwell for his work. He does nothing for which the patron should give him\na tip. The taxi-meter charges the patron roundly for all the service\ngiven, yet tipping chauffeurs is as common in the larger cities as\ntipping barbers or waiters. It simply shows the spread of the practice\nto workers who have no other claim upon it than their own avaricious\nimpulses--and the extreme docility of the public. Every tip given to a\nchauffeur is so clearly a bad economic transaction that further argument\nis unnecessary.\n\nSo widespread has the practice become that tipping is, individually, a\nproblem, as well as collectively. The traveler has a formidable cost to\nface in the tipping required. When the total passes $200,000,000 a year,\nit becomes a problem which the American people will find more difficult\nof solution the longer it continues unchecked.\n\nThe whole argument is summed up in this. Tipping is an economic waste\nbecause it is double pay for one service--or pay for no service. It\ncauses one person to give wealth to another without a fair return in\nvalues, or without any return. The pay that employers give to their\nemployees should be the only compensation they receive. All the money\ngiven by the public on the side is unearned increment.\n\nThe best condition for a fair exchange of wealth is where standards are\nknown and prices are definite. Self-respect and sound economics flourish\nin such an atmosphere, whereas, if values are hazy and compensation is\nindirect and irregular, as it is under the custom of tipping, the\nbickering that follows degrades manhood.\n\nFrom an economic viewpoint, all businesses are on an abnormal basis\nwhich figure minimum wages, or no wages, to their employees on the\nassumption that the public will, through gratuities, pay for this item\nof service.\n\n\"One service--one compensation\" is the only right relation of seller and\nbuyer, of patron and proprietor.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE ETHICS OF TIPPING\n\n\nThe moral wrong of tipping is in the grafting spirit it engenders in\nthose who profit by it; in the rigid class distinctions it creates in a\nrepublic; in the loss of that fineness of self-respect without which men\nand women are only so much clay--worthless dregs in the crucible of\ndemocracy.\n\nIn a monarchy it may be sufficient for self-respect to be limited to the\ngoverning classes; but the theory of Americanism requires that every\ncitizen shall possess this quality. We grant the suffrage simply upon\nmanhood--upon the assumption that all men are equal in that fundamental\nrespect.\n\n\nTHE PRICE OF PRIDE\n\nHence, whatever undermines self-respect, manhood, undermines the\nrepublic. Whatever cultivates aristocratic ideals and conventions in a\nrepublic strikes at the heart of democracy. Where all men are equal,\nsome cannot become superior unless the others grovel in the dust.\nTipping comes into a democracy to produce that relation.\n\nTipping is the price of pride. It is what one American is willing to pay\nto induce another American to acknowledge inferiority. It represents the\nroot of aristocracy budding anew in the hearts of those who publicly\nrenounced the system and all its works.\n\nThe same Americans who profit by this undemocratic practice exert as\nmuch influence, proportionably, in the government of the republic, as\nthose who give tips, or those whose sense of rectitude will not allow\nthem to give or accept gratuities. Is a man who will take a tip as good\na citizen, is his self-respect as fine, as the one who will not accept a\ntip, or who will not give a tip? Is the one as well qualified to vote as\nthe other?\n\nWhat is a gentleman? What is a lady?\n\nCan a waiter be a gentleman? Can a maid be a lady?\n\nWould a gentleman or a lady accept a gratuity?\n\nWhat would happen if a tip should be offered to the average \"gentleman\"\nwho patronizes restaurants, and taxicabs and barber shops? He would have\na brainstorm of self-righteous wrath!\n\n\nTHE TEST OF DEMOCRACY\n\nAnd there is the test. If a \"gentleman\" would not accept a tip, is it\ngentlemanly to give a tip? If a \"gentleman's\" self-respect would rebel\nat the idea of accepting a gratuity, why should not a waiter's\nself-respect rebel at the idea?\n\n\"Oh, but there's a difference!\"\n\nThe difference is there indeed. It is the difference between aristocracy\nand democracy. In an aristocracy a waiter may accept a tip and be\nservile without violating the ideals of the system. In the American\ndemocracy to be servile is incompatible with citizenship.\n\nEvery tip given in the United States is a blow at our experiment in\ndemocracy. The custom announces to the world that at heart we are\naristocratic, that we do not believe practically that \"all men are\ncreated equal\"; that the class distinctions forbidden by our organic law\nare instituted through social conventions and flourish in spite of our\nlofty professions.\n\nUnless a waiter can be a gentleman, democracy is a failure. If any form\nof service is menial, democracy is a failure. Those Americans who\ndislike self-respect in servants are undesirable citizens; they belong\nin an aristocracy.\n\n\nTIPS DISLIKED BY RECIPIENTS\n\nFortunately, conditions are not as rotten as the extent of the tipping\npractice would indicate. The vast majority of Americans who give tips do\nso under duress. At heart they loathe the custom. They feel that it is\ntribute exacted as arbitrarily and unrighteously as the tribute paid to\nthe Barbary pirates. Some day this majority will rise up and deal as\nsummarily with the tipping practice as our forefathers dealt with the\nMediterranean tribute custom!\n\nA great number of servants and workers in such lines as barber shops,\nrestaurants and other public service positions are equally opposed to\nthe custom. They are caught up, however, in a system where they must\nconform to the custom or lose their employment. Many a barber or waiter\nor chauffeur whose self-respect rebels at taking a tip is forced to do\nso in order not to offend patrons. For nothing so stirs up a \"gentleman\"\nas for the person serving to decline a tip. The reason is that he feels\nthe rebuke implied in the refusal and knows in his conscience that the\npractice is wrong. We always grow more indignant at a just accusation\nthan at an unjust one!\n\n\nCONSCIENCE IS STIRRING\n\nThe constant re-appearance of laws to regulate tipping, in every section\nof the country, proves that the conscience of the people is stirring.\nThe daily and periodical press now and then condemn the practice\neditorially in unmeasured terms and persons prominent in the public eye\noccasionally flare-up at some particularly flagrant manifestation of the\nitching palm. Governor Whitman, of New York, in an address to the\nSociety for the Prevention of Useless Giving, said (as District Attorney\nthen):\n\n    \"It is a brave thing, a womanly thing and a courageous thing for\n    you to band together to combat an evil. And I hope you will\n    stand pat. We are all growing to tolerate a kind of petty\n    grafting that is not right, that is un-American. I object to\n    having a man take my hat and hang it up for me and then accept\n    a coin. I am strong and big enough to hang up my own hat. And I\n    also prefer to carry my own bag to having a boy half my size\n    carry a bag that is half his size and be paid with a coin. If he\n    honestly earns the money he should have it as an earning, not as\n    a gratuity. It is this giving of gratuities that is unlike us,\n    it is a custom copied from a foreign country where conditions\n    are different from ours.\"\n\nWhere one person has the courage to speak out against this deep-rooted\nsocial convention, unnumbered thousands feel dumbly the same opposition\nto it. Harry Lauder, the Scotch comedian, a citizen of a monarchy, on\none of his tours in America, was reported by the newspapers as being\ndisgusted with the development of so aristocratic a custom as tipping in\nAmerica, the cradle of democracy. The press will yield many such\nevidences of condemnation for the practice in high places. They are\ncited to prove that opposition to tipping is not a mere distaste among\npersons of limited means who cannot afford to tip generously.\n\nThe cost of following the custom is an important item; but those who\nconsider it morally wrong gladly would pay any increase in charges that\nmight follow the abolition of the custom. If the Pullman company should\nagree to abolish tipping if each patron would pay a quarter more for his\nberth it would be a long step in advance--though the custom should be\nabolished without additional charges to the public.\n\n\nHUSH MONEY\n\nThe United States went through a period of muck-raking against graft\namong politicians and big business men. It was found that the idea of\n\"honest graft\" was shockingly prevalent. The especially odious\nmanifestations were dealt with, but the little springs and rivulets that\ncombine to make the main stream were allowed to trickle along, unite,\nand become a torrent! Tipping is the training school of graft.\n\nWill a messenger boy who thinks that the public owes him gratuities\ndevelop into a man with sound morals? Will the bell-boy who works for\ntips grow up to be a policeman who accepts hush-money from the corner\nsaloon-keeper? What is the difference between a tip to a bell-boy for\ndoing what the hotel pays him to do and the hush-money to a policeman\nfor overlooking the offence he is paid to detect?\n\nThe tipping practice has created an atmosphere of petty graft, the\nconstant breathing of which breeds all other forms of dishonesty. It is\nsmall wonder that with so much avarice in low places that we have been\nshocked by graft in high places. The tipping custom is educating the\ngrafting spirit much faster than the prosecuting arm of the government\ncan destroy it.\n\nThere is a direct connection between corruption in elections and the\ncustom of tipping. The man who lives upon tips will not see the\ndishonesty of selling his vote, so readily as if he discerned the\nimmorality of gratuities. Of course, not all tip-takers sell their\nvotes; but the moral laxity in one direction predisposes toward laxity\nin other directions.\n\n\nSPLITTING COMMISSIONS\n\nWhen a gratuity gets above a small amount, it is known as splitting\ncommissions, or plain graft. Salesmen in their anxiety to sell goods\nwill divide their commissions with the buyers. Frequently buyers or\npurchasing agents will demand this concession when it has not been\noffered. One New York department store found that its piano buyer was\naccepting money for placing all orders with a particular manufacturer.\nThis store discharged its buyer, and yet the proprietor of the store\ndoubtless tipped the waiter at lunch the same day he so acted! He failed\nto see that a waiter (paid to serve patrons) who accepts tips, is\nprecisely on the same level as a buyer (paid to purchase in the whole\nmarket), who concentrates his orders with one house for a fee.\n\nA clipping from The New York _Times_ shows the attitude that employers\nare taking toward split commissions:\n\n    \"Several wholesalers in this market received a letter yesterday\n    from a prominent dry goods retailer in the middle West saying\n    that their buyers would be in this city to-day and that each one\n    had signified her acceptance of a rule against taking petty\n    'graft.' The retailer asked that the salesmen try not to make\n    this rule difficult to observe. The rule follows: 'You must not\n    accept entertainment of any kind, even luncheon or dinner, from\n    any one in New York. We will make an allowance, sufficient to\n    cover all expenses, including entertainment.'\"\n\nThis retail merchant had discovered that a free theater ticket or dinner\ncould create such a sense of obligation that his buyers would not be\nable to exercise the freedom of choice that was necessary. The New York\nsalesmen offered the tickets and dinners in the form of gracious\nhospitality, but knew all the while that their real intent was to bind\nthe buyers to them through a sense of obligation without regard to the\nmerits of the goods.\n\nThus the spirit of \"honest graft\" is spreading out in America. It grows\nwith what it feeds upon. It is a moral miasma, the fumes of which are\npermeating all strata of society.\n\n\nTHE BIBLE AGAINST TIPS\n\nFollowing are only a few of the many citations in the Bible against\ntipping, gifts, gratuities, greed and like practices and impulses:\n\n    Exodus 23:8. And thou shalt take no gift; for the gift blindeth\n    the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.\n\n    Ecclesiastes 7:7. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a\n    gift destroyeth the heart.\n\n    Proverbs 15:27. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own\n    house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.\n\n    I Samuel 12:3. Behold here I am: witness against me before the\n    Lord, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose\n    ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I\n    oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind\n    mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it you.\n\n    Isaiah 33:14-15. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring\n    fire?... He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly ...\n    that shaketh his hands from holding bribes.... He shall dwell on\n    high....\n\n    Job 15:34. For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate,\n    and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.\n\n    Luke 12:15. And he said unto them, Take heed and beware of\n    covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance\n    of the things which he possesseth.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING\n\n\nWhy the custom of tipping should be followed so generally when it is\npalpably a bad economic practice and ethically indefensible is a\npsychological study with the same aspects that the slavery issue\npresented before the Civil War.\n\nThe Puritan conscience allowed that institution to grow to formidable\nproportions before arousing itself decisively, and it has allowed this\nequally undemocratic custom to attain national ramifications.\n\n\nCASTE AND CLASS\n\nIn its broadest statement, the psychology of tipping presents the two\nantipodal qualities of pride and pusillanimity. The caste system is not\nbased upon the superiority of one class over another, but upon the\n_pride_ that one stage of human development feels over another stage of\nhuman development.\n\nA democracy cannot do away with different stages of development in the\nhuman mind. But it does do away with the belief of one stage of\ndevelopment that it is worthy of homage from another stage of\ndevelopment. Democracy does not concede that one man working with his\nbrain is superior to another man working with his brawn. Democracy looks\nbeyond the accident of occupation, or the stage of human development,\nand sees every man as originating in the same divine source. \"We hold\nthese truths to be self-evident, that _all_ men are created equal.\"\n\nIn a monarchy, the craving of the human mind for approbation--the\nquality of pride--is cultivated into the class or caste system. Those\ncitizens who have attained a larger measure of culture than their\nfellow-men allow the false sense of pride in that culture to creep into\ntheir ideals and actions. They seek for some method of visualizing this\nassumed superiority, of obtaining the acknowledgment of it from their\nfellow-men. With an unerring instinct of human nature they play upon the\ncupidity of those whom they desire to place in a servile relation. A\ngift of money wins the social distinction they covet.\n\nThus the tipping custom has its origin in pride, and it necessarily\ninvolves humility as a correlative condition. If all men are created\nequal, as we aver in our basic political creed, they cannot become\nunequal except artificially, except by an agreement of one set of\ncitizens to play the role of servitors for a consideration from another\nset of citizens. One set of citizens will become abased--that is, they\nwill surrender their birthright of equality--in order that another set\nmay strut around in a belief of superiority and indulge a sense of\npride.\n\n\nNO SUPERIOR CLASS\n\nIn a democracy, the gradations of culture exist, but it is not\npermissible for one class of workers to assume a superiority over\nanother class. That they do assume it is evident, and that for all\npractical social purposes we live and move and have our being on that\nassumption is evident, but in granting manhood suffrage, in allowing the\nproud and the humble to have an equal voice in government, we declare\nthe social system a fungus growth.\n\nAt the moment of the highest power of the institution of slavery it was\nnot less wrong than at the moment the first ship-load of slaves was\nlanded. No mere accumulation of material property can vitiate a\nprinciple of right. Hence, the very widespread acceptance of the tipping\ncustom lends no authority to it. If 95,000,000 Americans are engaged in\ntipping 5,000,000 Americans, and if both the givers and the receivers\napparently concur in the rightness of the custom, it does not thereby\nbecome right. We must go back to first principles to find the answer.\n\n\nTIPPING AND SLAVERY\n\nThe American democracy could not live in the face of a lie such as\nslavery presented, and it cannot live in the face of a lie such as\ntipping presents. The aim of American statesmanship should be to keep\nfresh and strong the original concepts of democracy and to beat back the\nefforts of base human qualities to override these concepts.\n\nThe relation of a man giving a tip and a man accepting it is as\nundemocratic as the relation of master and slave. A citizen in a\nrepublic ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with every other citizen,\nwith no thought of cringing, without an assumption of superiority or an\nacknowledgment of inferiority. This is elementary preaching and yet the\ndistance we have strayed from primary principles makes it necessary to\nprove the case against tipping.\n\nThe psychology of tipping may be stated more in detail in the following\nformula:\n\nTo one-quarter part of generosity add two parts of pride and one part of\nfear.\n\n\nFIRST INGREDIENT, GENEROSITY\n\nThis is a subtle element and merges into a sense of obligation on slight\nprovocation. You feel that your position in life is more fortunate, and\npity enters your thought. If an extra service is given, in reality or in\nappearance, the servitor has pitched his appeal upon the ground of\nobligation. Few persons can rest easily until a sense of obligation is\ndischarged through some form of compensation. The opportunity to balance\nthe account comes when cash is being passed between you and the person\nserving. You offer a cash consideration proportioned to your sense of\nobligation.\n\nInasmuch as the whole argument in favor of tipping is based upon the\nallegation that the servitor actually gives a value in extra service,\nthe element of obligation will be examined closely.\n\nThe Pullman porter or the waiter who can succeed in making a patron feel\na sense of obligation knows that he has assured a tip for himself. The\ncompany or the restaurant business is a vague fact, while the man\nhovering over your berth or table is a most tangible relation. His art\nis to make the patron feel that he is responsible for the careful\nattentions. In a subconscious way the patron knows that the price of the\nticket or the food includes the service (wages of the porter or waiter)\nbut the obsequious alertness of the attendant overshadows this\nknowledge. It is present personality versus an abstract entity known as\ncompany or restaurant. Hence, though the price of the ticket or the\npayment of the check pays for the porter's or waiter's service, the\npatron has been made to feel a second obligation which he discharges\nwith a tip.\n\n\nCLOAKROOM TACTICS\n\nThus tipping involves two payments for one service. Servitors\nunderstand clearly the psychology of the sense of obligation from\nexperiment even though they could not read understandingly a book on\npsychology. A trial in Detroit over the division of the tips in the\ncloak-room of a restaurant furnished the following proof:\n\n    \"'How do you make people \"cough up\"?' queried the judge.\n\n    \"'When they are going away I brush them down, and if they don't\n    give me something I take hold of their lapel and say, \"Excuse\n    me,\" and brush them again. I pretend that's the only English I\n    can speak. If they don't give me something then I hold on to\n    their hats until they do give me something. I made $12 the first\n    day I worked at the place.'\n\n    \"'Why did you pretend you could not speak English?' demanded the\n    judge.\n\n    \"'The more English you know the less tips you get.'\"\n\nThis morally obtuse hat-boy knew that the average person does not want\nsomething for nothing when dealing with serving persons, and he\nexploited this trait to the maximum. Pullman porters and high grade\nwaiters are more polished in the use of the same method, but it all\ngets back to the idea of creating a sense of obligation by actual or\npretended service beyond the expected.\n\nUndoubtedly, a rigid adherence to the letter of duty would result in\nservice that would be unsatisfactory, but this is to be surmounted\nrightly by the employer requiring flexibility of service from\nemployees--not by the public paying extra for affability, courtesy and\nattentiveness.\n\n\nSECOND INGREDIENT, PRIDE\n\nAnxiety to cut a good figure before servants or allied classes of\npersonal workers is a rich vein of pride which they do not fail to work\nfor all it is worth. This kind of mind is always agitated from fear that\nthe tipping has not been done handsomely enough. The satisfaction of\nhaving a fellow creature servile before your largess is a factor. The\ngratuity emphasizes your position in the social scale. It stamps the\ngiver as a gentleman or lady. The smirking attentiveness of the servitor\nis balm to vanity.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTruly, if it were not for vanity there would be no tipping system.\n\n\nTHIRD INGREDIENT, FEAR\n\nThe power behind the tipping custom is Social Convention and the fear of\nviolating it. The so-called social leaders, actuated by aristocratic\nideals, establish the custom and the crowd follow suit in a desire to do\nthe \"proper\" thing. The \"what will people say\" mania holds the average\nperson in an iron obedience to a custom which is innately loathed. It\nmakes you conspicuous to be a dissenter. The serving persons understand\nthis psychology perfectly. To drift along with the current of social\nusage is easiest, whereas, to go against it requires the highest order\nof courage. The multitude simply rate it as one of the petty vices and\nlet it go at that.\n\n\nTHE REMEDY\n\nNow what is the method of meeting and mastering this situation?\n\nPrecisely the same reasoning employed by the Americans in 1801 against\nthe custom of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates.\n\nFirst, establish clearly in your mind that tipping is wrong. The slogan\nis: ONE COMPENSATION FOR ONE SERVICE. With this premise, you can\nanswer, _seriatim_, every argument which arises in favor of the custom.\nTo the plea of generosity or obligation the reply is, full compensation\nfor all service rendered is included in the bill you pay at the hotel\ndesk, at the ticket window, to the barber-shop cashier, for the\ntaxi-meter reading, and so on. Any extra compensation implied by the\nperson serving is an imposition and has no justification either as\ncharity or obligation.\n\nSecond, the promptings of pride must be recognized frankly and mastered\nby democratic ideals. When a tip is given, not only is an individual\nwrong done, but a blow is struck at republican government and the ideals\nupon which it is founded. Patriotism, as well as faithfulness to\nself-respect requires that all customs which promote class distinctions\nshall be held in check. In entertaining a democratic attitude toward all\nAmericans you are strengthening the government under which you live. You\nwill not become less of a gentleman or lady if the socially submerged\nclasses rise to a normal plane of self-respect. In declining to place a\nfalse valuation upon them you are promoting the true mission of\nAmericanism.\n\n    \"To thine own self be true,\n     And it must follow as the night the day\n     Thou canst not then be false to any man.\"\n\nThird, the fear of violating a social custom is overcome when you\nunderstand its pernicious nature. The general observance of it gives the\ncustom neither rightness nor authority. With full assurance that the\ncustom is wrong and with a measure of the courage Decatur showed before\nTripoli, an apparently formidable, but really vulnerable, custom can be\ndestroyed.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE LITERATURE OF TIPPING\n\n\nWriters of books on etiquette uniformly accept tipping as the correct\nsocial usage. They state just the amount that it is proper to give on\nvarious occasions and thus do their utmost to rivet the custom upon the\npeople.\n\nA few extracts from such books will be given here to show how the custom\nis strengthened by the arbiters of etiquette. Those masses of Americans\nwho are aspiring to a broader culture naturally turn to these books, and\nhave their Americanism poisoned at the very start. They are educated to\nbelieve that tipping is essential to social grace. The feature\ndepartments of newspapers in answering queries about tipping usually\nconfirm this impression, though now and then a side-swipe is delivered\nat the extortionate attitude of the serving persons.\n\n\nHOTEL FEES\n\nTaking up the hotel first, the following advice is from \"Everyday\nEtiquette\":\n\n    \"A porter carries a bag and he must be tipped; another carries\n    up a trunk, he must be tipped; one rings for ice water and the\n    boy bringing it expects his ten cents; one wants hot water every\n    morning and in notifying the chambermaid of this fact, must slip\n    a bit of silver into her palm. The waiter at one's table must be\n    frequently remembered, and the head waiter will give one better\n    attention if he finds something in his hand after he shows the\n    new arrival to a table, and, of course, on leaving one will give\n    a fee.\n\n    \"It is usually best for a transient guest to fee the waiter at\n    each meal, since another man will probably be in attendance at\n    the next one. The usual rate is to give 10 per cent. of the sum\n    paid for the lunch or dinner--ten cents being the minimum except\n    at a restaurant of humble pretensions, where five will be gladly\n    accepted by the waitress.\"\n\nIf the waiters and other hotel employees had written the foregoing\nthemselves could they have put it more strongly? Note the advice to tip\nthe waiter at each meal because a new one may be on hand at the next\nmeal! This implies that the failure to tip is a grave offense, and that\nno risk of giving it must be taken. The patron may rest assured that a\nnew one will be on hand at the next meal, for the head waiter shifts\nthem about for exactly that reason--to make the patron tip again.\n\nHowever, in this same book, there is a reluctant note, as shown by the\nfollowing extract:\n\n    \"We may rebel against the custom and with reason. But as not one\n    of us can alter the state of affairs, it is well to accept it\n    with good grace, or reconcile oneself to indifferent service.\"\n\nHotel managers will read this with entire approval. And yet, consider\nwhat a contradiction it is for a hotel to advertise its service at such\nand such rates and then subject its guests to \"indifferent service\" if\nthey do not cross an itching palm at every angle in the building!\n\n\nTIP--OR BE INSULTED\n\nAny one who conscientiously objects to tipping knows how true it is that\nin the \"best\" places, with one or two notable exceptions, not only\n\"indifferent service\" but positively insulting deportment may be\nexpected from the servitors if the tips are omitted.\n\nThe servitors are aggressive because their remuneration depends upon\nwhat they can work out of the patrons. The employer had hired them on\nthe understanding that any compensation they receive must come from the\ngratuities of patrons. In certain hotels the management carries the\nexploitation to the point of charging the servitors for the privilege of\nworking the patrons. The tipping privilege in one hotel has been sold as\nhigh as $10,000 a year!\n\nThe economic pressure of tipping upon the patron causes one authority on\netiquette, \"Good Form For All Occasions,\" to exclaim:\n\n    \"Women of frugal mind endeavor to call on these functionaries as\n    little as they can because the cents readily mount into dollars.\n    The elevator-boy receives fewer tips than his peripatetic\n    brother and need not be feed after a short stay.\"\n\nHere is proof that those who from economic or ethical reasons do not\nwish to tip are persecuted. They are advised that the easiest way to\navoid the displeasure of servitors is to call on them for service as\nlittle as possible! The two dollars or more they pay at the hotel desk\nfor a day's domicile must be exclusively for the privilege of sitting in\na chair or sleeping in a bed. The moment they require the service of any\nof the employees about the building, they are under a second obligation\nto pay. And yet, hotels prate about their \"hospitality.\" The Barbary\npirates were hospitable in the same way--after you paid the tribute!\n\n\nHOW THE BOOKS HELP\n\n\"The Cyclopaedia of Social Usage\" states the tipping obligation as\nfollows:\n\n    \"In a large and fashionable hotel generous and widely diffused\n    gratuities are expected by the employees. The experienced\n    traveler usually distributes in gratuities a sum equal to ten\n    per cent. of the amount of the bill. It is customary when a\n    lengthy sojourn is made in an hotel or pension to tip the\n    chambermaid, the various waiters and the porter who does one's\n    boots, once in every week. Once in every fortnight the head\n    waiter's expectations should be satisfied, and where an elevator\n    boy and doorman are on duty, they, too, have claims on the purse\n    of the guest.\n\n    \"In a fashionable European hotel the rule of tipping a franc a\n    week all around may safely be observed during a long stop. But\n    at the hour of departure something extra must be added to the\n    weekly franc, and the head waiter will scarcely smile as blandly\n    as need be if he is not propitiated with gold.\"\n\nOthers, the writer says, have claims that it is well to recognize and\nmeet before they urge them.\n\nPractically all the books on etiquette have the same note of\nsubserviency to the custom. The point to be remembered is that, without\nbeing conscious of it, these writers are in league with the\nbeneficiaries of the custom to perpetuate and extend it. Most of the\nauthors think the custom is right, they have the aristocratic viewpoint\nthat servants should \"know their place\" and, in a republic, be made to\nacknowledge it by accepting a gratuity. Others simply take conditions as\nthey find them and write to inform readers how to avoid unpleasant\nincidents. But regardless of the opinion of the writers on the ethics of\nthe custom, the books are one of the principal supports of the custom.\n\nLeaving the hotel, and considering the tipping custom in its relation to\nprivate hospitality, we find this advice in \"Dame Curtesy's Book of\nEtiquette\":\n\n    \"It is customary to give servants a tip when one remains several\n    days under a friend's roof. The sum cannot be stated but common\n    sense will settle the question.\"\n\n\nIN PRIVATE HOUSES\n\nThe theory of tipping to servants in private homes where one may be a\nguest is based on the assumption that one's presence gives the servants\nextra work and they should be compensated therefor. The extra work\nundoubtedly is involved, but in a really true conception of hospitality,\nshould not the servants enter into it as much as the hosts? Or, if the\nguest entails extra work should not the host's conception of hospitality\ncause him or her to supply the extra compensation? The guest who tips\nservants in a private home implies that the host or hostess has not\nadequately compensated them for their labor.\n\nThe tips under such circumstances are a reflection upon the hospitality\nof the home. A host should ascertain if servants consider themselves\noutside the feeling of hospitality and pay them for the extra work, thus\ngiving the guest _complete_ hospitality. It is bad enough to tip in a\nhotel, for professional hospitality; to tip in a private home is, or\nshould be, an insult to the host.\n\n\nON OCEAN VOYAGES\n\nThe same author advises in regard to the Pullman car that \"a porter\nshould receive a tip at the end of the journey, large or small according\nto the length of the trip and the service rendered,\" and then considers\nthe custom aboard a ship, as follows:\n\n    \"There is much tipping to be done aboard a ship. Two dollars all\n    around is a tariff fixed for persons of average means, and this\n    is increased to individual servants from whom extra service has\n    been demanded.\"\n\nThe traveler boards a ship with a ticket of passage which includes\nstateroom and meals and all service requisite to the proper enjoyment of\nthese privileges. The stewards and other employees on board are\nexpressly for the purpose of giving the service the ticket promised.\nHence, extra compensation to them may be justified only as charity. They\ncannot possibly render extra service for which they should be paid. If a\npassenger called upon the engineer to render a service, that employee\nwould be rendering an extra service, but stewards and stewardesses and\nlike employees are aboard to render any service the passenger wants or\nneeds. Moving deck chairs, bringing books, attending to calls to your\nstateroom, serving you food and the like duties are all within the scope\nof their regular employment.\n\nBut read another writer's pronouncement:\n\n    \"At the end of an ocean voyage of at least five days' duration,\n    the fixed tariff of fees exacts a sum of two dollars and a half\n    per passenger to every one of those steamer servants who have\n    ministered daily to the traveler's comfort.\n\n    \"Thus single women would give this sum to the stewardess, the\n    table steward, the stateroom steward, and, if the stewardess has\n    not prepared her bath, she bestows a similar gratuity on her\n    bath steward. If every day she has occupied her deck chair, he\n    also will expect two dollars and fifty cents.\n\n    \"Steamers there are on which the deck boys must be remembered\n    with a dollar each, and where a collection is taken up, by the\n    boy who polishes the shoes and by the musicians.\n\n    \"On huge liners patronized by rich folks exclusively, the\n    tendency is to fix the minimum gratuity at $5, with an advance\n    to seven, ten and twelve where the stewardess, table steward\n    and stateroom steward are concerned.\"\n\nThen follow instructions to tip the smoking-room steward, the barbers\nand even the ship's doctor!\n\n\nTHE \"RICH AMERICAN\" MYTH\n\nIt is small wonder, in view of the nature of the literature of tipping,\nthat Europe has found American travelers \"rich picking.\" Before\nembarking on the first trip abroad the average American informs himself\nand herself of what is expected in the way of gratuities, and everywhere\nthe tourist turns in a library advice is found which effectually throws\nthe cost of service upon the patron. Railroad and steamship literature\nusually avoids the subject because these companies do not want to bring\nthis additional expense of travel to the attention of the public. A\nsteamship folder will state that passage to London is ninety dollars,\nincluding berth and meals, but gives no hint that the tips will amount\nto ten dollars more!\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nTIPPING AND THE STAGE\n\n\nAn almost invariable laugh-producer on the stage or in moving pictures\nis a scene in which a bell-boy or other servitor executes the customary\nmaneuvers for obtaining a tip.\n\nPlay producers know that the laugh can be evoked and any hotel scene is\ncertain to include this bit of business. In seeking the explanation of\nthe humor in such a scene, the answer will be found to be cynicism and\nthe peculiar glee that people feel in observing others in disagreeable\nsituations.\n\n\nCOMIC WOES\n\nThe slap-stick variety of comedy is based upon this trait in human\nnature. If a man is kicked down three flights of stairs, the spectator\nhowls with delight. And, particularly, if a policeman is worsted in an\nencounter, the merriment is frenzied. Our Sunday comic papers depend\nalmost exclusively upon violence for their humor. It is the final\nspanking the Katzenjammer Kids receive that brings the laugh. The climax\nto many other comics--notably Mutt and Jeff--is violence.\n\nHence, a tipping scene on the stage or in moving pictures creates a\nlaugh because the public sees the tip-giver as a victim. He usually\nexaggerates his role by making the giving of the tip a painful act to\nhimself, and the whole scene proves the contention in this discussion,\nnamely, that tipping is wrong. If the spectators did not perceive the\nbell-boy as a bandit, and the hotel guest as a victim, no laugh would\nresult. They have been in similar situations and know the feelings of\nthe victim.\n\nSometimes stage managers vary the incident so that the laugh is on the\nbell-boy, by having the guest refrain from tipping. Then the spectators\nlaugh at the bell-boy's disappointment--again finding humor in\nmisfortune.\n\n\nTIPS IN THE MOVIES\n\nWith the development of moving pictures the utilization of this kind of\nhumor has widened immeasurably. And the point to be considered here is\nthe influence of such visualization of tipping upon the spread of the\ncustom. Undoubtedly tipping is increased by moving pictures and by stage\nrepresentation. The public is made to feel that, despite the inherent\nwrong in the custom, it must be followed, or they will experience the\nunpleasantness at which they have just laughed.\n\nAnother example of the itching palm which may be depended upon to\nproduce a laugh is a scene in which a policeman is handed a bill for\nneglecting his duty in some respect. A well-to-do man will cross the law\nin some manner and in the play he winks an eye, the policeman turns his\nback with his palm extended, a bill is slipped into it, and he departs\nto the sound of the spectators' laugh.\n\nThe effect of these scenes upon the public is dual. It either confirms\ntheir impression that all servants or officers are \"approachable,\" or it\ncreates among the unsophisticated the idea that tipping or graft is the\ncustomary and proper method of dealing with such classes of citizens.\nThe worldly wise gain the first impression, and the spread of the\ntipping custom is assured by the second impression.\n\nMoving pictures have extended this influence to every nook and corner of\nthe country. The result is that persons who live in the smaller and more\ndemocratic communities are educated to the big city development of the\nitching palm. And the effect upon children and young people is\npernicious in the extreme.\n\n\nIMPRESSING THE YOUNG\n\nA boy who sees a tipping scene in a moving picture gains the impression\nthat it is smart to exact such tribute. Or he gains the impression that\nhe has been overlooking a rich vein of easy remuneration. The photo-play\ndirectors, either consciously or unconsciously, are doing great damage\nto democratic ideals by featuring such scenes. It will not be surprising\nif, among the other evils fostered by moving pictures, the next\ngeneration displays a marked increase in the grafting propensity. The\nyoung people are being educated to think it natural.\n\nThus, aside from the human impulses of pride and avarice, it is apparent\nthat literature and the stage are strengthening the custom of tipping by\ntheir representations of it as humorous. People will not combat anything\nat which they laugh. The itching palm has two doughty champions in the\nbooks on etiquette and the theaters.\n\nActors, it would seem, have enough contact with the itching palm among\nstage hands to make them ardent advocates of reform, to say nothing of\ntheir contact with it in hotels. On the vaudeville stage especially the\ncarpenter, the electrician, the property man and their co-workers must\nbe \"seen\" with regular and generous donations to insure a smooth act. In\nmany theaters the stage hands have a definite scale of tips for regular\nduties that they perform--and for which the management also pays them.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nTHE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT\n\n\nFrom a waiter, or a porter, or a janitor's point of view, tipping is\nwrong only when it is meager. They regard this form of compensation as\nnot only just but usually too sparingly bestowed.\n\nUnquestionably, with any reform in the manner of compensation to persons\nengaged in domestic or other serving capacities, must go a reform in the\nattitude of the public toward servitors. The patron who abuses his\nprivileges, who exacts of employees far more than he has the right to\nask, who treats them as automatons without sensibilities or\nself-respect--such a patron must be handled simultaneously with the\nchange in manner of compensation.\n\nEmployers, particularly in hotels and like public places, will have to\ngive more attention to seeing that employees are not mistreated by the\nswaggering, blatant, selfish type of patron. This type abounds and has\nbeen developed largely by the tipping custom, that is, the extremely\nservile attitude assumed by servitors in order to stimulate tipping has\nbrought out the opposite quality of domineering pride in the patron.\n\n\nTHE SORE SPOT\n\nNo feeling so rankles in the mind as the sense of uncompensated labor.\nThe thought that patrons have gotten something for nothing leaves a sore\nspot in the thought of servitors. And if they are employed in places\nwhere the only compensation they receive is from the gratuities of\npatrons, this soreness is incurable. The next time the patron appears he\nwill be made to feel the displeasure of the employee. Thus, in one\nsense, it is the system that is wrong, a system which does an injustice\nto both employee and patron.\n\nEvery employee has a fairly clear idea of his duties. Most employees\nscrupulously refrain from doing more than the duties for which they are\npaid expressly. Hence, when an employee over-steps this boundary he has\nfixed in his own mind, he has the sense of uncompensated labor. He\nfeels a grudge either against the employer or the patron. He looks to\none or the other to supply the extra remuneration for the extra service.\n\nAs a consequence, personal service workers are nursing a grievance much\nof the time. Their conversation and thoughts are about some patron who\nhas failed to compensate them, or has, in their judgment, inadequately\ncompensated them. They devote little time to thinking of a reform in the\nsystem that would give them an adequate compensation from the employer\nand do away entirely with the patron-to-employee form of compensation.\n\n\nTHE MARTYR\n\nThe tipping system is so established now that the individual who opposes\nit must be prepared to play the role of martyr, whether employee or\npatron. Employers who profit by the no-wage system dislike employees\nwith a degree of self-respect that makes them rebel at gratuities. Such\nwages as are paid are so nominal that the employee cannot subsist upon\nthem alone. He either has to quit that line of work or enter it and\nconform to the conventional methods.\n\nIn Chapter V the equity of tipping certain employees was considered and\nthe claim of other employees as to their rights will be considered\nbriefly here.\n\n\nBAGGAGEMEN\n\nTipping men who call for and deliver trunks has become a fixed custom in\nthe cities and is expected, though not so often practiced, in the\nsmaller towns. The transfer company theoretically charge for the\ncomplete operation of moving the trunk from the home or hotel to the\nrailroad station. But the men on the wagons or trucks exact tips for\ncarrying the baggage up and down stairs or elevators. The question is,\nare they entitled to this extra compensation? The baggagemen argue that\ntheir business, strictly interpreted, is to carry the trunk from the\nhouse to the station and that going up stairs and into rooms is an extra\nservice. Hence, they stand around and make it evident that they expect\ncompensation from the patron, in addition to their wages from the\ncompany.\n\nTheir position is not tenable. A patron pays the company to get his\ntrunk from wherever it may be and to deliver it to its destination.\nWhatever operations are necessary to get the trunk are the natural\nduties of the company and its employees. The charges of the company are,\nor should be, based on the complete service. The exaction of extra\ncompensation in the form of tips by the employees, therefore, is an\nimposition. In calling the company no person, tacitly or openly, agrees\nto the argument that the trunk is to be moved from curb to curb.\n\nThe understanding is that your baggage is to be removed from its\ncustomary place in the home to the customary place in the station or\nother destination. It would be as reasonable for baggagemen to dump a\ntrunk outside a station and demand a gratuity from the railroad for\nbringing it inside, as to demand a gratuity from the patron for taking\nthe trunk up or down stairs. Tipping to baggagemen is unnecessary. If\nthe company pays inadequate wages the remedy lies not from the patron\nthrough tips but from the employer through the payment of increased\nwages.\n\n\nBOOTBLACKS\n\nOf late years the custom has grown up to tip bootblacks. This is in\naddition to the regular charge paid for the service and has no\njustification except in the false plea of the servitor that if the\npatron does not tip him he will have no compensation. Here it may be\nstated that the thought that the tip constitutes the only compensation\nthe employee receives is the chief influence in the mind of the patron.\nHe feels a pity for the employee even though he objects to the bad\neconomic system that enables employers to engage workers on such a\nbasis. The employees exploit this thought in the mind by leading the\nconversation with the patron into the channel of compensation. At some\ntime during the service he lets the patron know that the tips he\nreceives are his only compensation and this arouses the sense of\nobligation in the patron who does not like to have his shoes shined for\nnothing, even though the payment at the desk covers the transaction.\n\nAny one who has patronized a restaurant regularly, or a bootblack stand,\nor a barbershop, or manicurist, or any public place, will recall how\ninvariably the servitors bring up the subject of tipping and always with\nthe suggestion that they would be disabled financially if it were not\nfor the generosity of the public.\n\nThis is all a carefully and skilfully planned campaign to exploit the\npatron.\n\n\nBARBER SHOP PORTERS\n\nPatrons who do not tip barbers frequently tip the porters who brush them\ndown. On the surface it seems that the porter's attentions in a barber\nshop are extra and deserve extra compensation. Yet, theoretically, no\nmaster barber would admit that a patron of his shop has any other\ncharges to pay than the regular tariffs. The porter is there as an extra\nmeasure of service from the shop. Practically, however, the shops all\nproceed on the assumption of tipping. The porter is a much-aggrieved\nindividual if he is overlooked. In any sound economic system, the\nporter's compensation should come exclusively from the shop. If his\nattentions are decided to be extra, there should be a regular scale of\ncompensation, as for a hair cut, which the patron should pay. So long as\nhis services are furnished by the shop without being included in the\nregular shop tariffs, the patron owes the porter nothing for his\nattentions.\n\nThe solution of the whole tipping problem lies in the foregoing\npostulate--that if any employee is in a position to render an extra\nservice there should be a regular scale of charges for such service. It\nis the irregular compensation, depending upon the whim of the patron,\nthat makes the practice economically unsound. No hotel, or other\nemployer, should have on the premises any employee whose compensation\ndepends upon chance. If a hotel stations an employee in the washroom he\nshould be there distinctly as part of the service for which a patron\npays at the cashier's desk. A porter in a barber shop should be engaged\nexclusively at the shop's expense as part of the complete service for\nwhich a patron pays to the cashier. Employers, however, are much too\nshrewd to scatter employees around on the formal understanding that the\npatrons are to compensate them. They pretend that they are engaged as an\nextra measure of courtesy or service from the employer and then are\neducated to exact, through tips, their compensation from the patron.\n\n\nDOOR MEN\n\nIt would seem that if there were any place where the patron might feel\nfree to forget his coin pocket, it would be in the use of doors. But it\nis customary now to tip door men. That is, you have to pay to enter a\nhotel, a restaurant or other public place in order to spend money with\nthe employer. The employer will smile blandly and assure you that no\npatron need tip the door man, but the door man will give unmistakable\nevidence to the contrary. The tipping of door men shows how the custom\ngrows with what it feeds upon. To the devotee of the custom every\nunderling has an itching palm that must be scratched with a coin and the\nemployer rejoices because it relieves him of wage-payments. Tipping\ndoormen is incomprehensibly weak. Elevator men are in the same class.\n\n\nGUIDES\n\nIn parks and other public places where the employer or the Government\nfurnishes guides and where patrons pay a regular fee for being shown the\nsights, the guides carefully cultivate the tipping propensity. Their\nmost common method is to start a conversation about how inadequately\nthey are paid for their work and the high cost of living. They play upon\nthe sympathies of the sight-seers until at the end of the trip the\nfeeling is strong that the guide should be remembered. He pockets the\ngratuity and looks for other game. The patrons overlook the fact that if\nhe is underpaid the employer or the Government is at fault. He often\nworks in the appearance of extra attentions to create the sense of\nobligation. It is clearly a case of double compensation for one service.\n\n\nHATBOYS\n\nThe cloak-room is one of the best devices for throwing the item of wages\nto the shoulders of patrons. For some one to check and guard your hat\nand overcoat while you see a show or dine has a speaking likeness to a\nreal extra service. But it is as counterfeit as the other pretenses of\nextra service. It is every restaurant's or theater's duty to provide for\nhats and coats of patrons. The meal or the show cannot be enjoyed unless\nthis preliminary function is performed by the proprietor. When two\ndollars is paid for a theater ticket it also pays for this service, and\nextra compensation to the attendant in charge may be defended as charity\nbut not as an obligation. A patron who buys a meal in a restaurant owes\nthe cloak-room attendants nothing. He paid for their service in paying\nfor the meal. Tips to hatboys are superfluous.\n\n\nJANITORS\n\nThe autocrat of the basement is a man with a grievance even when\ngenerously tipped. From his viewpoint he is called upon to do a score of\nthings outside his duties. Must he do these for nothing? He must not.\nThe only question is who shall pay him. The janitor should be hired by\nemployers upon the understanding that the renters have the right of way\nin utilizing his services. Or, apartments should be leased with a clear\nunderstanding of the janitor's duties, so that he will have no lee-way\nto exploit the renters. On the face of it, the idea of defining a\njanitor's services so that everything outside of the regulations would\nbe extra service for which the renter should compensate him, seems\ndifficult of execution. But the difficulty is less real than apparent.\nAnd in the meantime, the janitor regularly is tipped to do things for\nwhich he is paid by the employer. He is \"out for his\" as eagerly as the\nwaiter or the Pullman porter. Hallboys in the apartment houses are\nequally avaricious. Now and then the metropolitan papers contain letters\nto the editor complaining of their exactions--pathetic letters from\nwell-to-do persons paying thousands of dollars' rent for apartments! One\nway out would be to insert in a lease that the renter shall receive full\nand equal service without extra compensation to employees.\n\n\nMANICURISTS\n\nThese young women have the best psychological opportunity to exact\ntribute, particularly where the patrons are men. The personal contact is\ninfluential, and the plaintive tale of meager salary and small tips\nwhich she purrs into your ears, the meanwhile flashing a languishing\nsmile--it's a great little game which she plays for all it is worth!\nSome of them receive eight dollars a week in \"salary,\" and the tips\namount to enough to make their income thirty-five a week and more. The\nemployer has the fifty, seventy-five cents or a dollar charge for the\nservice as practically clear profit. Many men tip the manicurist as much\nas they pay for the service. Perhaps many of them feel that they get\ntheir money's worth in social enjoyment--not believing that the young\nwoman bestows the same charm upon every other male victim! \"I feel sorry\nfor that little Miss Brown. If it wasn't for the tips she couldn't live\non her salary,\" said one sympathetic man. He objected to tipping as a\nrule, but here was a clear case where it was worthy! No use arguing\nethics with him.\n\n\nMESSENGERS\n\nThe custom of pay to telegraph messenger boys by the recipients of\nmessages is peculiarly reprehensible because it is fixing a standard of\ngraft in his mind that will work out into worse practices in maturity. A\nboy given a tip has had his self-respect punctured in a dangerous way.\nHe may grow up and out of such a conception of compensation, but it will\nbe a struggle, and much of our police and other public graft had its\norigin in the cultivation of the belief that \"tips\" are proper. A\nmessenger boy has absolutely no claim upon a patron for extra\ncompensation. The price of a telegram includes the cost of delivery.\n\n\nSTENOGRAPHERS\n\nPublic typists often expect gratuities. The regular charges are for \"the\nhouse.\" They want something for themselves on the side. Sometimes the\ntips are so large that the employer gets greedy and requires them to be\nturned in, as proved by the following extract from a want ad in the New\nYork _Times_:\n\n    \"Remuneration half of all you make with weekly guarantee of $20;\n    proceeds net more than guarantee. No smoking; tips must be\n    turned in.\"\n\nIt seems self-evident that anything given to stenographers beyond the\nregular charges for the work is pure waste. They cannot possibly give\nany service in return, and cannot retain the proper self-respect in\naccepting something for nothing. Many of them, however, take the tips\nsimply to avoid offending patrons.\n\nThe list of tip-takers is too extensive for individual consideration.\nBath attendants, bartenders, house servants, clerks--and so on through\na lamentably long list, have the same moral disease. The contagion is\nspreading in an alarming way. Of course, the whole system is riding for\na fall.\n\nThe spurious and specious arguments of employees in behalf of the custom\nand the timorous acquiescence of the public will alike yield before a\nrobust and elemental Americanism.\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT\n\n\n\"We face a condition, not a theory,\" assert those employers who defend\ntheir adaptation of wages to the tipping custom. \"The public seems\ndetermined to bestow gratuities, and if we paid full wages in addition,\nour employees would be the highest paid workers in the world.\"\n\nBut two wrongs do not make a right.\n\n\nTHREE KINDS OF EMPLOYERS\n\nEmployers who profit by tipping are classified as follows:\n\n    1. Those who pay living wages and positively forbid gratuities.\n\n    2. Those who pay average competitive wages and maintain a\n    passive attitude toward gratuities.\n\n    3. Those who pay minimum, or no, wages, and aggressively exploit\n    the propensity to give.\n\nAt present the first class constitutes almost an infinitesimal minority.\nHere and there in large cities there are barber shops which advertise a\n\"No-Tip\" policy, and occasionally a hotel or restaurant.\n\nIn the second class are most of the moderate-price places catering to\nthe public. The employers and employees welcome gratuities but do not\nmake them the prime object in their relations with patrons.\n\nThe third class includes the high-grade hotels, sleeping car companies,\nexpensively conducted restaurants and like enterprises. This is the\nclass which sets the pace through the patronage of the socially or\nfinancially prominent.\n\nA few of the more noteworthy employers who profit by the custom follow:\n\n    The Pullman Company,\n    The Hotel Company,\n    The Taxicab Company,\n    The Transfer Company,\n    The Steam Ship Company,\n    The Master Barber,\n    The Apartment House Owner,\n    The Restaurant,\n    The Telegraph Company.\n\nThat an organized conspiracy exists between employers and employees to\nexploit the public is realized vaguely, if at all, by the average\npatron.\n\nProof of this allegation may be found at the cashier's desk of almost\nany restaurant or hotel. The waiter invariably is given change that will\nmake it easy for the patron to tip. He returns with the change arranged\nin such a way on the tray that the patron must fumble over all of it if\nhe wants the full amount. The employer's and the waiter's theory is\nthat, rather than do this, he will leave a dime or a quarter in one\ncorner. In a barber shop the patron always receives small change so that\nit will be easy to \"remember\" the porter.\n\nYet, such a practice is the mildest indictment that may be brought\nagainst employers for entering a conspiracy to exploit patrons.\n\n\nSELLING THE TIP PRIVILEGE\n\nIn New York and Chicago particularly, many employers went so far (and\nstill maintain the practice) as to sell to outside persons and companies\nthe privilege of collecting the tips in their places of business. That\nis to say, these outside parties were to furnish waiters, cloak room\nattendants and other employees to the hotel or restaurant and depend\nupon the tips for their remuneration.\n\nSo large was the sum realized from tips that the hotels and restaurants\nactually charged the outside parties thousands of dollars for the\nconcession. In Illinois a law was passed in 1915 aimed directly at this\norganized phase of the custom. It prohibited hotels and others from\nselling tipping privileges. The men who owned such privileges promptly\nwent to law to test the constitutionality of the act. To the tip-taker\nanything is unconstitutional that interferes with his graft!\n\nAt the time the law went into effect, the situation was reported in the\nChicago _Tribune_ as follows:\n\n    \"The state will have a fight on its hands before the Chicago tip\n    trust ... releases its clutch on the pocketbooks of hotel and\n    restaurant patrons.\n\n    \"At midnight last night ... there was no indication the largess\n    was going anywhere else than it has gone before ever since a\n    commercial genius capitalized the well-known generosity of the\n    dining and wining public--straight into the coffers of the\n    trust.\"\n\nThe manager of one of the leading hotels said that lawyers for the hotel\nhad served notice on the head of the biggest of Chicago's three tip\ntrusts to withdraw his minions.\n\n    \"Do you contemplate returning part of the money paid for the\n    concession?\" he was asked.\n\n    \"That,\" the manager replied, \"is a detail.\"\n\n    \"Do you think it possible (the head of the tip trust) will\n    resist expulsion?\"\n\n    \"Hardly. We'll just put in a crew of our own and that will end\n    it.\"\n\n    \"Have you heard a report that the tip trusts contemplate\n    standing by their guns and, if necessary, charging a 10 cent fee\n    for checking hats and coats, anticipating the tip?\"\n\n    \"That's preposterous.\"\n\nAfter such evidence, patrons of hotels and other public service places\nhardly will feel as cheerful in giving tips as they may have felt before\nbeing enlightened. Here was a typical instance of a hotel advertising\nsuch and such rates for rooms and food with the plain inference that\npatrons had no other obligation. Then the management goes out and sells\nthe right to exploit the patrons, thereby filling its dining rooms and\ncloak rooms with employees who must exact tips if they are to be paid at\nall for their work!\n\n\nARE YOU A BENEFACTOR?\n\nA small part of the public cares nothing about this and will tip\nregardless of the conditions of employment of the servitors. This\nelement simply enjoys the grandiloquent role of Bestower of Largess. But\nthe vast majority of Americans has followed the custom under duress.\nThis majority finds it repugnant to tip on the assumption that the\nemployee alone profits by its generosity; and to discover that the\nemployer as well profits by it--in fact secretly devises methods of\nencouraging the tipping--will confirm the majority in the thought that\nthe custom is wholly bad.\n\nUnder which school of economics, or ethics, can such a system be\njustified?\n\nThe assertion of employers that tipping is the spontaneous impulse of\npatrons and that they cannot afford to pay living wages in addition is\nseen to be without foundation in conspicuous instances. Such spontaneity\nas exists they stimulate and exploit for their own profit.\n\nConceding that the development of tipping has thrown employment upon an\nabnormal basis, the question arises, if tipping is abolished should the\nincrease in wages be borne exclusively by the employer?\n\nTo the extent that employers make extraordinary dividends out of the\ncustom the extra cost of operation through normal wages should be borne\nby them without increased tariffs to patrons. Competition in the hotel\nbusiness, for example, has been adjusted to the custom of tipping and\nthe sudden throwing of a bona fide wage system upon such employers,\nwithout an increase in revenues, would be disastrous.\n\n\nA REASONABLE SOLUTION\n\nThe solution in certain instances might be found in a joint obligation\nof patron and employer. The employer says: \"I have been able to give you\nfood at such and such a price because I have not had to charge to it the\ncost of waiter hire. If the public discontinues gratuities to my\nemployees, I must raise the price of food to cover this deficit.\" The\npatron replies: \"Upon proof that your food tariffs have not included\nthe item of waiter-hire, I will pay more for my meals if they are served\nfree.\"\n\nThe goal of a reform in tipping is to make one payment--and that one to\nthe employer--cover every expense of the patron.\n\nEven if the public should have to pay more for food, lodging and other\nservice, if tipping is abolished, an immense advance in sound economics\nand democratic ethics would be made in eliminating the double-payment\nsystem. Where two payments are made--to employer and employee--it is\ninevitable that the patron will lose.\n\nIt should be understood, however, that a large part of the $200,000,000\nor more given annually by Americans in gratuities is sheer waste because\nit is given for absolutely nothing in return. Such waste should be\neliminated without consideration of employer or employee.\n\nSo long as employers assume that the public will pay part or all of the\nwages of employees, so long will the employees be under the necessity of\nresorting to outrageous tactics--coddling the patron who does tip,\ninsulting and neglecting the one who does not tip--in order to obtain\npay for their services.\n\nEmployers must come to the viewpoint that tipping is morally wrong, and\ntherefore of necessity, economically unsound. The money they make out of\ntipping is tainted money. Employees should be engaged on wages that are\nadequate without regard to any gratuities that may be given.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nONE STEP FORWARD\n\n\nWhen the Hotel Statler, in Buffalo, announced that a guest need not tip\nits employees in order to get satisfactory service, a sensation was\nsprung upon hotel managers and the traveling public. Nothing more\nemphatically shows the abnormal state of mind toward tipping than that\nsuch an elementary right should be affirmed and cause surprise in the\naffirmation.\n\n\nA SOUND CODE\n\nFollowing is its Code to employes on the practice of tipping:\n\n    \"The patron of a hotel goes there because he expects to receive\n    certain things served with celerity, courtesy and cheerfulness.\n\n    \"The persons who are to fetch and carry him these things will be\n    those whose portion it is to render intimate, personal services\n    to others. Since time immemorial, this class of servitors has\n    been of the rank and file.\n\n    \"Now and then a server is found--a waiter, a bootblack, a barber\n    or a bell boy--who adds a bit of his own personality to his\n    services. Such a one shows a bit more\n    intelligence--initiative--perspicacity--than his fellows. The\n    patron finds his smaller wants anticipated, and is pleased. He\n    feels that the servant has given him something extra and\n    unexpected--and he wants to pay something extra for it.\n\n    \"He tips.\n\n    \"Of course there are abuses of the tip. A rich bounder wants\n    something more than other hotel guests, and he futilely tries to\n    get it by throwing money about.\n\n    \"His tips are insults, and his reward Servility instead of\n    service.\n\n    \"Or--\n\n    \"An individual wishing to be thought a 'good fellow' ADMINISTERS\n    tips with the advice to 'buy a house and lot,' etc.\n\n    \"Or--\n\n    \"An infrequent traveler, having the time of his life, tips out\n    of sheer goodheartedness.\n\n    \"These types help to constitute the 'Public.'\n\n    \"It is the business of a good hotel to cater to the Public. It\n    is the avowed business of the Hotel Statler to please the public\n    better than any other hotel in the world.\n\n    \"Statler can run a tipless hotel if he wants to.\n\n    \"But Statler knows that a first-class hotel cannot be maintained\n    on a tip-less basis, for the reason that a small but certain per\n    cent. of its guests will tip, in spite of all rules.\n\n    \"Statler can and does do this: He guarantees to his guests who\n    do not wish to tip, everything--EVERYTHING--in the way of hotel\n    service, courtesy, etc., that the tipper gets.\n\n    \"Let's make that a bit stronger--guests do NOT have to tip at\n    Hotel Statler to get courteous, polite, attentive service.\n\n    \"Or, for final emphasis, we say to Statler guests: Please do NOT\n    tip unless you feel like it; but if you DO tip, let your tipping\n    be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous\n    custom.\n\n    \"Any Statler employee who is wise and discreet enough to merit\n    tips is wise and discreet enough to render a like service\n    whether he is tipped or not.\n\n    \"And he is wise and discreet enough to say 'thank you' when he\n    gets his tip.\n\n    \"In this connection let this be said:\n\n    \"The man who takes a tip and does not thank the tipper does not\n    feel that he has earned the tip any more than a blackmailer\n    feels that he has earned his blood money.\n\n    \"Any Statler employee who fails to give Service, or who fails to\n    thank the guest who gives him something, falls short of the\n    Statler Standard. We always thank any guest who reports such a\n    case to us. Statler does not deal summarily with his helpers,\n    any more than he deals perfunctorily with his guests--but the\n    tip-grafters get short shrift here.\"\n\n\nFOR THE BENEFIT OF GUESTS\n\nTo understand the spirit of management which could issue such\ninstructions to its employees in the face of the opportunity to exploit\nthe public, as most hotels do and so throw the whole cost of wages upon\nthe patron, it is necessary to consider other sections of the Code\ntreating of professional hospitality.\n\n    \"Hotel Statler is operated primarily for the benefit and\n    convenience of its guests. Without guests there could be no\n    Hotel Statler. These are simple Facts easily understood.\n\n    \"The Statler is a successful hotel. The Reason is, that every\n    Waiter in this hotel, every Hall-Boy, the Chambermaid, the\n    Clerk, the Chef, the Manager, the Boss Himself, is working all\n    the time to make them FEEL 'at home.'\n\n    \"Hotel service--that is, Hotel Statler service--means the limit\n    of Courteous, Efficient Attention from Each Particular Employee\n    to Each Particular Guest. This is the kind of service a Guest\n    pays for when he pays us his bill--whether it is for $2.00 or\n    $20.00 per day. It is the kind of Service he is entitled to,\n    and he NEED NOT and SHOULD NOT pay ANY MORE.\"\n\n\nNOT HOSPITALITY\n\nCompare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this\ncode with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other\nfirst-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel\nwhere the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the\nbell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your\nsuit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same\nspirit--he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the\nemployer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages.\n\nApparently this hotel reached the conviction that this was not\nhospitality.\n\nThen the conviction was reached that a guest \"need not and should not\npay any more\" for hotel service than the rate paid at the desk. From\nthis it was logical to bring the employees to a new conception of\nservice and to stop the piratical practice toward guests who do not\ntip.\n\nIt is particularly significant to note the assertion that the proprietor\ncan run a tipless hotel if he wants to. That is an interesting\ndeclaration. It proves that those managers who exploit the tipping\npropensity deliberately do so for reasons of greed.\n\nThen the reason for not running a tipless hotel is stated to be that \"a\nsmall but certain per cent. of its guests will tip in spite of all\nrules.\" Here is evidence that the public has its measure of blame for\nthe custom as well as the avarice of managers. This hotel declares that\nits conception of hospitality is to leave the guest free in his relation\ntoward employees. But note this! _It does not leave the employees free\nin their attitude toward guests._\n\n\nUP TO THE EMPLOYER\n\nThe foregoing distinction is the crux of the whole tipping problem. If\nmanagers will restrain and discipline employees so that they will not\nrun riot in their eagerness to exact toll from patrons the tipping evil\nwill be reduced to a minimum.\n\n\nTHE FIRST STEP\n\nIt is not the idea underlying this discussion to consider that a\nsatisfactory disposal of the tipping custom has been made when managers\ninsure equal treatment for those who do not tip in comparison with those\nwho do tip. Nothing short of the complete abolition of the custom can be\nthe goal in a republic. But as a long stride toward the goal, the Code\ncited above is noteworthy. It constitutes the first immediate step that\nany hotel may take.\n\nThe public would find immense relief in the general adoption of the\nforegoing idea--that tipping must \"be yielding to a genuine desire--not\nconforming to an outrageous custom.\" Inasmuch as the vast majority of\nAmericans who tip do so only because they are afraid not to conform to\nan outrageous custom, this plan, honestly enforced upon employees, will\nreduce the followers of the custom to the small percentage of the public\nwho tip because of pride or moral obtuseness. A way can be found to\nhandle this element when the majority have been freed.\n\nOnce the proof is at hand that tipping can be handled the conclusion is\nunescapable that the managers who knuckle to the custom are \"corrupt and\ncontented.\" They are on precisely the same moral level as their\nemployees.\n\n\nTHE GUEST'S RIGHTS\n\nIn the meantime, the individual patron has the right to and should\nproceed on the theory that he is entitled to EVERYTHING in the way of\nservice for the one payment. This is his common law right even if no\nspecial laws regulating tipping are in force.\n\nThe public is at a great disadvantage in combating the tipping evil when\nthe managers leave the issue to be settled between the patrons and the\nemployees. A bell boy can commit an offense to a patron who does not tip\nthat is perfectly tangible to the patron but difficult to report to the\nmanager. Unless the manager takes a positive hand and instructs his\nemployees in a manner similar to the above Code it is likely that most\npersons will continue to pay tribute rather than be insulted and\nneglected.\n\nIn Chicago, the Young Men's Christian Association operates a\nnineteen-story hotel where tips are prohibited, and this organization\ngenerally discourages the custom in its enterprises.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE\n\n\nThe Pullman company stands in the public mind as the leading exponent of\ntipping. It certainly is the largest beneficiary of the custom, as a\nsimple calculation will show.\n\nThe company has about 6,500 porters, who receive $27.50 a month in\nwages. Suppose the porters received no tips. The company then would have\nto pay living wages. Assuming that the long hours of work would not\nattract desirable porters under a straight wage system without at least\n$60 a month pay, each one of the 6,500 would have an increase of $32.50\na month, or $390 a year.\n\nThis would mean an increase in the company's annual pay-roll of\n$2,535,000!\n\nIn other words, the company saves about two and a half millions a year\nthrough the tips given to its porters. What part of the large annual\ndividend is furnished by this saving is a secret of the company's books.\n\nSome of these porters after many years' service receive $42 a month in\nwages, and this would bring down the foregoing estimate, though not to\nany radical extent. The tips bring their incomes to $100, $150, $200 and\nmore a month! There are, of course, many runs on which the porters\nderive smaller amounts in gratuities, and the best runs are given as a\nreward for long and faithful service.\n\n\nWHAT THE PULLMAN MANAGER SAID\n\nThe Walsh Commission, appointed to investigate industrial conditions in\nthe United States, in 1915 singled out the Pullman tipping practice for\ninvestigation. Some of the testimony given by the general manager of the\ncompany follows:\n\n    \"The company simply accepts conditions as it finds them. The\n    company did not invent tipping. It was here when the company\n    began.\"\n\n    \"What do you say to making tipping unlawful and paying employees\n    a living wage?\" Chairman Walsh asked.\n\n    \"If such a condition arises, I presume we would have to pay\n    wages necessary to get the service.\"\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \"Do you get your negroes in the South?\"\n\n    \"Yes, we have been looking after them in the South. The South is\n    a bigger field and the men there are more adapted for the work\n    than the Northern negroes.\"\n\n    \"Well, be plain,\" Chairman Walsh said, \"are the negroes from the\n    South more docile and less independent than those from the\n    North?\"\n\n    \"Well, no, but the Southern negro is more pleasing to the\n    traveling public. He is more adapted to wait on people and serve\n    with a smile.\"\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \"Can a man live on $27.50 a month and rear a family?\"\n\n    \"Really, I don't know. He might.\"\n\n    \"Does the Pullman company have in mind the liberality and\n    kindness of the public when it fixes that rate of pay?\"\n\n    \"Well, I should say that tips have something to do with it. I\n    didn't make the rates of pay.\"\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \"A porter must call passengers during the night, polish shoes,\n    answer bells, and look after the safety and comfort of the\n    passengers at all hours, must he not?\"\n\n    \"Yes. He is reprimanded, suspended or discharged for infractions\n    of the rules.\"\n\n    \"What is your attitude toward the question of an organization\n    among your employees?\"\n\n    \"I felt that the movement to form a federation of our employees\n    was a selfish one on the part of a few.\"\n\n\nWHAT THE PORTERS SAID\n\nThe Commission also called several porters to testify. They stated that\nthey could not live without the tips. One porter with twenty-one years'\nservice behind him testified that he receives $42 a month in wages,\nwhile the tips averaged about $75 a month, or $117 income from the\ncompany and the public.\n\nAnother porter receiving $27.50 a month testified that his tips averaged\nabout $77 a month. He was described as wearing two diamond rings and\nbeing tastefully dressed.\n\nThe conductors receive from $70 to $90 a month in salary, and it was\nbrought out before the Commission that many do not consider it dishonest\nto \"knock down\" on seat sales. This is accomplished partly at the\ncompany's expense, and partly at the expense of patrons--especially\nunsophisticated travelers who buy a whole seat but have other\npassengers sit beside them, the conductor pocketing the extra payment.\nThis practice is limited to day runs. There is also the opportunity to\novercharge.\n\nThat the Pullman company gives the public good service through its\nporters is indisputable. The only question is whether the public should\npay extra for this service. If a porter with an income of $117, say,\nreceives only $27.50 from the company, the public is paying\nthree-fourths of his wages and the company only one-fourth. Where the\nporters have incomes of $150 to $200 a month the company pays one-fifth\nto one-eighth of the amount and the public pays from four-fifths to\nseven-eighths!\n\n\nSERVICE INCLUDED\n\nThe price of a ticket on a sleeping car is as much as a patron should\npay the Pullman company, and it should carry with it adequate porter\nservice.\n\nA passenger enters a car in spick and span condition as a rule. At the\nend of the journey, through no fault of his own, he may be dusty, and it\nbecomes the obligation of the Pullman company to discharge him in as\ngood condition as when he entered the car. The porter is there for this\nservice. Hence, to give him a tip for a \"brush,\" or for any other\nservice he may have rendered to make the use of the company's property\ncomfortable, is a superfluous payment.\n\nThe company has a school for training a porter in which he is taught a\nrigid discipline of attentions to passengers, all of which tend to\ncreate in the passenger a sense of obligation toward the porter. Yet not\none of these attentions calls for a gratuity if they are examined\nfairly.\n\nThe porter is psychologist enough to know that to create the illusion\nthat he has rendered an extra service is as good for producing a tip as\nactually to do so. Hence he will come around with a pillow, or shine\nyour shoes during the night unsolicited, or execute some other maneuver\nthat arouses a feeling of obligation. The shining of shoes is outside\nhis ordinary duties, but he has no valid claim for compensation unless\nspecifically requested to perform this service. In his mind is the\nconstant reminder that if the passenger does not make a donation his\npay envelope from the company will not meet his bills.\n\n\nWHAT THE PRESS SAID\n\nAmong the many editorial comments that the disclosures of the Walsh\nCommission evoked is the following from the St. Louis _Republic_:\n\n    The most captious critic of the Pullman company cannot deny that\n    it merits a unique distinction. Other corporations before now\n    have underpaid their employees ... but it remained for the\n    Pullman company to discover how to work on the sympathies of the\n    public in such a manner as to induce that public to make up, by\n    gratuities, for its failure to pay its employees a living wage.\n\n    It began this forty years ago, when the \"plantation\" darky of\n    ante-bellum days was still abroad in the land. It used him, his\n    pathetic history, his peculiar attitude toward the white man,\n    for the accomplishment of its purpose. There at the end of the\n    journey, after the traveler had paid $2, $2.50 or $3 for his\n    berth, stood the porter with his whisk broom and his smile.\n\n    And back of him was the pathetic fact, industriously circulated,\n    that \"the company\" did not pay him enough to live on, so that he\n    was dependent on the gratuities of passengers who had already\n    paid full price for accommodations and services. We were\n    expected to pay him simply because the Pullman company didn't.\n    And we paid him. Tens of millions of passengers have paid him\n    millions of dollars.\n\n    It wasn't really philanthropy to the porter; it was philanthropy\n    extended to the Pullman company, which was glad to have the fact\n    of its meanness in its relations to its colored\n    employees--ill-informed of the rights of workingmen and\n    dependent by instinct--published to the world.\n\n    It was the Pullman company which fastened the tipping habit on\n    the American people and they used the negro as the instrument to\n    do it with.\n\nIt may be remarked in closing this phase of the discussion that an act\nof Congress forbidding tips on inter-state carriers would effectually\nreach the Pullman situation.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING\n\n\nIt has been asserted in this discussion that tipping is incompatible\nwith a democratic form of government. Yet we find officials of our\nGovernment following the custom and allowing tips as a legitimate item\nof expense of traveling to be paid out of the public treasury.\n\n\nFREE AND EQUAL\n\nThis state of affairs proves that the work of 1776 and 1787 was limited\npractically to one phase of democracy, namely, the political. Washington\nand Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the passionate\nideal. This they and their associates achieved in ample measure. They\ngave the waiter or the barber or the bootblack an equal voice in\ngovernment with themselves.\n\nLet those Americans who think that the abolition of tipping would be too\nradical a step toward social democracy consider how repulsive the\nattitude of Washington and Jefferson was to the aristocratic thought of\ntheir day. No matter what arguments the aristocrats presented against\npolitical democracy, their real objection was just this granting of\nvoting equality to persons whom they rated as socially submerged.\n\nBut having founded our government upon political democracy, the straight\nline of development is toward social and industrial democracy, in order\nto complete the ideal entertained by Washington and Jefferson. That both\nof these idealists tipped servants and that Washington owned slaves is\nindisputable, but they left records that prove that they merely\n\"suffered it to be so now.\" Washington clearly foresaw the trouble in\nwhich slavery would involve his country, and would have freed his slaves\nif he could have done so without precipitating what to him appeared a\ngreater evil in view of all the circumstances of his day.\n\nThe Revolutionary period did all that can be asked of one generation\nwhen political equality was established. It remains for our generation\nto finish the work of democracy by establishing social and industrial\ndemocracy. The prospect of a street cleaner or your valet being your\nsocial and industrial equal may seem either utopian or undesirable, but\nit must be remembered, as stated, that two centuries ago the thought of\ngranting an equal vote to such persons was precisely as distasteful to\nthe aristocratic mind.\n\n\nEQUALITY AND UNIFORMITY\n\nMuch loose thinking along these lines would be obviated if every one\ncould learn clearly the distinction between \"equality\" and \"uniformity.\"\nIt is the thought of uniformity that makes most persons belligerent\ntoward democratic impulses in industry or society. They dislike the idea\nof a dead level of compulsory uniformity. A bootblack and a banker are\n\"equal\" in the right to vote, but they are not \"uniform\" in function or\nculture. Social democracy will abolish an aristocratic custom like\ntipping so that every citizen will stand upon an equality of\nself-respect. It will delete the adjective \"menial\" from any form of\nservice so that a garbage collector will stand in as honorable a\nrelation to society as a lawyer. But social democracy will not and\ncannot make naturally uncongenial minds live in a relation of compulsory\nfellowship.\n\nThus in the United States we have only one-third of a democracy. The\nother two-thirds--social and industrial democracy--must be attained\nbefore we can consider our government as ideal. The tipping custom\nstands squarely in the path of this attainment. The slavery system is\nnot worse in competition with free labor than is the tipping system of\ncompensation. In neither system are values determined by merit or\nproduction.\n\nIn the list of the 5,000,000 Americans with itching palms were national\nor city government employees like mail carriers, garbage collectors and\npolicemen. In the larger cities a system of giving gratuities to these\nand other government employees has grown up that emphasizes the distance\nwe have to travel to attain true democracy.\n\nAny one of these three classes of government employees is paid well for\nthe service he renders. Yet there are mail carriers who will lose a\ncourteous, friendly bearing toward those who fail to \"remember\" them at\nChristmas, or at more frequent intervals, or who will actually curtail\nthe service they are paid to render.\n\n\nMISGUIDED GENEROSITY\n\nThere seems to be something about the continual contact of a person\nserving and a person served that makes the one think the other owes him\nsomething on the side. A mail carrier will bring your mail once, twice\nor several times a day for a period and then enters the feeling that he\nis entitled to some substantial token of appreciation of his faithful,\ncheerful service, other than the compensation paid by the government.\nOften the person being served feels a generous appreciation of good\nservice and bestows a token of it without the person serving having\nexpected or wanted it. The tipping custom is not wholly the outgrowth of\ngreed. It is frequently misguided generosity. Where the error creeps in\nis in expressing appreciation in terms of money. Self-respect is\nsatisfied with verbal appreciation.\n\nAs an employer the government, of all employers, should set an example\nof true democracy, should practice sound economics and ethics in the\nrelations it permits between its employees and the public. There is no\njustification from any viewpoint for giving gratuities to public\nservants. If garbage collectors render slipshod service to citizens who\nfail to tip them--and they do this regularly--a complaint should bring\nimmediate relief. It does not now because the higher officials are under\nthe same illusion about tipping that envelopes the subordinates.\n\nAn inspector of street cleaning in Philadelphia was investigating a\ncomplaint against a street sweeper in a residence district. The sweeper\ntold him that he felt the complaint must be ill-founded and that the\npeople in the neighborhood must be satisfied with his sweeping, because\nhe had recently received from residents in one block twenty-one dollars\nin Christmas tips.\n\nHow many public servants in your own neighborhood did you tip last\nChristmas?\n\nIt should not be assumed that the indictment here read is against all\nmail carriers or garbage collectors, or policemen. With tipping, as with\nmany other abuses \"there are more than seven thousand who have not bowed\nthe knee to Baal.\"\n\n\nTHE GOLDEN RULE\n\nAt Christmas the spirit of generosity finds many curious and misdirected\nexpressions. Policemen on certain traffic corners are remembered by many\ngifts of money and cigars from persons who have no other contact with\nthem than a nod from a limousine as they pass the corner daily. Why\nshould the feeling of appreciation run to thought of money as a token of\nexpression? It is because the persons who give entertain the idea that\nthe policeman is in a stratum of society under them and that, being an\nunderling, his self-respect will not be hurt by offering money. The same\npersons would not think of offering a friend money and would be insulted\nif any one offered them money. The golden rule is a dead letter to them.\n\nSome clubs have handled the tipping custom by forbidding gratuities\nduring the year and then allowing the members to contribute to a fund to\nbe divided among the servitors at Christmas. This is a great improvement\nover the tipping custom but it is still short of the democratic ideal. A\nservant who is adequately paid for his work throughout the year has no\nmore call upon the generosity of patrons at Christmas than a clerk in a\nshoe store from whom you purchase shoes four or six times a year.\n\n\nGOVERNMENT HOTELS\n\nThe Government operates hotels in the Canal Zone, and tipping is\npermitted. Guests who fail to tip are treated by the servitors precisely\nlike they are treated in private hotels, but the writer, who boarded\nthree months in one of the Government hotels in the Canal Zone, during\nwhich time he did not tip the waiter, found that a complaint to the\nmanager about poor service would result in the prompt discipline of the\noffending servitor. This is more than can be said of many privately\noperated hotels.\n\nIn this connection, it is noteworthy that the only whisper of graft in\nthe building of the $400,000,000 canal was the charge made against the\npurchasing agent of the Commissary that he split commissions with the\nhouses from which he purchased supplies. Splitting commissions is the\nitching palm in commerce.\n\nIt would seem that before passing laws to regulate tipping among\ncitizens, the Government, state and national, should be able to come\ninto court with clean hands. Until the Government rids its service of\nthe spirit of graft the law-makers are beating around the bush.\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\nLAWS AGAINST TIPPING\n\n\nEfforts to abolish or regulate the custom of tipping have been made in\nthe Legislatures of practically all of the States. Often after passing\nlegislative barriers the laws have fallen before Executive vetoes, so\nthat scarcely half a dozen States now have statutes on the subject.\n\nThe State of Washington adopted a law prohibiting tipping, but it was so\ngenerally ignored that the Legislature of 1913 repealed it. This shows\nthat, at first blush, a social custom of long standing has a stronger\ninfluence upon the people than a conscientious conviction registered in\na new law.\n\nYet, as abortive as the legal campaign against tipping has been thus\nfar, the constant recurrence of the issue in the Legislatures, and the\nvoluntary attempts at regulation being made by hotels and other public\nservice enterprises, show that the propaganda is making headway and\nthat there are great moral resources in the people ready to be called\ninto action.\n\n\nCUSTOM ABOVE LAW\n\nThe opposition to tipping is unorganized, undisciplined and\ninarticulate, while the beneficiaries of the custom, with a munificent\ntribute to nerve activity, are upon a highly efficient basis of\noperation. Even with a law at his back to stiffen his moral resolution,\nthe average citizen feels more afraid of violating the custom than of\nviolating the law. It is because of the intangible nature of the custom\nfrom his viewpoint. A waiter can do so many things to annoy a\nnon-tipping patron that the patron cannot present in the form of a\nconcrete complaint, yet which are quite real and irritating. The upshot\nis that the patron swallows his conscientious objection to the custom\nand pays the tribute for fair service.\n\nHe knows that a failure to tip means a struggle three times a day in the\ndining room for his rights and the same struggle at every point of\ncontact with the itching palm. Rather than have his efficiency\ninterfered with by the mental disturbance such rows create, he pays the\nprice. But this type of man will make excellent material in the regular\nranks even if he lacks the initiative of a lone hand against big odds.\nWhen the movement against tipping reaches the stage where a spokesman\nand leader is produced, all the latent opposition will spring into\neffective cooeperation.\n\n\nTHE IOWA LAW\n\nSome of the laws are aimed exclusively at the takers of tips and others\nat the givers as well. The Iowa law is in the first class, as follows:\n\n    Sec. 5028-u. Accepting or Soliciting Gratuity or Tip. Every\n    employee of any hotel, restaurant, barber shop, or other public\n    place, and every employee of any person, firm partnership, or\n    corporation, or of any public service corporation engaged in the\n    transportation of passengers in this state, who shall accept or\n    solicit any gratuity, tip or other thing of value or of valuable\n    consideration, from any guest or patron, shall be guilty of a\n    misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less\n    than five dollars, or more than twenty-five dollars, or be\n    imprisoned in the county jail for a period not exceeding thirty\n    days.\n\nThis law makes the mere acceptance of a tip illegal and it also heads\noff any attempt to circumvent the law on a technicality by prohibiting\nthe acceptance of \"other thing of value or of valuable consideration.\"\n\n\nTHE WISCONSIN BILL\n\nThe Wisconsin bill, which the Governor vetoed on the ground that it\ncurtailed \"personal liberty\" was intended to penalize the giving of the\ntip, and was worded as follows:\n\n    Sec. 45751. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant or public\n    place and every employee of any person, firm or of any public\n    service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers\n    or the furnishing of food, lodging and other accommodations to\n    the public in this state who shall receive or solicit any\n    gratuity or tip from any guest or patron shall be guilty of a\n    misdemeanor. Every person who shall give or offer any gratuity\n    or tip to any person or employee prohibited from receiving or\n    soliciting the same by the provisions of this section shall also\n    be guilty of a misdemeanor.\n\n    \"Every hotel, restaurant, firm and public service corporation\n    engaged in the transportation of passengers or in furnishing\n    food or lodging or other accommodations to the public shall keep\n    a copy of this law posted in a conspicuous place in such hotel\n    and restaurant and in the dining or sleeping cars of any firm\n    or public service corporation mentioned in this section. Any\n    persons violating any of the provisions of this section shall be\n    guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not\n    less than five dollars, nor more than twenty-five dollars, or by\n    imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed thirty days.\"\n\nThe demand for this bill was so strong among the members of the\nLegislature that it almost was passed over the Governor's veto. The\nprovision that a copy of the law must be posted in the places where the\npublic comes into contact with the itching palm is a most essential one.\nIt reassures patrons to see it and gives them a present stimulus for\nstanding upon their right to good service for one payment.\n\n\nTHE COURTS AND TIPPING\n\nThe courts, in declaring such laws unconstitutional have proceeded upon\nthe common law right of one citizen to give away his goods or property\nin the form of money to any other citizen. A tip, the judges say,\nrepresents a gift within the meaning of this common law right. But the\ninstances of such altruism are exceedingly rare.\n\nEven the judges who so decide know that the tips they give are not bona\nfide gifts out of the goodness of a generous heart. Tips are given, by\nthe devotees of the custom, from a sense of obligation. They pretend to\nfeel that the servitor actually has rendered a service for which the tip\nis payment. The proof of this is found in the fact that such persons\nnever go about giving money gifts indiscriminately. Their gifts are\nexclusively to the employees of public service enterprises, showing that\nno thought of charity or generosity enters their minds.\n\nThe courts some day will come to the conclusion that a gift of money to\nany serving person is a special relation that is subject to the police\npower of the State. The special circumstances surrounding the gift will\nbe taken into consideration. Then it will be seen that the gift was made\nfor something the patron did not receive; for something for which he is\nrequired to pay twice and that the motives of the gift were pride, or\nfear or a sense of obligation falsely aroused.\n\nWhile the courts are so scrupulous in preserving the common law right to\nmake gifts, they might give consideration to the equally indubitable\nright of a patron to receive full value for his money, and to receive\nsuch value for one payment.\n\nIt may be, that to write an anti-tipping law that will stand the test of\njudges educated in the old school of thought about gratuities,\nlegislators will have to approach the subject from this viewpoint of\npreserving a patron's common law right to satisfactory service for one\npayment. For instance, a law specifically defining the right of a patron\nto have food served, or to use a hotel room or sleeping car facilities,\nin short to patronize any public service place, with only one charge,\nand that to be paid exclusively to the proprietor, might strike an\neffective blow at \"the universal heart of Flunkyism.\"\n\nThe courts will assert that the foregoing right exists without a special\nstatute, and it does. Still the average citizen does not think of\ninstituting a suit against a hotel, or swearing out a warrant against\nthe manager or an employee to enforce his common law right to service at\none price. If there is a specific statute against tipping there is a\nmore tangible inducement to stand up for one's rights and there is more\nlikelihood that redress will be granted. The defense of tipping on the\n\"personal liberty\" plea, like the defense of the liquor business on the\nsame plea, will grow feebler and feebler until judges cease to take the\naristocratic viewpoint.\n\n\nTHE SOUTH CAROLINA LAW\n\nThe South Carolina law goes a step ahead of either the Iowa law or the\nWisconsin bill in the provision that the employer shall not permit the\ncustom of tipping, in addition to provisions prohibiting the giving or\nreceiving of tips by patrons or employees. The law follows:\n\n    \"It shall be unlawful in this State for any hotel, restaurant,\n    cafe, dining car company, railroad companies, sleeping car\n    company or barber shop to knowingly allow any person in its\n    employ to receive any gratuity commonly known as a tip, from any\n    patron or passenger, and it shall be unlawful for any patron of\n    any hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car or for any passenger on\n    any railroad train or sleeping car to give any employee any such\n    gratuity and it shall be unlawful for any employee of any hotel,\n    restaurant, cafe, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car\n    company or barber shop to receive any such gratuity.\n\n    \"By 'gratuity' or 'tip' as used in this Act, is to mean any\n    extra compensation of any kind, which any hotel, restaurant,\n    cafe, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or\n    barber shop manager, officer or any agent thereof in charge of\n    the same, allows to be given to any employee and is not a part\n    of the regular charge of the hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining\n    car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop, for\n    any part of service rendered, or a part of the service which by\n    contract it is under duty to render. No company or incorporation\n    shall evade this Act by adding to the regular charge, directly\n    or indirectly, anything intended for or to be used or to be\n    given away as a gratuity or tip to the employee. All charges\n    must be made by the company or proprietor in good faith as a\n    charge for the service it renders, inclusive of the service\n    which it furnishes through employees.\n\n    \"Each hotel shall post a copy of this Act in each room and each\n    restaurant, cafe and barber shop shall post at least two copies\n    of this Act in two conspicuous places in their places of\n    business, and each railroad company shall post two copies of\n    this Act in their waiting rooms and passenger rooms at passenger\n    stations in cities of three thousand inhabitants or more, and\n    each sleeping car and dining car shall have posted therein at\n    least one copy of this Act.\n\n    \"Any person or corporation failing to post as required shall be\n    fined not less than ten dollars for such failure and each day of\n    failure shall constitute a separate and distinct offense and any\n    person violating any of the other provisions of this Act shall\n    be subject to a fine of not less than ten dollars or more than\n    one hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for not exceeding thirty\n    days.\"\n\nThis South Carolina law was an evident effort to cover the custom of\ntipping in a manner that would permit of no evasions. It defines a \"tip\"\nand prohibits surreptitious gratuities and makes employer, employee and\npatron equally liable to prosecution. Yet, it falls short of an ideal\nlaw because its operations are limited to seven places frequented by the\npublic and does not cover private places where the itching palm\nflourishes, such as apartment houses and boarding houses.\n\nTo stop tipping in hotels, restaurants, cafes, dining cars, railroad\nstations and cars, sleeping cars or barber shops will be a long stride\nin the right direction, but the need of stopping tipping to messenger\nboys, janitors and other employees of apartment houses, maids and\nwaitresses in boarding houses, garbage collectors, mail carriers and\npolicemen among government employees, trunk transfermen, guides,\nsteamship employees and others too numerous to cite, is fully as urgent.\n\n\nTHE IDEAL LAW\n\nThe ideal act will be evolved through these repeated approximations and\nthrough experience. In a broad outline it must include (1) a clear\ndefinition of a tip, (2) a statement of a patron's right to service for\none payment exclusively to the proprietor, (3) a prohibition against\nsubterfuges in the charges whereby patrons may give tips, (4) the wages\npaid by an employer to be considered as presumptive evidence of his\nattitude toward tipping, (5) a requirement that employers shall give\npatrons a definite understanding of the service to which they are\nentitled, (6) any actual extra service to be compensated for direct to\nemployer after being appraised and charged for by the employer, (7) the\ngiving of money or gifts to employees to be taken out of the class of\n\"charity\" and \"personal liberty,\" (8) the employer, the employee and the\npatron to be subject to the same penalty for violating the law and the\nconviction of any one of the three to be followed automatically by the\nconviction of the other two for the same offense, (9) the law to be\napplicable to any employer and any employee in any relation with the\npublic or with individuals, in private home or public place, (10) a\nprohibition against operating any convenience for the public in which\nthe rate of payment shall be left to the whim of the patron, such as\ncloak rooms, the tariffs to be displayed and exacted impartially of\nevery patron if the employer assumes that patrons must pay extra for the\nservice, (11) an adequate provision for acquainting patrons with the law\nthrough posting it or otherwise directing their attention to it, (12)\nthe granting of licenses to operate public service places only upon\ncondition that gratuities are not to be permitted, directly or\nindirectly, (13) the granting to a patron who has been denied fair\nservice of redress in addition to the punishment of the guilty employee\nand employer, (14) an adequate scale of penalties, fine or imprisonment\nfor any violation of any part of the law.\n\nIt is not presumed that if a law were drawn to embody the foregoing\nprovisions that the tipping custom would be strangled. Only actual tests\nin the courts will produce the ultimate intent. Of course, if employers\nand employees and patrons were actuated by a desire to maintain their\nrelations upon a basis of self-respect so circumstantial a law would be\nunnecessary, but many of them are not thus actuated and a minute\nrestraint will be imperative at the outset and until a normal ideal of\ndemocracy is cultivated.\n\n\nTHE NEBRASKA ACT\n\nThe bill introduced in the 1915 session of the Nebraska Legislature does\nnot penalize the patron for giving gratuities and seems to be aimed at\nthe practice of \"split commissions\" as well as at tipping. It has a\nmaximum fine of one hundred dollars, or imprisonment of sixty days and\nthe employers only are specified for conviction. The act follows:\n\n    \"No employee or servant shall accept, obtain or agree to accept,\n    or attempt to obtain, from any person, for himself or for any\n    other person, any gift, gratuity or consideration as an\n    inducement to perform or as a reward for having performed any\n    duty or service for which such employee or servant has been\n    employed or is to be paid by the employer or master, firm or\n    corporation of such employee or servant.\n\n    \"No employer or master, firm or corporation shall permit or\n    allow any of his or their employees or servants to solicit or to\n    accept any gift, gratuity or consideration as an inducement to\n    perform or as a reward for having performed any duty or service\n    for which such employee or servant has been or is to be paid by\n    such employer or master, firm or corporation.\n\n    \"Each and every employer or master, firm or corporation who\n    carries on business as the keeper of a hotel, inn, restaurant,\n    cafe, place for the sale of alcoholic beverages, barber shop or\n    place for polishing boots and shoes, or who operates a railroad\n    dining, buffet, sleeping or parlor car, shall post up or cause\n    to be posted up in at least two conspicuous places in the\n    premises in which such business is carried on, or in such car, a\n    notice that tipping, or the giving of any gift or gratuity to\n    any servant or employee, is forbidden under penalty of fine or\n    imprisonment.\n\n    \"No employer or master, firm or corporation shall give or agree\n    to give or offer to any employee or servant any gift, gratuity\n    or consideration as an inducement to perform or as a reward for\n    having performed any duty or service for which such employer or\n    servant has been or is to be paid by the employer, master, firm\n    or corporation employing such servants.\n\n    \"Each and every employer, master, firm or corporation who shall\n    violate any of the provisions herein made shall be deemed guilty\n    of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be liable in each and\n    every case to a fine of not less than ten dollars nor more than\n    one hundred dollars, or to imprisonment in the county jail of\n    the proper county not less than ten nor more than sixty days, or\n    to both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the\n    court.\"\n\n\nTHE TENNESSEE LAW\n\nThe Tennessee law was adopted upon the especial solicitation of the\ntraveling salesmen of the State. These men live constantly in touch with\nthe itching palm and find the tribute not only burdensome to themselves\nbut to their employers. The act is much like the South Carolina law, and\na notable feature is Section 6:\n\n    \"That it shall be the duty of the circuit judges and the courts\n    of like jurisdiction to especially call the attention of the\n    grand jury to the provisions of this act at each term of the\n    court.\"\n\nThe foregoing provision makes it certain that, even if patrons are timid\nabout obeying the law and if employers and employees disregard it, the\nfight against the custom will go right on, just as does the fight\nagainst bootlegging after saloons have been banished from a city. The\nTennessee law also has a more elaborate scale of fines, as the following\nsection shows:\n\n    \"Be it further enacted that any hotel, restaurant, cafe, barber\n    shop, dining car, railroad or sleeping car company, and the\n    manager, officer or agent of the same in charge, violating this\n    act or wilfully allowing the same to be violated in any way,\n    shall each be subject to a penalty of not less than $10 nor more\n    than $50 for each tip allowed to be given. If any person shall\n    give an employee any gratuity or tip each person shall be\n    subject to a fine of not more than $25 and not less than $5 for\n    each offense. If any of the above employees shall receive a\n    gratuity or tip he or she shall be subject to a fine of not more\n    than $25 nor less than $5 for each offense. Should any hotel,\n    restaurant, cafe, barber shop, dining car, railroad company or\n    sleeping car company fail, neglect or refuse to post notice of\n    this act as required herein, such hotel, restaurant, cafe,\n    barber shop, dining car, railroad or sleeping car company shall\n    be subject to a fine not to exceed $100 for each day it shall\n    fail.\"\n\nNaturally if this law is enforced with any fidelity by the grand\njuries, not to mention such actions as may be instituted by the public,\ntipping in Tennessee in the specified public service place will become\nextinct, or assume a guise not covered by the law. But if tipping is\nrestrained only in the seven places enumerated and allowed to be\npracticed unrestrained everywhere else, only a limited industrial\ndemocracy will be attained, and the part of the custom left alive will\nspread by its own insidious processes to the places preempted.\n\n\nTHE ILLINOIS COMPROMISE\n\nWhen the public conscience is fully aroused to the need of stifling this\ncustom, the legal mind will be able to draw up a law that will prevent\ntipping anywhere and under any circumstances. The Illinois law is a\nparticular example of a half-way measure in that it seeks only to\nprohibit the practice of leasing tipping concessions to employees.\n\n    \"That it shall be unlawful for the owner, proprietor, lessee,\n    superintendent, manager or agent in any hotel, restaurant,\n    eating house, barber shop, theatre, store building, office\n    building, factory, railroad, street railroad, fair ground,\n    baseball or football ground, hall used for public meetings or\n    entertainments, or any other building, office, or space which is\n    a place of public accommodation or public resort, to rent, lease\n    or permit to be used any part, space or portion thereof, for any\n    trade, calling or occupation, or for the exercise of any\n    privilege by any person, company, partnership or corporation for\n    the purpose of accepting, demanding or receiving, directly or\n    indirectly, from the customers, patrons or people who frequent\n    such places of public accommodation or public resort, gratuities\n    or donations, commonly called tips, in addition to the regular,\n    ordinary and published rate of charge for work performed,\n    materials furnished or services rendered, _provided_, that\n    nothing in this section contained shall be construed to prohibit\n    any employee or servant from accepting or receiving gratuities\n    or donations commonly called tips, if such gratuities or\n    donations are not accounted for, paid over, or delivered,\n    directly, or indirectly, in whole or in part, to any person,\n    company, partnership or corporation, but are retained by such\n    employee or servant, as and for his absolute and individual\n    property.\n\n    \"Any lease, contract, agreement or understanding entered into in\n    violation of the provisions of section 1 of this act shall be\n    absolutely void.\n\n    \"Any person, company, partnership or corporation or any officer\n    or agent thereof, violating the provisions of this act shall be\n    deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be\n    fined in any sum not exceeding ten thousand dollars for each and\n    every offense, and, in addition thereto such person, officer or\n    agent, in the discretion of the court, be sentenced to the\n    county jail not less than three months and not more than one\n    year.\"\n\n\nLEGALIZED ROBBERY\n\nThis Illinois law is an instance of an American Commonwealth\nspecifically and deliberately recognizing tipping as legal and right. It\nturns loose the tip-pirates upon the public with full governmental\nsanction, but stipulates that in their piracy they shall not organize\ninto a trust, as they had done in Chicago and in all large cities.\n\nThe Illinois law can be commended to the extent that it seeks to break\nup the organized traffic in tips, but its recognition of tipping on an\nunorganized basis is equivalent to the action of some European\ngovernments in paying out of their treasuries tribute to the Barbary\npirates for the privilege of sailing the high seas. Thomas Jefferson's\ndemocracy rebelled at this and he freed the whole world from the\noutrageous custom.\n\n\nIN MASSACHUSETTS\n\nMassachusetts has a law to prohibit the corrupt influencing of agents,\nemployees or servants, but it is aimed specially at the practice of\n\"splitting commissions\" and does not operate to restrain tipping in the\nState. A salesman sometimes will offer to give a buyer a bonus or part\nof his commission if an order is placed, and this practice is causing\nthe business world considerable thought, as employers realize that a\nbuyer who will accept favors from salesmen will not exercise unbiased\njudgment. It is the itching palm a plane above tipping owing to the\nlarger amount involved, and is akin to the graft of public officials.\nThe law follows:\n\n    \"Whoever corruptly gives, offers or promises to an agent,\n    employee or servant any gift or gratuity whatever, with intent\n    to influence his action in relation to his principal's,\n    employer's or master's business; or an agent, employee or\n    servant who corruptly requests or accepts a gift or gratuity or\n    a promise to make a gift or to do an act beneficial to himself\n    under an agreement or with an understanding that he shall act\n    in any particular manner in relation to his principal's,\n    employer's or master's business; or an agent, employee or\n    servant, who, being authorized to procure materials, supplies or\n    other articles either by purchase or contract for his principal,\n    employer or master, or to employ service or labor for his\n    principal, employer or master receives, directly or indirectly,\n    for himself or for another, a commission, discount or bonus from\n    the person who makes such sale or contract, or furnishes such\n    materials, supplies or other articles, or from a person who\n    renders such service or labor; and any person who gives or\n    offers such an agent, employee or servant such commission,\n    discount or bonus, shall be punished by a fine of not less than\n    ten dollars nor more than five hundred dollars, or by such fine\n    and by imprisonment for not more than one year.\"\n\nAlthough the Arkansas and Mississippi laws against tipping are not\nmentioned, a comprehensive idea of the extent and nature of the\nopposition to the custom in the United States is presented in the review\nof the bills introduced in or enacted by the Legislatures of Iowa,\nWisconsin, South Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, Illinois, and\nMassachusetts. All the other States have no laws against tipping.\nConsidering the fact that no organization has been formed to agitate\nfor this reform, these spontaneous State efforts are significant.\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\nSAMUEL GOMPERS ON TIPPING\n\n\nLabor has the strongest interest of any element of citizens for seeing\nthe 5,000,000 men, women and children with itching palms elevated to a\nnormal plane of self-respect. For nothing in America more certainly\npromotes class distinctions than tipping. It is essentially\naristocratic, and labor has attained its widest development in\ndemocracy.\n\n\nWAITERS AGAINST THE TIP CUSTOM\n\nOccasionally waiters and some other workers in a serving capacity have\nattempted to organize and place their work upon the wage-system, rather\nthan the combination wage-and-tip system, or the strictly tip system,\nnow existing. In New York in 1913 the waiters struck for higher wages\nand serious riots occurred before they capitulated to the old system.\nThe hotels preferred the tipping system because it throws the cost of\nwaiter hire upon the public, whereas, an adequate wage system would\nnecessitate a readjustment of their business.\n\nEven where the waiters and barbers have organized they have not always\nshown aggressive efforts to abolish or regulate the tipping custom. The\nbarbers, for instance, are highly organized, and any real desire upon\ntheir part to abolish the custom would be followed by immediate reform.\nBut it is evident that the tipping system of compensation is attractive\nto many persons who serve the public because it yields more pay than a\nwage system. In the higher strata of workers particularly the tips are\nso large as to stupefy moral sense, and this minority dominates the\nmajority by setting a standard of \"proper\" social usage.\n\n\nA LABOR LEADER ON TIPS\n\nMr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, has\nopposed tipping as an irregular form of compensation, and in response to\nan inquiry for his opinion he inclosed a letter he had written to the\nmanager of the Hotel Stowell, in Los Angeles, where a non-tipping rule\nis enforced.\n\n    \"_Hotel Stowell, Los Angeles, Calif._\n\n    \"Replying to your letter of November 28th I beg to say that I\n    found your hotel and service eminently satisfactory and was\n    particularly pleased with the rule you have enforced as to no\n    tipping.\n\n    \"While, of course, I have followed the usual custom of giving\n    tips, yet I have maintained the principle of tipping to be\n    unwise and that it tends to lessen the self-respect of a man who\n    accepts a tip.\n\n            \"Very truly yours,\n          \"(Signed) SAMUEL GOMPERS,\n        \"American Federation of Labor.\"\n\nThis letter is interesting as revealing the attitude of many prominent\nAmericans, namely, that while they conform to the custom rather than be\nsubjected to insults, annoyance and poor service, they really consider\nit inimical to self-respect.\n\n\nEUROPEAN TIPS\n\nMr. Gompers in his letter said: \"You have my permission to quote my\nopinion upon this subject in any way that you may desire,\" and gave\npermission to have reproduced here the chapter in his book, \"Labor In\nEurope and America,\" which deals with tipping in Europe, as he\nencountered it in his investigations of labor conditions. The chapter is\nentitled \"Nuisances of European Travel\" and is as follows:\n\n    \"Having in previous letters given my impressions with regard to\n    matters of more serious import, I wish to say something about\n    the almost hourly sufferings of American travelers in Europe\n    from mosquito bites. To the sharp probes from these insects,\n    with the resultant pain, fever and disgust, the traveler is\n    obliged to submit continually--at hotels and restaurants, on the\n    railroad and often elsewhere--as he goes seeing the sights. To\n    illustrate: our party on arriving at The Hague engaged two\n    mosquitoes in the form of station porters to carry our\n    hand-baggage to the bus of the Hotel Blank, waiting at the curb\n    of the station exit. The station porters passed the valises over\n    to the hotel bus porter at a point just within the station door.\n    Nip! nip! by the two station porters.\n\n\n    NIP! NIP!\n\n    \"When we arrived at the hotel door both the bus porter and the\n    bus driver asked me for what they regarded as their due drop of\n    blood. Nip! nip! Within the door of the hotel the manager\n    informed us that all his rooms had been engaged by telegraph,\n    but that he could give us good rooms at a clean hotel near by,\n    and we took them. Two hotel porters who had carried our bits of\n    hand-baggage into the hotel lobby asked me, as soon as the hotel\n    manager had turned his back, for their tribute. Nip! nip! Yet\n    another porter, after taking the things a few steps down the\n    street to the other hotel stood by in the hallway and waited to\n    give us his nip. Seven gouges of silver change out of my pocket\n    before we reached our rooms! But the probes of the mosquito\n    swarms of this hotel reached even further. The little hotel\n    charged us Hotel Blank rates for our rooms, about double what\n    would have been asked had we gone there direct and bargained for\n    accommodations. And the dinner at the Hotel Blank cost us half a\n    florin apiece more than the price set down in the guide-book. In\n    this incident the reader sees some, but not all, of the methods\n    of stinging which the hotel mosquitoes practice.\n\n    \"In Berlin, just at the moment of our departure, the porter, the\n    gold-laced and brass-buttoned dignitary who browbeats lamblike\n    guests at European hotel entrances, handed us our laundry bill,\n    every article of which was charged double to treble New York\n    prices. In Vienna, tired of blood-letting to each mosquito\n    separately in the group of servants always assembled about the\n    door upon our departure--'the review' they themselves call this\n    evolution--I drew the manager aside and said: 'I understand\n    that there is a way of giving tips to all hands through the\n    management.' (One bleeding as it were.) 'How much extra shall I\n    give you?' He replied: 'Twenty per cent. of your bill.'\n\n\n    \"BRIBE AND BE HAPPY\"\n\n    \"I was rather tickled than bitten the first time I got a nip in\n    a European railway train. One of our party suggested that as the\n    second-class places were crowded we should go into a first-class\n    compartment and await results. When the conductor, in his\n    jim-dandy uniform, came along, he was handed our second-class\n    tickets and a mark--a silver coin worth a paltry twenty-five\n    cents. And he took our tickets and passed on without seeing for\n    what class they called. The vast possibilities of cheaply\n    purchased privileges on future trips acted as a palliative to\n    this little sting. And the thought of what might happen if the\n    traveler in America should try to overcome the virtue of one of\n    our express-train conductors with a 'quarter' brought all our\n    party to see the circumstance from a humorous point of view.\n    Truth to relate, it marked the beginning of a custom we\n    followed--since we learned that it was general--of buying our\n    way past any obstacle that appeared to interrupt the smoothness\n    or comfort of our daily progress. With a little silver we\n    henceforth obtained concessions from grand-looking policemen,\n    soldiers on guard, vergers in churches, museum custodians. It is\n    a common custom for conductors on street cars in Continental\n    Europe to hold out their hands to receive as a tip any small\n    change due, but first handed over to the passenger. You may have\n    your choice in European travel: Bribe and be otherwise happy and\n    free, or virtuously decline to bribe and be snubbed, ordered\n    about and forbidden to see things.\n\n\n    BORDERS ON BLACKMAIL\n\n    \"The tipping system, bad as it is becoming in America, is in\n    Europe universal and accepted by all classes of travelers as an\n    inevitable nuisance. It often borders on blackmail. Tippers go\n    raving mad in recounting their wrongs under the tyrannies of the\n    system, the newspapers by turn rail or make merry over it, the\n    hotel keepers and other employers of the class have their excuse\n    that they pay wages to their servants--but the tipping goes on\n    forever. Why is it? Who is to blame?\n\n    \"These questions I have asked representative waiters--for\n    representatives these men have, many of them being organized\n    into benefit societies and a small proportion in a sort of trade\n    union. But one answer was given. The system is detestable to\n    every man and woman of the serving class possessing the least\n    degree of self-respect. It is demoralizing to all who either\n    give or receive tips. The real beneficiaries of the system are\n    the employers. An end to it, with a fair standard of wages,\n    would be a boon of the first order to employees, a means of\n    compelling hotel proprietors to put their business on a basis of\n    fair dealing, and an incalculable aid to the tranquillity and\n    pleasure of the general public.\n\n\n    MORAL PIRATES\n\n    \"I have often talked over the system of tipping with my fellow\n    waiters,\" said an educated man of the calling, when I brought up\n    the subject to him. (Parenthetically, perhaps, I should say here\n    that since this man speaks fluently and writes correctly four\n    languages, has traveled much and observed well on the great\n    tourist routes of the world, has studied some of the serious\n    works of writers on sociology, and has, withal, acquired\n    agreeable manners, he may be called educated. Without doubt, had\n    he a few thousands of vulgar dollars he might buy himself a\n    title as Baron and marry in our best society; but he is above\n    that; he has a craving for walking in the light of truth.) \"All\n    of us would like to see the system abolished,\" he assured me,\n    \"except a small minority who in their moral make-up resemble\n    pirates, and who cruise in places where riches abound. But the\n    whole situation is one in which reform is most difficult.\n\n    \"Among the people who patronize hotels and restaurants there is\n    a considerable element that, either for a week of frolic or\n    during their lifelong holiday, are regardless of the value of\n    their tips, and through their vanity enjoy throwing away a\n    percentage of their ready money. Then, also, are those grateful\n    for the little kindly attentions which a good waiter or porter\n    knows how to bestow. As for the proprietors and managers, their\n    business is based on tips as one of the considerable forms of\n    revenue. For instance, in many German hotels the waiters are\n    obliged to give the cashier five or more marks additional on\n    every hundred marks of checks. In Austria, at the larger\n    restaurants the customers tip three persons after a meal--the\n    head-waiter who collects the payments, the waiter who serves and\n    the piccolo or beer-boy. The hotel management sells to the\n    head-waiter the monopoly privilege of the tips. The head-waiter\n    then provides the newspapers and magazines on file, the city\n    directories, time-tables and other books of reference called for\n    by patrons, and a part of the outfit of the waiters. Of course,\n    it is an old and true story, that in the big restaurants of\n    Paris, and to-day of other cities and fashionable\n    watering-places, the waiters pay so much cash a day for their\n    jobs. The pestering of guests to buy drinks comes, not so much\n    from commissions, as from orders of the management that the\n    custom of drinking at meals must be encouraged. In Germany it is\n    usual at the larger restaurants to add half a mark to the cost\n    of a meal if the guest drinks plain water only.\n\n\n    TOO MANY SERVANTS\n\n    \"European hotels generally take on more servants than are\n    necessary. It makes a showing of being prepared for big\n    business. Then the servants must redouble their artful moves to\n    extort tips. Porters not infrequently work without salary at\n    all. Chambermaids, who are paid by the month, receive absurdly\n    low pay. Financing a hotel or restaurant is based on the tips as\n    a margin yielding on the average a fixed amount. To make them\n    reach the required sum all the employees are obliged to maneuver\n    so as to put up a showing of earning the traveler's extra silver\n    pieces. Coppers rarely are expected as tips now. It has become\n    common for railway station porters to demand half a franc for\n    what once brought them a few sous or pfennigs.\n\n    \"One outcome of running a hotel on the tipping system developed\n    to the point of bamboozling or worrying the guests out of petty\n    extras at every turn is that each year there is an emigration of\n    European waiters to America to get places in hotels taken by\n    European managers, who, depending upon their servants to work\n    the system at its worst for the guests, can make a business pay\n    both manager and landlord, where an American manager, paying\n    wages, would fail. While shop-keepers have in the course of time\n    been forced to adopt the one-price system, the drift in the\n    hotel business has been continuously away from the per diem\n    rate. Another point--the big tourist agencies for European\n    travel are certainly in some sort of partnership with the hotels\n    for which they sell coupon tickets. Those on the inside of the\n    hotel business in Europe know that these hotels are patronized\n    largely by Americans, spendthrifts on their trip staying a few\n    days at a time and usually speaking English only, and therefore\n    disinclined to hunt up stopping-places for themselves. Hence at\n    such hotels there is a harvest for everybody--a situation which\n    eventually leads to bad food, bad cooking, bad service, and a\n    hold-up at every turn of the guest.\"\n\n\n    A SORRY BUSINESS\n\n    In going over the possible method of a change for the better in\n    this sorry business, my waiter friend said that first of all he\n    believed that a big trade union must be formed of hotel help.\n    Tipping must give way to fair wages. The public could give its\n    share of assistance. He recommended that the guests at either\n    hotels or restaurants should follow these rules, notes of which\n    were taken on the spot. \"Patronize, whenever possible, the\n    hotels and eating houses where tips are forbidden; there are\n    such places in England and on the continent. Refuse\n    importunities for tips, either through words or 'hanging\n    around,' where there has been no service. Where, for your own\n    comfort you feel constrained to tip give the bare minimum.\n    Whenever possible do not tip at all.\"\n\n    He added, and I felt that he had me also in mind, \"Some\n    easy-going natured people believe that they tip the nearest\n    itching palm to them because of their sympathy with the poor.\n    Reflection should teach them that there can sometimes be real\n    charity without public demonstration.\"\n\n    True, church people might, with this purpose, give through their\n    own congregational agencies. In London, the American traveler\n    wishing to do the best with his withheld tip-appropriation,\n    might send it to the Westminster Children's Aid Society; In\n    Rome, to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals;\n    In Berlin, to the semi-public lodging houses. Everywhere,\n    trade-unionists can always give first to the genuine and\n    pressing claims of their own organizations. But, of course, if\n    the tipper, gives, not from motives of good-heartedness, but\n    mere vanity, all advice is thrown away on him. The hotel keeper\n    will continue growing rich on him and despising him. Other\n    folks in Europe may have good reason to tell him, what a plain\n    spoken Swiss citizen told a friend of mine: \"You Americans with\n    your dirty dollars are ruining my country.\"\n\n\nVANITY, ALL IS VANITY!\n\nMr. Gompers in this chapter from his book has shed much light on the\nethics, economics and psychology of tipping. The deliberate, shameless\nexploitation of the public by employers and employees is revealed. No\nground to stand upon is left to the tip givers except vanity, and the\npernicious influence of the custom, to patron, employee and employer, is\nso unmistakable that the doom of the custom is as certain as was\nslavery, when the American conscience once squarely faces the issue.\n\nHotel and restaurant managers in our cities have employed European\nwaiters upon the theory that the native American has too much\nindependence and self-respect. The European waiters have multiplied the\ntip-giving propensity in America and have established their undemocratic\nsovereignty over our public hospitality. Inasmuch as a certain element\nof Americans think that the last word in social propriety originates in\nEurope, when these European servitors are transplanted, gold lace and\nall, to America, they hasten to enlarge their tips to the point which\nthey assume these servitors consider \"proper.\"\n\nThe astonishing feature of the European situation is that the European\npatrons of hotels do not themselves tip within a tenth of the largess\nbestowed by American tourists. The American tourist is fair game to the\nEuropean hotel, which trebles its regular rates the moment he appears. A\nnative of the country, however, can have identically the same\naccommodations for one-third of the American's bill, and his tips are a\nbagatelle in comparison.\n\nThe situation may be changed by an organization of employees, but reform\nwill come most speedily whenever the public, which pays the bill,\ndecides to withhold the tribute.\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\nTHE WAY OUT\n\n\nSummarizing the case against tipping, the following facts stand out\nprominently:\n\n    1. Flunkyism is rampant in the American democracy and this\n    aristocratic influence is undermining republican ideals and\n    institutions.\n\n    2. Flunkyism, in the form of tipping, is kept alive by the\n    courts on the plea of \"personal liberty.\"\n\n    3. Tipping nowadays is of precisely the same morality as paying\n    tribute to the Barbary Pirates was in Jefferson's day, which the\n    American conscience finally abolished.\n\n    4. On the economic side, tipping is wrong because it is payment\n    for no service, or double payment for one service; thereby\n    causing the exchange of wealth without a mutual gain.\n\n    5. Tipping is ethically wrong because one person accepts payment\n    for a service not rendered, or for a service which the employer\n    already has paid to have performed. And because gratuities\n    destroy self-respect.\n\n    6. The hold which tipping has upon the public is due to\n    unscrupulous appeals to generosity, pride and fear of violating\n    conventional social usage.\n\n    7. The public is exploited deliberately through books on social\n    propriety which emphasize the custom, or which advise conformity\n    thereto for the sake of peace and comfort.\n\n    8. The exploitation of the public is aided by the visualization\n    of the custom in moving pictures and on the stage where it is\n    treated humorously.\n\n    9. Employees defend tipping upon the ground that it compensates\n    them for extra services not covered in their wages. An\n    examination of individual instances shows this contention to be\n    false in a vast majority of the number examined.\n\n    10. Employers defend the custom on the ground that the public\n    insists upon giving gratuities and they must face competition\n    based upon that condition. But it is shown that employers openly\n    profit by the custom and secretly encourage it.\n\n    11. One metropolitan hotel has blazed the way to reform by\n    guaranteeing that its guests will not be annoyed or neglected if\n    tips are not given. This partial step toward the abolition of\n    the custom is possible everywhere if employers are sincere in\n    their profession of antipathy for the custom.\n\n    12. Our democratic government permits its officers and employees\n    to accept gratuities, thereby stultifying the spirit of the\n    Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.\n\n    13. The conscience of the people as reflected in the laws\n    adopted or offered against tipping is sound and needs only to be\n    led to an adequate expression. There are abundant indications of\n    a widespread distaste for the custom but the sentiment is\n    unorganized and inarticulate.\n\n    14. The head of the labor movement in America declares that\n    tipping is undesirable as a system of compensation for employees\n    and destroys the self-respect of those who give or receive the\n    gratuities.\n\n    15. A national organization of those interested in this reform\n    should be brought into being with effective state auxiliaries.\n\n\nBETTER ORGANIZATION NEEDED\n\nThe last proposition constitutes \"the way out\" of the present\nundesirable situation. When it is remembered that the anti-tipping\npropaganda heretofore has lacked organization and direction it is not\nsurprising that the laws adopted against the custom and the spasmodic\npublic irritation over it have fizzled out. With the same organization\nbehind this movement that has been given to the anti-saloon movement, or\nthe suffrage movement, tipping would be vanquished in an astonishingly\nshort time.\n\nThere is no doubt there is sufficient latent opposition to tipping to\nform the basis of an anti-tipping organization. It may be called \"The\nAmerican Anti-Tipping Association,\" or by any other name, and it should\nembrace in its membership not only those who are opposed to giving tips,\nbut those servants and workers who are opposed to receiving tips, and\nalso all other persons of any race or creed whose conception of true\nAmericanism does not include approval of this custom.\n\n\nNOT A WAR AGAINST PERSONS\n\nThe object of such an organization should not be to wage war on persons,\nbut on a custom. There is no need for hostility against waiters,\nbarbers, porters and the like as a class. Many of these heartily oppose\nthe custom and will join in a movement to eradicate it. Hence, the\ncampaign should be to readjust the basis of compensation of those who\nserve the public so that self-respect may be preserved all around.\nNothing less than a fair wage as a substitute for the present tipping\nsystem of compensation would be considered.\n\nHaving made the foregoing point clear at the outset, much resentment\namong servitors would be eliminated. No one has a desire to deprive a\nwaiter of an adequate compensation, but no one has a desire to give him\nan excessive compensation through gratuities, or a compensation which\ndepresses his self-respect in the manner of receiving and humiliates the\npatron in the manner of giving.\n\nEmployers would need to be informed, too, that the campaign against\ntipping is not to throw an unjust burden of operating expense upon them.\nIt will indeed deprive them of any revenues which they should not,\neconomically or ethically, receive from the public through gratuities to\nemployees. The substitution of a wage scale will be attended by economic\nchanges which at first may cause some unsettled conditions, but this is\ninevitable when an unsound practice has been allowed to grow\nunrestrained in the business world.\n\n\nPUBLIC OPINION\n\nOne of the first aims of such an organization would be to bring public\nopinion to bear upon city, state and national governments to inspire\nthem to clean house in regard to tipping. No government employee should\nbe permitted to accept any compensation other than his salary or wages\nfrom the government. Mail carriers, policemen, garbage collectors,\nguides and other government employees are paid adequately and gratuities\nto them from the public are indefensible, in any country, and supremely\nso in the American democracy.\n\nThe public, of course, will need to revise its attitude toward these and\nall persons who serve them. The feeling that a traffic policeman whom\nyou pass in your automobile every day should be remembered with a gift\nof money or anything else substantial at Christmas, or upon any other\noccasion is false sentiment. He is due nothing except courtesy all the\ntime from the public, which, through taxes, already has provided his\ncompensation. The feeling that a mail carrier whom you see daily, or a\ngarbage collector, must be similarly remembered is equally false\nsentiment. The ideal is a relation in which patron and employee, public\nand government employee, entertain mutual opinions of self-respect, and\nregardless of how distasteful this may be to class sense, or\naristocratic impulses, it is the American standard and the right\nstandard.\n\n\nPROMOTING LEGISLATION\n\nAn organization opposed to tipping would have as its further objects the\npromotion of legislation against the custom and the protection of the\npublic in the enjoyment of its rights at law. If so many States have\nadopted laws as a spontaneous expression of Americanism, it may be\nassumed that with organized public sentiment, and educated public\nsentiment all the States will get in line. There will be abundant\nfinancial resources behind such an organization. Those who oppose\ntipping have been silent but they have felt keenly and will contribute\nliberally toward the advancement of the cause. And when such an\norganization actually proves its efficacy in protecting the public, its\nranks will be augmented overwhelmingly.\n\nThe protection hinted at is the kind that would take up specific\ninstances of neglect of patrons who do not give tips. Thus, if a member\nshould be neglected or insulted in a hotel after he had failed to bestow\na gratuity, the organization, upon investigation, would assume the task\nof correcting the situation at law. Even where there is no statute\nagainst tipping, the common law guarantees the right of a patron to fair\nand equal service, and the organization could enforce this right in the\ncourts.\n\nNaturally, great care and good judgment would be needed to prevent an\ninjustice to proprietors and employees. Often patrons exact more service\nthan they are entitled to, and in such a situation the organization\nwould be ranged on the side of the employee. Those who desire a\ncondition where they may run rough-shod over servitors have a mistaken\nidea of the anti-tipping ideal. The employer is required to have\nemployees who will give cheerful, adequate service, but within the\nlimits of reason, and the selfish, domineering, patron is an evil which\nmust be restrained as effectually as the waiter who surreptitiously\ninsults patrons who do not tip.\n\n\nTO PREVENT COMPLAINT\n\nSurveying the vast field of tipping one may wonder how any organization\ncould offer protection to the numberless patrons who might complain.\nThe answer is that the organization would be as widespread as the\ncustom. Every town and city would have its local organization with an\nattorney to prosecute violations. But it is reasonable to presume that\nwhen public opinion is once thoroughly aroused and organized, and a few\nprosecutions have been successful, that employers and employees, who do\nnot voluntarily reform their practices, will see the light.\n\nAs deep-rooted as the custom seems, it really rests on insecure\nfoundations and will crumble before any real attack. The average\nAmerican, be he barber, waiter or porter, has enough inherent\nunderstanding of democracy to know that the custom is wrong. He \"will\nget his\" as long as an easy-going public will stand for the exaction,\nbut will not be a formidable opponent. The imported European waiter will\npresent more obstinate fondness for the custom, having been nurtured in\nthe aristocratic school, but his opposition can be handled.\n\nThe most difficult type will be the class of patrons who delight in\nplaying the role of Lady Bountiful or Gentleman Generous. Their pride\nwill be restrained from buying servility from other Americans. And\nwealthy proprietors, who cater to this class and the intermediate class\nwhich ape the \"smart set,\" will cling to the custom because of their\npecuniary interest therein. But the average American and his vigorous\nsense of democracy will be adequate to the task of controlling all\nelements adverse to the republic.\n\nThe campaign against tipping is much more than a purpose to save the\nmoney given in gratuities. Its idealism aims to reach the very pinnacle\nof republican society--the destiny toward which 1776 started us. The\nmountain peaks of pride will have to be pulled down and the valleys of\nfalse humility will have to be lifted up, while the impulses to greed\nand avarice will have to be rebuked until every American can say:\n\n    If I must build my pride upon another man's humility,\n    I will not be proud;\n    If I must build my strength upon another man's weakness,\n    I will not be strong;\n    If I must build my success upon another man's failure,\n    I will not succeed!\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n    ARGUMENTS FOR TIPPING, 26, 28\n\n\n    BAGGAGEMEN, 76\n\n    BARBARY PIRATES, THE, 15\n\n    BARBER, THE, 29\n\n    BARBER-SHOP PORTERS, 79\n\n    BATH ATTENDANTS, 86\n\n    BELL-BOYS, 32, 69, 104\n\n    BETTER ORGANIZATION NEEDED, 160\n\n    BIBLE, THE, AGAINST TIPPING, 45\n\n    BLACKMAIL, 150\n\n    BOOTBLACKS, 66, 78\n\n\n    CASTE AND CLASS, 47\n\n    CHAMBERMAIDS, 153\n\n    CHAUFFEURS, 33\n\n    CHRISTMAS TIPS, 116, 119\n\n    CLOAKROOM TACTICS, 52\n\n    CLUBS, 119\n\n    COMMISSIONS, SPLITTING, 43\n\n    COURTS, THE, AND TIPPING, 126\n\n    CUSTOM ABOVE LAW, 123\n\n\n    DEMOCRACY AND TIPPING, 38, 48, 114, 166\n\n    DOOR MEN, 81\n\n\n    ECONOMICS OF TIPPING, 26, 28\n\n    ELEVATOR MEN, 61, 81\n\n    EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT, THE, 73\n\n    EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT, THE, 88\n\n    EMPLOYERS, can control, 102\n        \"      conspiracy by, 90\n        \"      retain tips, 86, 90, 152\n        \"      three kinds of, 88\n        \"      who profit by tips, 89, 105\n\n    EQUALITY AND UNIFORMITY, 115\n\n    ETIQUETTE BOOKS foster tipping, 58\n\n    EUROPEAN TIPS, 146\n      train conductors, 149\n\n\n    FEAR, as a reason for tipping, 55\n\n    FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA, 7\n\n    FREE AND EQUAL, 113\n\n\n    GARBAGE COLLECTORS, 116, 118\n\n    GENEROSITY, as a reason for tipping, 51\n         \"      misguided, 117\n\n    GENTLEMAN, what is a?, 37\n        \"      would he accept tips?, 37\n\n    GOLDEN RULE, THE, 119\n\n    GOMPERS, SAMUEL, on tipping, 144\n\n    GOVERNMENT HOTELS, tipping in, 120\n         \"        \"    the, and tipping, 113\n\n    GOVERNOR WHITMAN against tips, 40\n\n    GRAFT, \"honest\", 45\n      \"    taught by tipping, 42\n\n    GUEST'S RIGHT, THE, 104\n\n    GUIDES, 81\n\n\n    HARRY LAUDER against tipping, 41\n\n    HATBOYS, 82\n\n    \"HONEST GRAFT\", 45\n\n    HOSPITALITY, false, 101\n\n    HOTEL, The, 30\n      \"    fees, 59\n      \"    hospitality, 62, 101\n      \"    theory and practice, 32\n      \"    tipless, 97, 146\n\n    HOUSE SERVANTS, 64\n\n    HUSH MONEY, 42\n\n\n    IDEAL LAW, The, 132\n\n    ILLINOIS LAW, The, 91\n        \"    Compromise, The, 138\n\n    IOWA LAW, The, 124\n\n    ITCHING PALM, The, 8, 10, 19, 31, 70, 72\n\n\n    JANITORS, 83\n\n\n    LADY, What is a?, 37\n      \"   would she accept tips, 37\n\n    LAWS against Tipping, 122\n\n    LEGALIZED ROBBERY, 140\n\n    LEGISLATION, Promoting, 164\n\n    LITERATURE of Tipping, The, 58\n\n\n    MAIL CARRIERS, 116\n\n    MANICURISTS, 84\n\n    MASSACHUSETTS, In, 141\n\n    MERCHANTS against tips, 44\n\n    MESSENGERS, 85\n\n    \"MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE\", 17\n\n    MORAL PIRATES, 151\n\n    \"MOVIES,\" the, and tipping, 69\n\n    MUSICIANS, 66\n\n\n    NEBRASKA ACT, The, 134\n\n    NOT A WAR Against Persons, 161\n\n    \"NO TIP\" POLICY, barber shops, 89\n      \"  \"      \"    hotels, 89, 97, 147\n      \"  \"      \"    restaurants, 89\n\n\n    OCEAN VOYAGES, tipping on, 65\n\n    ONE COMPENSATION, One Service, 35, 55\n\n    ORGANIZATION NEEDED, 160\n\n\n    PERSONAL LIBERTY, 10, 13\n\n    PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION, 19\n\n    POLICEMEN, 116, 119\n\n    PORTERS, 147, 153\n       \"     Pullman, 108\n\n    PRICE OF PRIDE, The, 37\n\n    PRIDE, as a reason for tipping, 54\n\n    PRIVATE HOUSES, tipping in, 64\n\n    PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING, The, 47\n\n    PULLMAN COMPANY, The, 105\n       \"        \"    investigated, 106\n\n    PUBLIC OPINION, 162\n\n\n    REASONS for tipping, 51, 54, 55\n\n    RECIPIENTS opposed to Tipping, 39, 144, 150\n\n    REMEDY for Tipping, 55, 94, 95, 103, 158\n\n    RICH AMERICAN MYTH, The, 67\n\n\n    SHIP'S DOCTOR, The, 67\n\n    SLEEPING-CAR PHASE, The, 105\n\n    SOLUTION, a Reasonable, 94\n\n    SOUTH CAROLINA LAW, The, 129\n\n    SPLITTING COMMISSIONS, 43\n\n    STAGE, The, and Tipping, 68, 72\n\n    STATISTICS of Tipping\n      money given in tips, 8\n      number of tip-takers, 7\n      tips in N. Y. City, 17, 22\n      tips in other cities, 21\n      tip-taking classes, 19, 20\n\n    STATLER HOTEL, The, 97\n\n    STENOGRAPHERS, 86\n\n    STEWARDS, Ship, 66\n\n    STREET CLEANERS, 118\n\n\n    TENNESSEE LAW, The, 136\n\n    TIPPING and Americanism, 11, 87, 150\n       \"    and democracy, 7, 38, 48, 113\n       \"    and labor, 144, 145\n       \"    and morals, 96, 158\n       \"    and patriotism, 56\n       \"    and personal liberty, 10, 13\n       \"    and public opinion, 162\n       \"    and slavery, 11, 50\n       \"    and the Bible, 45\n       \"    and the caste system, 47\n       \"    and the courts, 126\n       \"    and the wage system, 75, 107\n       \"    arguments for, 26, 28\n       \"    and a training school for graft, 42\n       \"    in private houses, 64\n       \"    in \"the movies\", 69\n       \"    Laws Against, 123\n       \"    Literature of, The, 58\n       \"    Merchants opposed to, 44\n       \"    on ocean voyages, 65\n       \"    on the stage, 68\n       \"    psychology of, the, 47\n       \"    real reasons for, 51, 54, 55\n       \"    recipients opposed to, 39, 144, 150\n       \"    remedy for, 55, 94, 95, 103, 158\n\n    \"TIP PRIVILEGES\" Sold, 90, 152\n\n    TIP-TAKERS, Partial List of, 19\n         \"      numbers by cities, 21\n\n    \"TIP TRUST, The\", 92\n\n    \"TRIBUTE, Not One Cent for\", 17\n\n\n    WAGES VERSUS TIPS, 75, 107\n\n    WAITER, The, 27\n       \"    can he be a gentleman?, 37\n\n    WAITERS, European, 150, 156\n\n    WAITRESSES, 59\n\n    WALSH COMMISSION, The, 111\n\n    WASHINGTON LAW, The, 122\n\n    WAY OUT, The, 158\n\n    WISCONSIN BILL, The, 125\n\n    Y. M. C. A., The, 104\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note:\n\nSpelling and hyphenation have been retained as in the original\npublication. On page 74, \"asumed\" in \"attitude asumed by servitors\"\nhas been changed to \"assumed\".","title":"The Itching Palm: A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":28978}