Part 2

Every one of them takes the hotel patron for fair game. And the hotel proprietor, with a few notable exceptions, encourages this despicable attitude. The assumption is that the patron pays at the desk only for the privilege of being in the building.

Hence, they will not cheerfully move his baggage to his room unless he pays to get it there. He cannot have a pitcher of ice water without being made to feel that he owes for the service. The maid who cares for his room exacts her toll. The head waiter demands payment for showing him to a seat. The individual waiters at each meal (and they are changed each meal by the head-waiter so that the patron has a new tip to give each time he dines) require fees. If he rings a bell, asks any assistance, goes out the door to a cab, in short, whichever way he turns, an itching palm is outstretched!

Just think for a moment of the real significance of this state of affairs. Hotel hospitality? Why, the Barbary pirates would have been ashamed to go it that strong!

To ignore this grafting spirit means insulting annoyance. The suave hotel manager listens to your complaint and smiles assurance that his guests shall have proper service, but underneath the smile he has a contempt for the "tight-wad," and instructs the cashier always to give the waiters small change so as to make tipping easy for the patrons.

In truth, what does a hotel guest pay for when he registers? Certainly for the service of the bell-boy who carries his suit-case to his room; for the keeping of the room in order; for water, clean towels and other necessities for his comfort; for the privilege of finding a seat in the dining room; for the right to use the doors--all without extra charge.

But the hotel manager admits this in theory and outrageously violates it in practice. All tipping done to bell-boys, porters, maids, waiters, door men, hat-boys and other servitors in a hotel is sheer economic waste. When the guest pays his bill at the desk he pays for all the service they perform.

The hotel manager protests that the money that passes between his guests and his employees is not his affair. But he proves his insincerity by adjusting his wage scale on the estimate that the guests will pass money to his employees!

Professional hospitality as "enjoyed" by Americans is a travesty on democracy. That Europe should have such a system and spirit is historically understandable. Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy.

THE CHAUFFEUR

It would be possible to run through all the classes tipped and prove that the extra compensation is unearned. The chauffeur is a latter-day instance of the itching palm. Like the barber, the chauffeur is paid well for his work. He does nothing for which the patron should give him a tip. The taxi-meter charges the patron roundly for all the service given, yet tipping chauffeurs is as common in the larger cities as tipping barbers or waiters. It simply shows the spread of the practice to workers who have no other claim upon it than their own avaricious impulses--and the extreme docility of the public. Every tip given to a chauffeur is so clearly a bad economic transaction that further argument is unnecessary.

So widespread has the practice become that tipping is, individually, a problem, as well as collectively. The traveler has a formidable cost to face in the tipping required. When the total passes $200,000,000 a year, it becomes a problem which the American people will find more difficult of solution the longer it continues unchecked.

The whole argument is summed up in this. Tipping is an economic waste because it is double pay for one service--or pay for no service. It causes one person to give wealth to another without a fair return in values, or without any return. The pay that employers give to their employees should be the only compensation they receive. All the money given by the public on the side is unearned increment.

The best condition for a fair exchange of wealth is where standards are known and prices are definite. Self-respect and sound economics flourish in such an atmosphere, whereas, if values are hazy and compensation is indirect and irregular, as it is under the custom of tipping, the bickering that follows degrades manhood.

From an economic viewpoint, all businesses are on an abnormal basis which figure minimum wages, or no wages, to their employees on the assumption that the public will, through gratuities, pay for this item of service.

"One service--one compensation" is the only right relation of seller and buyer, of patron and proprietor.

VI

THE ETHICS OF TIPPING

The moral wrong of tipping is in the grafting spirit it engenders in those who profit by it; in the rigid class distinctions it creates in a republic; in the loss of that fineness of self-respect without which men and women are only so much clay--worthless dregs in the crucible of democracy.

In a monarchy it may be sufficient for self-respect to be limited to the governing classes; but the theory of Americanism requires that every citizen shall possess this quality. We grant the suffrage simply upon manhood--upon the assumption that all men are equal in that fundamental respect.

THE PRICE OF PRIDE

Hence, whatever undermines self-respect, manhood, undermines the republic. Whatever cultivates aristocratic ideals and conventions in a republic strikes at the heart of democracy. Where all men are equal, some cannot become superior unless the others grovel in the dust. Tipping comes into a democracy to produce that relation.

Tipping is the price of pride. It is what one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority. It represents the root of aristocracy budding anew in the hearts of those who publicly renounced the system and all its works.

The same Americans who profit by this undemocratic practice exert as much influence, proportionably, in the government of the republic, as those who give tips, or those whose sense of rectitude will not allow them to give or accept gratuities. Is a man who will take a tip as good a citizen, is his self-respect as fine, as the one who will not accept a tip, or who will not give a tip? Is the one as well qualified to vote as the other?

What is a gentleman? What is a lady?

Can a waiter be a gentleman? Can a maid be a lady?

Would a gentleman or a lady accept a gratuity?

What would happen if a tip should be offered to the average "gentleman" who patronizes restaurants, and taxicabs and barber shops? He would have a brainstorm of self-righteous wrath!

THE TEST OF DEMOCRACY

And there is the test. If a "gentleman" would not accept a tip, is it gentlemanly to give a tip? If a "gentleman's" self-respect would rebel at the idea of accepting a gratuity, why should not a waiter's self-respect rebel at the idea?

"Oh, but there's a difference!"

The difference is there indeed. It is the difference between aristocracy and democracy. In an aristocracy a waiter may accept a tip and be servile without violating the ideals of the system. In the American democracy to be servile is incompatible with citizenship.

Every tip given in the United States is a blow at our experiment in democracy. The custom announces to the world that at heart we are aristocratic, that we do not believe practically that "all men are created equal"; that the class distinctions forbidden by our organic law are instituted through social conventions and flourish in spite of our lofty professions.

Unless a waiter can be a gentleman, democracy is a failure. If any form of service is menial, democracy is a failure. Those Americans who dislike self-respect in servants are undesirable citizens; they belong in an aristocracy.

TIPS DISLIKED BY RECIPIENTS

Fortunately, conditions are not as rotten as the extent of the tipping practice would indicate. The vast majority of Americans who give tips do so under duress. At heart they loathe the custom. They feel that it is tribute exacted as arbitrarily and unrighteously as the tribute paid to the Barbary pirates. Some day this majority will rise up and deal as summarily with the tipping practice as our forefathers dealt with the Mediterranean tribute custom!

A great number of servants and workers in such lines as barber shops, restaurants and other public service positions are equally opposed to the custom. They are caught up, however, in a system where they must conform to the custom or lose their employment. Many a barber or waiter or chauffeur whose self-respect rebels at taking a tip is forced to do so in order not to offend patrons. For nothing so stirs up a "gentleman" as for the person serving to decline a tip. The reason is that he feels the rebuke implied in the refusal and knows in his conscience that the practice is wrong. We always grow more indignant at a just accusation than at an unjust one!

CONSCIENCE IS STIRRING

The constant re-appearance of laws to regulate tipping, in every section of the country, proves that the conscience of the people is stirring. The daily and periodical press now and then condemn the practice editorially in unmeasured terms and persons prominent in the public eye occasionally flare-up at some particularly flagrant manifestation of the itching palm. Governor Whitman, of New York, in an address to the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, said (as District Attorney then):

"It is a brave thing, a womanly thing and a courageous thing for you to band together to combat an evil. And I hope you will stand pat. We are all growing to tolerate a kind of petty grafting that is not right, that is un-American. I object to having a man take my hat and hang it up for me and then accept a coin. I am strong and big enough to hang up my own hat. And I also prefer to carry my own bag to having a boy half my size carry a bag that is half his size and be paid with a coin. If he honestly earns the money he should have it as an earning, not as a gratuity. It is this giving of gratuities that is unlike us, it is a custom copied from a foreign country where conditions are different from ours."

Where one person has the courage to speak out against this deep-rooted social convention, unnumbered thousands feel dumbly the same opposition to it. Harry Lauder, the Scotch comedian, a citizen of a monarchy, on one of his tours in America, was reported by the newspapers as being disgusted with the development of so aristocratic a custom as tipping in America, the cradle of democracy. The press will yield many such evidences of condemnation for the practice in high places. They are cited to prove that opposition to tipping is not a mere distaste among persons of limited means who cannot afford to tip generously.

The cost of following the custom is an important item; but those who consider it morally wrong gladly would pay any increase in charges that might follow the abolition of the custom. If the Pullman company should agree to abolish tipping if each patron would pay a quarter more for his berth it would be a long step in advance--though the custom should be abolished without additional charges to the public.

HUSH MONEY

The United States went through a period of muck-raking against graft among politicians and big business men. It was found that the idea of "honest graft" was shockingly prevalent. The especially odious manifestations were dealt with, but the little springs and rivulets that combine to make the main stream were allowed to trickle along, unite, and become a torrent! Tipping is the training school of graft.

Will a messenger boy who thinks that the public owes him gratuities develop into a man with sound morals? Will the bell-boy who works for tips grow up to be a policeman who accepts hush-money from the corner saloon-keeper? What is the difference between a tip to a bell-boy for doing what the hotel pays him to do and the hush-money to a policeman for overlooking the offence he is paid to detect?

The tipping practice has created an atmosphere of petty graft, the constant breathing of which breeds all other forms of dishonesty. It is small wonder that with so much avarice in low places that we have been shocked by graft in high places. The tipping custom is educating the grafting spirit much faster than the prosecuting arm of the government can destroy it.

There is a direct connection between corruption in elections and the custom of tipping. The man who lives upon tips will not see the dishonesty of selling his vote, so readily as if he discerned the immorality of gratuities. Of course, not all tip-takers sell their votes; but the moral laxity in one direction predisposes toward laxity in other directions.

SPLITTING COMMISSIONS

When a gratuity gets above a small amount, it is known as splitting commissions, or plain graft. Salesmen in their anxiety to sell goods will divide their commissions with the buyers. Frequently buyers or purchasing agents will demand this concession when it has not been offered. One New York department store found that its piano buyer was accepting money for placing all orders with a particular manufacturer. This store discharged its buyer, and yet the proprietor of the store doubtless tipped the waiter at lunch the same day he so acted! He failed to see that a waiter (paid to serve patrons) who accepts tips, is precisely on the same level as a buyer (paid to purchase in the whole market), who concentrates his orders with one house for a fee.

A clipping from The New York _Times_ shows the attitude that employers are taking toward split commissions:

"Several wholesalers in this market received a letter yesterday from a prominent dry goods retailer in the middle West saying that their buyers would be in this city to-day and that each one had signified her acceptance of a rule against taking petty 'graft.' The retailer asked that the salesmen try not to make this rule difficult to observe. The rule follows: 'You must not accept entertainment of any kind, even luncheon or dinner, from any one in New York. We will make an allowance, sufficient to cover all expenses, including entertainment.'"

This retail merchant had discovered that a free theater ticket or dinner could create such a sense of obligation that his buyers would not be able to exercise the freedom of choice that was necessary. The New York salesmen offered the tickets and dinners in the form of gracious hospitality, but knew all the while that their real intent was to bind the buyers to them through a sense of obligation without regard to the merits of the goods.

Thus the spirit of "honest graft" is spreading out in America. It grows with what it feeds upon. It is a moral miasma, the fumes of which are permeating all strata of society.

THE BIBLE AGAINST TIPS

Following are only a few of the many citations in the Bible against tipping, gifts, gratuities, greed and like practices and impulses:

Exodus 23:8. And thou shalt take no gift; for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.

Ecclesiastes 7:7. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart.

Proverbs 15:27. He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house; but he that hateth gifts shall live.

I Samuel 12:3. Behold here I am: witness against me before the Lord, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it you.

Isaiah 33:14-15. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?... He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly ... that shaketh his hands from holding bribes.... He shall dwell on high....

Job 15:34. For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate, and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.

Luke 12:15. And he said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

VII

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING

Why the custom of tipping should be followed so generally when it is palpably a bad economic practice and ethically indefensible is a psychological study with the same aspects that the slavery issue presented before the Civil War.

The Puritan conscience allowed that institution to grow to formidable proportions before arousing itself decisively, and it has allowed this equally undemocratic custom to attain national ramifications.

CASTE AND CLASS

In its broadest statement, the psychology of tipping presents the two antipodal qualities of pride and pusillanimity. The caste system is not based upon the superiority of one class over another, but upon the _pride_ that one stage of human development feels over another stage of human development.

A democracy cannot do away with different stages of development in the human mind. But it does do away with the belief of one stage of development that it is worthy of homage from another stage of development. Democracy does not concede that one man working with his brain is superior to another man working with his brawn. Democracy looks beyond the accident of occupation, or the stage of human development, and sees every man as originating in the same divine source. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that _all_ men are created equal."

In a monarchy, the craving of the human mind for approbation--the quality of pride--is cultivated into the class or caste system. Those citizens who have attained a larger measure of culture than their fellow-men allow the false sense of pride in that culture to creep into their ideals and actions. They seek for some method of visualizing this assumed superiority, of obtaining the acknowledgment of it from their fellow-men. With an unerring instinct of human nature they play upon the cupidity of those whom they desire to place in a servile relation. A gift of money wins the social distinction they covet.

Thus the tipping custom has its origin in pride, and it necessarily involves humility as a correlative condition. If all men are created equal, as we aver in our basic political creed, they cannot become unequal except artificially, except by an agreement of one set of citizens to play the role of servitors for a consideration from another set of citizens. One set of citizens will become abased--that is, they will surrender their birthright of equality--in order that another set may strut around in a belief of superiority and indulge a sense of pride.

NO SUPERIOR CLASS

In a democracy, the gradations of culture exist, but it is not permissible for one class of workers to assume a superiority over another class. That they do assume it is evident, and that for all practical social purposes we live and move and have our being on that assumption is evident, but in granting manhood suffrage, in allowing the proud and the humble to have an equal voice in government, we declare the social system a fungus growth.

At the moment of the highest power of the institution of slavery it was not less wrong than at the moment the first ship-load of slaves was landed. No mere accumulation of material property can vitiate a principle of right. Hence, the very widespread acceptance of the tipping custom lends no authority to it. If 95,000,000 Americans are engaged in tipping 5,000,000 Americans, and if both the givers and the receivers apparently concur in the rightness of the custom, it does not thereby become right. We must go back to first principles to find the answer.

TIPPING AND SLAVERY

The American democracy could not live in the face of a lie such as slavery presented, and it cannot live in the face of a lie such as tipping presents. The aim of American statesmanship should be to keep fresh and strong the original concepts of democracy and to beat back the efforts of base human qualities to override these concepts.

The relation of a man giving a tip and a man accepting it is as undemocratic as the relation of master and slave. A citizen in a republic ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with every other citizen, with no thought of cringing, without an assumption of superiority or an acknowledgment of inferiority. This is elementary preaching and yet the distance we have strayed from primary principles makes it necessary to prove the case against tipping.

The psychology of tipping may be stated more in detail in the following formula:

To one-quarter part of generosity add two parts of pride and one part of fear.

FIRST INGREDIENT, GENEROSITY

This is a subtle element and merges into a sense of obligation on slight provocation. You feel that your position in life is more fortunate, and pity enters your thought. If an extra service is given, in reality or in appearance, the servitor has pitched his appeal upon the ground of obligation. Few persons can rest easily until a sense of obligation is discharged through some form of compensation. The opportunity to balance the account comes when cash is being passed between you and the person serving. You offer a cash consideration proportioned to your sense of obligation.

Inasmuch as the whole argument in favor of tipping is based upon the allegation that the servitor actually gives a value in extra service, the element of obligation will be examined closely.

The Pullman porter or the waiter who can succeed in making a patron feel a sense of obligation knows that he has assured a tip for himself. The company or the restaurant business is a vague fact, while the man hovering over your berth or table is a most tangible relation. His art is to make the patron feel that he is responsible for the careful attentions. In a subconscious way the patron knows that the price of the ticket or the food includes the service (wages of the porter or waiter) but the obsequious alertness of the attendant overshadows this knowledge. It is present personality versus an abstract entity known as company or restaurant. Hence, though the price of the ticket or the payment of the check pays for the porter's or waiter's service, the patron has been made to feel a second obligation which he discharges with a tip.

CLOAKROOM TACTICS

Thus tipping involves two payments for one service. Servitors understand clearly the psychology of the sense of obligation from experiment even though they could not read understandingly a book on psychology. A trial in Detroit over the division of the tips in the cloak-room of a restaurant furnished the following proof:

"'How do you make people "cough up"?' queried the judge.

"'When they are going away I brush them down, and if they don't give me something I take hold of their lapel and say, "Excuse me," and brush them again. I pretend that's the only English I can speak. If they don't give me something then I hold on to their hats until they do give me something. I made $12 the first day I worked at the place.'

"'Why did you pretend you could not speak English?' demanded the judge.

"'The more English you know the less tips you get.'"

This morally obtuse hat-boy knew that the average person does not want something for nothing when dealing with serving persons, and he exploited this trait to the maximum. Pullman porters and high grade waiters are more polished in the use of the same method, but it all gets back to the idea of creating a sense of obligation by actual or pretended service beyond the expected.

Undoubtedly, a rigid adherence to the letter of duty would result in service that would be unsatisfactory, but this is to be surmounted rightly by the employer requiring flexibility of service from employees--not by the public paying extra for affability, courtesy and attentiveness.

SECOND INGREDIENT, PRIDE