Part 4

Of late years the custom has grown up to tip bootblacks. This is in addition to the regular charge paid for the service and has no justification except in the false plea of the servitor that if the patron does not tip him he will have no compensation. Here it may be stated that the thought that the tip constitutes the only compensation the employee receives is the chief influence in the mind of the patron. He feels a pity for the employee even though he objects to the bad economic system that enables employers to engage workers on such a basis. The employees exploit this thought in the mind by leading the conversation with the patron into the channel of compensation. At some time during the service he lets the patron know that the tips he receives are his only compensation and this arouses the sense of obligation in the patron who does not like to have his shoes shined for nothing, even though the payment at the desk covers the transaction.

Any one who has patronized a restaurant regularly, or a bootblack stand, or a barbershop, or manicurist, or any public place, will recall how invariably the servitors bring up the subject of tipping and always with the suggestion that they would be disabled financially if it were not for the generosity of the public.

This is all a carefully and skilfully planned campaign to exploit the patron.

BARBER SHOP PORTERS

Patrons who do not tip barbers frequently tip the porters who brush them down. On the surface it seems that the porter's attentions in a barber shop are extra and deserve extra compensation. Yet, theoretically, no master barber would admit that a patron of his shop has any other charges to pay than the regular tariffs. The porter is there as an extra measure of service from the shop. Practically, however, the shops all proceed on the assumption of tipping. The porter is a much-aggrieved individual if he is overlooked. In any sound economic system, the porter's compensation should come exclusively from the shop. If his attentions are decided to be extra, there should be a regular scale of compensation, as for a hair cut, which the patron should pay. So long as his services are furnished by the shop without being included in the regular shop tariffs, the patron owes the porter nothing for his attentions.

The solution of the whole tipping problem lies in the foregoing postulate--that if any employee is in a position to render an extra service there should be a regular scale of charges for such service. It is the irregular compensation, depending upon the whim of the patron, that makes the practice economically unsound. No hotel, or other employer, should have on the premises any employee whose compensation depends upon chance. If a hotel stations an employee in the washroom he should be there distinctly as part of the service for which a patron pays at the cashier's desk. A porter in a barber shop should be engaged exclusively at the shop's expense as part of the complete service for which a patron pays to the cashier. Employers, however, are much too shrewd to scatter employees around on the formal understanding that the patrons are to compensate them. They pretend that they are engaged as an extra measure of courtesy or service from the employer and then are educated to exact, through tips, their compensation from the patron.

DOOR MEN

It would seem that if there were any place where the patron might feel free to forget his coin pocket, it would be in the use of doors. But it is customary now to tip door men. That is, you have to pay to enter a hotel, a restaurant or other public place in order to spend money with the employer. The employer will smile blandly and assure you that no patron need tip the door man, but the door man will give unmistakable evidence to the contrary. The tipping of door men shows how the custom grows with what it feeds upon. To the devotee of the custom every underling has an itching palm that must be scratched with a coin and the employer rejoices because it relieves him of wage-payments. Tipping doormen is incomprehensibly weak. Elevator men are in the same class.

GUIDES

In parks and other public places where the employer or the Government furnishes guides and where patrons pay a regular fee for being shown the sights, the guides carefully cultivate the tipping propensity. Their most common method is to start a conversation about how inadequately they are paid for their work and the high cost of living. They play upon the sympathies of the sight-seers until at the end of the trip the feeling is strong that the guide should be remembered. He pockets the gratuity and looks for other game. The patrons overlook the fact that if he is underpaid the employer or the Government is at fault. He often works in the appearance of extra attentions to create the sense of obligation. It is clearly a case of double compensation for one service.

HATBOYS

The cloak-room is one of the best devices for throwing the item of wages to the shoulders of patrons. For some one to check and guard your hat and overcoat while you see a show or dine has a speaking likeness to a real extra service. But it is as counterfeit as the other pretenses of extra service. It is every restaurant's or theater's duty to provide for hats and coats of patrons. The meal or the show cannot be enjoyed unless this preliminary function is performed by the proprietor. When two dollars is paid for a theater ticket it also pays for this service, and extra compensation to the attendant in charge may be defended as charity but not as an obligation. A patron who buys a meal in a restaurant owes the cloak-room attendants nothing. He paid for their service in paying for the meal. Tips to hatboys are superfluous.

JANITORS

The autocrat of the basement is a man with a grievance even when generously tipped. From his viewpoint he is called upon to do a score of things outside his duties. Must he do these for nothing? He must not. The only question is who shall pay him. The janitor should be hired by employers upon the understanding that the renters have the right of way in utilizing his services. Or, apartments should be leased with a clear understanding of the janitor's duties, so that he will have no lee-way to exploit the renters. On the face of it, the idea of defining a janitor's services so that everything outside of the regulations would be extra service for which the renter should compensate him, seems difficult of execution. But the difficulty is less real than apparent. And in the meantime, the janitor regularly is tipped to do things for which he is paid by the employer. He is "out for his" as eagerly as the waiter or the Pullman porter. Hallboys in the apartment houses are equally avaricious. Now and then the metropolitan papers contain letters to the editor complaining of their exactions--pathetic letters from well-to-do persons paying thousands of dollars' rent for apartments! One way out would be to insert in a lease that the renter shall receive full and equal service without extra compensation to employees.

MANICURISTS

These young women have the best psychological opportunity to exact tribute, particularly where the patrons are men. The personal contact is influential, and the plaintive tale of meager salary and small tips which she purrs into your ears, the meanwhile flashing a languishing smile--it's a great little game which she plays for all it is worth! Some of them receive eight dollars a week in "salary," and the tips amount to enough to make their income thirty-five a week and more. The employer has the fifty, seventy-five cents or a dollar charge for the service as practically clear profit. Many men tip the manicurist as much as they pay for the service. Perhaps many of them feel that they get their money's worth in social enjoyment--not believing that the young woman bestows the same charm upon every other male victim! "I feel sorry for that little Miss Brown. If it wasn't for the tips she couldn't live on her salary," said one sympathetic man. He objected to tipping as a rule, but here was a clear case where it was worthy! No use arguing ethics with him.

MESSENGERS

The custom of pay to telegraph messenger boys by the recipients of messages is peculiarly reprehensible because it is fixing a standard of graft in his mind that will work out into worse practices in maturity. A boy given a tip has had his self-respect punctured in a dangerous way. He may grow up and out of such a conception of compensation, but it will be a struggle, and much of our police and other public graft had its origin in the cultivation of the belief that "tips" are proper. A messenger boy has absolutely no claim upon a patron for extra compensation. The price of a telegram includes the cost of delivery.

STENOGRAPHERS

Public typists often expect gratuities. The regular charges are for "the house." They want something for themselves on the side. Sometimes the tips are so large that the employer gets greedy and requires them to be turned in, as proved by the following extract from a want ad in the New York _Times_:

"Remuneration half of all you make with weekly guarantee of $20; proceeds net more than guarantee. No smoking; tips must be turned in."

It seems self-evident that anything given to stenographers beyond the regular charges for the work is pure waste. They cannot possibly give any service in return, and cannot retain the proper self-respect in accepting something for nothing. Many of them, however, take the tips simply to avoid offending patrons.

The list of tip-takers is too extensive for individual consideration. Bath attendants, bartenders, house servants, clerks--and so on through a lamentably long list, have the same moral disease. The contagion is spreading in an alarming way. Of course, the whole system is riding for a fall.

The spurious and specious arguments of employees in behalf of the custom and the timorous acquiescence of the public will alike yield before a robust and elemental Americanism.

XI

THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT

"We face a condition, not a theory," assert those employers who defend their adaptation of wages to the tipping custom. "The public seems determined to bestow gratuities, and if we paid full wages in addition, our employees would be the highest paid workers in the world."

But two wrongs do not make a right.

THREE KINDS OF EMPLOYERS

Employers who profit by tipping are classified as follows:

1. Those who pay living wages and positively forbid gratuities.

2. Those who pay average competitive wages and maintain a passive attitude toward gratuities.

3. Those who pay minimum, or no, wages, and aggressively exploit the propensity to give.

At present the first class constitutes almost an infinitesimal minority. Here and there in large cities there are barber shops which advertise a "No-Tip" policy, and occasionally a hotel or restaurant.

In the second class are most of the moderate-price places catering to the public. The employers and employees welcome gratuities but do not make them the prime object in their relations with patrons.

The third class includes the high-grade hotels, sleeping car companies, expensively conducted restaurants and like enterprises. This is the class which sets the pace through the patronage of the socially or financially prominent.

A few of the more noteworthy employers who profit by the custom follow:

The Pullman Company, The Hotel Company, The Taxicab Company, The Transfer Company, The Steam Ship Company, The Master Barber, The Apartment House Owner, The Restaurant, The Telegraph Company.

That an organized conspiracy exists between employers and employees to exploit the public is realized vaguely, if at all, by the average patron.

Proof of this allegation may be found at the cashier's desk of almost any restaurant or hotel. The waiter invariably is given change that will make it easy for the patron to tip. He returns with the change arranged in such a way on the tray that the patron must fumble over all of it if he wants the full amount. The employer's and the waiter's theory is that, rather than do this, he will leave a dime or a quarter in one corner. In a barber shop the patron always receives small change so that it will be easy to "remember" the porter.

Yet, such a practice is the mildest indictment that may be brought against employers for entering a conspiracy to exploit patrons.

SELLING THE TIP PRIVILEGE

In New York and Chicago particularly, many employers went so far (and still maintain the practice) as to sell to outside persons and companies the privilege of collecting the tips in their places of business. That is to say, these outside parties were to furnish waiters, cloak room attendants and other employees to the hotel or restaurant and depend upon the tips for their remuneration.

So large was the sum realized from tips that the hotels and restaurants actually charged the outside parties thousands of dollars for the concession. In Illinois a law was passed in 1915 aimed directly at this organized phase of the custom. It prohibited hotels and others from selling tipping privileges. The men who owned such privileges promptly went to law to test the constitutionality of the act. To the tip-taker anything is unconstitutional that interferes with his graft!

At the time the law went into effect, the situation was reported in the Chicago _Tribune_ as follows:

"The state will have a fight on its hands before the Chicago tip trust ... releases its clutch on the pocketbooks of hotel and restaurant patrons.

"At midnight last night ... there was no indication the largess was going anywhere else than it has gone before ever since a commercial genius capitalized the well-known generosity of the dining and wining public--straight into the coffers of the trust."

The manager of one of the leading hotels said that lawyers for the hotel had served notice on the head of the biggest of Chicago's three tip trusts to withdraw his minions.

"Do you contemplate returning part of the money paid for the concession?" he was asked.

"That," the manager replied, "is a detail."

"Do you think it possible (the head of the tip trust) will resist expulsion?"

"Hardly. We'll just put in a crew of our own and that will end it."

"Have you heard a report that the tip trusts contemplate standing by their guns and, if necessary, charging a 10 cent fee for checking hats and coats, anticipating the tip?"

"That's preposterous."

After such evidence, patrons of hotels and other public service places hardly will feel as cheerful in giving tips as they may have felt before being enlightened. Here was a typical instance of a hotel advertising such and such rates for rooms and food with the plain inference that patrons had no other obligation. Then the management goes out and sells the right to exploit the patrons, thereby filling its dining rooms and cloak rooms with employees who must exact tips if they are to be paid at all for their work!

ARE YOU A BENEFACTOR?

A small part of the public cares nothing about this and will tip regardless of the conditions of employment of the servitors. This element simply enjoys the grandiloquent role of Bestower of Largess. But the vast majority of Americans has followed the custom under duress. This majority finds it repugnant to tip on the assumption that the employee alone profits by its generosity; and to discover that the employer as well profits by it--in fact secretly devises methods of encouraging the tipping--will confirm the majority in the thought that the custom is wholly bad.

Under which school of economics, or ethics, can such a system be justified?

The assertion of employers that tipping is the spontaneous impulse of patrons and that they cannot afford to pay living wages in addition is seen to be without foundation in conspicuous instances. Such spontaneity as exists they stimulate and exploit for their own profit.

Conceding that the development of tipping has thrown employment upon an abnormal basis, the question arises, if tipping is abolished should the increase in wages be borne exclusively by the employer?

To the extent that employers make extraordinary dividends out of the custom the extra cost of operation through normal wages should be borne by them without increased tariffs to patrons. Competition in the hotel business, for example, has been adjusted to the custom of tipping and the sudden throwing of a bona fide wage system upon such employers, without an increase in revenues, would be disastrous.

A REASONABLE SOLUTION

The solution in certain instances might be found in a joint obligation of patron and employer. The employer says: "I have been able to give you food at such and such a price because I have not had to charge to it the cost of waiter hire. If the public discontinues gratuities to my employees, I must raise the price of food to cover this deficit." The patron replies: "Upon proof that your food tariffs have not included the item of waiter-hire, I will pay more for my meals if they are served free."

The goal of a reform in tipping is to make one payment--and that one to the employer--cover every expense of the patron.

Even if the public should have to pay more for food, lodging and other service, if tipping is abolished, an immense advance in sound economics and democratic ethics would be made in eliminating the double-payment system. Where two payments are made--to employer and employee--it is inevitable that the patron will lose.

It should be understood, however, that a large part of the $200,000,000 or more given annually by Americans in gratuities is sheer waste because it is given for absolutely nothing in return. Such waste should be eliminated without consideration of employer or employee.

So long as employers assume that the public will pay part or all of the wages of employees, so long will the employees be under the necessity of resorting to outrageous tactics--coddling the patron who does tip, insulting and neglecting the one who does not tip--in order to obtain pay for their services.

Employers must come to the viewpoint that tipping is morally wrong, and therefore of necessity, economically unsound. The money they make out of tipping is tainted money. Employees should be engaged on wages that are adequate without regard to any gratuities that may be given.

XII

ONE STEP FORWARD

When the Hotel Statler, in Buffalo, announced that a guest need not tip its employees in order to get satisfactory service, a sensation was sprung upon hotel managers and the traveling public. Nothing more emphatically shows the abnormal state of mind toward tipping than that such an elementary right should be affirmed and cause surprise in the affirmation.

A SOUND CODE

Following is its Code to employes on the practice of tipping:

"The patron of a hotel goes there because he expects to receive certain things served with celerity, courtesy and cheerfulness.

"The persons who are to fetch and carry him these things will be those whose portion it is to render intimate, personal services to others. Since time immemorial, this class of servitors has been of the rank and file.

"Now and then a server is found--a waiter, a bootblack, a barber or a bell boy--who adds a bit of his own personality to his services. Such a one shows a bit more intelligence--initiative--perspicacity--than his fellows. The patron finds his smaller wants anticipated, and is pleased. He feels that the servant has given him something extra and unexpected--and he wants to pay something extra for it.

"He tips.

"Of course there are abuses of the tip. A rich bounder wants something more than other hotel guests, and he futilely tries to get it by throwing money about.

"His tips are insults, and his reward Servility instead of service.

"Or--

"An individual wishing to be thought a 'good fellow' ADMINISTERS tips with the advice to 'buy a house and lot,' etc.

"Or--

"An infrequent traveler, having the time of his life, tips out of sheer goodheartedness.

"These types help to constitute the 'Public.'

"It is the business of a good hotel to cater to the Public. It is the avowed business of the Hotel Statler to please the public better than any other hotel in the world.

"Statler can run a tipless hotel if he wants to.

"But Statler knows that a first-class hotel cannot be maintained on a tip-less basis, for the reason that a small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip, in spite of all rules.

"Statler can and does do this: He guarantees to his guests who do not wish to tip, everything--EVERYTHING--in the way of hotel service, courtesy, etc., that the tipper gets.

"Let's make that a bit stronger--guests do NOT have to tip at Hotel Statler to get courteous, polite, attentive service.

"Or, for final emphasis, we say to Statler guests: Please do NOT tip unless you feel like it; but if you DO tip, let your tipping be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous custom.

"Any Statler employee who is wise and discreet enough to merit tips is wise and discreet enough to render a like service whether he is tipped or not.

"And he is wise and discreet enough to say 'thank you' when he gets his tip.

"In this connection let this be said:

"The man who takes a tip and does not thank the tipper does not feel that he has earned the tip any more than a blackmailer feels that he has earned his blood money.

"Any Statler employee who fails to give Service, or who fails to thank the guest who gives him something, falls short of the Statler Standard. We always thank any guest who reports such a case to us. Statler does not deal summarily with his helpers, any more than he deals perfunctorily with his guests--but the tip-grafters get short shrift here."

FOR THE BENEFIT OF GUESTS

To understand the spirit of management which could issue such instructions to its employees in the face of the opportunity to exploit the public, as most hotels do and so throw the whole cost of wages upon the patron, it is necessary to consider other sections of the Code treating of professional hospitality.

"Hotel Statler is operated primarily for the benefit and convenience of its guests. Without guests there could be no Hotel Statler. These are simple Facts easily understood.

"The Statler is a successful hotel. The Reason is, that every Waiter in this hotel, every Hall-Boy, the Chambermaid, the Clerk, the Chef, the Manager, the Boss Himself, is working all the time to make them FEEL 'at home.'

"Hotel service--that is, Hotel Statler service--means the limit of Courteous, Efficient Attention from Each Particular Employee to Each Particular Guest. This is the kind of service a Guest pays for when he pays us his bill--whether it is for $2.00 or $20.00 per day. It is the kind of Service he is entitled to, and he NEED NOT and SHOULD NOT pay ANY MORE."

NOT HOSPITALITY

Compare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this code with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other first-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel where the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the bell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your suit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same spirit--he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the employer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages.

Apparently this hotel reached the conviction that this was not hospitality.