Part 5

Then the conviction was reached that a guest "need not and should not pay any more" for hotel service than the rate paid at the desk. From this it was logical to bring the employees to a new conception of service and to stop the piratical practice toward guests who do not tip.

It is particularly significant to note the assertion that the proprietor can run a tipless hotel if he wants to. That is an interesting declaration. It proves that those managers who exploit the tipping propensity deliberately do so for reasons of greed.

Then the reason for not running a tipless hotel is stated to be that "a small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip in spite of all rules." Here is evidence that the public has its measure of blame for the custom as well as the avarice of managers. This hotel declares that its conception of hospitality is to leave the guest free in his relation toward employees. But note this! _It does not leave the employees free in their attitude toward guests._

UP TO THE EMPLOYER

The foregoing distinction is the crux of the whole tipping problem. If managers will restrain and discipline employees so that they will not run riot in their eagerness to exact toll from patrons the tipping evil will be reduced to a minimum.

THE FIRST STEP

It is not the idea underlying this discussion to consider that a satisfactory disposal of the tipping custom has been made when managers insure equal treatment for those who do not tip in comparison with those who do tip. Nothing short of the complete abolition of the custom can be the goal in a republic. But as a long stride toward the goal, the Code cited above is noteworthy. It constitutes the first immediate step that any hotel may take.

The public would find immense relief in the general adoption of the foregoing idea--that tipping must "be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous custom." Inasmuch as the vast majority of Americans who tip do so only because they are afraid not to conform to an outrageous custom, this plan, honestly enforced upon employees, will reduce the followers of the custom to the small percentage of the public who tip because of pride or moral obtuseness. A way can be found to handle this element when the majority have been freed.

Once the proof is at hand that tipping can be handled the conclusion is unescapable that the managers who knuckle to the custom are "corrupt and contented." They are on precisely the same moral level as their employees.

THE GUEST'S RIGHTS

In the meantime, the individual patron has the right to and should proceed on the theory that he is entitled to EVERYTHING in the way of service for the one payment. This is his common law right even if no special laws regulating tipping are in force.

The public is at a great disadvantage in combating the tipping evil when the managers leave the issue to be settled between the patrons and the employees. A bell boy can commit an offense to a patron who does not tip that is perfectly tangible to the patron but difficult to report to the manager. Unless the manager takes a positive hand and instructs his employees in a manner similar to the above Code it is likely that most persons will continue to pay tribute rather than be insulted and neglected.

In Chicago, the Young Men's Christian Association operates a nineteen-story hotel where tips are prohibited, and this organization generally discourages the custom in its enterprises.

XIII

THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE

The Pullman company stands in the public mind as the leading exponent of tipping. It certainly is the largest beneficiary of the custom, as a simple calculation will show.

The company has about 6,500 porters, who receive $27.50 a month in wages. Suppose the porters received no tips. The company then would have to pay living wages. Assuming that the long hours of work would not attract desirable porters under a straight wage system without at least $60 a month pay, each one of the 6,500 would have an increase of $32.50 a month, or $390 a year.

This would mean an increase in the company's annual pay-roll of $2,535,000!

In other words, the company saves about two and a half millions a year through the tips given to its porters. What part of the large annual dividend is furnished by this saving is a secret of the company's books.

Some of these porters after many years' service receive $42 a month in wages, and this would bring down the foregoing estimate, though not to any radical extent. The tips bring their incomes to $100, $150, $200 and more a month! There are, of course, many runs on which the porters derive smaller amounts in gratuities, and the best runs are given as a reward for long and faithful service.

WHAT THE PULLMAN MANAGER SAID

The Walsh Commission, appointed to investigate industrial conditions in the United States, in 1915 singled out the Pullman tipping practice for investigation. Some of the testimony given by the general manager of the company follows:

"The company simply accepts conditions as it finds them. The company did not invent tipping. It was here when the company began."

"What do you say to making tipping unlawful and paying employees a living wage?" Chairman Walsh asked.

"If such a condition arises, I presume we would have to pay wages necessary to get the service."

* * * * *

"Do you get your negroes in the South?"

"Yes, we have been looking after them in the South. The South is a bigger field and the men there are more adapted for the work than the Northern negroes."

"Well, be plain," Chairman Walsh said, "are the negroes from the South more docile and less independent than those from the North?"

"Well, no, but the Southern negro is more pleasing to the traveling public. He is more adapted to wait on people and serve with a smile."

* * * * *

"Can a man live on $27.50 a month and rear a family?"

"Really, I don't know. He might."

"Does the Pullman company have in mind the liberality and kindness of the public when it fixes that rate of pay?"

"Well, I should say that tips have something to do with it. I didn't make the rates of pay."

* * * * *

"A porter must call passengers during the night, polish shoes, answer bells, and look after the safety and comfort of the passengers at all hours, must he not?"

"Yes. He is reprimanded, suspended or discharged for infractions of the rules."

"What is your attitude toward the question of an organization among your employees?"

"I felt that the movement to form a federation of our employees was a selfish one on the part of a few."

WHAT THE PORTERS SAID

The Commission also called several porters to testify. They stated that they could not live without the tips. One porter with twenty-one years' service behind him testified that he receives $42 a month in wages, while the tips averaged about $75 a month, or $117 income from the company and the public.

Another porter receiving $27.50 a month testified that his tips averaged about $77 a month. He was described as wearing two diamond rings and being tastefully dressed.

The conductors receive from $70 to $90 a month in salary, and it was brought out before the Commission that many do not consider it dishonest to "knock down" on seat sales. This is accomplished partly at the company's expense, and partly at the expense of patrons--especially unsophisticated travelers who buy a whole seat but have other passengers sit beside them, the conductor pocketing the extra payment. This practice is limited to day runs. There is also the opportunity to overcharge.

That the Pullman company gives the public good service through its porters is indisputable. The only question is whether the public should pay extra for this service. If a porter with an income of $117, say, receives only $27.50 from the company, the public is paying three-fourths of his wages and the company only one-fourth. Where the porters have incomes of $150 to $200 a month the company pays one-fifth to one-eighth of the amount and the public pays from four-fifths to seven-eighths!

SERVICE INCLUDED

The price of a ticket on a sleeping car is as much as a patron should pay the Pullman company, and it should carry with it adequate porter service.

A passenger enters a car in spick and span condition as a rule. At the end of the journey, through no fault of his own, he may be dusty, and it becomes the obligation of the Pullman company to discharge him in as good condition as when he entered the car. The porter is there for this service. Hence, to give him a tip for a "brush," or for any other service he may have rendered to make the use of the company's property comfortable, is a superfluous payment.

The company has a school for training a porter in which he is taught a rigid discipline of attentions to passengers, all of which tend to create in the passenger a sense of obligation toward the porter. Yet not one of these attentions calls for a gratuity if they are examined fairly.

The porter is psychologist enough to know that to create the illusion that he has rendered an extra service is as good for producing a tip as actually to do so. Hence he will come around with a pillow, or shine your shoes during the night unsolicited, or execute some other maneuver that arouses a feeling of obligation. The shining of shoes is outside his ordinary duties, but he has no valid claim for compensation unless specifically requested to perform this service. In his mind is the constant reminder that if the passenger does not make a donation his pay envelope from the company will not meet his bills.

WHAT THE PRESS SAID

Among the many editorial comments that the disclosures of the Walsh Commission evoked is the following from the St. Louis _Republic_:

The most captious critic of the Pullman company cannot deny that it merits a unique distinction. Other corporations before now have underpaid their employees ... but it remained for the Pullman company to discover how to work on the sympathies of the public in such a manner as to induce that public to make up, by gratuities, for its failure to pay its employees a living wage.

It began this forty years ago, when the "plantation" darky of ante-bellum days was still abroad in the land. It used him, his pathetic history, his peculiar attitude toward the white man, for the accomplishment of its purpose. There at the end of the journey, after the traveler had paid $2, $2.50 or $3 for his berth, stood the porter with his whisk broom and his smile.

And back of him was the pathetic fact, industriously circulated, that "the company" did not pay him enough to live on, so that he was dependent on the gratuities of passengers who had already paid full price for accommodations and services. We were expected to pay him simply because the Pullman company didn't. And we paid him. Tens of millions of passengers have paid him millions of dollars.

It wasn't really philanthropy to the porter; it was philanthropy extended to the Pullman company, which was glad to have the fact of its meanness in its relations to its colored employees--ill-informed of the rights of workingmen and dependent by instinct--published to the world.

It was the Pullman company which fastened the tipping habit on the American people and they used the negro as the instrument to do it with.

It may be remarked in closing this phase of the discussion that an act of Congress forbidding tips on inter-state carriers would effectually reach the Pullman situation.

XIV

THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING

It has been asserted in this discussion that tipping is incompatible with a democratic form of government. Yet we find officials of our Government following the custom and allowing tips as a legitimate item of expense of traveling to be paid out of the public treasury.

FREE AND EQUAL

This state of affairs proves that the work of 1776 and 1787 was limited practically to one phase of democracy, namely, the political. Washington and Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the passionate ideal. This they and their associates achieved in ample measure. They gave the waiter or the barber or the bootblack an equal voice in government with themselves.

Let those Americans who think that the abolition of tipping would be too radical a step toward social democracy consider how repulsive the attitude of Washington and Jefferson was to the aristocratic thought of their day. No matter what arguments the aristocrats presented against political democracy, their real objection was just this granting of voting equality to persons whom they rated as socially submerged.

But having founded our government upon political democracy, the straight line of development is toward social and industrial democracy, in order to complete the ideal entertained by Washington and Jefferson. That both of these idealists tipped servants and that Washington owned slaves is indisputable, but they left records that prove that they merely "suffered it to be so now." Washington clearly foresaw the trouble in which slavery would involve his country, and would have freed his slaves if he could have done so without precipitating what to him appeared a greater evil in view of all the circumstances of his day.

The Revolutionary period did all that can be asked of one generation when political equality was established. It remains for our generation to finish the work of democracy by establishing social and industrial democracy. The prospect of a street cleaner or your valet being your social and industrial equal may seem either utopian or undesirable, but it must be remembered, as stated, that two centuries ago the thought of granting an equal vote to such persons was precisely as distasteful to the aristocratic mind.

EQUALITY AND UNIFORMITY

Much loose thinking along these lines would be obviated if every one could learn clearly the distinction between "equality" and "uniformity." It is the thought of uniformity that makes most persons belligerent toward democratic impulses in industry or society. They dislike the idea of a dead level of compulsory uniformity. A bootblack and a banker are "equal" in the right to vote, but they are not "uniform" in function or culture. Social democracy will abolish an aristocratic custom like tipping so that every citizen will stand upon an equality of self-respect. It will delete the adjective "menial" from any form of service so that a garbage collector will stand in as honorable a relation to society as a lawyer. But social democracy will not and cannot make naturally uncongenial minds live in a relation of compulsory fellowship.

Thus in the United States we have only one-third of a democracy. The other two-thirds--social and industrial democracy--must be attained before we can consider our government as ideal. The tipping custom stands squarely in the path of this attainment. The slavery system is not worse in competition with free labor than is the tipping system of compensation. In neither system are values determined by merit or production.

In the list of the 5,000,000 Americans with itching palms were national or city government employees like mail carriers, garbage collectors and policemen. In the larger cities a system of giving gratuities to these and other government employees has grown up that emphasizes the distance we have to travel to attain true democracy.

Any one of these three classes of government employees is paid well for the service he renders. Yet there are mail carriers who will lose a courteous, friendly bearing toward those who fail to "remember" them at Christmas, or at more frequent intervals, or who will actually curtail the service they are paid to render.

MISGUIDED GENEROSITY

There seems to be something about the continual contact of a person serving and a person served that makes the one think the other owes him something on the side. A mail carrier will bring your mail once, twice or several times a day for a period and then enters the feeling that he is entitled to some substantial token of appreciation of his faithful, cheerful service, other than the compensation paid by the government. Often the person being served feels a generous appreciation of good service and bestows a token of it without the person serving having expected or wanted it. The tipping custom is not wholly the outgrowth of greed. It is frequently misguided generosity. Where the error creeps in is in expressing appreciation in terms of money. Self-respect is satisfied with verbal appreciation.

As an employer the government, of all employers, should set an example of true democracy, should practice sound economics and ethics in the relations it permits between its employees and the public. There is no justification from any viewpoint for giving gratuities to public servants. If garbage collectors render slipshod service to citizens who fail to tip them--and they do this regularly--a complaint should bring immediate relief. It does not now because the higher officials are under the same illusion about tipping that envelopes the subordinates.

An inspector of street cleaning in Philadelphia was investigating a complaint against a street sweeper in a residence district. The sweeper told him that he felt the complaint must be ill-founded and that the people in the neighborhood must be satisfied with his sweeping, because he had recently received from residents in one block twenty-one dollars in Christmas tips.

How many public servants in your own neighborhood did you tip last Christmas?

It should not be assumed that the indictment here read is against all mail carriers or garbage collectors, or policemen. With tipping, as with many other abuses "there are more than seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal."

THE GOLDEN RULE

At Christmas the spirit of generosity finds many curious and misdirected expressions. Policemen on certain traffic corners are remembered by many gifts of money and cigars from persons who have no other contact with them than a nod from a limousine as they pass the corner daily. Why should the feeling of appreciation run to thought of money as a token of expression? It is because the persons who give entertain the idea that the policeman is in a stratum of society under them and that, being an underling, his self-respect will not be hurt by offering money. The same persons would not think of offering a friend money and would be insulted if any one offered them money. The golden rule is a dead letter to them.

Some clubs have handled the tipping custom by forbidding gratuities during the year and then allowing the members to contribute to a fund to be divided among the servitors at Christmas. This is a great improvement over the tipping custom but it is still short of the democratic ideal. A servant who is adequately paid for his work throughout the year has no more call upon the generosity of patrons at Christmas than a clerk in a shoe store from whom you purchase shoes four or six times a year.

GOVERNMENT HOTELS

The Government operates hotels in the Canal Zone, and tipping is permitted. Guests who fail to tip are treated by the servitors precisely like they are treated in private hotels, but the writer, who boarded three months in one of the Government hotels in the Canal Zone, during which time he did not tip the waiter, found that a complaint to the manager about poor service would result in the prompt discipline of the offending servitor. This is more than can be said of many privately operated hotels.

In this connection, it is noteworthy that the only whisper of graft in the building of the $400,000,000 canal was the charge made against the purchasing agent of the Commissary that he split commissions with the houses from which he purchased supplies. Splitting commissions is the itching palm in commerce.

It would seem that before passing laws to regulate tipping among citizens, the Government, state and national, should be able to come into court with clean hands. Until the Government rids its service of the spirit of graft the law-makers are beating around the bush.

XV

LAWS AGAINST TIPPING

Efforts to abolish or regulate the custom of tipping have been made in the Legislatures of practically all of the States. Often after passing legislative barriers the laws have fallen before Executive vetoes, so that scarcely half a dozen States now have statutes on the subject.

The State of Washington adopted a law prohibiting tipping, but it was so generally ignored that the Legislature of 1913 repealed it. This shows that, at first blush, a social custom of long standing has a stronger influence upon the people than a conscientious conviction registered in a new law.

Yet, as abortive as the legal campaign against tipping has been thus far, the constant recurrence of the issue in the Legislatures, and the voluntary attempts at regulation being made by hotels and other public service enterprises, show that the propaganda is making headway and that there are great moral resources in the people ready to be called into action.

CUSTOM ABOVE LAW

The opposition to tipping is unorganized, undisciplined and inarticulate, while the beneficiaries of the custom, with a munificent tribute to nerve activity, are upon a highly efficient basis of operation. Even with a law at his back to stiffen his moral resolution, the average citizen feels more afraid of violating the custom than of violating the law. It is because of the intangible nature of the custom from his viewpoint. A waiter can do so many things to annoy a non-tipping patron that the patron cannot present in the form of a concrete complaint, yet which are quite real and irritating. The upshot is that the patron swallows his conscientious objection to the custom and pays the tribute for fair service.

He knows that a failure to tip means a struggle three times a day in the dining room for his rights and the same struggle at every point of contact with the itching palm. Rather than have his efficiency interfered with by the mental disturbance such rows create, he pays the price. But this type of man will make excellent material in the regular ranks even if he lacks the initiative of a lone hand against big odds. When the movement against tipping reaches the stage where a spokesman and leader is produced, all the latent opposition will spring into effective cooeperation.

THE IOWA LAW

Some of the laws are aimed exclusively at the takers of tips and others at the givers as well. The Iowa law is in the first class, as follows:

Sec. 5028-u. Accepting or Soliciting Gratuity or Tip. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant, barber shop, or other public place, and every employee of any person, firm partnership, or corporation, or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers in this state, who shall accept or solicit any gratuity, tip or other thing of value or of valuable consideration, from any guest or patron, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than five dollars, or more than twenty-five dollars, or be imprisoned in the county jail for a period not exceeding thirty days.

This law makes the mere acceptance of a tip illegal and it also heads off any attempt to circumvent the law on a technicality by prohibiting the acceptance of "other thing of value or of valuable consideration."

THE WISCONSIN BILL

The Wisconsin bill, which the Governor vetoed on the ground that it curtailed "personal liberty" was intended to penalize the giving of the tip, and was worded as follows: