William R. Scott

“ A salesman sometimes will offer to give a buyer a bonus or part of his commission if an order is placed, and this practice is causing the business world considerable thought, as employers realize that a buyer who will accept favors from salesmen will not exercise unbiased judgment. It is the itching palm a plane above tipping owing to the larger amount involved, and is akin to the graft of public officials. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gompers in this chapter from his book has shed much light on the ethics, economics and psychology of tipping. The deliberate, shameless exploitation of the public by employers and employees is revealed. No ground to stand upon is left to the tip givers except vanity, and the pernicious influence of the custom, to patron, employee and employer, is so unmistakable that the doom of the custom is as certain as was slavery, when the American conscience once squarely faces the issue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one has a desire to deprive a waiter of an adequate compensation, but no one has a desire to give him an excessive compensation through gratuities, or a compensation which depresses his self-respect in the manner of receiving and humiliates the patron in the manner of giving.
Employers would need to be informed, too, that the campaign against tipping is not to throw an unjust burden of operating expense upon them. It will indeed deprive them of any revenues which they should not, economically or ethically, receive from the public through gratuities to employees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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" ”

“ The extent to which employers are exploiting the public is realized vaguely, if at all. The vein of generosity and the fear of violating a social convention can be worked profitably, and they are in league with their employees to make it assay the maximum amount to the patron.
In a restaurant where the employer has thus shifted the cost of waiter hire to the shoulders of the public, the patron who conscientiously objects to tipping has not the slightest chance in the world of a square deal in competition with the patron who pays tribute, although he pays as much for the food. ”

“ Unquestionably, with any reform in the manner of compensation to persons engaged in domestic or other serving capacities, must go a reform in the attitude of the public toward servitors. The patron who abuses his privileges, who exacts of employees far more than he has the right to ask, who treats them as automatons without sensibilities or self-respect—such a patron must be handled simultaneously with the change in manner of compensation. ”

“ Hence, whatever undermines self-respect, manhood, undermines the republic. Whatever cultivates aristocratic ideals and conventions in [37] 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. ”

“ A well-to-do man will cross the law in some manner and in the play he winks an eye, the policeman turns his back with his palm extended, a bill is slipped into it, and he departs to the sound of the spectators' laugh.
The effect of these scenes upon the public is dual. It either confirms their impression that all servants or officers are "approachable," or it creates among the unsophisticated the idea that tipping or graft is the customary and proper method of dealing with such classes of citizens. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 [96] 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. ”

“ The tipping system, bad as it is becoming in America, is in Europe universal and accepted by all classes of travelers as an inevitable nuisance. It often borders on blackmail. Tippers go raving mad in recounting their wrongs under the tyrannies of the system, the newspapers by turn rail or make merry over it, the hotel keepers and other employers of the class have their excuse that they pay wages to their servants—but the tipping goes on forever. ”

“ 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 rôle 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is small wonder, in view of the nature of the literature of tipping, that Europe has found American travelers "rich picking." Before embarking on the first trip abroad the average American informs himself and herself of what is expected in the way of gratuities, and everywhere the tourist turns in a library advice is found which effectually throws the cost of service upon the patron. Railroad and steamship literature usually avoids the subject because these companies do not want to bring this additional expense of travel to the attention of the public. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Second, the promptings of pride must be recognized frankly and mastered by democratic ideals. When a tip is given, not only is an individual wrong done, but a blow is struck at republican government and the ideals upon which it is founded. Patriotism, as well as faithfulness to self-respect requires that all customs which promote class distinctions shall be held in check. In entertaining a democratic attitude toward all Americans you are strengthening the government under which you live. ”

“ Often patrons exact more service than they are entitled to, and in such a situation the organization would be ranged on the side of the employee. Those who desire a condition where they may run rough-shod over servitors have a mistaken idea of the anti-tipping ideal. The employer is required to have employees who will give cheerful, adequate service, but within the limits of reason, and the selfish, domineering, patron is an evil which must be restrained as effectually as the waiter who surreptitiously insults patrons who do not tip. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic transaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound which does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five dollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer and the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return—nothing of like substantiality. ”

“ The public, of course, will need to revise its attitude toward these and all persons who serve them. The feeling that a traffic policeman whom you pass in your automobile every day should be remembered with a gift of money or anything else substantial at Christmas, or upon any other occasion is false sentiment. He is due nothing except courtesy all the time from the public, which, through taxes, already has provided his compensation. The feeling that a mail carrier whom you see daily, or a garbage collector, must be similarly remembered is equally false sentiment. ”

“ The system is detestable to every man and woman of the serving class possessing the least degree of self-respect. [151] It is demoralizing to all who either give or receive tips. The real beneficiaries of the system are the employers. An end to it, with a fair standard of wages, would be a boon of the first order to employees, a means of compelling hotel proprietors to put their business on a basis of fair dealing, and an incalculable aid to the tranquillity and pleasure of the general public. ”

“ Still the average citizen does not think of instituting a suit against a hotel, or swearing out a warrant against the manager or an employee to enforce his common law right to service at one price. If there is a specific statute against tipping there is a more tangible [129] inducement to stand up for one's rights and there is more likelihood that redress will be granted. The defense of tipping on the "personal liberty" plea, like the defense of the liquor business on the same plea, will grow feebler and feebler until judges cease to take the aristocratic viewpoint. ”

“ 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. ”