The Itching Palm Part 1

The Itching Palm.

by William R Scott.

I

FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA

"Oliver Cromwell struck a mortal blow at the universal heart of Flunkyism," wrote Carlyle of the execution of Charles I.

Yet, Flunkyism is not dead!

In the United States alone more than 5,000,000 persons derive their incomes, in whole or in part, from "tips," or gratuities. They have the moral malady denominated The Itching Palm.

Tipping is the modern form of Flunkyism. Flunkyism may be defined as a willingness to be servile for a consideration. It is democracy's deadly foe. The two ideas cannot live together except in a false peace. The tendency always is for one to sap the vitality of the other.

The full significance of the foregoing figures is realized in the further knowledge that these 5,000,000 persons with itching palms are fully 10 per cent of our entire industrial population; for the number of persons engaged in gainful occupations in this country is less than 50,000,000.

Whether this const.i.tutes a problem for moralists, economists and statesmen depends upon the ethical apprais.e.m.e.nt of tipping. If tipping is moral, the interest is reduced to the economic phase--whether the remuneration thus given is normal or abnormal. If tipping is immoral, the fact that 5,000,000 Americans practice it const.i.tutes a problem of first rate importance.

Accurate statistics are not obtainable, but conservative estimates place the amount of money given in one year by the American people in tips, or gratuities, at a figure somewhere between $200,000,000 and $500,000,000!

Now we have the full statement of the case against tipping--five million persons receiving in excess of two hundred millions of dollars for--what?

It will be interesting to examine the ethics, economics and psychology of tipping to determine whether the American people receive a value for this expenditure.

II

ON PERSONAL LIBERTY

The Itching Palm is a moral disease. It is as old as the pa.s.sion of greed in the human mind. Milton was thinking of it when he exclaimed:

"Help us to save free conscience from the paw, Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw."

Although it had only a feeble lodgment in the minds of the Puritans, because their minds were in the travail that gave birth to democracy, enough remained to perpetuate the disease. In Europe, under monarchical ideals, a person could accept a tip without feeling the acute loss of self-respect that attends the practice in America, under democratic ideals. For tipping is essentially an aristocratic custom.

TIPPING UN-AMERICAN

If it seems astounding that this aristocratic practice should reach such stupendous proportions in a republic, we must remember that the same republic allowed slavery to reach stupendous proportions.

IF TIPPING IS UN-AMERICAN, SOME DAY, SOMEHOW, IT WILL BE UPROOTED LIKE AFRICAN SLAVERY

Apparently the American conscience is dormant upon this issue. But this is more apparent than real. The people are stirring vaguely and uneasily over the ethics of the custom. Six State Legislatures reflected the dawning of a new conscience by considering in their 1915 sessions bills relating to tipping. They were Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Carolina.

The geographical distribution of these States is significant. It is proof that the opposition to the practice is not isolated, not sectional, but national. North, Central, South, the verdict was registered that tipping is wrong. The South, former home of slavery, might be supposed to be favorable to this aristocratic custom. On the contrary the most vigorous opposition to it is found there. Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina simultaneously had laws against tipping--with the usual contests in the courts on their const.i.tutionality.

The Negro was servile by law and inheritance. The modern tip-taker voluntarily a.s.sumes, in a republic where he is actually and theoretically equal to all other citizens, a servile att.i.tude for a fee. While the form of servitude is different, the slavery is none the less real in the case of the tip-taker.

Strangely enough, bills to prohibit tipping often have been vetoed by Governors--notably in Wisconsin--on the ground that they curtailed personal liberty. That is to say, a bill which removed the chains of social slavery from the serving cla.s.ses was declared to be an abridgment of liberty! "Oh, Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!"

The Legislature in Wisconsin almost re-pa.s.sed the bill over the Governor's veto. In Tennessee and Kentucky bills have been vetoed for the same given reason, though Tennessee in 1916 finally had such a law in force. In Illinois, the law was framed primarily with the object of preventing the leasing of privileges to collect tips in hotels and other public places, and not against the individual giver or taker of tips.

SHORT-LIVED LAWS

The courts have negatived such laws on much the same grounds, so that anti-tipping laws thus far have been, generally, short-lived. The reason is, of course, that popular sentiment has not been behind the laws in an extent sufficient to give them power. Judges and executives simply have yielded to their own cla.s.s impulses, and the pressure from organized interests, to suppress the legislation. When the public conscience finds itself and becomes organized and articulate, they will have no difficulty in finding grounds for declaring regulatory laws const.i.tutional. The history of the prohibition of the liquor business is a parallel.

PERSONAL LIBERTY

Personal liberty is a phrase that is being redefined in America in every decade. In its broadest sense it is interpreted to mean that a man has the right to go to perdition if he so elects without neighbors or the government taking note or interfering.

Anti-liquor laws in the early days of the temperance movement fared badly from this interpretation, just as anti-tipping laws fare to-day.

But as public sentiment crystallized, and judges and executives began to feel the pressure at the polls, a new conception of personal liberty developed. In its present accepted sense, as regards liquor, it is interpreted to mean that no citizen may act or live in a way that is detrimental to himself, his neighbor or his government, and his privilege to drink liquor is abridged or abolished at will.

The right to give tips is not inalienable. It is not grounded on personal liberty. If the public conscience reaches the conviction that tipping is detrimental to democracy, that it destroys that fineness of self-respect requisite in a republic, the right will be abridged or withdrawn.

III

BARBARY PIRATES

The American people became fully aroused on one occasion to the iniquity of tipping--on an international scale.

In 1801 President Jefferson decided that the United States could tolerate no longer the system of tribute enforced by the Barbary States along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean.

Before our action, no European government had made more than fitful, ineffectual attempts to break up a practice at once humiliating to national honor and disastrous to national commerce. Candor requires the admission that we, too, submitted for years to this system of paying tribute to Barbary pirates for an unmolested pa.s.sage of our s.h.i.+ps, but the significant fact is that American manhood did finally and successfully revolt against the practice.

By 1805 our naval forces had brought the pirates to their knees and all Europe breathed grateful sighs of relief. Even the Pope commended the American achievement. The practice was contrary to every dictate of self-respect.

TRIBUTE

These pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli did not pretend to have any other right behind their demands for tribute than the right they could enforce with cutla.s.s and cannon--a right ferociously employed. It was not robbery in the ordinary sense of the word. They demanded a fee based on the value of the cargo for the privilege of sailing in the Mediterranean, and this being paid, the s.h.i.+p could proceed to its destination. s.h.i.+p-owners soon began to figure tribute as a fixed expense of navigation, like insurance, and pa.s.sed the added cost along to the ultimate consumer.

This practice of paying tribute was a system of international tipping.

The Barbary pirates granted immunity to those who obeyed the custom, but made it decidedly warm and expensive for those who dared to protest against it--just as do our modern pirates in hotels, sleeping cars, restaurants, barber shops and elsewhere.

If a s.h.i.+p refused to pay tribute it was sunk, and the sailors went to slavery in the desert, or to death by fearful torture. President Jefferson could not see any basis of right in the position of the Barbary States that the Mediterranean was their private lake through which s.h.i.+ps could not pa.s.s without paying toll. He sent Decatur to register our protest.