The Itching Palm Part 10

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 a.s.serted 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. Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the pa.s.sionate ideal. This they and their a.s.sociates 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 att.i.tude of Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson. That both of these idealists tipped servants and that Was.h.i.+ngton owned slaves is indisputable, but they left records that prove that they merely "suffered it to be so now." Was.h.i.+ngton 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 circ.u.mstances 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 fellows.h.i.+p.

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 compet.i.tion 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 cla.s.ses 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.s 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 cooperation.

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 cla.s.s, 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 partners.h.i.+p, or corporation, or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of pa.s.sengers 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 circ.u.mvent the law on a technicality by prohibiting the acceptance of "other thing of value or of valuable consideration."

THE WISCONSIN BILL