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:
Sec. 45751. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant or public
place and every employee of any person, firm or of any public
service corporation engaged in the transportation of passengers
or the furnishing of food, lodging and other accommodations to
the public in this state who shall receive or solicit any
gratuity or tip from any guest or patron shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor. Every person who shall give or offer any gratuity
or tip to any person or employee prohibited from receiving or
soliciting the same by the provisions of this section shall also
be guilty of a misdemeanor.
"Every hotel, restaurant, firm and public service corporation
engaged in the transportation of passengers or in furnishing
food or lodging or other accommodations to the public shall keep
a copy of this law posted in a conspicuous place in such hotel
and restaurant and in the dining or sleeping cars of any firm
or public service corporation mentioned in this section. Any
persons violating any of the provisions of this section shall be
guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not
less than five dollars, nor more than twenty-five dollars, or by
imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed thirty days."
The demand for this bill was so strong among the members of the
Legislature that it almost was passed over the Governor's veto. The
provision that a copy of the law must be posted in the places where the
public comes into contact with the itching palm is a most essential one.
It reassures patrons to see it and gives them a present stimulus for
standing upon their right to good service for one payment.
THE COURTS AND TIPPING
The courts, in declaring such laws unconstitutional have proceeded upon
the common law right of one citizen to give away his goods or property
in the form of money to any other citizen. A tip, the judges say,
represents a gift within the meaning of this common law right. But the
instances of such altruism are exceedingly rare.
Even the judges who so decide know that the tips they give are not bona
fide gifts out of the goodness of a generous heart. Tips are given, by
the devotees of the custom, from a sense of obligation. They pretend to
feel that the servitor actually has rendered a service for which the tip
is payment. The proof of this is found in the fact that such persons
never go about giving money gifts indiscriminately. Their gifts are
exclusively to the employees of public service enterprises, showing that
no thought of charity or generosity enters their minds.
The courts some day will come to the conclusion that a gift of money to
any serving person is a special relation that is subject to the police
power of the State. The special circumstances surrounding the gift will
be taken into consideration. Then it will be seen that the gift was made
for something the patron did not receive; for something for which he is
required to pay twice and that the motives of the gift were pride, or
fear or a sense of obligation falsely aroused.
While the courts are so scrupulous in preserving the common law right to
make gifts, they might give consideration to the equally indubitable
right of a patron to receive full value for his money, and to receive
such value for one payment.
It may be, that to write an anti-tipping law that will stand the test of
judges educated in the old school of thought about gratuities,
legislators will have to approach the subject from this viewpoint of
preserving a patron's common law right to satisfactory service for one
payment. For instance, a law specifically defining the right of a patron
to have food served, or to use a hotel room or sleeping car facilities,
in short to patronize any public service place, with only one charge,
and that to be paid exclusively to the proprietor, might strike an
effective blow at "the universal heart of Flunkyism."