Why the custom of tipping should be followed so generally when it is palpably a bad economic practice and ethically indefensible is a psychological study with the same aspects that the slavery issue presented before the Civil War.

The Puritan conscience allowed that institution to grow to formidable proportions before arousing itself decisively, and it has allowed this equally undemocratic custom to attain national ramifications.

CASTE AND CLASS

In its broadest statement, the psychology of tipping presents the two antipodal qualities of pride and pusillanimity. The caste system is not based upon the superiority of one class over another, but upon the pride that one stage of human development feels over another stage of human development.

A democracy cannot do away with different stages of development in the human mind. But it does do away with the belief of one stage of development that it is worthy of homage from another stage of development. Democracy does not concede that one man working with his brain is superior to another man working with his brawn. 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. They seek for some method of visualizing this assumed superiority, of obtaining the acknowledgment of it from their fellow-men. With an unerring instinct of human nature they play upon the cupidity of those whom they desire to place in a servile relation. A gift of money wins the social distinction they covet.

Thus the tipping custom has its origin in pride, and it necessarily involves humility as a correlative condition. If all men are created equal, as we aver in our basic political creed, they cannot become unequal except artificially, except by an agreement of one set of citizens to play the role of servitors for a consideration from another set of citizens. One set of citizens will become abased that is, they will surrender their birthright of equality in order that another set may strut around in a belief of superiority and indulge a sense of pride.

NO SUPERIOR CLASS

In a democracy, the gradations of culture exist, but it is not permissible for one class of workers to assume a superiority over another class. That they do assume it is evident, and that for all practical social purposes we live and move and have our being on that assumption is evident, but in granting manhood suffrage, in allowing the proud and the humble to have an equal voice in government, we declare the social system a fungus growth.

At the moment of the highest power of the institution of slavery it was not less wrong than at the moment the first ship-load of slaves was landed. No mere accumulation of material property can vitiate a principle of right. Hence, the very widespread acceptance of the tipping custom lends no authority to it. If 95,000,000 Americans are engaged in tipping 5,000,000 Americans, and if both the givers and the receivers apparently concur in the rightness of the custom, it does not thereby become right. We must go back to first principles to find the answer.

TIPPING AND SLAVERY

The American democracy could not live in the face of a lie such as slavery presented, and it cannot live in the face of a lie such as tipping presents. The aim of American statesmanship should be to keep fresh and strong the original concepts of democracy and to beat back the efforts of base human qualities to override these concepts.

The relation of a man giving a tip and a man accepting it is as undemocratic as the relation of master and slave. A citizen in a republic ought to stand shoulder to shoulder with every other citizen, with no thought of cringing, without an assumption of superiority or an acknowledgment of inferiority. This is elementary preaching and yet the distance we have strayed from primary principles makes it necessary to prove the case against tipping.

The psychology of tipping may be stated more in detail in the following formula:

To one-quarter part of generosity add two parts of pride and one part of fear.

FIRST INGREDIENT, GENEROSITY

This is a subtle element and merges into a sense of obligation on slight provocation. You feel that your position in life is more fortunate, and pity enters your thought. If an extra service is given, in reality or in appearance, the servitor has pitched his appeal upon the ground of obligation. Few persons can rest easily until a sense of obligation is discharged through some form of compensation. The opportunity to balance the account comes when cash is being passed between you and the person serving. You offer a cash consideration proportioned to your sense of obligation.

Inasmuch as the whole argument in favor of tipping is based upon the allegation that the servitor actually gives a value in extra service, the element of obligation will be examined closely.

The Pullman porter or the waiter who can succeed in making a patron feel a sense of obligation knows that he has assured a tip for himself. The company or the restaurant business is a vague fact, while the man hovering over your berth or table is a most tangible relation. His art is to make the patron feel that he is responsible for the careful attentions. In a subconscious way the patron knows that the price of the ticket or the food includes the service (wages of the porter or waiter) but the obsequious alertness of the attendant overshadows this knowledge. It is present personality versus an abstract entity known as company or restaurant. Hence, though the price of the ticket or the payment of the check pays for the porter’s or waiter’s service, the patron has been made to feel a second obligation which he discharges with a tip.

CLOAKROOM TACTICS

Thus tipping involves two payments for one service. Servitors understand clearly the psychology of the sense of obligation from experiment even though they could not read understandingly a book on psychology. A trial in Detroit over the division of the tips in the cloak-room of a restaurant furnished the following proof:

“‘How do you make people “cough up"?’ queried the judge.

“’When they are going away I brush them down, and if they don’t give me something I take hold of their lapel and say, “Excuse me,” and brush them again. I pretend that’s the only English I can speak. If they don’t give me something then I hold on to their hats until they do give me something. I made $12 the first day I worked at the place.’

“‘Why did you pretend you could not speak English?’ demanded the
judge.

“‘The more English you know the less tips you get.’”

This morally obtuse hat-boy knew that the average person does not want something for nothing when dealing with serving persons, and he exploited this trait to the maximum. Pullman porters and high grade waiters are more polished in the use of the same method, but it all gets back to the idea of creating a sense of obligation by actual or pretended service beyond the expected.

Undoubtedly, a rigid adherence to the letter of duty would result in service that would be unsatisfactory, but this is to be surmounted rightly by the employer requiring flexibility of service from employees not by the public paying extra for affability, courtesy and attentiveness.

SECOND INGREDIENT, PRIDE

Anxiety to cut a good figure before servants or allied classes of personal workers is a rich vein of pride which they do not fail to work for all it is worth. This kind of mind is always agitated from fear that the tipping has not been done handsomely enough. The satisfaction of having a fellow creature servile before your largess is a factor. The gratuity emphasizes your position in the social scale. It stamps the giver as a gentleman or lady. The smirking attentiveness of the servitor is balm to vanity.

Truly, if it were not for vanity there would be no tipping system.

THIRD INGREDIENT, FEAR

The power behind the tipping custom is Social Convention and the fear of violating it. The so-called social leaders, actuated by aristocratic ideals, establish the custom and the crowd follow suit in a desire to do the “proper” thing. The “what will people say” mania holds the average person in an iron obedience to a custom which is innately loathed. It makes you conspicuous to be a dissenter. The serving persons understand this psychology perfectly. To drift along with the current of social usage is easiest, whereas, to go against it requires the highest order of courage. The multitude simply rate it as one of the petty vices and let it go at that.

THE REMEDY

Now what is the method of meeting and mastering this situation?

Precisely the same reasoning employed by the Americans in 1801 against the custom of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates.

First, establish clearly in your mind that tipping is wrong. The slogan is: One compensation for one service. With this premise, you can answer, seriatim, every argument which arises in favor of the custom. To the plea of generosity or obligation the reply is, full compensation for all service rendered is included in the bill you pay at the hotel desk, at the ticket window, to the barber-shop cashier, for the taxi-meter reading, and so on. Any extra compensation implied by the person serving is an imposition and has no justification either as charity or obligation.

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. You will not become less of a gentleman or lady if the socially submerged classes rise to a normal plane of self-respect. In declining to place a false valuation upon them you are promoting the true mission of Americanism.

“To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Third, the fear of violating a social custom is overcome when you understand its pernicious nature. The general observance of it gives the custom neither rightness nor authority. With full assurance that the custom is wrong and with a measure of the courage Decatur showed before Tripoli, an apparently formidable, but really vulnerable, custom can be destroyed.