Labor has the strongest interest of any element of citizens for seeing the 5,000,000 men, women and children with itching palms elevated to a normal plane of self-respect. For nothing in America more certainly promotes class distinctions than tipping. It is essentially aristocratic, and labor has attained its widest development in democracy.

WAITERS AGAINST THE TIP CUSTOM

Occasionally waiters and some other workers in a serving capacity have attempted to organize and place their work upon the wage-system, rather than the combination wage-and-tip system, or the strictly tip system, now existing. In New York in 1913 the waiters struck for higher wages and serious riots occurred before they capitulated to the old system. The hotels preferred the tipping system because it throws the cost of waiter hire upon the public, whereas, an adequate wage system would necessitate a readjustment of their business.

Even where the waiters and barbers have organized they have not always shown aggressive efforts to abolish or regulate the tipping custom. The barbers, for instance, are highly organized, and any real desire upon their part to abolish the custom would be followed by immediate reform. But it is evident that the tipping system of compensation is attractive to many persons who serve the public because it yields more pay than a wage system. In the higher strata of workers particularly the tips are so large as to stupefy moral sense, and this minority dominates the majority by setting a standard of “proper” social usage.

A LABOR LEADER ON TIPS

Mr. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, has opposed tipping as an irregular form of compensation, and in response to an inquiry for his opinion he inclosed a letter he had written to the manager of the Hotel Stowell, in Los Angeles, where a non-tipping rule is enforced.

“Hotel Stowell, Los Angeles, Calif.

“Replying to your letter of November 28th I beg to say that I found your hotel and service eminently satisfactory and was particularly pleased with the rule you have enforced as to no tipping.

“While, of course, I have followed the usual custom of giving tips, yet I have maintained the principle of tipping to be unwise and that it tends to lessen the self-respect of a man who accepts a tip.

“Very truly yours,
“(Signed) SAMUEL GOMPERS,
“American Federation of Labor.”

This letter is interesting as revealing the attitude of many prominent Americans, namely, that while they conform to the custom rather than be subjected to insults, annoyance and poor service, they really consider it inimical to self-respect.

EUROPEAN TIPS

Mr. Gompers in his letter said: “You have my permission to quote my opinion upon this subject in any way that you may desire,” and gave permission to have reproduced here the chapter in his book, “Labor In Europe and America,” which deals with tipping in Europe, as he encountered it in his investigations of labor conditions. The chapter is entitled “Nuisances of European Travel” and is as follows:

“Having in previous letters given my impressions with regard to matters of more serious import, I wish to say something about the almost hourly sufferings of American travelers in Europe from mosquito bites. To the sharp probes from these insects, with the resultant pain, fever and disgust, the traveler is obliged to submit continually at hotels and restaurants, on the railroad and often elsewhere as he goes seeing the sights. To illustrate: our party on arriving at The Hague engaged two mosquitoes in the form of station porters to carry our hand-baggage to the bus of the Hotel Blank, waiting at the curb of the station exit. The station porters passed the valises over to the hotel bus porter at a point just within the station door. Nip! nip! by the two station porters.

NIP! NIP!

“When we arrived at the hotel door both the bus porter and the bus driver asked me for what they regarded as their due drop of blood. Nip! nip! Within the door of the hotel the manager informed us that all his rooms had been engaged by telegraph, but that he could give us good rooms at a clean hotel near by, and we took them. Two hotel porters who had carried our bits of hand-baggage into the hotel lobby asked me, as soon as the hotel manager had turned his back, for their tribute. Nip! nip! Yet another porter, after taking the things a few steps down the street to the other hotel stood by in the hallway and waited to give us his nip. Seven gouges of silver change out of my pocket before we reached our rooms! But the probes of the mosquito swarms of this hotel reached even further. The little hotel charged us Hotel Blank rates for our rooms, about double what would have been asked had we gone there direct and bargained for accommodations. And the dinner at the Hotel Blank cost us half a florin apiece more than the price set down in the guide-book. In this incident the reader sees some, but not all, of the methods of stinging which the hotel mosquitoes practice.

“In Berlin, just at the moment of our departure, the porter, the gold-laced and brass-buttoned dignitary who browbeats lamblike guests at European hotel entrances, handed us our laundry bill, every article of which was charged double to treble New York prices. In Vienna, tired of blood-letting to each mosquito separately in the group of servants always assembled about the door upon our departure ’the review’ they themselves call this evolution I drew the manager aside and said: ’I understand that there is a way of giving tips to all hands through the management.’ (One bleeding as it were.) ’How much extra shall I give you?’ He replied: ‘Twenty per cent. of your bill.’

“BRIBE AND BE HAPPY”

“I was rather tickled than bitten the first time I got a nip in a European railway train. One of our party suggested that as the second-class places were crowded we should go into a first-class compartment and await results. When the conductor, in his jim-dandy uniform, came along, he was handed our second-class tickets and a mark a silver coin worth a paltry twenty-five cents. And he took our tickets and passed on without seeing for what class they called. The vast possibilities of cheaply purchased privileges on future trips acted as a palliative to this little sting. And the thought of what might happen if the traveler in America should try to overcome the virtue of one of our express-train conductors with a ‘quarter’ brought all our party to see the circumstance from a humorous point of view. Truth to relate, it marked the beginning of a custom we followed since we learned that it was general of buying our way past any obstacle that appeared to interrupt the smoothness or comfort of our daily progress. With a little silver we henceforth obtained concessions from grand-looking policemen, soldiers on guard, vergers in churches, museum custodians. It is a common custom for conductors on street cars in Continental Europe to hold out their hands to receive as a tip any small change due, but first handed over to the passenger. You may have your choice in European travel: Bribe and be otherwise happy and free, or virtuously decline to bribe and be snubbed, ordered about and forbidden to see things.

BORDERS ON BLACKMAIL

“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. Why is it? Who is to blame?

“These questions I have asked representative waiters for representatives these men have, many of them being organized into benefit societies and a small proportion in a sort of trade union. But one answer was given. The system is detestable to every man and woman of the serving class possessing the least degree of self-respect. 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.

MORAL PIRATES

“I have often talked over the system of tipping with my fellow waiters,” said an educated man of the calling, when I brought up the subject to him. (Parenthetically, perhaps, I should say here that since this man speaks fluently and writes correctly four languages, has traveled much and observed well on the great tourist routes of the world, has studied some of the serious works of writers on sociology, and has, withal, acquired agreeable manners, he may be called educated. Without doubt, had he a few thousands of vulgar dollars he might buy himself a title as Baron and marry in our best society; but he is above that; he has a craving for walking in the light of truth.) “All of us would like to see the system abolished,” he assured me, “except a small minority who in their moral make-up resemble pirates, and who cruise in places where riches abound. But the whole situation is one in which reform is most difficult.

“Among the people who patronize hotels and restaurants there is a considerable element that, either for a week of frolic or during their lifelong holiday, are regardless of the value of their tips, and through their vanity enjoy throwing away a percentage of their ready money. Then, also, are those grateful for the little kindly attentions which a good waiter or porter knows how to bestow. As for the proprietors and managers, their business is based on tips as one of the considerable forms of revenue. For instance, in many German hotels the waiters are obliged to give the cashier five or more marks additional on every hundred marks of checks. In Austria, at the larger restaurants the customers tip three persons after a meal the head-waiter who collects the payments, the waiter who serves and the piccolo or beer-boy. The hotel management sells to the head-waiter the monopoly privilege of the tips. The head-waiter then provides the newspapers and magazines on file, the city directories, time-tables and other books of reference called for by patrons, and a part of the outfit of the waiters. Of course, it is an old and true story, that in the big restaurants of Paris, and to-day of other cities and fashionable watering-places, the waiters pay so much cash a day for their jobs. The pestering of guests to buy drinks comes, not so much from commissions, as from orders of the management that the custom of drinking at meals must be encouraged. In Germany it is usual at the larger restaurants to add half a mark to the cost of a meal if the guest drinks plain water only.

TOO MANY SERVANTS

“European hotels generally take on more servants than are necessary. It makes a showing of being prepared for big business. Then the servants must redouble their artful moves to extort tips. Porters not infrequently work without salary at all. Chambermaids, who are paid by the month, receive absurdly low pay. Financing a hotel or restaurant is based on the tips as a margin yielding on the average a fixed amount. To make them reach the required sum all the employees are obliged to maneuver so as to put up a showing of earning the traveler’s extra silver pieces. Coppers rarely are expected as tips now. It has become common for railway station porters to demand half a franc for what once brought them a few sous or pfennigs.

“One outcome of running a hotel on the tipping system developed to the point of bamboozling or worrying the guests out of petty extras at every turn is that each year there is an emigration of European waiters to America to get places in hotels taken by European managers, who, depending upon their servants to work the system at its worst for the guests, can make a business pay both manager and landlord, where an American manager, paying wages, would fail. While shop-keepers have in the course of time been forced to adopt the one-price system, the drift in the hotel business has been continuously away from the per diem rate. Another point the big tourist agencies for European travel are certainly in some sort of partnership with the hotels for which they sell coupon tickets. Those on the inside of the hotel business in Europe know that these hotels are patronized largely by Americans, spendthrifts on their trip staying a few days at a time and usually speaking English only, and therefore disinclined to hunt up stopping-places for themselves. Hence at such hotels there is a harvest for everybody a situation which eventually leads to bad food, bad cooking, bad service, and a hold-up at every turn of the guest.”

A SORRY BUSINESS

In going over the possible method of a change for the better in this sorry business, my waiter friend said that first of all he believed that a big trade union must be formed of hotel help. Tipping must give way to fair wages. The public could give its share of assistance. He recommended that the guests at either hotels or restaurants should follow these rules, notes of which were taken on the spot. “Patronize, whenever possible, the hotels and eating houses where tips are forbidden; there are such places in England and on the continent. Refuse importunities for tips, either through words or ’hanging around,’ where there has been no service. Where, for your own comfort you feel constrained to tip give the bare minimum. Whenever possible do not tip at all.”

He added, and I felt that he had me also in mind, “Some easy-going natured people believe that they tip the nearest itching palm to them because of their sympathy with the poor. Reflection should teach them that there can sometimes be real charity without public demonstration.”

True, church people might, with this purpose, give through their own congregational agencies. In London, the American traveler wishing to do the best with his withheld tip-appropriation, might send it to the Westminster Children’s Aid Society; In Rome, to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; In Berlin, to the semi-public lodging houses. Everywhere, trade-unionists can always give first to the genuine and pressing claims of their own organizations. But, of course, if the tipper, gives, not from motives of good-heartedness, but mere vanity, all advice is thrown away on him. The hotel keeper will continue growing rich on him and despising him. Other folks in Europe may have good reason to tell him, what a plain spoken Swiss citizen told a friend of mine: “You Americans with your dirty dollars are ruining my country.”

VANITY, ALL IS VANITY!

Mr. 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.

Hotel and restaurant managers in our cities have employed European waiters upon the theory that the native American has too much independence and self-respect. The European waiters have multiplied the tip-giving propensity in America and have established their undemocratic sovereignty over our public hospitality. Inasmuch as a certain element of Americans think that the last word in social propriety originates in Europe, when these European servitors are transplanted, gold lace and all, to America, they hasten to enlarge their tips to the point which they assume these servitors consider “proper.”

The astonishing feature of the European situation is that the European patrons of hotels do not themselves tip within a tenth of the largess bestowed by American tourists. The American tourist is fair game to the European hotel, which trebles its regular rates the moment he appears. A native of the country, however, can have identically the same accommodations for one-third of the American’s bill, and his tips are a bagatelle in comparison.

The situation may be changed by an organization of employees, but reform will come most speedily whenever the public, which pays the bill, decides to withhold the tribute.