Part 15

"The Statler is a successful hotel. The Reason is, that every Waiter in this hotel, every Hall-Boy, the Chambermaid, the Clerk, the Chef, the Manager, the Boss Himself, is working all the time to make them FEEL 'at home.'

"Hotel service--that is, Hotel Statler service--means the limit of Courteous, Efficient Attention from Each Particular Employee to Each Particular Guest. This is the kind of service a Guest pays for when he pays us his bill--whether it is for $2.00 or $20.00 per day. It is the kind of Service he is entitled to, and he NEED NOT and SHOULD NOT pay ANY MORE."

NOT HOSPITALITY

Compare the attitude of management toward guests as revealed in this code with the bristling, belligerent attitude of employees in other first-class places where tipping is undisciplined! In the average hotel where the management encourages the tipping for economic reasons the bell-boy will make a scene if you fail to tip him after he carries your suit-case from the lobby to your room. Every other employee has the same spirit--he has to have it if he is to be compensated at all, for the employer puts it squarely up to him to work the guest for his wages.

Apparently this hotel reached the conviction that this was not hospitality.

Then the conviction was reached that a guest "need not and should not pay any more" for hotel service than the rate paid at the desk. From this it was logical to bring the employees to a new conception of service and to stop the piratical practice toward guests who do not tip.

It is particularly significant to note the assertion that the proprietor can run a tipless hotel if he wants to. That is an interesting declaration. It proves that those managers who exploit the tipping propensity deliberately do so for reasons of greed.

Then the reason for not running a tipless hotel is stated to be that "a small but certain per cent. of its guests will tip in spite of all rules." Here is evidence that the public has its measure of blame for the custom as well as the avarice of managers. This hotel declares that its conception of hospitality is to leave the guest free in his relation toward employees. But note this! It does not leave the employees free in their attitude toward guests.

UP TO THE EMPLOYER

The foregoing distinction is the crux of the whole tipping problem. If managers will restrain and discipline employees so that they will not run riot in their eagerness to exact toll from patrons the tipping evil will be reduced to a minimum.

THE FIRST STEP

It is not the idea underlying this discussion to consider that a satisfactory disposal of the tipping custom has been made when managers insure equal treatment for those who do not tip in comparison with those who do tip. Nothing short of the complete abolition of the custom can be the goal in a republic. But as a long stride toward the goal, the Code cited above is noteworthy. It constitutes the first immediate step that any hotel may take.

The public would find immense relief in the general adoption of the foregoing idea--that tipping must "be yielding to a genuine desire--not conforming to an outrageous custom." Inasmuch as the vast majority of Americans who tip do so only because they are afraid not to conform to an outrageous custom, this plan, honestly enforced upon employees, will reduce the followers of the custom to the small percentage of the public who tip because of pride or moral obtuseness. A way can be found to handle this element when the majority have been freed.

Once the proof is at hand that tipping can be handled the conclusion is unescapable that the managers who knuckle to the custom are "corrupt and contented." They are on precisely the same moral level as their employees.

THE GUEST'S RIGHTS

In the meantime, the individual patron has the right to and should proceed on the theory that he is entitled to EVERYTHING in the way of service for the one payment. This is his common law right even if no special laws regulating tipping are in force.

The public is at a great disadvantage in combating the tipping evil when the managers leave the issue to be settled between the patrons and the employees. A bell boy can commit an offense to a patron who does not tip that is perfectly tangible to the patron but difficult to report to the manager. Unless the manager takes a positive hand and instructs his employees in a manner similar to the above Code it is likely that most persons will continue to pay tribute rather than be insulted and neglected.

In Chicago, the Young Men's Christian Association operates a 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."