Part 21

"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.

XVII

THE WAY OUT

Summarizing the case against tipping, the following facts stand out prominently:

1. Flunkyism is rampant in the American democracy and this aristocratic influence is undermining republican ideals and institutions.

2. Flunkyism, in the form of tipping, is kept alive by the courts on the plea of "personal liberty."

3. Tipping nowadays is of precisely the same morality as paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates was in Jefferson's day, which the American conscience finally abolished.

4. On the economic side, tipping is wrong because it is payment for no service, or double payment for one service; thereby causing the exchange of wealth without a mutual gain.

5. Tipping is ethically wrong because one person accepts payment for a service not rendered, or for a service which the employer already has paid to have performed. And because gratuities destroy self-respect.

6. The hold which tipping has upon the public is due to unscrupulous appeals to generosity, pride and fear of violating conventional social usage.