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The Itching Palm, by William R Scott The Itching Palm, by William R Scott The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Itching Palm, by William R Scott This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Itching Palm A Study of the Habit of Tipping in America Author: William R Scott Release Date: July 15, 2010 [EBook #33170] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ITCHING PALM *** Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net The Itching Palm A STUDY OF THE HABIT OF TIPPING IN AMERICA By 1 The Itching Palm, by William R Scott WILLIAM R. SCOTT Author of "The Americans in Panama," "Scientific Circulation Management," Etc. THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1916 COPYRIGHT 1916 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY The Itching Palm THE AUTHOR WILL BE PLEASED TO CORRESPOND WITH ANY READER WHO APPROVES OF, OR HAS COMMENTS TO MAKE UPON, THE ATTITUDE TAKEN IN THIS BOOK TOWARD THE TIPPING CUSTOM. WILLIAM R. SCOTT. PADUCAH, KENTUCKY. CONTENTS 2 CHAPTER PAGE 3 CHAPTER PAGE I FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA 7 II ON PERSONAL LIBERTY 10 III BARBARY PIRATES 15 IV PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION 19 V THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING 26 VI THE ETHICS OF TIPPING 36 VII THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TIPPING 47 VIII THE LITERATURE OF TIPPING 58 IX TIPPING AND THE STAGE 68 X THE EMPLOYEE VIEWPOINT 73 XI THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT 88 XII ONE STEP FORWARD 97 XIII THE SLEEPING-CAR PHASE 105 XIV THE GOVERNMENT AND TIPPING 113 XV LAWS AGAINST TIPPING 122 XVI SAMUEL GOMPERS ON TIPPING 144 XVII THE WAY OUT 158 INDEX 169 THE ITCHING PALM I FLUNKYISM IN AMERICA "Oliver Cromwell struck a mortal blow at the universal heart of Flunkyism," wrote Carlyle of the execution of Charles I. Yet, Flunkyism is not dead! In the United States alone more than 5,000,000 persons derive their incomes, in whole or in part, from "tips," or gratuities. They have the moral malady denominated The Itching Palm. CHAPTER PAGE 4 Tipping is the modern form of Flunkyism. Flunkyism may be defined as a willingness to be servile for a consideration. It is democracy's deadly foe. The two ideas cannot live together except in a false peace. The tendency always is for one to sap the vitality of the other. The full significance of the foregoing figures is realized in the further knowledge that these 5,000,000 persons with itching palms are fully 10 per cent of our entire industrial population; for the number of persons engaged in gainful occupations in this country is less than 50,000,000. Whether this constitutes a problem for moralists, economists and statesmen depends upon the ethical appraisement of tipping. If tipping is moral, the interest is reduced to the economic phase--whether the remuneration thus given is normal or abnormal. If tipping is immoral, the fact that 5,000,000 Americans practice it constitutes a problem of first rate importance. Accurate statistics are not obtainable, but conservative estimates place the amount of money given in one year by the American people in tips, or gratuities, at a figure somewhere between $200,000,000 and $500,000,000! Now we have the full statement of the case against tipping--five million persons receiving in excess of two hundred millions of dollars for--what? It will be interesting to examine the ethics, economics and psychology of tipping to determine whether the American people receive a value for this expenditure. II ON PERSONAL LIBERTY The Itching Palm is a moral disease. It is as old as the passion of greed in the human mind. Milton was thinking of it when he exclaimed: "Help us to save free conscience from the paw, Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw." Although it had only a feeble lodgment in the minds of the Puritans, because their minds were in the travail that gave birth to democracy, enough remained to perpetuate the disease. In Europe, under monarchical ideals, a person could accept a tip without feeling the acute loss of self-respect that attends the practice in America, under democratic ideals. For tipping is essentially an aristocratic custom. TIPPING UN-AMERICAN If it seems astounding that this aristocratic practice should reach such stupendous proportions in a republic, we must remember that the same republic allowed slavery to reach stupendous proportions. IF TIPPING IS UN-AMERICAN, SOME DAY, SOMEHOW, IT WILL BE UPROOTED LIKE AFRICAN SLAVERY Apparently the American conscience is dormant upon this issue. But this is more apparent than real. The people are stirring vaguely and uneasily over the ethics of the custom. Six State Legislatures reflected the dawning of a new conscience by considering in their 1915 sessions bills relating to tipping. They were Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and South Carolina. The geographical distribution of these States is significant. It is proof that the opposition to the practice is not isolated, not sectional, but national. North, Central, South, the verdict was registered that tipping is wrong. The South, former home of slavery, might be supposed to be favorable to this aristocratic custom. On the CHAPTER PAGE 5 contrary the most vigorous opposition to it is found there. Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina simultaneously had laws against tipping--with the usual contests in the courts on their constitutionality. The Negro was servile by law and inheritance. The modern tip-taker voluntarily assumes, in a republic where he is actually and theoretically equal to all other citizens, a servile attitude for a fee. While the form of servitude is different, the slavery is none the less real in the case of the tip-taker. Strangely enough, bills to prohibit tipping often have been vetoed by Governors--notably in Wisconsin--on the ground that they curtailed personal liberty. That is to say, a bill which removed the chains of social slavery from the serving classes was declared to be an abridgment of liberty! "Oh, Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!" The Legislature in Wisconsin almost re-passed the bill over the Governor's veto. In Tennessee and Kentucky bills have been vetoed for the same given reason, though Tennessee in 1916 finally had such a law in force. In Illinois, the law was framed primarily with the object of preventing the leasing of privileges to collect tips in hotels and other public places, and not against the individual giver or taker of tips. SHORT-LIVED LAWS The courts have negatived such laws on much the same grounds, so that anti-tipping laws thus far have been, generally, short-lived. The reason is, of course, that popular sentiment has not been behind the laws in an extent sufficient to give them power. Judges and executives simply have yielded to their own class impulses, and the pressure from organized interests, to suppress the legislation. When the public conscience finds itself and becomes organized and articulate, they will have no difficulty in finding grounds for declaring regulatory laws constitutional. The history of the prohibition of the liquor business is a parallel. PERSONAL LIBERTY Personal liberty is a phrase that is being redefined in America in every decade. In its broadest sense it is interpreted to mean that a man has the right to go to perdition if he so elects without neighbors or the government taking note or interfering. Anti-liquor laws in the early days of the temperance movement fared badly from this interpretation, just as anti-tipping laws fare to-day. But as public sentiment crystallized, and judges and executives began to feel the pressure at the polls, a new conception of personal liberty developed. In its present accepted sense, as regards liquor, it is interpreted to mean that no citizen may act or live in a way that is detrimental to himself, his neighbor or his government, and his privilege to drink liquor is abridged or abolished at will. The right to give tips is not inalienable. It is not grounded on personal liberty. If the public conscience reaches the conviction that tipping is detrimental to democracy, that it destroys that fineness of self-respect requisite in a republic, the right will be abridged or withdrawn. III BARBARY PIRATES The American people became fully aroused on one occasion to the iniquity of tipping--on an international scale. In 1801 President Jefferson decided that the United States could tolerate no longer the system of tribute enforced by the Barbary States along the shores of the Mediterranean. CHAPTER PAGE 6 Before our action, no European government had made more than fitful, ineffectual attempts to break up a practice at once humiliating to national honor and disastrous to national commerce. Candor requires the admission that we, too, submitted for years to this system of paying tribute to Barbary pirates for an unmolested passage of our ships, but the significant fact is that American manhood did finally and successfully revolt against the practice. By 1805 our naval forces had brought the pirates to their knees and all Europe breathed grateful sighs of relief. Even the Pope commended the American achievement. The practice was contrary to every dictate of self-respect. TRIBUTE These pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli did not pretend to have any other right behind their demands for tribute than the right they could enforce with cutlass and cannon--a right ferociously employed. It was not robbery in the ordinary sense of the word. They demanded a fee based on the value of the cargo for the privilege of sailing in the Mediterranean, and this being paid, the ship could proceed to its destination. Ship-owners soon began to figure tribute as a fixed expense of navigation, like insurance, and passed the added cost along to the ultimate consumer. This practice of paying tribute was a system of international tipping. The Barbary pirates granted immunity to those who obeyed the custom, but made it decidedly warm and expensive for those who dared to protest against it--just as do our modern pirates in hotels, sleeping cars, restaurants, barber shops and elsewhere. If a ship refused to pay tribute it was sunk, and the sailors went to slavery in the desert, or to death by fearful torture. President Jefferson could not see any basis of right in the position of the Barbary States that the Mediterranean was their private lake through which ships could not pass without paying toll. He sent Decatur to register our protest. With the Pinckney slogan: "MILLIONS FOR DEFENSE--NOT ONE CENT FOR TRIBUTE!" the American naval forces made good our position. The tips that skippers of our nation had been paying to the pirates were saved and the custom soon was abandoned by other nations. ***** To-day, the old battle cry is reversed to read: "Millions for tribute--not one cent for defense!" It is certain that a greater tribute is paid in one week in the United States in the form of tips, than our merchantmen paid during the whole period that they knuckled to the Barbary pirates. In New York City alone more than $100,000 a day is paid in gratuities to waiters, hotel employes, chauffeurs, barbers and allied classes. But New York has reached a subserviency to the tipping custom that is amazing in a democratic country. This vast tribute is paid for not more real service than the Barbary pirates rendered to those from whom they exacted tribute. It is given to workers who are paid by their employers to perform the services enjoyed by the public. If the Barbary pirates could see the ease with which a princely tribute is exacted from a docile public by the tip-takers, they would yearn to be reincarnated as waiters in America--the Land of the Fee! IV PERSONNEL AND DISTRIBUTION CHAPTER PAGE 7 The Itching Palm is not limited to the serving classes. It is found among public officials, where it is particularized as grafting, and it is found among store buyers, purchasing agents, traveling salesmen and the like, and takes the form of splitting commissions. There are varied manifestations of the disease, but whether the amount of the gratuity is ten cents to a waiter or $10,000 to a captain of police, the practice is the same. This is a partial list of those affected: Baggagemen Barbers Bartenders Bath attendants Bellboys Bootblacks Butlers Cab drivers Chauffeurs Charwomen Coachmen Cooks Door men Elevator men Garbage men Guides Hatboys Housekeepers Janitors Maids Manicurists Messengers Mail carriers Pullman porters Rubbish collectors Steamship stewards Theater attendants Waiters The foregoing list is not offered as a complete roster of those who regularly or occasionally receive tips. Nearly every one can think of additions, and at Christmas the list is extended to include money gifts to policemen, delivery men and numerous others. THE TIP-TAKING CLASSES At the last Census, in 1910, there were 38,167,336 persons in the United States, out of a total population of ninety-odd millions, who were engaged in gainful occupations, that is, who worked for specified wages or salaries. Of this number, 3,772,174 persons were engaged in domestic or personal service, or practically ten per cent. of the industrial population. This means that in round numbers 4,000,000 Americans of both sexes and all ages were engaged in the lines of work specified in the foregoing list, with certain additions as mentioned. These are the citizens who profit by the tipping practice. Since 1910 the growth in population to one hundred millions, and the steadily widening spread of the tipping practice will increase the beneficiaries of tipping to 5,000,000. An idea of the relative distribution of the total may be obtained from the statistics of fifty leading cities. The numbers represent the tip-taking classes in each city. CITY NUMBER Albany 8,000 Atlanta 23,000 Baltimore 48,000 Birmingham 16,000 Boston 61,000 Bridgeport 5,200 Buffalo 25,000 Cambridge 7,500 Chicago 135,000 Cincinnati 30,000 Cleveland 31,000 Columbus 14,000 Dayton 6,500 Denver 17,000 Detroit 26,000 Fall River 4,000 Grand Rapids 5,500 Indianapolis 19,000 Jersey City 14,000 Kansas City 24,000 Los Angeles 26,000 Lowell 5,500 Louisville 23,000 Memphis 19,000 Milwaukee 22,000 Minneapolis 19,000 Nashville 15,000 New Haven 9,000 New Orleans 37,000 New York 400,000 Newark 17,000 Oakland 11,000 Omaha 10,000 Paterson 5,000 Philadelphia 105,000 Pittsburgh 41,000 Portland 17,000 Providence 14,000 Richmond 15,000 Rochester 13,000 St. Louis 56,000 St. Paul 16,000 San Francisco 44,000 Scranton 6,000 Seattle 19,000 Spokane 7,000 Syracuse 9,000 Toledo 9,500 Washington 43,000 Worcester 9,000 In all other cities, towns and hamlets there are proportionate quotas to bring the grand total to 5,000,000. Any estimate of the daily tipping tribute for the whole country necessarily is only an approximation, but $600,000 is a conservative figure. At this rate the annual tribute is around $220,000,000. IN NEW YORK ALONE Taking New York with its 400,000 persons who profit from tipping, the leading classes of beneficiaries are as follows: CHAPTER PAGE 8 Barbers 20,000 Bartenders 12,000 Bellboys 2,500 Bootblacks 3,500 Chauffeurs 12,000 Janitors 25,000 Manicurists 4,500 Messengers 1,500 Porters 15,000 Waiters 35,000 The tipping to these and other classes varies both in amount and regularity. Waiters and manicurists in the better-class places receive no pay from their employers and depend entirely upon tips for their compensation. Barbers and chauffeurs are classes which receive wages and supplement them with tips. Sometimes the employer will pay wages and require that all tips be turned in to the house. It is a common feature of the "Help Wanted" columns to state that the job is desirable to the workers because of "good tips." Thus the employers are fully alert to the economic advantage of tipping, and wherever it is practicable they throw upon their patrons the entire cost of servant hire. The extent to which employers are exploiting the public is realized vaguely, if at all. The vein of generosity and the fear of violating a social convention can be worked profitably, and they are in league with their employees to make it assay the maximum amount to the patron. In a restaurant where the employer has thus shifted the cost of waiter hire to the shoulders of the public, the patron who conscientiously objects to tipping has not the slightest chance in the world of a square deal in competition with the patron who pays tribute, although he pays as much for the food. A waiter, knowing that his compensation depends upon what he can work out of his patron, employs every art to stimulate the tipping propensity, from subtle flattery to out-right bull-dozing. He weaves a spell of obligation around a patron as tangible, if invisible, as the web a spider weaves around a fly. He plays as consciously upon the patron's fear of social usage as the musician in the alcove plays upon his violin. This is a particularly bad ethical and economic situation from any viewpoint. The patron, getting only one service, pays two persons for it--the employer and the employee. The payment to the employer is fixed, but to the employee it is dependent upon the whim of the patron. To make this situation normal, the patron should pay only once, and this should cover both the cost of the food and the services of the waiter. Theoretically this is the present idea under the common law, but actually the patron is required, through fear of well-defined penalties, to pay twice. Naturally, if the $200,000,000 or more annually given to those serving the public should be withdrawn suddenly, employers would face the necessity of a radical readjustment of wage systems. In many lines wages would be increased to a normal basis, either at the expense of the employer's profits, or through additional charges to patrons. Before going further into the employer phase of the practice, the economics of tipping in individual instances will be an interesting study. V THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING The basic question is, does tipping represent a sound exchange of wealth? Do the American people receive full value, or any value, for the $200,000,000 or more given in tips? Values, of course, may be sentimental as well as substantial and, so far as tipping is concerned, it can be demonstrated that if any values are received they are sentimental. The satisfaction of giving, the balm to vanity, the indulgence of pride, are the values obtained by the giver of a tip in exchange for his money. It is a stock argument for tipping that the person serving frequently performs extra services, or displays special painstaking, which deserve extra compensation. Only an examination of individual instances can determine whether this is true. The proportion of the tipping tribute which really pays for extraordinary service is CHAPTER PAGE 9 negligible. A brief inquiry into a few of the more prominent instances of tipping follows. THE WAITER If food is sold undelivered, then the waiter in bringing it to the patron and assisting him in its consumption does perform an extra service for which payment is due. But this is not the fact, any more than that a shoe clerk should be tipped for assisting a customer in the selection of his employer's footwear. In both instances, the cost of the service is included in the price of the article--food or shoes. The prices on the bill of fare have been figured to include all costs of serving it, such as cook-hire, waiter-hire, rent, music, table ware, raw materials and overhead charges. If a sirloin steak costs seventy-five cents a definite part of that amount represents the wages of the waiter serving it. Thus the waiter has no claim upon the patron for compensation, because the patron, in paying for the food, provides the proprietor with funds from which the waiter's wages will be paid. If the patron, in addition, gives the waiter a tip it is clearly a gift for which no value has been returned. The waiter is paid twice for one service. ECONOMIC WASTE The question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic transaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound which does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five dollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer and the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return--nothing of like substantiality. The patron may justify the gift from sentimental considerations, of pride, generosity or fear of violating a social convention, but no sophistry of reasoning can prove that a substantial value has been received. Of course, a waiter may give a patron more than the proprietor agrees to give in the bill of fare, and this undoubtedly is an extra service--but it is also a dishonest service. Every extra service to one patron means a deficiency of service to other patrons. It is a common experience that liberal tipping obtains special attentions which non-tipping patrons miss, but, being dishonest, such a condition is outside the scope of this inquiry. When a patron pays for food he is entitled to adequate and equal service, and no largess by other patrons should interfere with this basic right. On its economic side, then, tipping is wrong. Wealth is exchanged without both parties to the transaction receiving fair values. The psychology and ethics of the transaction will be considered in other chapters. THE BARBER No tipping is so inexcusable as that which is done to a barber. The trade is highly organized and the workers are well-paid under good working conditions. There is not the slightest chance for the barber to serve a patron in a way for which the patron does not pay in the shop tariffs. If a haircut costs thirty-five cents, the patron is entitled to just as good a hair-cut as the barber can give. The patron enters the shop upon the assumption that he is entitled to a satisfactory service. Hence, in tipping a barber a patron is yielding in a peculiarly timid way to the mesmeric influence which the tipping custom exerts over its devotees. CHAPTER PAGE 10 It is a wanton waste of wealth, an unsound business transaction, because money is given where charity is unnecessary and where absolutely nothing is given in return. "But my barber takes lots of pains with my hair," the patron exclaims in justification of the tip. As in the instance of the waiter, if he takes more than a normal amount of pains with your hair he is dishonest to his employer and to other patrons whom he must neglect to pay you special attention. Your right is to a satisfactory service, and this you pay for in the regular charge. Any extra compensation is unearned increment to the barber. The unctuous manner he employs to arouse a sense of obligation in a patron, when stripped of disguises, is a plain hold-up game. This will be shown in the consideration of the psychology and ethics of tipping. THE HOTEL The attitude that hotel employees have been allowed to develop toward the public is a blot upon professional hospitality. Every one of them takes the hotel patron for fair game. And the hotel proprietor, with a few notable exceptions, encourages this despicable attitude. The assumption is that the patron pays at the desk only for the privilege of being in the building. Hence, they will not cheerfully move his baggage to his room unless he pays to get it there. He cannot have a pitcher of ice water without being made to feel that he owes for the service. The maid who cares for his room exacts her toll. The head waiter demands payment for showing him to a seat. The individual waiters at each meal (and they are changed each meal by the head-waiter so that the patron has a new tip to give each time he dines) require fees. If he rings a bell, asks any assistance, goes out the door to a cab, in short, whichever way he turns, an itching palm is outstretched! Just think for a moment of the real significance of this state of affairs. Hotel hospitality? Why, the Barbary pirates would have been ashamed to go it that strong! To ignore this grafting spirit means insulting annoyance. The suave hotel manager listens to your complaint and smiles assurance that his guests shall have proper service, but underneath the smile he has a contempt for the "tight-wad," and instructs the cashier always to give the waiters small change so as to make tipping easy for the patrons. In truth, what does a hotel guest pay for when he registers? Certainly for the service of the bell-boy who carries his suit-case to his room; for the keeping of the room in order; for water, clean towels and other necessities for his comfort; for the privilege of finding a seat in the dining room; for the right to use the doors--all without extra charge. But the hotel manager admits this in theory and outrageously violates it in practice. All tipping done to bell-boys, porters, maids, waiters, door men, hat-boys and other servitors in a hotel is sheer economic waste. When the guest pays his bill at the desk he pays for all the service they perform. The hotel manager protests that the money that passes between his guests and his employees is not his affair. But he proves his insincerity by adjusting his wage scale on the estimate that the guests will pass money to his employees! Professional hospitality as "enjoyed" by Americans is a travesty on democracy. That Europe should have such a system and spirit is historically understandable. Tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy. THE CHAUFFEUR