STENOGRAPHERS
Public typists often expect gratuities. The regular charges are for "the house." They want something for themselves on the side. Sometimes the tips are so large that the employer gets greedy and requires them to be turned in, as proved by the following extract from a want ad in the New York Times:
"Remuneration half of all you make with weekly guarantee of $20; proceeds net more than guarantee. No smoking; tips must be turned in."
It seems self-evident that anything given to stenographers beyond the regular charges for the work is pure waste. They cannot possibly give any service in return, and cannot retain the proper self-respect in accepting something for nothing. Many of them, however, take the tips simply to avoid offending patrons.
The list of tip-takers is too extensive for individual consideration. Bath attendants, bartenders, house servants, clerks—and so on through a lamentably long list, have the same moral disease. The contagion is spreading in an alarming way. Of course, the whole system is riding for a fall.
The spurious and specious arguments of employees in behalf of the custom and the timorous acquiescence of the public will alike yield before a robust and elemental Americanism.
XI
THE EMPLOYER VIEWPOINT
"We face a condition, not a theory," assert those employers who defend their adaptation of wages to the tipping custom. "The public seems determined to bestow gratuities, and if we paid full wages in addition, our employees would be the highest paid workers in the world."
But two wrongs do not make a right.