THE REMEDY
Now what is the method of meeting and mastering this situation?
Precisely the same reasoning employed by the Americans in 1801 against the custom of paying tribute to the Barbary pirates.
First, establish clearly in your mind that tipping is wrong. The slogan is: ONE COMPENSATION FOR ONE SERVICE. With this premise, you can answer, seriatim, every argument which arises in favor of the custom. To the plea of generosity or obligation the reply is, full compensation for all service rendered is included in the bill you pay at the hotel desk, at the ticket window, to the barber-shop cashier, for the taxi-meter reading, and so on. Any extra compensation implied by the person serving is an imposition and has no justification either as charity or obligation.
Second, the promptings of pride must be recognized frankly and mastered by democratic ideals. When a tip is given, not only is an individual wrong done, but a blow is struck at republican government and the ideals upon which it is founded. Patriotism, as well as faithfulness to self-respect requires that all customs which promote class distinctions shall be held in check. In entertaining a democratic attitude toward all Americans you are strengthening the government under which you live. You will not become less of a gentleman or lady if the socially submerged classes rise to a normal plane of self-respect. In declining to place a false valuation upon them you are promoting the true mission of Americanism.
"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Third, the fear of violating a social custom is overcome when you understand its pernicious nature. The general observance of it gives the custom neither rightness nor authority. With full assurance that the custom is wrong and with a measure of the courage Decatur showed before Tripoli, an apparently formidable, but really vulnerable, custom can be destroyed.
VIII
THE LITERATURE OF TIPPING
Writers of books on etiquette uniformly accept tipping as the correct social usage. They state just the amount that it is proper to give on various occasions and thus do their utmost to rivet the custom upon the people.
A few extracts from such books will be given here to show how the custom is strengthened by the arbiters of etiquette. Those masses of Americans who are aspiring to a broader culture naturally turn to these books, and have their Americanism poisoned at the very start. They are educated to believe that tipping is essential to social grace. The feature departments of newspapers in answering queries about tipping usually confirm this impression, though now and then a side-swipe is delivered at the extortionate attitude of the serving persons.
HOTEL FEES
Taking up the hotel first, the following advice is from "Everyday Etiquette":
"A porter carries a bag and he must be tipped; another carries up a trunk, he must be tipped; one rings for ice water and the boy bringing it expects his ten cents; one wants hot water every morning and in notifying the chambermaid of this fact, must slip a bit of silver into her palm. The waiter at one's table must be frequently remembered, and the head waiter will give one better attention if he finds something in his hand after he shows the new arrival to a table, and, of course, on leaving one will give a fee.
"It is usually best for a transient guest to fee the waiter at each meal, since another man will probably be in attendance at the next one. The usual rate is to give 10 per cent. of the sum paid for the lunch or dinner—ten cents being the minimum except at a restaurant of humble pretensions, where five will be gladly accepted by the waitress."
If the waiters and other hotel employees had written the foregoing themselves could they have put it more strongly? Note the advice to tip the waiter at each meal because a new one may be on hand at the next meal! This implies that the failure to tip is a grave offense, and that no risk of giving it must be taken. The patron may rest assured that a new one will be on hand at the next meal, for the head waiter shifts them about for exactly that reason—to make the patron tip again.
However, in this same book, there is a reluctant note, as shown by the following extract:
"We may rebel against the custom and with reason. But as not one of us can alter the state of affairs, it is well to accept it with good grace, or reconcile oneself to indifferent service."
Hotel managers will read this with entire approval. And yet, consider what a contradiction it is for a hotel to advertise its service at such and such rates and then subject its guests to "indifferent service" if they do not cross an itching palm at every angle in the building!