BETTER ORGANIZATION NEEDED
The last proposition constitutes "the way out" of the present undesirable situation. When it is remembered that the anti-tipping propaganda heretofore has lacked organization and direction it is not surprising that the laws adopted against the custom and the spasmodic public irritation over it have fizzled out. With the same organization behind this movement that has been given to the anti-saloon movement, or the suffrage movement, tipping would be vanquished in an astonishingly short time.
There is no doubt there is sufficient latent opposition to tipping to form the basis of an anti-tipping organization. It may be called "The American Anti-Tipping Association," or by any other name, and it should embrace in its membership not only those who are opposed to giving tips, but those servants and workers who are opposed to receiving tips, and also all other persons of any race or creed whose conception of true Americanism does not include approval of this custom.
NOT A WAR AGAINST PERSONS
The object of such an organization should not be to wage war on persons, but on a custom. There is no need for hostility against waiters, barbers, porters and the like as a class. Many of these heartily oppose the custom and will join in a movement to eradicate it. Hence, the campaign should be to readjust the basis of compensation of those who serve the public so that self-respect may be preserved all around. Nothing less than a fair wage as a substitute for the present tipping system of compensation would be considered.
Having made the foregoing point clear at the outset, much resentment among servitors would be eliminated. No one has a desire to deprive a waiter of an adequate compensation, but no one has a desire to give him an excessive compensation through gratuities, or a compensation which depresses his self-respect in the manner of receiving and humiliates the patron in the manner of giving.
Employers would need to be informed, too, that the campaign against tipping is not to throw an unjust burden of operating expense upon them. It will indeed deprive them of any revenues which they should not, economically or ethically, receive from the public through gratuities to employees. The substitution of a wage scale will be attended by economic changes which at first may cause some unsettled conditions, but this is inevitable when an unsound practice has been allowed to grow unrestrained in the business world.
PUBLIC OPINION
One of the first aims of such an organization would be to bring public opinion to bear upon city, state and national governments to inspire them to clean house in regard to tipping. No government employee should be permitted to accept any compensation other than his salary or wages from the government. Mail carriers, policemen, garbage collectors, guides and other government employees are paid adequately and gratuities to them from the public are indefensible, in any country, and supremely so in the American democracy.
The public, of course, will need to revise its attitude toward these and all persons who serve them. The feeling that a traffic policeman whom you pass in your automobile every day should be remembered with a gift of money or anything else substantial at Christmas, or upon any other occasion is false sentiment. He is due nothing except courtesy all the time from the public, which, through taxes, already has provided his compensation. The feeling that a mail carrier whom you see daily, or a garbage collector, must be similarly remembered is equally false sentiment. The ideal is a relation in which patron and employee, public and government employee, entertain mutual opinions of self-respect, and regardless of how distasteful this may be to class sense, or aristocratic impulses, it is the American standard and the right standard.