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the public should be withdrawn suddenly, employers would face the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 furthe