Miss Brown. If it wasn't for the tips she couldn't live
on her salary," said one sympathetic man. He objected to tipping as a
rule, but here was a clear case where it was worthy! No use arguing
ethics with him.

MESSENGERS

The custom of pay to telegraph messenger boys by the recipients of
messages is peculiarly reprehensible because it is fixing a standard of
graft in his mind that will work out into worse practices in maturity. A
boy given a tip has had his self-respect punctured in a dangerous way.
He may grow up and out of such a conception of compensation, but it will
be a struggle, and much of our police and other public graft had its
origin in the cultivation of the belief that "tips" are proper. A
messenger boy has absolutely no claim upon a patron for extra
compensation. The price of a telegram includes the cost of delivery.

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