country necessarily is only an approximation, but $600,000 is a conservative figure. At this rate the annual tribute is around $220,000,000.

IN NEW YORK ALONE

Taking New York with its 400,000 persons who profit from tipping, the leading classes of beneficiaries are as follows:

The tipping to these and other classes varies both in amount and regularity. Waiters and manicurists in the better-class places receive no pay from their employers and depend 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 further into the employer phase of the practice, the economics of tipping in individual instances will be an interesting study.

V

THE ECONOMICS OF TIPPING

The basic question is, does tipping represent a sound exchange of wealth? Do the American people receive full value, or any value, for the $200,000,000 or more given in tips?

Values, of course, may be sentimental as well as substantial and, so far as tipping is concerned, it can be demonstrated that if any values are received they are sentimental. The satisfaction of giving, the balm to vanity, the indulgence of pride, are the values obtained by the giver of a tip in exchange for his money.

It is a stock argument for tipping that the person serving frequently performs extra services, or displays special painstaking, which deserve extra compensation. Only an examination of individual instances can determine whether this is true. The proportion of the tipping tribute which really pays for extraordinary service is negligible. A brief inquiry into a few of the more prominent instances of tipping follows.

THE WAITER

If food is sold undelivered, then the waiter in bringing it to the patron and assisting him in its consumption does perform an extra service for which payment is due.

But this is not the fact, any more than that a shoe clerk should be tipped for assisting a customer in the selection of his employer's footwear. In both instances, the cost of the service is included in the price of the article—food or shoes.

The prices on the bill of fare have been figured to include all costs of serving it, such as cook-hire, waiter-hire, rent, music, table ware, raw materials and overhead charges. If a sirloin steak costs seventy-five cents a definite part of that amount represents the wages of the waiter serving it.

Thus the waiter has no claim upon the patron for compensation, because the patron, in paying for the food, provides the proprietor with funds from which the waiter's wages will be paid. If the patron, in addition, gives the waiter a tip it is clearly a gift for which no value has been returned. The waiter is paid twice for one service.

ECONOMIC WASTE

The question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic transaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound which does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five dollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer and the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return—nothing of like substantiality.

The patron may justify the gift from sentimental considerations, of pride, generosity or fear of violating a social convention, but no sophistry of reasoning can prove that a substantial value has been received.

Of course, a waiter may give a patron more than the proprietor agrees to give in the bill of fare, and this undoubtedly is an extra service—but it is also a dishonest service. Every extra service to one patron means a deficiency of service to other patrons. It is a common experience that liberal tipping obtains special attentions which non-tipping patrons miss, but, being dishonest, such a condition is outside the scope of this inquiry. When a patron pays for food he is entitled to adequate and equal service, and no largess by other patrons should interfere with this basic right.

On its economic side, then, tipping is wrong. Wealth is exchanged without both parties to the transaction receiving fair values. The psychology and ethics of the transaction will be considered in other chapters.

THE BARBER

No tipping is so inexcusable as that which is done to a barber. The trade is highly organized and the workers are well-paid