Part 11 (1/2)
The Wisconsin bill, which the Governor vetoed on the ground that it curtailed ”personal liberty” was intended to penalize the giving of the tip, and was worded as follows:
Sec. 45751. Every employee of any hotel, restaurant or public place and every employee of any person, firm or of any public service corporation engaged in the transportation of pa.s.sengers or the furnis.h.i.+ng of food, lodging and other accommodations to the public in this state who shall receive or solicit any gratuity or tip from any guest or patron shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Every person who shall give or offer any gratuity or tip to any person or employee prohibited from receiving or soliciting the same by the provisions of this section shall also be guilty of a misdemeanor.
”Every hotel, restaurant, firm and public service corporation engaged in the transportation of pa.s.sengers or in furnis.h.i.+ng food or lodging or other accommodations to the public shall keep a copy of this law posted in a conspicuous place in such hotel and restaurant and in the dining or sleeping cars of any firm or public service corporation mentioned in this section. Any persons violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than five dollars, nor more than twenty-five dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed thirty days.”
The demand for this bill was so strong among the members of the Legislature that it almost was pa.s.sed over the Governor's veto. The provision that a copy of the law must be posted in the places where the public comes into contact with the itching palm is a most essential one.
It rea.s.sures patrons to see it and gives them a present stimulus for standing upon their right to good service for one payment.
THE COURTS AND TIPPING
The courts, in declaring such laws unconst.i.tutional have proceeded upon the common law right of one citizen to give away his goods or property in the form of money to any other citizen. A tip, the judges say, represents a gift within the meaning of this common law right. But the instances of such altruism are exceedingly rare.
Even the judges who so decide know that the tips they give are not bona fide gifts out of the goodness of a generous heart. Tips are given, by the devotees of the custom, from a sense of obligation. They pretend to feel that the servitor actually has rendered a service for which the tip is payment. The proof of this is found in the fact that such persons never go about giving money gifts indiscriminately. Their gifts are exclusively to the employees of public service enterprises, showing that no thought of charity or generosity enters their minds.
The courts some day will come to the conclusion that a gift of money to any serving person is a special relation that is subject to the police power of the State. The special circ.u.mstances surrounding the gift will be taken into consideration. Then it will be seen that the gift was made for something the patron did not receive; for something for which he is required to pay twice and that the motives of the gift were pride, or fear or a sense of obligation falsely aroused.
While the courts are so scrupulous in preserving the common law right to make gifts, they might give consideration to the equally indubitable right of a patron to receive full value for his money, and to receive such value for one payment.
It may be, that to write an anti-tipping law that will stand the test of judges educated in the old school of thought about gratuities, legislators will have to approach the subject from this viewpoint of preserving a patron's common law right to satisfactory service for one payment. For instance, a law specifically defining the right of a patron to have food served, or to use a hotel room or sleeping car facilities, in short to patronize any public service place, with only one charge, and that to be paid exclusively to the proprietor, might strike an effective blow at ”the universal heart of Flunkyism.”
The courts will a.s.sert that the foregoing right exists without a special statute, and it does. Still the average citizen does not think of inst.i.tuting a suit against a hotel, or swearing out a warrant against the manager or an employee to enforce his common law right to service at one price. If there is a specific statute against tipping there is a more tangible inducement to stand up for one's rights and there is more likelihood that redress will be granted. The defense of tipping on the ”personal liberty” plea, like the defense of the liquor business on the same plea, will grow feebler and feebler until judges cease to take the aristocratic viewpoint.
THE SOUTH CAROLINA LAW
The South Carolina law goes a step ahead of either the Iowa law or the Wisconsin bill in the provision that the employer shall not permit the custom of tipping, in addition to provisions prohibiting the giving or receiving of tips by patrons or employees. The law follows:
”It shall be unlawful in this State for any hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car company, railroad companies, sleeping car company or barber shop to knowingly allow any person in its employ to receive any gratuity commonly known as a tip, from any patron or pa.s.senger, and it shall be unlawful for any patron of any hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car or for any pa.s.senger on any railroad train or sleeping car to give any employee any such gratuity and it shall be unlawful for any employee of any hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop to receive any such gratuity.
”By 'gratuity' or 'tip' as used in this Act, is to mean any extra compensation of any kind, which any hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop manager, officer or any agent thereof in charge of the same, allows to be given to any employee and is not a part of the regular charge of the hotel, restaurant, cafe, dining car, railroad company, sleeping car company or barber shop, for any part of service rendered, or a part of the service which by contract it is under duty to render. No company or incorporation shall evade this Act by adding to the regular charge, directly or indirectly, anything intended for or to be used or to be given away as a gratuity or tip to the employee. All charges must be made by the company or proprietor in good faith as a charge for the service it renders, inclusive of the service which it furnishes through employees.
”Each hotel shall post a copy of this Act in each room and each restaurant, cafe and barber shop shall post at least two copies of this Act in two conspicuous places in their places of business, and each railroad company shall post two copies of this Act in their waiting rooms and pa.s.senger rooms at pa.s.senger stations in cities of three thousand inhabitants or more, and each sleeping car and dining car shall have posted therein at least one copy of this Act.
”Any person or corporation failing to post as required shall be fined not less than ten dollars for such failure and each day of failure shall const.i.tute a separate and distinct offense and any person violating any of the other provisions of this Act shall be subject to a fine of not less than ten dollars or more than one hundred dollars, or be imprisoned for not exceeding thirty days.”
This South Carolina law was an evident effort to cover the custom of tipping in a manner that would permit of no evasions. It defines a ”tip”
and prohibits surrept.i.tious gratuities and makes employer, employee and patron equally liable to prosecution. Yet, it falls short of an ideal law because its operations are limited to seven places frequented by the public and does not cover private places where the itching palm flourishes, such as apartment houses and boarding houses.
To stop tipping in hotels, restaurants, cafes, dining cars, railroad stations and cars, sleeping cars or barber shops will be a long stride in the right direction, but the need of stopping tipping to messenger boys, janitors and other employees of apartment houses, maids and waitresses in boarding houses, garbage collectors, mail carriers and policemen among government employees, trunk transfermen, guides, steams.h.i.+p employees and others too numerous to cite, is fully as urgent.
THE IDEAL LAW
The ideal act will be evolved through these repeated approximations and through experience. In a broad outline it must include (1) a clear definition of a tip, (2) a statement of a patron's right to service for one payment exclusively to the proprietor, (3) a prohibition against subterfuges in the charges whereby patrons may give tips, (4) the wages paid by an employer to be considered as presumptive evidence of his att.i.tude toward tipping, (5) a requirement that employers shall give patrons a definite understanding of the service to which they are ent.i.tled, (6) any actual extra service to be compensated for direct to employer after being appraised and charged for by the employer, (7) the giving of money or gifts to employees to be taken out of the cla.s.s of ”charity” and ”personal liberty,” (8) the employer, the employee and the patron to be subject to the same penalty for violating the law and the conviction of any one of the three to be followed automatically by the conviction of the other two for the same offense, (9) the law to be applicable to any employer and any employee in any relation with the public or with individuals, in private home or public place, (10) a prohibition against operating any convenience for the public in which the rate of payment shall be left to the whim of the patron, such as cloak rooms, the tariffs to be displayed and exacted impartially of every patron if the employer a.s.sumes that patrons must pay extra for the service, (11) an adequate provision for acquainting patrons with the law through posting it or otherwise directing their attention to it, (12) the granting of licenses to operate public service places only upon condition that gratuities are not to be permitted, directly or indirectly, (13) the granting to a patron who has been denied fair service of redress in addition to the punishment of the guilty employee and employer, (14) an adequate scale of penalties, fine or imprisonment for any violation of any part of the law.
It is not presumed that if a law were drawn to embody the foregoing provisions that the tipping custom would be strangled. Only actual tests in the courts will produce the ultimate intent. Of course, if employers and employees and patrons were actuated by a desire to maintain their relations upon a basis of self-respect so circ.u.mstantial a law would be unnecessary, but many of them are not thus actuated and a minute restraint will be imperative at the outset and until a normal ideal of democracy is cultivated.
THE NEBRASKA ACT