NO-TIP CAMPAIGN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 26, 31 January 1912, Page 11

NO-TIP CAMPAIGN.

* . »» — _ EVILS. Oi* THE SYSTEM. The National No-tip Campaign, launched recently on the Papific coast, is extending like wildfire all over- America, and is greatly helped by the ultimatum to hotels served by the League of Commercial Travellers (reports the New York correspondent of the London Telegraph). I Europe exported the tip system to America, and the soil hert was so congenial that it has developed to unexampled proportions. One pays a mini- i mum of 5d a 6 a tip to the barbe^ and ' usually one-fifth of the total bill to the ' waiter at a restaurant, the tips to hotel ( employees, bootblacks, messengers, and the rest of the numerous fraternity being equally extravagant. , Now the public is arising, in, a mass to protest against what Yankees call "graft," and they •Warmly support' the , travellers in their organised protest. 'Ac- i cording to Judge Petit, in a ':ase decided at Chicagb, the national- Legislature should protect beople from the tip syste.n, just as it protects people from pickpockets. He was deciding a case in which a big sum was demanded by a Chicago firm which owns tne "tipping •privilege" in several big Chicago hotels. The firm secured by contract the "right- toinatroomiand other tipsY and* complained of breach ,of contract. „ In New York the privilege to levy blackmail on guests in the hatroom is esti- ! mated by the leading hotels in .some cases as high as £10,000 a yea*, and thb employees in the hatroom, usually poorly Eaid, are. so vigilantly watched that they aye' no chance of annexing the gratui- j ties for themselves, but must surrender , them to their employers. - ' j In Chicago the Judge decided in fay- ' our ot the hotel, saying that the farmers and' owners of hatroom and other tip privileges are engaged in robbery, and, therefore, in an illegal business. The waiters themselves seem 'disposed to aid 'the campaign, but those interviewed say that their wages of £1 a week must be increased. A waiter here oottld not live on £1 a week, and even his tips, accord- | ing to authorities I have interviewed in New York, are not wholly hi&. A waiter must pay trihute : To the agency securing him the job ; to the head waiter ; to the assistant head waiter. Each group of waiters is supposed to have a single assistant, whose entire salary is. paid out ■of tKe waiters' pockete." . | j The silver waiter must be tipped, or ' hb will not furnish the requisite silver to the table. I it is undisputed and indisputable that < the, hotel proprietors here rather like ' the tip system, and Americans, they say, 1 have brought its levies upon themselves.