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Page 8
There is a persistent question regarding the distribution of property
which is of peculiar interest in the season of automobile tours and summer
hotels. Most thinking people acknowledge a good deal of perplexity over
this question, while on most parallel ones they are generally
cock-sure--on whichever is the side of their personal interests. But in
this question the bias of personal interest is not very large, and
therefore it may be considered with more chance of agreement than can the
larger questions of the same class which parade under various disguises.
The little question is that of tipping. After we have squeezed out of it
such antitoxic serum as we can, we will briefly indicate the application
of it to larger questions.
Tipping is plainly a survival of the feudal relation, long before the
humbler men had risen from the condition of status to that of contract,
when fixed pay in the ordinary sense was unknown, and where the relation
between servant and master was one of ostensible voluntary service and
voluntary support, was for life, and in its best aspect was a relation of
mutual dependence and kindness. Then the spasmodic payment was, as tips
are now, essential to the upper man's dignity, and very especially to the
dignity of his visitor. This feudal relation survives in England today to
such an extent that poor men refrain from visiting their rich relations
because of the tips. In the great country-houses the tips are expected to
be in gold, at least so I was told some years ago. And in England and out
of it, Don Cesar's bestowal of his last shilling on the man who had served
him, still thrills the audience, at least the tipped portion of it.
Europe being on the whole less removed from feudal institutions than we
are, tipping is not only more firmly established there, but more
systematized. It is more nearly the rule that servants' places in hotels
are paid for, and they are apt to be dependent entirely upon tips. The
greater wealth of America, on the other hand, and the extravagance of the
_nouveaux riches_, has led in some institutions to more extravagant
tipping than is dreamed of in Europe, and consequently has scattered
through the community a number of servants from Europe who, when here,
receive with gratitude from a foreigner, a tip which they would scorn from
an American.
In the midst of general relations of contract--of agreed pay for agreed
service, tipping is an anomaly and a constant puzzle.
It would seem strange, if it were not true of the greater questions of the
same kind, that in the chronic discussion of this one, so little
attention, if any, has been paid to what may be the fundamental line of
division between the two sides--namely, the distinction between ideal
ethics and practical ethics.
An illustration or two will help explain that distinction:
First illustration: "Thou shalt not kill" which is ideal ethics in an
ideal world of peace. Practical ethics in the real world are illustrated
in Washington and Lee, who for having killed their thousands, are placed
beside the saints!
Second illustration: Obey the laws and tell the truth. This is ideal
ethics, which our very legislatures do much to prevent being practical.
For instance; they ignore the fact that in the present state of morality,
taxes on personal property can be collected from virtually nobody but
widows and orphans who have no one to evade the taxes for them. So the
legislatures continue the attempt to tax personal property, and a judge on
the bench says that a man who lies about his personal taxes shall not on
that account be held an unreliable witness in other matters.
Or to take an illustration less radical: it is not in legal testimony
alone that ideal ethics require everybody to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth--that the world should have as much truth
as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and
perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be
realized. For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when
he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making
needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world--made up of perfect people,
there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there
were, the whole truth could be told without causing pain or enmity. Or
again, in a world where there are dishonest people, a man telling
everything about his schemes, would have them run away with by others,
though in an ideal world, where there were no dishonest people, he could
speak freely. In fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does
not even depend on the existence of dishonesty: for in a world where
people have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out
for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the execution of
competing plans on the part of perfectly honest people.
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