From an economic viewpoint, all businesses are on an abnormal basis which figure minimum wages, or no wages, to their employees on the assumption that the public will, through gratuities, pay for this item of service.
"One service--one compensation" is the only right relation of seller and buyer, of patron and proprietor.
The moral wrong of tipping is in the grafting spirit it engenders in those who profit by it; in the rigid class distinctions it creates in a republic; in the loss of that fineness of self-respect without which men and women are only so much clay--worthless dregs in the crucible of democracy.
In a monarchy it may be sufficient for self-respect to be limited to the governing classes; but the theory of Americanism requires that every citizen shall possess this quality. We grant the suffrage simply upon manhood--upon the assumption that all men are equal in that fundamental respect.
Hence, whatever undermines self-respect, manhood, undermines the republic. Whatever cultivates aristocratic ideals and conventions in a republic strikes at the heart of democracy. Where all men are equal, some cannot become superior unless the others grovel in the dust. Tipping comes into a democracy to produce that relation.
Tipping is the price of pride. It is what one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority. It represents the root of aristocracy budding anew in the hearts of those who publicly renounced the system and all its works.
The same Americans who profit by this undemocratic practice exert as much influence, proportionably, in the government of the republic, as those who give tips, or those whose sense of rectitude will not allow them to give or accept gratuities. Is a man who will take a tip as good a citizen, is his self-respect as fine, as the one who will not accept a tip, or who will not give a tip? Is the one as well qualified to vote as the other?
Can a waiter be a gentleman? Can a maid be a lady?
Would a gentleman or a lady accept a gratuity?
What would happen if a tip should be offered to the average "gentleman" who patronizes restaurants, and taxicabs and barber shops? He would have a brainstorm of self-righteous wrath!