THE TIPPING CUSTOM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5164, 12 August 1927, Page 3

THE TIPPING CUSTOM.

A CURSE TO SOCIETY. DEFIANCE BY LORD BURNHAM. Lodr Burnham’s defiance of one of the deepest-rooted customs of Britain, in requesting the guests at a banquet not to tip the waiters, must have shaken the British Isles to their foundation. Those who have not been to Europe or the United States (says the Sydney Sun) have no conception of the extent of the demands which service makes on the public. The tip is part of national life—a troublesome and expensive part. The first tip wag probably a walrus tooth given by a timid Ice Age man to a waiter because he wanted the waiter to think well of him. All the neighbours, not to be outdone, showered walrus teeth on waiters, and the habit has persisted and developed until this day. There is a great deal cast upon Adam, whose fault “brought work into the world with loss of Eden’’ (slightly to vary John Milton’s account), but the anathemas which he deserved are as nothing compared with the righteous curses which should fall upon the scoundrel who gave the first tip at that whale banquet on the ice-floe. In England Everybody is tipped. You tip not only the waiter, but the policeman, and the butler, and the gardener, and the secretary, and you will probably make no mistake if you tip the members of Parliament, and the Chancellor of the House of Lords., and the major-General who lends you a match to light your pipe. In hotels—English as well .as Continental —the regular tipping scale is .10 per cent, on your bill. Of course, there is some excuse for the tip in the Old World and in America, because in many establishments waiters and others are not paid —in fa.ct, they pay for the privilege of working, relying on the tips for a livelihood. That, happily, is not the case in Australia. Here the wages are good, and there is no need to tip anybody. Where a union wage is fixed it is with diffidence that one offers a tip—though obviously not all workers regard tips in that light.