A NO-TIP CAMPAIGN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 33, 3 February 1912, Page 4

A NO-TIP CAMPAIGN.

The National No-tip Campaign, launchod recently on tlio Pacific coast, is extending like wildfire all over America, and is greatly helped by tlio ultimatum to hotels served by the League of Commercial Travellers, as reported in the “Daily Telegraph.” I'iiirope exported the tip system to America, and the soil here was so congenial that it has developed to unexampled proportions. One pays a minimum 5d as a tip to the barber, and usually one-fifth of tiie 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 ankcos call “graft,” and they warmly support the travellers in their organised protest. According to Judge Petit, in a case decided at Chicago, the national Legislature should protect people from the tip system, just as it protects people from pickpockets. Ho was deciding a case in which a big sum was demanded by a Chicago firm which owns the “tipping privilege” in several big Chicago hotels.

'l'liis firm secured by* contract the “right” to hat room and other tips, and complained of breach ol contract. In Now York the privilege to levy blackmail on guests in the hatroom is estimated by the leading hotels in some cases as high as £IO,OOO a year, and the employees in the hatroom, usually poorly paid, arc so vigilantly watched that they have no chance ol annexing the gratuities lor themselves, but must surrender them to their employers. In Chicago the judge decided in favour of the hotel, saying that the farmers and owners ol hatroom and other tip privileges are engaged in robbery, and, therefore, in an illegal business.