TIPS BY ONE OF TILE NEW POOR.
OF all the difficulties and discomforts_ of the new poor the most irritating, if not the most serious, is the question of tips. Take the case of, say, a younger son of some small country squire, who has done moderately well in the Civil Service and has an income that would have been sufficient twenty years ago for the amenities of life. As long as his father lived he was free to spend his holidays at home. He shot and fished and found a horse in the stable to ride. He shot with neighbours, and thought nothing of the cost of cartridges. The keepers he tipped were old friends ; the money for the journey was nothing ; he had always given the station master at the little station a pound at. Christmas ; and many others in the village expected and received their presents. .
. Now the old man is dead, and the eldest son is just carrying on in the old place. Our friend the Civil Servant cannot go home now.when he likes. He is asked by his brother, and he wants .to go and take his boys, because it is the old place, and they ought to know it and love it as he does. Yet he dare not face it, because he cannot bear to seem mean and ungenerous to his old friends. His income has risen scarcely at all—some fifteen or sixteen per cent. bonus is all his increase—and his expenses have more_ than doubled. He knows it is all foolishness : that the station master and the porters have more than twice the wages they used to get ; that the keeper enjoys the same salary as he, had himself when he joined the Civil Service ; that they do not require his sovereigns and his half-crowns. Still, he has not the courage to refrain from giving taximen more than their fare, or from pressing on the railway staff the shillings and sixpences which they graciously, or ungraciously, accept in addition to their wages. It is easy to sympathize with a man who hates the idea of not being kind to his old friends : it is less easy to justify the habitual overpayment of taximen.. Yet which of us does not invariably give more than the fare ? And does anyone not tip a porter, however poor he or she may be ?
It may be a more or less reprehensible form of snobbery. One likes to be called " Sir " ; one likes to see a man touch his hat and hear his " thank you." Perhaps it is a desperate attempt to retain one's own self-respect. " I may be overdrawn at the bank, and unable to pay for my children's boots. I may be sinking in the social scale, but at any rate I can make this man, who is really so 'much better off than I am, call me ' Sir.' I will not admit the bouleversement of social values, or that all men are free and equal. Therefore I will give this one sixpence, and that one a shilling—and go without wine at my dinner."
One would have thought that the receivers of tips would, with the emancipation of the proletariat, refuse to receive them. Yet the postman, at 90s. a week, still calls for his " Christmas Box " as if he were still getting 40s. The policeman, who starts with 70s. at the age of 18 or 20 (while his elder brother, the agri- cultural labourer, is trying to rear a faMily on 80s. a week) expects half a crown when he rings the bell and tells me that there is a window open. The young porter, at 57s., asked to handle a mass of luggage from cab to platform—some fifty yards—is indignant if he is given less than a shilling. Even in the United States where, as we are frequently told, every one is equal—black and white, Jew and Gentile—it is said that, though wages are enormous, every little service which those wages should cover has to be paid for in addition. ' If, then, the new' poor have nothing to hope for M this matter from Democracy, which • has taken from Aristocracy every privilege except the privilege of paying, what 'should they do? Logically, of course, they can say " we are taxed and rated up to a fifth and fourth of our income to Maintain _ what used to be called ' the lower classes '—the people to whom we personally gave soup and jellies and pluni puddings and flannel pettidoats, their education as children, and their pensions as old servants and retainers; their presents at ChriStmaS, and their wages all the year round even when they were too old to work. Now we are taxed and rated, and our money is used by the State or the local authorities to do' the same things—bUt on a much larger scale. • We cannot afford . -voluntary benevolence as *ell. We- haVe Our duty to our children and our own old folk. We will give no more alms and we will tip no more." But shall -we say it ? Is it want of moral courage which makes us give tips which we cannot afford, or an uneasy instinct that if we refuse to act as " gentlemen " those who have taken so muck from us will take all ? Or is it the unconscious feeling that these' small acts of kindness, even if we cannot really afford them, 'grease the wheels of life and' bring' us nearer to our fellow- 'creattires, iii a way that no • State or rate benevolence can do? Do we feel that if we give 'nothing Our souls will dry up, and that for our own sake, and againSt our own material interests, the saying of the greatest of all psychologists is profoundly true, " It is more blessed to give . . . " ?
At any rate I gave 6d. to the porter this morning, and he said " Thank you, Sir."
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