The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 by Various

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And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property rights
extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not as
yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have learned how
to acquire property for public use without either plundering the private
owner or excessively enriching him. The British application of the Small
Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the large landholder,
without making of him a vociferous champion of the Acts.

Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
let the public be moral at its own expense.

A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been permitted,
through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,
forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to
the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country was
parcelled out, in a lawless age, among the unworthy retainers of a
predatory prince, must we forever pay rent on every loaf we eat--as we
should do, in fact, even if we transformed great landed estates into
privately held funds? Did we not abolish human slavery, without
compensation, and is there any one to question the justice of the act?

We did indeed extinguish slavery without compensation to the slave owners.
But if no one had ever conceived of such a policy we should have been a
richer nation and a happier one. We paid for the slaves, in blood and
treasure, many times the sum that would have made every slave owner eager
to part with his slaves. Such enrichment of the slave owner would have
been an act of social injustice, it may be said. The saying would be open
to grave doubt, but the doctrine here advanced runs, not in terms of
justice, but in terms of social expediency.

And expediency is commonly regarded as a cheap substitute for justice. It
is wrongly so regarded. Social justice, as usually conceived, looks to the
past for its validity. Its preoccupation is the correction of ancient
wrongs. Social expediency looks to the future: its chief concern is the
prevention of future wrongs. As a guide to political action, the
superiority of the claims of social expediency is indisputable.

VII

In the foregoing argument it has been deliberately assumed that the
interests to be extinguished are, for the most part, universally
recognized as anti-social. Slavery, health-destroying adulteration, the
maintenance of tenements that menace life and morals, these at least
represent interests so abominable that all must agree upon the wisdom of
extinguishing them. The only point in dispute must be one of method. It is
the contention of the present writer that when even such interests have
had time to become clothed with an appearance of regularity, the method of
extinction should be through compensation. By its tolerance of such
interests, the public has made itself an accomplice in the mischief to
which they give rise, and accordingly has not even an equitable right to
throw the whole responsibility upon the private persons concerned.

Interests thus universally recognized to be evil are necessarily few. In
the vast majority of cases the establishment of interests we now seek to
proscribe took place in an epoch in which no evil was imputed to them. At
first a small minority, usually regarded as fanatics, attack the interests
in question. This minority increases, and in the end transforms itself
into a majority. But long after majority opinion has become adverse, there
remains a vigorous minority opinion defending the menaced interests. A
hundred years ago the distilling of spirituous liquors was almost
universally regarded as an entirely legitimate industry. The enemies of
the industry were few and of no political consequence. Today in many
communities the industry is utterly condemned by majority opinion. There
is, however, no community in which a minority honestly defending the
industry is absolutely wanting. Admitting that the majority opinion is
right, it remains none the less true that adherents of the minority
opinion would regard themselves as most grievously wronged if the majority
proceeded to a destruction of their interests.

Where moral issues alone are involved, we may perhaps accept the view that
the well considered opinion of the majority is as near as may be to
infallibility. But it is very rarely the case that the question of the
legitimacy of a property interest can be reduced to a purely moral issue.
Usually there are also at stake, technical and broad economic issues in
which majority judgment is notoriously fallible. Thus we have at times had
large minorities who believed that the bank as an institution is wholly
evil, and ought to be abolished. This was the majority opinion in one
period of the history of Texas, and in accordance with it, established
banking interests were destroyed by law. It is only within the last
fifteen years that the majority of the citizens of that commonwealth have
admitted the error of the earlier view.

In the course of the last twenty-five years, notable progress has been
made in the art of preserving perishable foods through refrigeration.
There are differences of opinion as to the effect upon the public health
of food so preserved; and further differences as to the effect of the cold
storage system upon the cost of living. On neither the physiological nor
the economic questions involved is majority opinion worthy of special
consideration. None the less, legislative measures directed against the
storage interests have been seriously considered in a large number of
states, and were it not for the difficulties inherent in the regulation of
interstate commerce, we should doubtless see the practice of cold storage
prohibited in some jurisdictions. Those whose property would thus be
destroyed would accept their losses with much bitterness, in view of the
fact that the weight of expert opinion holds their industry to be in the
public interest.

What still further exacerbates the feeling of injury on the part of those
whose interests are proscribed, is the fact that the purity of motives of
the persons most active in the campaign of proscription is not always
clear. Not many years ago we had a thriving manufacture of artificial
butter. The persons engaged in the industry claimed that their product was
as wholesome as that produced according to the time-honored process, and
that its cheapness promised an important advance in the adequate
provisioning of the people. We destroyed the industry, very largely
because of our strong bent toward conservatism in all matters pertaining
to the table. But among the influences that were most active in taxing
artificial butter out of existence, was the competing dairymen's interest.

It is asserted by those who would shift the whole burden of taxation onto
land that they are animated by the most unselfish motives, whereas their
opponents are defending their selfish interests alone. Yet a common Single
Tax appeal to the large manufacturer and the small house-owner takes the
form of a computation demonstrating that those classes would gain more
through the reduction in the burden on improvements than they would lose
through increase in burden on the land. Let it be granted that personal
advantage is not incompatible with purity of motives. The association of
ideas does not, however, inspire confidence, especially in the breasts of
those whose interests are threatened.

Extinction of property interests without compensation necessarily makes
our legislative bodies the battleground of conflicting interests. Honest
motives are combined with crooked ones in the attack upon an interest;
crooked and honest motives combine in its defense. Out of the disorder
issues a legislative determination that may be in the public interest or
may be prejudicial to it. And most likely the law is inadequately
supported by machinery of enforcement: it is effective in controlling the
scrupulous; to the unscrupulous it is mere paper. In many instances its
net effect is only to increase the risks connected with the conduct of a
business.

When England prohibited importation of manufactures from France, the
import trade continued none the less, under the form of smuggling. The
risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire and flood. Just as
one could insure against the latter risks, so the practice arose of
insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports
were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of goods
for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a century and a
half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent administration are
equally comic. At the time, however, there was nothing comic in the
contempt for law and order thus engendered, in the feeling of outrage on
the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the alliance of respectable
merchants with the thieves and footpads enlisted for the smuggling trade.

VIII

It is a common observation of present day social reformers that an
excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for security of
property, while security of non-property rights is neglected. And this
would indeed be a serious indictment of the existing order if there were
in fact a natural antithesis between the security of property and security
of the person. There is, however, no such antithesis. In the course of
history the establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded
the establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions in
which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is essential
to any form of security. Property can pay for policing; the person can
not. This is a crude and materialistic interpretation of the facts, but it
is essentially sound.

How much personal security existed in England, five centuries and a half
ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way through human flesh
to the throne? The lowly, certainly, enjoyed no greater security than the
high born. How much personal security exists in the late Macedonian
provinces of the Turkish Empire, or in northern Mexico? It is safe to
issue a challenge to all the world to produce an instance, contemporary or
historical, of a country in which property is insecure and in which human
life and human happiness are not still more insecure. On the other hand,
it is difficult to produce an instance of a state in which security of
property has long been established, in which there is not a progressive
sensitiveness about the non-propertied rights of man. It is in the
countries where the sacredness of private property is a fetich, that one
finds recognition of a universal right to education, of a right to
protection against violence and against epidemic disease, of a right to
relief in destitution. These are perhaps meagre rights; but they represent
an expanding category. The right to support in time of illness and in old
age is making rapid progress. The development of such rights is not only
not incompatible with security of property, but it is, in large measure, a
corollary of property security. Personal rights shape themselves upon the
analogy of property rights; they utilize the same channels of thought and
habit. One of the most powerful arguments for "social insurance" is its
very name. Insurance is recognized as an essential to the security of
property; it is therefore easy to make out a case for the application of
the principle to non-propertied claims.

Some may claim that the security of property has now fulfilled its
mission; that we can safely allow the principle to decay in order to
concentrate our attention upon the task of establishing non-propertied
rights. But let us remember that we are not removed from barbarism by the
length of a universe. The crust of orderly civilization is deep under our
feet: but not six hundred years deep. The primitive fires still smoke on
our Mexican borders and in the Balkans. And blow holes open from time to
time through our own seemingly solid crust--in Colorado, in West Virginia,
in the Copper Country. It is evidently premature to affirm that the
security of property has fulfilled its mission.

IX

The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property against the
rights of man--or more honestly--the rights of labor. The claims of labor
upon the social income may advance at the expense of the claims of
property. In the institutional struggle between the propertied and the
propertyless, the sympathies of the writer are with the latter party. It
is his hope and belief that an ever increasing share of the social income
will assume the form of rewards for personal effort.

But this is an altogether different matter from the crushing of one
private property interest after another, in the name of the social welfare
or the social morality. Such detailed attacks upon property interests are,
in the end, to the injury of both social classes. Frequently they amount
to little more than a large loss to one property interest, and a small
gain to another. They increase the element of insecurity in all forms of
property; for who shall say which form is immune from attack? Now it is
the slum tenement, obvious corollary of our social inequalities; next it
may be the marble mansion or gilded hotel, equally obvious corollaries of
the same institutional situation. Now it is the storage of meat that is
under attack; it may next be the storage of flour. The fact is, our mass
of income yielding possessions is essentially an organic whole. The
irreproachable incomes are not exactly what they would be if those subject
to reproach did not exist. If some property incomes are dirty, all
property incomes become turbid.

The cleansing of property incomes, therefore, is a first obligation of the
institution of property as a whole. The compensation principle throws the
cost of the cleansing upon the whole mass, since, in the last analysis,
any considerable burden of taxation will distribute itself over the mass.
The principle is therefore consonant with justice. What is not less
important, the principle, systematically developed, would go far toward
freeing the legislature from the graceless function of arbitrating between
selfish interests, and the administration from the necessity of putting
down powerful interests outlawed by legislative act. It would give us a
State working smoothly, and therefore an efficient instrument for social
ends. Most important of all, it would promote that security of economic
interests which is essential to social progress.

A STUBBORN RELIC OF FEUDALISM

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.

Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic in hand.

In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do about it
has lately been pretty distinctly settled: the religion of pauperization
is pretty generally set aside: almsgiving, the authorities on ethics now
generally hold, should be restricted to deserving cases--to people
incapacitated by constitution or circumstance from taking proper care of
themselves.

Now is tipping almsgiving, and are servants among the deserving classes?

How many people have asked themselves these simple questions, and how many
who are educated up to habitually refusing alms unless the last of the
questions is affirmatively answered, just as habitually tip servants?

Is tipping almsgiving? Not in the same sense that alms are given without
any show of anything in return: the servant does something for the tipper.
Yes, but he is paid for it by his employer. True, but only sometimes: at
other times he is only partly paid, depending for the rest on tips; and
sometimes the tips are so valuable that the servant pays his alleged
employer for the opportunity to get them. Yet I know one hotel in Germany,
and probably there are others, there and elsewhere, where the menus and
other stationery bear requests against tipping. But in that one hotel I
know tipping to be as rife as in hotels generally: the customers are not
educated up to the landlord's standard. And here we come to the
fundamental remedy for all questionable practices--the education of the
people beyond them. But this is simply the ideal condition in which ideal
ethics could prevail. Meanwhile we must determine the practical ethics of
the actual world.

The servant's position is different from that of most other wage-earners,
in that he is in direct contact with the person who is to benefit from his
work. The man who butchers your meat or grinds your flour, you probably
never see; but the man who brushes your clothes or waits on your table,
holds to you a personal relation, and he can do his work so as merely to
meet a necessity, or so as to rise beyond mere necessity into comfort or
luxury. Outside of home servants, the necessity is all that, in the
present state of human nature, his regular stipend is apt to provide; the
comfort or the luxury, the feeling of personal interest, the atmosphere of
promptness and cheerfulness and ease, is apt to respond only to the tip.
Only in the ideal world will it be spontaneous. In the real world it must
be paid for.

And why should it not be--why is it not as legitimate to pay for having
your wine well cooled or carefully tempered and decanted, as to pay for
the wine itself? The objection apt to be first urged is that it degrades
the servant. But does it? He is not an ideal man in an ideal world,
already doing his best or paid to do his best. You are not degrading him
from any such standard as that, into the lower one of requiring tips: you
are simply taking him as he is. True, if he got no tips, he would not
depend upon them; but without them he would not do all you want him to;
before he will do that, he must be developed into a different man--he must
become a creature of an ideal world. You may in the course of ages develop
him into that, and as you do, he will work better and better, and tips may
grow smaller and smaller, until he does his best spontaneously, and tips
have dwindled to nothing. But to withdraw them now would simply make him
sulky, and lead to his doing worse than now.

Another objection urged against tips is that they put the rich tipper at
an advantage over the poor one. But the rich man is at an advantage in
nearly everything else, why not here? The idea of depriving him of his
advantages, is rank communism, which destroys the stimulus to energy and
ingenuity that, in the present state of human nature, is needed to keep
the world moving. In an ideal state of human nature, the man with ability
to create wealth may find stimulus enough, as some do to a considerable
extent now, in the delight of distributing wealth for the general good;
but we are considering what is practicable in the present state of human
nature.

Another aspect of the case, or at least a wider aspect, is the more
sentimental one where the tip is prompted as reciprocation for spontaneous
kindness.

But in the service of private families, as distinct from service to the
general public or to visitors it is notorious that constant tipping is
ruinous. Occasional holidays and treats and presents at Christmas and on
special occasions are useful, as promoting the general feeling of
reciprocation. But from visitors the tip is generally essential to
ensuring the due meed of respect. Yet we can reasonably imagine a time
when it may not be; and even now, for the casual service of holding a
horse or brushing off the dust, a hearty "thank you" is perhaps on the
whole better than a tip.

Considering the morality of the question all around--the practical ethics
as well as the ideal, the underlying facts are that no man ought to be a
servant in the servile sense, and indeed no man ought to be poor; and in
an ideal world no man would be one or the other. Just how we are to get a
world without servants or servile people, is perhaps a little more plain
than how we are to get Mr. Bellamy's world without poor people, which,
however, amounts to nearly the same thing. At least we will get a less
servile world, as machinery and organization make service less and less
personal. Bread has long been to a great extent made away from home; much
of the washing is also done away in great laundries, and organizations
have lately been started to call for men's outer clothes, and keep them
cleaned, repaired and pressed. There is a noticeable rise, too, in the
dignity of personal service: witness the college students at the summer
hotels, and the self-respecting Jap in the private family. These
influences are making for the ideal world in relation to service, and
_when_ we get it, no man will take tips, and nobody will offer them.

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