It is a stock argument for tipping that the person serving frequently performs extra services, or displays special painstaking, which deserve extra compensation. Only an examination of individual instances can determine whether this is true. The proportion of the tipping tribute which really pays for extraordinary service is negligible. A brief inquiry into a few of the more prominent instances of tipping follows. THE WAITER If food is sold undelivered, then the waiter in bringing it to the patron and assisting him in its consumption does perform an extra service for which payment is due. But this is not the fact, any more than that a shoe clerk should be tipped for assisting a customer in the selection of his employer's footwear. In both instances, the cost of the service is included in the price of the article--food or shoes. The prices on the bill of fare have been figured to include all costs of serving it, such as cook-hire, waiter-hire, rent, music, table ware, raw materials and overhead charges. If a sirloin steak costs seventy-five cents a definite part of that amount represents the wages of the waiter serving it. Thus the waiter has no claim upon the patron for compensation, because the patron, in paying for the food, provides the proprietor with funds from which the waiter's wages will be paid. If the patron, in addition, gives the waiter a tip it is clearly a gift for which no value has been returned. The waiter is paid twice for one service. ECONOMIC WASTE The question then recurs, is this gift to the waiter a sound economic transaction? Economists teach that no transaction is industrially sound which does not involve an equal exchange of values. The exchange of five dollars for a pair of shoes is a sound transaction because the dealer and the customer each receive a value. But the gift of a quarter to a waiter as a tip is an unsound transaction because the patron receives nothing in return--nothing of like substantiality. The patron may justify the gift from sentimental considerations, of pride, generosity or fear of violating a social convention, but no sophistry of reasoning can prove that a substantial value has been received. Of course, a waiter may give a patron more than the proprietor agrees to give in the bill of fare, and this undoubtedly is an extra service--_but it is also a dishonest service_. Every extra service to one patron means a deficiency of service to other patrons. It is a common experience that liberal tipping obtains special attentions which non-tipping patrons miss, but, being dishonest, such a condition is outside the scope of this inquiry. When a patron pays for food he is entitled to adequate and equal service, and no largess by other patrons should interfere with this basic right. On its economic side, then, tipping is wrong. Wealth is exchanged without both parties to the transaction receiving fair values. The psychology and ethics of the transaction will be considered in other chapters.