When Tipping Was Considered Deeply Un-American

Today's restaurants abandoning the tipping system are part of a long heritage of people — including Emerson and Twain — raging against the gratuity system.

With New York restaurateur Danny Meyer banning tips in his restaurants andBerkeley restaurateurs Andrew Hoffman and John Paluska joining the no-tip bandwagon, the tipping debate has clinked back into the headlines of late.

Except it never really went away.

To tip or not to tip constitutes one of the oldest and nastiest debates surrounding America's restaurant business.

When tipping began to spread in post-Civil War America, it was tarred as "a cancer in the breast of democracy," "flunkeyism" and "a gross and offensive caricature of mercy." But the most common insult hurled at it was "offensively un-American."

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