The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [50]
Susskind had a good idea of the true value of such a concession because he had worked as a hatcheck boy, in pea jacket and tight pants, at the Cafe Martin on Fifth Avenue, and later at the brandnew Astor. At these smart resorts and a few others, hatchecking had existed for a long time, but the managements had never thought of renting out the concession. In some places, attendants were allowed to retain their tips in lieu of salaries. In others, hatcheck rights were granted to a headwaiter or doorman as a perquisite of office. The owners of these gratuitous concessions paid the salaries of the hatcheck boys and received from them what proportion of their tips the boys thought it prudent to yield. Only an exhatcheck boy could understand the vastness of the possibilities.
The titular vestiaire at Martin's was an old retainer named Louis, who paid nothing for the concession. Louis' boys used to palm alternate tips and drop the coins inside their uniforms. They wore long underdrawers in those days, and coins would remain safe between the legs of the drawers and the skin of the wearer. Despite the leakage of silver, the concessionaire grew wealthy. Susskind had had opportunity to study the Broadway mentality at the Astor and decided that pretty girls would draw heavier tips than boys. He had also learned that it was extremely flattering to regular patrons to memorize their faces and say, “No check,” when they gave him their wraps. Recognition enhanced their selfesteem, and they tipped generously. He taught this mnemonic method of boosting tips to his employees at Churchill's, where he paid his girls twentyfive dollars a week.
When the concessionaire, wise to the ways of checkers, was in personal charge of his business, he could exercise a vigilance impossible to a hotel functionary with other duties. If he thought a girl was stealing an unreasonable amount, he could discharge her. By trial and error he could build up a fairly reliable personnel. Susskind bought more concessions with his profits from Churchill's. When George Rector seceded from his father's restaurant and opened his own place on Fortyeighth Street, Susskind paid him three thousand dollars for his coatroom concession before he opened. Shortly before the United States entered the World War, Susskind, in partnership with his brother Joe, ran the cloakrooms of sixty restaurants and employed six hundred men and women. Harry continued to wear his uniform at Churchill's, which had moved to larger quarters twice since he opened shop there. Joe wore the livery of the Hotel Knickerbocker, where the brothers had an extremely profitable concession. The Susskinds put managers in their concessions in other restaurants, paying them a small percentage of the profits. Complete honesty is not expected in the hatcheck business, and most of the managers stayed within reason.
The public was more ingenuous then than now, and most restaurant patrons believed that the Susskinds' girls retained their tips. The girls wore a kind of musicalcomedy Frenchmaid costume and put their tips in their apron pockets as they received them. The Susskinds were wise enough not to install the locked boxes into which many presentday hatcheck operatives drop their tips as soon as they get them. But the arrangement could not be kept a secret indefinitely. S. Jay Kaufman of the old Globe and Karl K. Kitchen of the Evening World, who were the Broadway columnists of circa 1917, gave the true state of affairs considerable publicity. Harry Susskind began to sense an undertone of antagonism. People kidded him about driving to work in a specialbody Cadillac and then donning a hatcheck attendant's uniform. Susskind lived in style in those days. He had an apartment on Riverside Drive, then fashionable, a house in