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By Root 550 0

(for Abraham) Ellis, who does business under the name of Planetary Recreations, Inc., from an office on an upper floor of the Manhattan Opera House, which he now owns. He bought the old theater with profits from the hatcheck business. He operates the ballrooms and banquet halls at the Opera House, and his customers check a lot of coats. Ellis leases the concessions at half a score of other restaurants. He became involved in theatricals in 1935 when he paid $15,000 for concessions at The Eternal Road, the big Reinhardt production that was delayed for a year by money troubles. Before the show could open, Ellis had to contribute $4000 toward the Equity bond to cover actors' salaries. He lost $10,000 on the deal. If the show had had a long run, he says, he would have made “a fortune of money.” For the three years of the French Casino's success, Ellis had the concession there. He paid a flat sum of $31,000 a year, with a percentage arrangement that brought the total up to $50,000 annually. When Billy Rose took over the place during the winter he raised Ellis' rent to $40,000 in advance and a percentage. Ellis paid about $20,000 for the Cotton Club.

The Stork Club concession was rented for $15,000 to a syndicate of employees. The proprietors of “21” long ago presented their concession to Jimmy, a doorman who is said to have saved them from infinite grief during the prohibition period. Renee Carroll, the redhaired girl at Sardi's, pays nothing for her concession, because the management values her gift for remembering the names of movingpicture publicity men and making them feel like celebrities.

The most conservative concessionaires operate in hotels. A painfully sedate and now defunct graduate doorman named J. Bates Keating had the concessions at the Astor, the Pierre, and the Edison for many years. He liked to talk about the unobtrusiveness of his service—no vulgar, obstreperous flower or cigarette girls pushing sales. Cigarette girls in hotels work for the lessee of the stand in the lobby. The Waldorf retains its own checkrooms, but pays ten per cent of the gross receipts to the manager, an experienced concessionaire.

The strangest feature of the hatchecking business is the complete absence of tangible merchandise or a fixed charge. The stock in trade consists of cardboard checks, worth two dollars a thousand wholesale, and the customer is not allowed to retain even the check when he leaves. A patron who takes his hat and walks out, paying nothing to the check girl, is liable to no pursuit, physical or legal. In reputable resorts, the contract between concessionaire and proprietor specifies that no patron is to be caused embarrassment. Yet less than one per cent of the people who use checkrooms omit the tip.

Shortly before the war, there was a national crusade against tipping. The shocking discovery that many tippees turned over their take to a third party spurred the crusaders. Governor Charles S. Whitman of New York was a leading antitipper, and the city had a Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving. A man named William Rufus Scott, of Paducah, Kentucky, wrote a book called The Itching Palm which urged the human race to give up tipping. Scott said that the psychological basis of tipping was one part misguided generosity, two parts pride, and one part fear of being unfavorably noticed. The last motive is unquestionably important. During the hours when checking is desultory, the patron walking up to the counter feels that he has the undivided attention of the cloakroom staff. He probably tips a quarter. When patrons are leaving in a hurry at the close of a floor show, men sneak in dimes. The more efficient concessionaires keep hourbyhour graphs that prove this.

“A tip is what one American is willing to pay to induce another American to acknowledge inferiority” was another of Scott's dicta. Largesse exalts the ego of the tipper in almost exact ratio to the inconsequence of the service. Heralds in the Middle Ages had a nice living in gratuities from feudal landlords who would hang a peasant for holding out a ducat of