Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1890 — FEES ON A STEAMSHIP. [ARTICLE]

FEES ON A STEAMSHIP.

English Stewards Expect to bei Ordered Around. „ New York Sun. ». The fee system is more rigidly enforced on a. big Atlantic steamer than any where else. It is one of the places where servants will demand their fees and tell you the amount which they think you ought to give them. While at restaurants, and hotels the waiters expect fees for their services and will hint and make it uncomfortable if they are not paid, they have not gone so far as to tell you that they expect a fee and the amount that they expect. Even the sleeping-car porters do not do that. They will come around at the end of the trip, brush your coat and hat, whistle you around and run ;the whisk broom around your trousers’ ‘buttons, but it is seldom that they will ask you for any money, let alone a specific amount. On the Atlantic steamers the stewards expect their fees as a matter of right as much aS the steamship company expects pay for your passage. It ns possible to avoid paying the fees, as they are not collectable by law, passenger who does not pay them will have trouble in getting his luggage off the steamer, and it would be well for him to keep off steamers afterward where any of the servants of that boat are employed. The stewards seem to have some sort of fee guide book or black-list of passengers who do not give fees so that they can make them suffer on future trips. The fees amount to about 10 per cent, of the voyage money. Certain fees are regularly fixed and. are expected, irrespective of" the cost of the stateroom or the style in which a man travels, while certain other fees depend on the style. For an ordinary passensrer there are fees to be given, to the stateroom steward; the saloon steward, the deck steward, the smok-ing-room steward, and the barber and bathman. The fee to the steward who looks after your stateroom is about $2.50. The steward who waits on you at the table expects the same fee. The deck steward, for bringing you an occasional drink and looking after your steamer chair andru;,s, expects five shillings, but he will take half a crown. The smoking-room steward expects five shillings, and if you are in the smoking-room a great pari of the trip he feels that he is entitled to as much as the stateroom steward or your waitpr. A bath every day oh the way over can be had for a five-shilling fee. These rates are fixed by long custom. The stewards can tell whether a man understands the rates, and will pay up at the end of the trip. If they do not think that he will they give him hints from time to time until they get some assurance on his part that he recognizes the obligation of the fee system. If they think he will not pay he will have a hard time of it. He will find th t his i titeroom is not well made up, that he does not get care when he is sea sick, that he is served last at the table and does not get the things that he ordered, that the wrong drinks and cigars come to him in the smoking-room, and that Bis steamer chair is constantly lost. The servants are as effective as sea sickness in making a man’s trip miserable. These fees are not to be paid until the last day of the trip, that is, on the way over until arriving at Queenstown, I if the passengers donsot go on through to Liverpool. The servants speedily . find out at which place a passenger ’ will get off. If an American his first trip they are pretty sure to know It. { It is advisable for him in that case to tell his stateroom steward and his waiter that he will give them the regular- fee at the end of the trip if- they serve him properly, and that if they do not they will not get a cent, If he telle them this in the proper way he will get as good service as the man who has been over a dozen times before. The last, morning of the trip the stateroom steward comes around for his fee. If the passenger does not offer it the steward suggests that it is customary to give hint a fee, and that the regular fee is half a sovereign. If anything less is offered him, and ho thinks he can get a half sovereign by refusing, to accept less, he will at once hand the proffered sum back, and say in an insolent way that he never takes anything less than the regular fee. With many passengers, particularly women, th’s remark and.the tone extract the ten shillings. The saloon steward does the same thing. The stewards work in with each other, and if a man succeeds in avoiding the stateroom steward the saloon steward will ask him for both himself and the stateroom steward. As man can sot get off the ship until it stops, there is no way of these demands, which will be repeated during the last day of the trip until the victim succumbs.