Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1912 — WHY HOTEL RATES ARE HIGH [ARTICLE]

WHY HOTEL RATES ARE HIGH

Some Expenses Not Put Down In the Books Are Disclosed by Wife of Hotel Manager. New York. —Every now and then one learns something new of the New York hotels. Mrs. Max Thompson, wife of the assistant manager of a Gotham hotel, is entitled to the gratitude of the public for letting in a little light upon the duties and emoluments of the hotel managers—even If she did do the letting in because, according to her husband, some dispute concerning a fuzzy poodle had risen between them. In her petition for alimony Mrs. Thompson alleges that her husband’s Income is $8,400 annually. "He is paid SI,BOO for his services; S6OO as agent for a champagne; $720 for certain unnamed services performed for hotels in Paris, Berlin and London and $1,200 by steamship lines for procuring certain business for them.” That happens to figure up to SIO,BOO a year, but the difference may be set down to the difficulty which ladles notoriously experienced in dealing with arithmetical facts: It also (happens that she does not state all the facts, if the facts in Mr. Thompson’s case coincide with the facts in the other hotel officials. For example, the assistant manager of the hotel is allowed his rooms and a certain specified sum daily in the dining-rooms. The discreet pushing of a brand of cigars is always worth something. One bartender in one of the great hotels admittedly received $lO a day for pushing a certain whisky. No doubt his Immediate superiors may have profited slightly by the same brand. The carriage callers, head porters, stewards, chefs, detectives, laundry chiefs, head waiters—every other employe in a position of even modified authority about a hotel —always are able to add to their income by certain other side incomes. No doubt they are sometime? moved by sheer gratitude to share such gratuities with the men who have the power of discharge over them. “I will take any position of responsibility whatever in any one of the great hotels," said a competent

hotel man, “and I will serve without salary'and with absolute honesty. And at the end of the year I will have made more money than the manager's salary amounts to. It isn’t any wonder that the public complains of the hotel charges. Look what those charges cover.”