Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1914 — SPENDERS GOING OUT [ARTICLE]

SPENDERS GOING OUT

Sons of Rich No Longer Buy Motor Cars for Girl. i Restaurant Is a Failure—Gotham Palace Planned for Private Dining Room Trade Got Off on Wrong Foof. New York. —Every time the Case de Paris blows up—it detonates like a bomb twice a year—sonie one blames it on the shirt front. “When it began as the Case de I’Opera it got off on the wrong foot,” say these pessimists. "The imported manager allowed that only evening dress would be permitted after milking time. New Yorkers are intensely patriotic. They resented the idea that it was necessary to go to London to find a master of feeding.

Also, they may like to dress up like plush fire horses, but they do not like to be ordered to do so. So the place failed.” All of which is piffle. Other importations—Paul Poiret and that count person who introduced the form fitting pants to us, for example—have New York swooning in utter admiration. And New Yorkers most happily get into the 1776 rig at other places where it is required. And western patrons usually begin dressing in the cab on the way up from the depot. The truth Is - that The first smash Was caused by poor service. Those which succeeded it are to be blamed on the fact that New York is sobering up. ... “The architects of the case,” said a Broadway philosopher, “planned it for the private dining room trade. Brokers and sons of brokers and rich men from small western towns —plus their chorus girl affiliations of the moment —weie to bfe catered to. What New York’s night livers know as ‘parties’ were held ,in these embossed and silken retreats. The feminine guest who didn’t find a SIOO bill in a walnut felt she had been defrauded. Guesjtfi Of only moderate digestive capacity usually were taken out on the freight elevator.” Iff those very halcyon days one popular musical comedy star kept books on the offerings of her friends. Year in and year out she found herself between $30,000 and $40,000 to the windward, between the gems and automobiles and other junk given her. A big Wall street operator gave ten shares of * certain stock, worth par at the time, to his feminine guests one night. Another presented ten chorus girls with dingle dangles for their necks one evening. The man who then got their money at the pump have found for the most part that the well has run dry. The fathers’ sons of today may not be tightwads, but they’re anything but looee. The heir of the greatest fortune in town has a Sunday school class, the next in line keeps getting into sociological discussions, the third is working in a railroad office and the fourth is busy all day in his own brokerage establishment. Chorus giris who kept high priced cars five years ago now find it strains the bank roll to sustain a bicycle. So—with the private dining rooms catering to the Sweeney trade—the Case de Paris found “Its architectural limitations 'a heavy handicap. Too much highly valuable space had been wasted. Not that there isn’t plenty of spending, but, compared to the old daye, fit is of the "Zip, there goes a nickel!" sort. For which the dance craze is largely respohßible. Every restaurant on Broadway is doing a capacity business until one o’clock every night aDd, with highballs at 40 cents and a spoonful of Welsh rabbit spoiling eix bits, the net results ought to be satisfactory. Nor is one o’clock in the morning a fixed limit. One restaurant dances 24-hour Bhlfts, with just a pause for the barber during the afternoon. Half a dozen shove the terpsichorean curfew into the discard on occasion. 4nd the dance mania is increasing. This week one vaudeville theater announces that dancing will be permitted In the lobby during intermissions. Modern dances will likely be, taught at the recreation centers hereafter. The charity ball—which was at one time puritanic to the verge of woodenness —is to permit the tango and the hesitation this year. It is true that the charity bail isn’t exclusive any more, unless exclusiveness is to be defined as the ability to ride In a wagon built like a pilot house. No. The whole trouble is that New York’s spenders have eewed fishhooks In their pockets. Which fact has been noted by visitors from foreign shores.

Miss Emmy Wehlen, the Viennese star of musical comedy, said the other day that all the European Capitals are cluttered up with young men who seem to have nothing to do but see that their friends enjoy themselves. While in New York the young men have either worked so hard that when night comes they are barely able to keep from going to sleep with their fatigued faces in the dinner plates, or else they display an almost bigoted preference for beer as a beverage. But Miss Wehlen sees a bright spot. “The old men of New York,” says Miss Wehlen, “seem to have plenty of money and time —and everything else except a disposition to go home.”