Marshall County Republican. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1856-1878, 1873-05-01
Hotels for Farmers.

The Prairie Farmer has some really
sensible remarks Oh this topic, every
word and sentence of which we fully in
dorse. Of all men who travel. none. as
a class, have their wants so poorly sup
piled at public houses as farmers. Our
contemporary truly says that most city
hotels are adapted to the accommodation
of city-bred people. They afford more
style than comfort, while the prices
charged for accommodation are far
above what farmers can afford to paw.
Most people that travel spend far more
on their living when away than they do
when at home. They think it is neces-
sary to keep up appearances at whatever
cost. Many a young clerk, whose salary
is only six or eight hundred dollars a
year, will stop, while travelling, at a hotel
that charges five dollars per day for ac-
c~ommodation, that people will suppose
he is at the head of some fourishing
mercantile establishment. The farmer.
on the contrary, cares little for display,
but wishes some such fare as he is ac-
customed to at home. He is satisfied to
appear to be what he really is. and does
not care to spend much money in keep
ing up appearances.
A hotel for farmers should be comfort
able, without being elegant; respectable,
without being stylish; commodious,
without a lavish expenditure in large
private apartments furnished with costly
articles. It's table should be supplied
with an abundance of the essentials of
life, but need not be furnished with
costly foreign delicacies, or with articles
of food produced out of season. The
times for meals should be at such hours
as most farmers take their meals at home:
for regularity in the times of eating adds
alike to comfort and to health. Good.
clean beds are required, but the sleeping
rooms need not be large nor gorgeously
furnished. Lastly, the prices asked for
accommodation should not be SO high
that a farmer feels impoverished by Wis
iting a city; that he must hasten away
without completing his business, or hav-
ing a little enjoyment or that he cannot
afford occasionally to bring his wife and
children to the city with him.
A hotel designed to accommodate far
mers should be in the -neighborhood of
the markets and commission business,
but need not be near the fashionable
portion OF a city. 1t requires a spacious
yard where wagons may be left commo-
dious stables, and accommodations for
those who may wish to take care of their
own teams. Sheds would also be re-
quired for sheltering loads of produce
till they are disposed of. A billiard
room need not form a necessary attach
ment to afarmers' hotel, but there should
be a spacious and well-arranged reading
room. In this should be kept files of
city newspapers, agricultural papers,
maps of the city'and adjacent country,
business directories, and card-racks for
t e display of business. It should be.
in short, a places where a farmer can
gain the information he wants with the
greatest convenience. Such a room
would be not only a pleasant place of re-
sort, but one where he could gain much
timely and useful information. Here
he could meet farmer from other sec
lions of the country, and compare notes
with them and here he could arrange
matters of business with dealers in pro-
duce, who would naturally frequent such
a place.
It may be said that a man need not
travel long in any great city without
finding a building bearing the sign
Farmers Hotel" This is even so, but
the character Of these places is anything
but in keeping with the name. Ordina-
rily they are the last places a farmer
would wish to stop at. The lower floor
is commonly occupied as a bar-room,
where vile cigars and viler whisky are
vended, and where roughs and loafers
congregate to carouse, gamble, swear
and drink. They ere places where no
regard is had for common decency, where
there is little protection for property,
and where, oftentimes, life is "at the
sole risk of the owner" The sleeping
rooms, where one cannot sleep for the
bite of vermin, the stencil of offal and
the noise Of drunken rowdies, are of the
size of horse stalls, from which they diff
fer but little except in the matter of To-
cation. The table is ordinarily supplied
with beef that might readily be mistaken
for sole leather, watery potatoes, stale
bakers bread, and a muddy article
called coffee, which is simply an infusion
of parched turnips and chickory, sweet
ened with brown sugar and cooled with
"swill-milk." From such a Farmers
Hotel !" as this every honest tiller of the
soil will devoutly pray to be delivered.