Tombstone epitaph., 1892-07-24
CLUB SERVANTS.
Thousands of Them Employed in
 New York City,
Social Organizations Which Employ an Army of People to Attend to Their Various wsnts-The Lead
 ing Clube-

Various Wants-The Lead
 ing Clubs.
 If the servants and employees of any one of the big clubs in this town were marched in dress parade the array would be a decidedly imposing one, and the size of the small army would sur prise anybody who had not had occasion to become familiar with the workings of the larger New York clubs, says the New York World. The Manhattan Ath- letic club probably heads the list of local clubs-or American clubs. for that mat ter-in the number of people who wear it's livery, or at least draw money from its treasury for attending to the wants of its members. More than two hun dred men, women and boys are regular ly employed in one capacity or another in the big Manhattan Athletic club house. and at times the attaches of tho club house number as high as two hun dred and fifty. This small army com i prises door men, hall boys, walters, bar | tenders, attendants at the rifle range, | shooting gallery, baths and other de- | partments, elevator boys, bookkeepers, accountants, engineers, firemen, cham | scrubwomen.
 Humble though some of these em- | ployes are, it costs money to secure their more or less professional services for the club, and the salary list is be- tween fifteen hundred dollars and two thousand dollars a week.
 | The Manhattan club, which probably comes next in the length of its salary list, employs between one hundred and forty five and one hundred and fifty, and pays | them something over one thousand dol | lars a week for attending to the club house and the wants of the men who keep it a-going. The present Manhat- tan Athletic club house is comparatively l a new thing, and naturally many, if not most, of its attaches are comparatively newcomers. But at the Manhattan club, which is one of the old club insti- | tutions of the town, many of the help have grown gray in the service The venerable female housekeeper, for in stance, has put in couple of decades keeping things in order for the Man hattanites, and dozen other employees have been with the club for q decade or more. There is one detachment of the Manhattan clubs employees whose very existence is probably unknown to nine tenths of the clubs members. Every one of this detachment is of the fem mine gender, and every one is likewise of the color of the ace of spades. The women in question are the houseclean- CTS, and put in their appearance at the clubhouse about sunrise, make things lively for a couple of hours, and disap- pear before the earliest member of the club has shaken off the embrace of Mor- pheus.
 The Union league also has big staf of employees, as may be imagined from the fact that i. spends nearly ten thou sand dollars every year in providing them with livery. The New York Ath- letic is another club which does 8 large business inthe way of employees; . likewise the Union club, the New York club, the Lawyers club, and half dog en other clubs on the same order. At most of these clubs employees of dozen or more years standing may still bs seen, and. in fact at any of the first
 class clubs it is the rule to retain thu doormen, so long as they behave them
 selves, in order to have at least a couplL of servants who are familiar with the faces of all the members. The Universi- ty club, of course, has an immense retinue of servants, but, as the rule there seems to be to have a ''shake-up'' once a month or so, not more than half
 dozen old-time attaches of the club are ! to be seen at the club house on Madison avenue nowadays.
 At the really frst-class clubs an en-
 deavor is made to secure as servants
 only serving people who have had ex-
 perience in private families or other
 frst-class clubs, but at some of the . clubs almost everybody who responds
 to the house committees advertise
 ment is taken on faith and given a
 chance to don the club livery. The
 Lawyers club is a notable exception to
 clubs of the last named order, the at
 taches of that institution being particu-
 larly well trained and disciplined. AL , most every one of them has seen service
 in the better class of New York fami-
 lies and every one of them thoroughly
 understands his place. There is rarely , or never any complaint of incivility or
 lack of attention on the part of the servants of the Lawyers club, and that 3 fact, perhaps, as much as anything
 else, accounts for the extreme populari-
 ty of the club. Altogether probably ? eight thousand or ten thousand people 1, find employment in the clubs of this [ city. z-
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