Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1900-05-12
A VISIT TO PARIS.
Americans Who Go to the Exposi-
ton Will Need Much Cash.
Hotel Rates Raised and Evsrythinaa
Will Have q Fancy Price
Tackled On to Fleece
Visitors,

Ben c. Truman, well known as a
newspaper writer in Chicago, is now in
Paris and in a recent letter offers,
through the Chicago Chronicle, some
suggestions to those contemplating a
visit to that city during the EXPOSE
ton. He says:
"The hotels have all raised their
rates from 40 to 80 per cent. The Grand
hotel is the leading robber of the gang.
Twenty years ago a good o could
be secured there for six francs per day,
candles and attendance included; coffee
for two francs, dejeuner a la four
Ghetto, four francs, and dinner for six,
including wine. Ten years ago,d during
the exposition of 1889, the same room
was seven francs, coffee three francs,
~dejeuner five francs and dinner seven,
including wine. Now, however, the
same room (~incandescent Light is Is
francs, coffee four francs, dejeuner
five francs and dinner seven, or about
Sc per day, and all the meals skinny
same thing every day; same old
poulette and chicken salad twice a day.
Can you imagine so prodigious a steal
as 80 cents for a cup of abominablc
coffee and a few counted rolls? The
Continental and L'Athanee charge
about the same. All the other hotels
of account charge about from 1s to IS
francs per day for full board per month
or per day-everything is so much
per day, even if it is by the month or
year.
"And then you are compelled to fee
from six to ten people almost contin-
ually. Elegant pensions, engineered
by widows of distinguished and la
mented army and navy officers are
higher priced than the high-rate no.
tells, while life at a regular pension
means taking chances OF being starved
or frozen to death. Next to the hotels
and pensions as freebooters come the
stores, that have put up their prices
quite 40 per cent.
Hats and shoes are so per cent. dear
err than in 1889; neckties that range
from rs cents to so cents in New York.
San Francisco and Los Angeles, range
from three francs eco cents) to seven
francs ($1.40) here-and this is the
country of silk manufactures! Cot
ton, linen and wooden goods have near
y all advanced from 20 to 60 per cent.
owe what they were in 1889. Canes and
umbrellas and such from 20 to 40 per
cent. Shirts, handkerchiefs and gloves
seem not TO have advanced SO much.
druggists goods have gone diabol-
ically out of all sight of all grades of
polite robbery. A prescription that
would cost rs cents in San Francisco
is 81 here. An ounce of castor oil is
so cents, a pint of witch hazel is 30
cents and an ounce of borax 40 cents.
Candies, fruit, clarets, tobacco. cigars
and cigarettes are the only things that
have not been atrociously advanced.
Soap, lead pencils, pen, ink and paper
have advanced 100 per cent. Omnibus
rates are six cents as against four cents
some years ago. The only thing cheap
in Paris to-day is the cab, which is still
only 80 cents from any one point to an
other within the city, for from one to
three persons, or 40 cents per hour for
am l have met a score or more of
Americans who had come here to stay
for several months. but who are going
back on the North German Lloyd
steamer Of the 18th. All of these go
home without making purchases, and
none of them will return by the French
line. Really, the foreign feeling
against the hotels and stores here is
intense, and the American and Eng
fish papers of Paris publish complaints
OF some kind daily" Truman is an
old traveller and knows what he is talk
ing about. It would seem as if the ex-
position were a good place to stay
auyou <rnp,