The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-05-10
FOREIGN WATERS INVASION.
Trained Servants of Europe Are
FlOcking to America.
New York Evening Post.

New York Evening Post.
81 may be mistaken, but nevertheless
feel safe in venturing the prophecy that
within the next three years the large cities
of this country will be overrun with En-
glish, French, German, Italian and Spanish
walters, said an experienced Washington
hotel clerk. What Florida was in the i'm
agination of Ponce de Leon modern America
is to the foreign waiter. To him 1t is an
FL Dorado, land of gold, the greatest boz
nanZa under the sun. Let me explain TO you
how this is gradually coming about.
I'm Europe the hotel system, you
doubtless know, is very different from that
of this country. In large city like Paris
there a great many hotels and cafes
competing for custom, and the one which
not only serves the best food, but, what Is
more important, maintains corps of the
most polite, sensible and best trained wait
ers, is the hotel that is going to succeed.
There the business has been reduced to a
science. In those countries the work of a
waiter is looked upon as a regular and legit-
innate calling. In Berlin and Paris there are
schools for walters where they learn sew
eral languages and undergo a long course of
training in the art of serving people, and
a Partisan hotel keeper would no more think
of accepting a waiter who was unable TO
show diploma from one of these schools
than an American steamboat owner would
think OF employing roustabOut to act as
pilot or engineer.
But the proprietors of European hotels
do not hire their walters We do in this
country. Instead, the walters pay the pro-
prietors. The position of waiter in one of
the Partisan hotels is let out to the high
est bidder for cash, provided the bidder
can show that he has the proper training
Besides the tips from the guests. the waiter
gets what he is able to make out of their
leavingS, such as soap, candles, fuel and
even food. He sells it to persons who make
business OF purchasing such things from
hotel walters.
I'm Europe the walters form a class of
veritable nomads. They are continually
travelling, In their training schools they
are taught three languages other than their
own, downright necessity in Europe,
where the countries are small and close
together. and where the languages are so
numerous and dissimilar, but, in their trav-
cling about they manage to pick up several
other tongues in addition to the four with
which they are familiar. Thus a waiter
who in summer is serving guests in Bergen,
Norway, will be found next winter bowling
and scraping to those from whom he ex-
poets tips in Shepherds Hotel in Cairo,
Egypt.
I'm America We are placed in a curious
position with regard to walters. The great
cities of the West, such as Chicago, Denver,
Omaha, indianapolis and others have
sprung up in a night, and in all of them as
wei as In the cities farther east, enormous
and luxurious hotels are going up. In all
such up-to-date hotels there is a great
demand for first-c,ass trained walters. a.
demand which the United States is unable
to supply. In this country the tendency
has been for young men to become doctors
lawyers, editors and so on, while on the
other hand the best we are able to present
In the way OF walters are the willing but
rather Indifferent and unframed colored
servitors Of the South. These facts the
European walters have discovered They
have found out that the big American
hotels recently built and now building are
paying what TO them is a princely salary
in addition to granting them the privilege
of taking all the tips they can get; that
in this country they have no competition.
and as result of all this they are fiocking
here by the forties. ffties and hundreds on
every steamer.
In Washington the trained European
waiter Is almost a necessity and Wash
ington was one of the first American cities
to employ them Hardly a day passes when
we do not entertain foreigners who cannot
speak a word of English and it was only