The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-20
From the Baltimore News.

X/Nl O1O1<AI lAOopAlatAAJ AS OAiS VI way N undisputed characteristics of O Baltimore, and our city is &C., cordingly an appropriate gathering place for the men from all over the country whose business is hospitality. This year there is an additional appropriateness in the circumstances that the president of the Hotel Mems Association of the United States and Canada is a Baltimore hotel man, and man who is every inch hotel man. The News has particular and inside information-no pun intended-on this head, of an unusually exclusive char acter, because in the trying first days after the great fire, when the paper was being printed in Washington. Joyces ho- tel was the improvised headquarters of the editors and newsgatherers of The News. The cheerfulness that prevailed among us in the midst of difficult conditions was due in no small measure to the pleas ant feeling that a genuine hotel-keeper produces in the surrounding atmosphere.
 The phrase ''ancient and honorable, as applied to various time-honored or ganizations, has become a mere conven- tionality and Is often used in ridlcule But 1t certainly applies in all seriousness to the vocation which the Hotel Mems asso- citation represents. The ancient and hon orable calling of the inn-keeper may well challenge comparison with any other that exists as to the value of It's contribution to human happiness. "There is nothing" says Dr. Johnson, with that tone of final ity which is one of his chief attractions there is nothing which has yet been con trived by man by which so much happi- ness is produced as by good tavern or inn" It ought to be a peculiar satisfac- ton to the men who carry on any busi- ness that the measure of their success is at the same time measure of the comfort, and cheerfulness, and happi- ness, of those whom that business serves. Of what other calling could anything be said at all similar to what the good doc- tor says about the work of the inn keeper?
 Dr. Johnson, to be sure, was not talk ing about American hotels. Boswell re- cords this fine dictum as having been de- livere1, as 1t happens, in the year. 1776, the birth year of our nation. Had he seen, In his minds eye, hotels with thousand rooms and twenty stories high, flooded with I tremendous glare of electric light, and removed as far as possible from the notion of simplicity and coziness, he might have made an addition to his dic- tum of very different character. In spite of all this, it still continues true that the hotel, the well-managed hotel, plays a most Important part in promoting the worlds happiness. As for American ho- tel-keepers, they are fine body of men, and show in a remarkable degree the cor diality and bigness of spirit that properly belongs to the inn-keeper's calling. They are enterprislng, generous in expenditure and energetic in keeping up their stand ards, and theys have made the material comforts and luxuriess of American ho- tels standard for the whole world.
 But, while our hotel-keepers are first rate men in carrying on the business as 1t has come to be understood In this coun- try, there must be thousands, and tens of thousands, of persons in America who long fer the recognition of a wholly dif- ferent ideal of hotel-keeplng from that
  tunity, of indefinite scope, exists for the man who will aim at quiet and unobtru- sive excellence rather than showy pro- fusion. at coziness and the sense of pri- vacy and personal care rather than whole sale magnifcence and the, glare of pub licity. To cite only one simple instance: Nobody is benefited by having twice as much electric light as there is any need of; everybody would feel much more com fortable and more restful with a careful adjustment of light to actual needs But this IS symbolic of the whole idea of the American hotel-provide everything in overwhelming abundance, and let the consequences take care of themselves Perhaps this principle is inseparable from the running of enormous hotels; but if so, why should there not be number of small hotels which, instead of try ing to ape the big ones, would make their strong point in careful attention to details, personal solicitude for the tastes of guests, the providing of an attractive place of inn-like comfort? Europe is cov- cred with such hotels, and more than half the charm of European travel for a large proportion of our tourists consists in the pleasure of the sojourn at these inns. You can't become a Rockefeller or a Carnegie by carrying on a hotel of that kind. but there is a very pretty income in it for the man or woman that ..nows how and will take the trouble. Indeed, with our American tendency to big expenditures, there is doubtless room for a number of hotels of ynodarata Ia s;za and unobtrusive character which, hav- ing established reputation for excep- tional excellence, could command prices higher than those of the Waldorf Astoria or the St. Regis, and whose proprietors would make a fortune. But what we are vastly more interested in is the idea of hotel at moderate prices, with little show hut with solid merit ,uhinh sro,,ld