Jamestown weekly alert. [volume] (Jamestown, Stutsman County, D.T. [N.D.]) 1882-1925, 1912-09-19
new HOTEL LAWS
WILL Be URGED
LEGISLATION AFFECTING INN
KEEPERS AND COMMERCIAL
TRAVELLING PUBLIC OF
NORTHWEST.

mittee Of the Northwest Hotel Mems
association will soon be called at
Minneapolis or St. Paul, to consider
needed legislation to be urged at the
next session of the legislatures, in
the states comprising the association,
namely, North Dakota, Minnesota,
South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska,
states c. A. Klaus of the Gladstone
Hotel, Jamestown, who with J. D.
Bacon, of the Dakotah, Grand Forks,
constitute the committee from North
Dakota. The committee was ap-
pointed at the tenth annual conven-
.;tion of the association held at Des
sMoines, a., last month, with the
spurpose of framing uniform hotel
laws for the above named states,
working in cooperation with the va
rious travelling mems associations
in such legislation. Representatives
of the travelling mems associations
will meet at the same time as the
hotel men, and later there will be
a joint session, at which the legisla-
ton affecting both will be discussed
and threshed out. Each association
has been notified with request to
send delegates to the meetings, SO
that the question of the hotel laws
may be permanently settled for many
years to come.
Among the various matters re-
quiring legislation and in the urg-
ence of which the hotel and travel
ling men will each bring their influ-
Eence to bear upon their legislators,
are the provisions for '.public COM
fort stations" and limiting the liza
bility of hotels for lost articles. The
|.need Of public comfort stations was
we'll stated in the resolution adopt
ed, as follows:
Public Comfort Stations.
Whereas, the use of hotels as
public comfort and convenience sta
tions in the villages, towns and cities
throughout the United States has
long been a steadily increasing bur-
den upon American hotel keepers
and an imposition upon the travelling
men and other patrons of hotels,
who pay for their patronage and are
entitled to the unrestricted and un
hampered use of these conveniences,
be it.
Resolved, that it is the sense of
our association In convention assem-
bled that the time has arrived when
our American municipalities should
give this questiaon serious attention,
for the credit of modern civilization,
the health, sanitation and daily well
fare of the public, and that@every vii
lage, town and city should have pub
slic comfort stations with free" and
"pay" departments, such as exist in
most all the cities of Europe; and be
it further
Resolved, that each and every
member of this association should
pledge himself to do all in his power
with the civic welfare organizations
in his community to bring about as
speedily as possible this urgently
needed improvement for modern and
enlightened civilization, which is
making for equity, scientific santa
tion and decencyS'
An article setting forth the sub
stance of the resolution will be put
into the hands of every Young Mems
Christian association, Ministerial un-
ion and other organizations in the
state that have altruistic motives,
asking them to get into the band
wagon in the movement to bring
about this legislation. Aberdeen,
S. D., Omaha, Neb., and other cities
have already taken up the public
comfort station problem.
Limiting Liability.
Another resolution introduced at
the Des Moines meeting and passed
was that urging the hotel men Of the
four states outside Of Nebraska to
work to secure legislation similar to
that recently put upon the Nebraska
statutes limiting the liability Of the
hotel in cases Of loss of articles by
guests. The Unlimited liability in
such cases which still holds in some
Of these states, the hotel men say. is
simply rslic Of the day In old Eng
land several hundred years ago,
when the innkeeper had scarcely any
rights that others were bound to re-
spect. II 10 . relic of the days when