The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-15
IGLORIFIED CAFETERIAS ROUT H. C. OF l.. FROM ANGELS CITY Help Yourself Eating Palaces With orchestras Furnish De- lectable Food Prices Low Enough to Break Broad
 way Caterers Heart = Thrifty Bankers
 Throng Them for the Midday Meal
By ZOE BECKLEY

 Los Angeles, Cal, July 14-(Special.) l want to go housekeeping here in- stantly! want one of these s20-a-month apartments with wall beds, folding ice boxes and built-in shelves and chiffon iers. Or a squat California bungalow the dachshund of houses-with orange trees in the yard and a roof smothered in roses. I want to go marketing for Accent asparagus and scent strawber- ries. Or eat in these miraculous cafe- terias, toting my own tray of and and 1o-cent goodies. all fresh and hot and toothsome.
 I want to ride out every afternoon to one of the score of beaches that rim Los Angeles to the west, where the mountains meet the sea"-where the soft and salty air.
 And sometimes I want to go on the rubberneck wagon to Pasadena and hear Charlie Meyer describe the sights to his passengers
 Ladies and gents," says Charlie, who weighs 327 and does a fast half-mile on the back of a 325-pound ostrich at the Cawston farm just to show you, i've are now crossing the famous Los Angeles river, the only river in the world that has to be irrigated to keep the fish alive!' Charlie does that sort of thing 1 throughout the trip, and it's all good | stuff.
 | Yes-I want to stay long time in l Los Angeles, where the candy shops look as if David Belasco had designed and 1 lighted them, and some of the meat | markets have the daintiness of jewelry | stores Where anything goes in the way 1 of clothes so long as the colors are bright enough. Where clerks and news paper writers own their own Fords and | Dogdes and Maxwells and Puicks. And | carnations are fifty a dime. GOVERNOR HELPS HIMSELF Nobody prepared me for the cafe | terias of Los Angeles, although every body eats in them, from Governor | Stevens himself down to the little dried- | up old ladies with microscopic incomes l who abound in swarms I am told this 1 system of maximum food and quality 1 for minimum price was invented here, l Boos Bros. opening the first cafeteria I some 12 years ago.
 
 | over town and in other towns. No one | seems able to explain why we have not 1 in New York this glorification of the 1 help-yourself lunch, where eating be- ] comes an adventure and every dish a | thrill.
 T don't know unless it's because the 1 New Yorker feels himself to be cheap skate Juggling tray of food" suggest l ed G. E. Stith, proprietor of the "B. & 1 M" cafeteria, said to be the largest in l the world The hurried clerk or ste | nographer might do with Eelp-your- l self lunch, but eastern men of affairs i don't take to it.
 "Westerners are different" he went on. They're more for comfort and less l for show. They're inherently more eco nomical Besides, salaries out here are 1 not like yours in the east
 This is especially true in southern | California, where hundreds of thousands | of people are so eager to make theil l homes that that wages become badly GU l down. We have thousands living or | small remittances who are willing tt 1 work for almost nothing, just to be here | But, after all the cafeteria is tht l ideal system for those to whom the mea ] itself is the important thing. We serve | the best quality of everything that car be bought. We purchase in carload lots | whenever possible and reduce waste to the vanishing point! We feed from BOG 1 to 5000 persons per day"
 STROLLS ON APPETITE ROW
 When MT. Stith says the cafeteria is l ideal for those who eat for the mea l alone, not for the qualities of service and luxury which make a social func- tion of a dinner, he underestimates the l charm of these Los Angeles eating places. For they have music. And soft lights and exquisite decorations. They