Newark leader. ([Newark, Ohio]) 1917-1946, 1919-06-06

E. M. Statler, owner of four we'll
known hotels-one each in Buffalo,
Detroit, Cleveland and st. Louis-has
written for the american Magazine"
an article under the heading GLOW
Men Act When They Can't Get a
Drink" Mr.. Statler's wide expert
erce as hotel owner has afforded him
rare opportunities for observing the
peculiar situation he anticipates for
the entire country. He says in part:
The making-over process may not
be as revolutionary as it seems to us
now. Drinking to excess has un-
questionably become less frequent in
recent years. 1t is no uncommon
thing to see perhaps four men at
table in one Of our cafes three of
them taking soft drinks and only one
having a cocktail, a highball, or some
thing of that sort. Two or three men
coup to the bar, and one of them
does not hesitate to order seltzer. No
body comments on it now; whereas,
ten or fifteen years ago, man who
did that was guyed by his companions
My prediction is that the common
run Of business men will adjust them
selves to a dry world far more easily
than they think. Thousands of men
take drink occasionally. They have
been going for days without whisky,
OF beer, or anything of the kind.
What will they do in the future? ?
Why they will do exactly the same on
the days when they would have taken
a drink that they have been doing now
on the days when they didn't touch
liquor.
Business Transacted in Office, not
at Bar.
People have an idea that there is
lot of business transacted over
bottle of wine, OF across the cocktail
glasses. They think that men get to-
gether in cafes and put through "big
DEALS" settle business polices, place
contracts, make sales; l don't believe
it. Undoubtedly this does happen
sometimes. But you ask any man
how much really important business
he does in bar, or across a cafe
table, and | think you will find that it
isn't enough to cut any real figure.
When | want to do business, | do
it in my office. SO do other men.
If you could put dictaphone under
every table in a cafe and get records
of all the talk that goes on across
those tables and compare them with
records from the office Of the same
men, you would see the difference.
The real business man doesn't go to
the bar, or the cafe, to put his deal
through. He goes there chiefly to
meet some of his acquaintances, to
talk about everything from golf to
Government, to hear the latest good
story, to get in touch with somebody
with whom he may want to do busi-
ness. He is after an opening, per-
haps. But when it comes to closing
a deal, to getting mans name on
the dotted line of a contract, that is
done in a business office, not on a
table in cafe.
This doesn't alter the fact, however,
that men do like to get together and
talk; and that they can talk better
across a little table than in almost
any other way. Is the little table
going to disappear altogether?
Where are men going to find the
"man talk" they crave?
In the first place, you must remem-
Der that only minority of men are
habitues Of bars and cafes. If there
are five hundred men in a hotel at
one time, only small proportion of
them are lined up at the bar. The
others are in the lobbies, in their
rooms, or in the restaurant, or the
grill-room. If there is no bar there,
the few who would have drifted to it
will simply join the rest, who are
where they would have been, anyway.
The Little Table
Will the little table, with its in
timacy, its chance for a good talk,
disappear? No, it won't. AS l said
before, there are thousands of men
sitting at those tables now with soft
drinks in front of them. If they can
have. good time doing that, there's /
no reason why the rest can't. 1t will |