BEHIND THE SCENES IN A HOTEL

Growth of the hotel industry

The modern hotel industry, claimed by the 35th Convention of the New York Hotel Association to be the fifth largest industry in the United States, is of comparatively recent growth. It is true that from the earliest times there have been inns and small hostels for the accommodation of the wayfarer. But this accommodation was the simple provision of board and lodging. The host and his family ran the house much as the modern boarding and rooming house is run. Until the late nineteenth century these houses, small and few in number, were usually at stage-coach changes along the road. With the great increase in travel, stimulated by the growth of steam railroads, hotels sprang up in great numbers and tended to concentrate in large centers of population. The invention of the elevator and the use of fireproof materials have made possible the construction of gigantic modern edifices. In the last few decades, under these conditions, more and more capital has been attracted to the industry until today there are 40,000 hotels, large and small, in the United States.

The individual hotel has developed into a complex institution, often of colossal size, supplying board and lodging on a most luxurious scale. In all parts of New York State, particularly in the smaller cities and towns, the small hotel with the inn tradition, with a simple table d’hôte service at one rate, still exists. But the tendency in New York City and in first and second class cities of the State has been toward a rapid expansion in the size of the individual establishment with an elaboration of service, and a specialization of hotel types. In the larger cities of the State, there are hotels with 450 or more rooms; in New York City there are many hotels with from 1000 to 2000 rooms. The largest hotel in New York, “the largest hotel in the world,” by its own advertisement, contains 2200 rooms and 2200 baths. In answer to the special needs of special groups, different types of hotels have sprung up—the commercial-transient hotel which supplies complete, efficient but unelaborate service, the apartment house and family hotel with additional comforts and luxuries for residents of a longer period, the ultra-fashionable hotel, and the hotel that specializes in banquets, conventions and other social functions. No distinct classification holds, for there is usually an overlapping of types.

As the individual hotel has grown, hotel corporations and syndicates have developed. In New York City the largest, most complete hotels, almost without exception, are operated by hotel corporations. Two companies are each managing five of the largest hotels. Another company manages five hotels, two of which are in first class cities of New York State and three in other states. One company manages a group of fifteen smaller family hotels in New York City. Four hotels in four different up-state cities are managed by still another company. These corporation managers have united to form the New York State Hotel Men’s Association and the Hotel Association of New York City for discussion of standards of operation. This exchange of opinion has resulted in the turning of hotel managers’ thoughts to standards and policies in regard to labor, though as yet little of a concrete nature has been accomplished.

The labor force in the modern hotel

The labor force required to furnish service in the modern hotel has necessarily increased enormously since the day when the host of the old-time hostel and his family personally cared for the needs of their guests. The following extract from a hotel manager’s pamphlet on the running of big hotels gives some idea of the problems of labor management: “The operation of a single metropolitan hotel is too complex an undertaking to be likened to a gigantic piece of housekeeping. When it comes to running a group of six of the largest hotels in the world ... the performance becomes of colossal size. The idea of employing 510 men just to cook food and another 925 just to wait on table, finding need at the same time to call in an average of 3000 waiters a month to help out on banquets, requiring 380 chambermaids to make beds and so on, must strike one pretty much as indicative of doing business on a wholesale scale.”

Hotel managers, however, have been too prone to treat their business as housekeeping on a big scale. The transition from the small home industry with a few paying guests has been too rapid for adjustment to large scale method and standards. The attention of the hotel management, so far, has been directed toward standards of service to the public. It has only begun to think of standardization of conditions of employment for workers. It is perhaps the most backward and unregulated of industries from the point of view of wages, hours and living conditions, and comparable only with domestic service. It is one of the few industries which continues to house its employees as a part of the wage payment. It is one of the few industries in which tipping or the giving of gratuities to workers by the public persists.

There are inherent in the business certain definite obstacles to standardization of labor conditions. The most serious of these is that it is an almost continuous industry where work is carried on for eighteen of the twenty-four hours with peaks of greater volume throughout the day. The hotel managers, however, have not as yet put their best effort into solving this problem and to working out standardized conditions of employment.

The reason for the investigation

Because for many years it has been aware of the long hours and living-in conditions in hotels, the Consumers’ League of New York undertook a study of the hotel industry in the summer and fall of 1921 to discover the hours, wages, working and living conditions for women workers in the hotels of New York State.

The method used in the investigation

The material used in the report was obtained by the investigators through their personal experience in working in typical women’s jobs in the hotel industry and by applying for work in a number of occupations in hotels and hotel employment offices. The material is necessarily incomplete and uneven though supplemented wherever possible by interviews with workers in the industry, officials and members of labor unions, employment agencies, etc. The report on wages, hours, and living-in conditions is a statement of the facts and conditions found in the hotels covered.

The scope of the investigation

For the purpose of this investigation a hotel was defined, according to the American Travel and Hotel Directory, as “any building or structure of the better class (whose minimum sized bedrooms are at least 50¢ a night) used or maintained in whole or part for the entertainment of the traveling public or persons of temporary residence; with sleeping rooms furnished for hire with or without meals and (in order not to be confused with lodging or rooming house) maintaining an office or lobby register.”

The scope of the investigation was necessarily limited because of the general condition of unemployment in other industries which turned many women to hotel work. The selection of hotels for the study, therefore, depended in a large measure upon the chance availability of jobs for the investigators. An attempt was made, however, to obtain work or apply for work in hotels as representative of the industry as possible. Hotels ranging in size from 25 to 2200 rooms were selected. The commercial hotel, the family apartment type, hotels featuring conventions and social functions—both transient and residential hotels were included. No resort or seasonal hotels were chosen.

It was found that the hotel industry centers in cities according to their size. The cities of New York State were classified according to population into first class cities of over 175,000; second class cities of from 50,000 to 175,000; and third class cities of less than 50,000 population. It proved to be far more difficult to secure employment in second and third class cities than in first class cities. In smaller centers this was in part due to the greater stability of the labor force and in the case of industrial cities to the unemployment situation. In cities of a few controlling industries, which had closed down, the hotel housekeepers invariably answered an inquiry for work with the statement that the works had shut down and so they had long waiting lists for all jobs.

The investigators applied for work in 96 hotels in New York State.

First class cities		47
Buffalo	12
New York and Brooklyn	25
Rochester	10

Second class cities		28
Albany	7
Binghamton	3
Schenectady	4
Syracuse	8
Utica	6

Third class cities		21
Elmira	2
Hudson	2
Ithaca	2
Kingston	2
Newburgh	3
Troy	4
Oswego	2
Poughkeepsie	4
		___
Total		96

Work was secured in sixteen hotels, fourteen of which were in first class cities, one in Rochester, two in Buffalo, and eleven in New York and Brooklyn. One job was secured in Syracuse, a second class city, and one in Troy, a city of the third class.

Occupations Covered

It is impossible to give the exact percentage of women to men employed in hotels. A recent survey has been made, however, by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics of hotels and restaurants in 26 cities. This report shows that 40% of the employees in hotels and restaurants are women.[^[1]] The percentage for hotels alone would undoubtedly be larger because men are usually employed as waiters in the larger restaurants and in restaurants there is no large group of women chambermaids as in hotels.

[1]. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Wages of Hotel and Restaurant Employees. 1919. (Advance Release 486, Sept. 31, 1921.)

Of the women in hotels, 56% are in the housekeeping department; 23% in the kitchen, dining room and pantry departments; and 20% in miscellaneous departments.[^[2]] The miscellaneous departments comprise office employees, laundry workers, elevator, telephone and telegraph operators, seamstresses, wrap checkers and newsstand salesgirls. They have been excluded from this study on the ground that they are not typical of the hotel industry and may be studied under their respective occupations. Since newsstands and checking rooms are usually concessions, the investigators felt they could not be adequately dealt with but should be separately investigated.

More than half of the women workers in hotels are employed in the housekeeping department. 40.2% of the women in hotels are chambermaids, 10% cleaners or bathmaids, 2% linen room girls and 3.8% housekeepers.[^[2]] Housekeepers have been excluded from this study because of the small percentage and the difficulty in securing information. The study of the housekeeping department, therefore, is confined to chambermaids, cleaners, bathmaids and linen room workers. The investigators worked in 14 jobs in the housekeeping department as chambermaid, bathmaid and linen room worker.

[2]. Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia. Wages of Women in Hotels and Restaurants. 1919. P. 10.

In the kitchen, cooks and assistant cooks are excluded on the ground of number. The information in the kitchen, dining room and pantry departments is, therefore, confined to waitresses and pantry workers. Two jobs were obtained in the kitchen as pantry worker. No work could be obtained as a waitress. All information regarding waitresses was secured from interviews with workers.

Labor Recruiting

During the war the hotels of New York City found that advertisements, private fee-charging employment agencies and bulletins posted at the employees’ entrance, were bringing in inadequate returns. The New York City Hotel Men’s Association, therefore, opened its own free employment bureau, which served as a clearing house for all jobs open in hotels belonging to the Association in New York City. One hotel company opened its own employment bureau to recruit workers for the five hotels under its management. This proved to be a temporary expedient only, to be used at a time when the hotels were in need of workers. When unemployment, due to the industrial depression, grew, the free employment bureaus were discontinued. This was at a time when the workers most needed them. The basis for the closing of the employment bureaus was voiced by one employment manager, “We don’t need to do that now; we have a long line at the door every day for every job.”

At present there is a return to the use of the advertisement and private employment agency. The old, unintelligent method of hiring the first worker in line after a casual interview, whether or not more suitable candidates may be available, is again the practice. In all but five of the hotels in which work was applied for the timekeeper and the head of the department interviewed the worker. It is true that some of the larger hotels in New York City under the control of big hotel corporations have developed employment departments. The employment managers have no labor policy, however. They are little more than clerks. They receive calls from the heads of departments and refer workers to them as they apply. No central record is kept. No job specifications have been worked out and no record is kept of the workers who leave. Even where there are employment managers the actual hiring is done by the heads of departments whose attitude is only too often, “These girls won’t stay long anyway, so it doesn’t much matter who is hired.”

The following example illustrates how unintelligently an interview can be carried on by a housekeeper who was apparently an excellent manager of her department in other respects. The bad psychology and entire lack of employment technique in the interview is obvious. The interview took place in a first class hotel of a first class city in New York State. The girl waited for three-quarters of an hour outside the linen room. Finally, the housekeeper, a robust, emphatic person, came up the stairs. The girl took the initiative:

“Are you the housekeeper?”

“Yes,” in a forbidding tone.

“Do you need any chambermaids?” She gave the girl an appraising look. She seemed to suspend judgment temporarily.

“Why, yes,” she replied ungraciously, “I do need a steady girl. Are you a floater?”

“No, I’m not a floater,” was the quick reply suggested to the girl. The housekeeper looked skeptical, but went on.

“Where’ve you worked?”

“—— in Albany.”

“Oh,” and she registered faint satisfaction, “that’s the same management as this hotel,” then, hardening again, “and did you get tired of that?”

“Oh, no,” replied the candidate, quick to get her cue, “I liked it. I had to leave when we moved away from there.” The housekeeper was mollified.

“You live here now?”

“Yes, I’m goin’ to. I ain’t got any people. I come from Lake George,” showing she was a floater after all.

“You sure you ain’t a floater and you’ll come Sundays, every Sunday and take your night watches?” suggesting to the girl that she will expect her to be skipping Sunday and watches. “Well, wages is $10.50 a week, live out, hours 8-3 with night watch every 20th night from 6 to 11 P.M. When can you start?”

“Tomorrow.”

“All right, now don’t go back on me, will you?” implying that the girls usually do.

Then, as an afterthought, “What’s your name?”

“Minnie ——, ma’am.”

“All right, Minnie, 8 o’clock tomorrow. Now don’t you go back on me, mind!”

Getting a job in a hotel

Now that the hotels’ employment agency is no longer open, a girl setting out to look for a job in a New York hotel first looks over the “Help Wanted” column in the New York World. There she may find advertisements such as these:

Wanted:
Chambermaid, with hotel experience, call before 10 A.M. Hotel ——; Live in.

Wanted:
Waitress, young girl, call before 10 A.M. Hotel ——.

Details are seldom given regarding wages or hours. If she is experienced she has a notion as to which are “good houses” so she rates the hotels in her mind and starts out early Monday morning to apply to them for a job.

Failing to find advertisements in the paper—and she does fail very often, for the labor supply in hotels is abundant—she makes the rounds of hotels, tipped off by a friend as to the best places to work. Or she joins the throng which files in and out of the hotel agencies on Sixth Avenue. The agency is usually on the second or third floor of a building with its sign in the doorway on the street floor. Under the sign are daily bulletin boards where the agency posts the “Jobs Open Today.” On the one side are jobs for men, on the other jobs for women. The girl stops to pour over these with a motley crew of women, young and old, trim and slattern, of all nationalities.

“Pantry girl	$40 a month	Live in
Waitress	$30 a month	Live in
Chambermaid	$25 a month	Live in,”

she reads. If she finds anything to interest her, she ascends the several flights of dark stairs leading to the agency offices. She finds the employment agency divided into two parts, the men’s department and the women’s department. Behind a railing at one end is the interviewer of women, seated at a desk, talking to applicants one by one. In front of the railing in groups sit the candidates for jobs. There are neat waitresses, pretty Irish chambermaids, intelligent, mature pantry women, buxom Italian cooks, fat little bathmaids and cleaners, who are beginning to despair of getting a job anywhere. Conversation is animated and loud, often in brogue and broken English. It concerns disputes between housekeepers and maids, the awful hours and food in some hotels, the Irish question, prohibition, and how foreigners are taking girls’ jobs.

Finally the interviewer turns and says, “Come on in. What are you looking for?” and she tells the candidate what jobs she has open and that she must obligate herself to pay the agency 10 per cent of her first month’s salary if she gets a job through it. Then the girl gets a card from the interviewer directing her to a job. The employment office is not careful to conserve the worker’s time or money. It is a commercial institution bent on profit. It sends her out to a hotel which wanted a chambermaid yesterday or early in the morning, without first telephoning to find out if the job is still open. It even “books” her for a job out-of-town with the most meager information regarding conditions in the hotel, although the worker is required to sign a contract to stay for a definite period of time. So she often finds herself, after visiting the agency, with a day lost, carfare lost and nothing gained, or a job secured which she finds it is impossible to keep because of some unknown disadvantages.

The hotel worker reflects, therefore, before going on a job recommended by the agency, deterred also by the 10 per cent fee. She will look around for herself and return here as a last resort. So she goes the round of the individual hotels again. When she reaches a hotel she walks to the rear hunting the employees’ entrance. It is not hard to distinguish. It is indicated by an opening in the sidewalk and a steeply descending flight of iron steps, often circular, leading to the basement or second basement. These are often slippery and dark. They lead into an ill-lighted passage at the bottom, littered with storeroom supplies, old bottles, casks, bags of potatoes, etc. She has not made much progress before she is hailed by the timekeeper from his cage behind the time clock near the door.

“Hey, what do you want,” he calls, “a job?” Sometimes he is scarcely so civil. She states her errand; she wants a job as a chambermaid, a waitress or a pantry girl, as the case may be. Sometimes she meets absolute discouragement from the timekeeper. Sometimes he is more good-natured and directs her to the housekeeper or the steward and shows her the way to the elevator. So she continues along the passage, dodging puddles and dripping pipes.

If she is a chambermaid, she goes to the housekeeper’s office or the linen room. There she sits on a bench outside the door waiting audience along with other applying bathmaids and cleaners,—talking again about how awful it is to work in a hotel. When she does see the housekeeper, she is greeted with a roughly appraising look.

“Hotel experience?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where?” and “how long?”

But it is her appearance which counts, not her experience. If the candidate is young and nice looking, undeformed, and there is a job open, she will get it. If she is older and getting fat, all the experience in the world will do her no good. Her looks demote her to the bathmaid class and she will find it hard to get a job as that. So she is casual in giving her experience and she is casually hired. She doesn’t learn much about the wages and hours or about the food and the room she is to have if she is to live in.

The girl decides to try it out for herself to see if it is “a good house for tips, how much you can pick up from the floor, what the watches are, how hard they work you, and what the grub and rooms are like.” If she doesn’t make out she’ll leave—it doesn’t much matter. She would do something else if she got half a chance—but she’ll stick to this awhile anyway.

Learning the ways of the hotel

During the first few days in the hotel, she is shoved about and utterly lost. Perhaps no one even asks her name for several days. She doesn’t know where her “station” or her “floor” is and how much territory it covers. She doesn’t know where the time clock is, where to get her meal ticket, where meals are served, where the toilets and dressing rooms are, where to get supplies and bed linen. She fumbles about “lost like” until she learns for herself. Sometimes she grows discouraged and leaves in the first few days. Sometimes she finds a friend who shows her around, takes her down to lunch, tells her what the rules are, and introduces her to her friends.

There were, of course, a few exceptions. In several cases rules and regulations were posted in linen closets and pantries and occasionally the housekeeper would put a new worker in charge of another girl to learn the rules. All hotels required the new worker to sign a contract stating that she would obey the rules of the establishment and would allow her baggage to be searched. The contracts seemed meaningless in that in most cases the workers had no way of knowing what the rules and regulations of the hotel were.

The training of new employees

As for learning her job, “You’re experienced, aren’t you? Well, then, you know what to do,” and the housekeeper dismisses all responsibility. The idea that any woman knows how to do chamber work or cleaning is prevalent in the housekeeping department. The girl is left to work alone, then scolded for her mistakes or even discharged without notice. One worker was turned out at 4 o’clock in the afternoon with no money and another girl put in her bed that night because the housekeeper “didn’t like the way she swept.” In a few exceptional cases the housekeeper taught the new girls by the “you watch me” method.

The failure of hotels to train their employees was pointed out by the United States Federal Board of Vocational Education which had been requested by the American Hotel Association to make an investigation of the possibilities for vocational training in the industry. The report points out that the hotel industry has developed so fast from a home industry that managers have not perfected their organization. Department heads have not been instructed that one of their functions is the training of new workers. The report stresses the fact that training must be based on a clear definition of jobs and that jobs have not yet been analyzed by the management. “As hotel men pay more attention to training and promotion of deserving employees, there will be greater inducement to capable young people to enter the business. Such opportunities for training and promotion will also lessen the turnover of labor and consequently lessen the cost of operation.”[^[3]] In New York State there seems little indication that hotels have profited by this report.

[3]. L. S. Hawkins, representing the Federal Board of Vocational Education. Vocational Education in the Hotel Business, A Report to the American Hotel Association of the United States and Canada. P. 10.

Transfers and Promotion

There was no such thing as a transfer or promotion policy in hotels where work was obtained. The nearest approach to it was found in one hotel where in the housekeeping department women were sometimes taken on as bathmaids at $25 a month and later became chambermaids at $28 a month. There their advancement ceased. Some hotels have rules that no chambermaids may be promoted to linen room workers. There was no cooperation between departments in transferring workers from one department to another.