In its efforts to meet the needs of the several classes of employees on the Canal Zone the commission established four different kinds of eating places,—a large general hotel, a score of line hotels, Spanish messes, and West Indian laborers' kitchens. At Ancon it built the large Tivoli Hotel costing half a million dollars, for the accommodation of visitors; and of those high-class employees who desired modern hotel facilities. This hotel is the social center of the Canal Zone. Here practically all of the tourists come and stay while on the Isthmus.
During the year 1912 this hotel cleared $53,000 in its operations. The cost of the supplies for the meals served, of which there were 161,000, was approximately 51 cents per meal. The cost of services was approximately 19 cents, making a total of 70 cents per meal. The rates were $3 up to $5.50 a day, employees being given special concessions.
JOHN BURKE
MEAL TIME AT AN I. C. C. KITCHEN
WASHINGTON HOTEL, COLON
MAJOR EUGENE T. WILSON
THE TIVOLI HOTEL, ANCON
The line hotels were, more properly speaking, merely dining-rooms where the American employees were furnished substantial meals for 30 cents each. Outsiders paid 50 cents each for these meals. They were up to a very high standard. Once the late Senator Thomas H. Carter, of Montana, was a member of a Senate committee visiting the Isthmus and he invited the subsistence officer, Maj. Wilson, to come to Washington and show the manager of the Senate restaurant how to prepare a good meal. A year later, after Senator Albert B. Cummins, of Iowa, had eaten one of the lunches at Gatun, he renewed the invitation of Senator Carter, telling Maj. Wilson he was sure that if he were to come Senators would get better meals for their money. At one of the Congressional hearings on the Isthmus Representative T. W. Sims, of Tennessee, asked that the menu of a meal he had eaten at one of these hotels be inserted in the record. Major Wilson inserted the menu for several days instead. The following is the menu at the Cristobal Hotel for January 20, 1912:
Breakfast.—Oranges, sliced bananas, oatmeal, eggs to order, German potatoes, ham or bacon, hot cakes, maple sirup, tea, coffee, cocoa.