Guide to Hotel Housekeeping. The average hotel manager is only too prone to complain of the incompetency and the inefficiency of hotel "help." It is true that it is difficult to secure skilled help, for there is no sort of institution that trains men and women for the different kinds of hotel work. Each hotel must train its own help, or obtain them from other hotels. Thus there is no uniform and generally accepted standard of excellence in the different departments of hotel-keeping. A good word should be said in behalf of the Irish-American girls, who constitute a majority of the laundry help, waitresses, and chambermaids in American hotels to-day. With a high regard for honor and rectitude, handicapped by poverty, they find employment, at a very early age, in hotels, and perform menial duties in a manner that is greatly to their credit. The Irish-American girls are not shiftless, remaining in one place for years until they either marry or leave to fill better positions, which is the privilege of every one living under the "Stars and Stripes." Some improve their spare time in study, thereby fitting themselves to become stenographers and bookkeepers. Some adopt the stage as a profession, one instance being that of Clara Morris, who takes delight in telling of the days when she washed silver in a hotel. My chief purpose in writing this book was to place a few guide-posts along the route of hotel housekeepers to warn them against certain errors common to women engaged in the arduous and difficult occupation of keeping house for hotels. If anything that I have set forth herein shall make the work of hotel housekeepers easier, more inviting, or more efficient, thereby contributing to the satisfaction of proprietors and to the comfort of patrons, I shall feel amply repaid for writing this book. Mary E. Palmer.
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