The Dallas Daily Herald

At the Largest Hotel.

The other day, says a writer in the Philadelphia News, I wandered through the largest hotel in this country, if not in the world—the Grand Union Hotel of Saratoga. I passed from sub-cellar to cupola, from ice vault to flaming fires, through the vast dining hall, its spacious ball-room, the great parlors, the reception and reading rooms, along the miles of balconies and piazzas, over the velvety lawns to the attached cottages, and in and out of 100 sleeping apartments of which there are 753 under one roof, and 100 more in a building across the narrow side street. Eighteen hundred people have been furnished with sleeping accommodations at one time, and the average number of guests daily during August is 1,100. The corridors are each 2,000 feet long, two-fifths of a mile. The length of the dining room is 280 feet and its width 66, giving ample room for 1,000 diners and their Ethiopian attendants, who number 250. From July 15 to September 1 there are 570 employees. For days together the butcher is paid $500 a day and the grocer half as much more. Think of the outlay. The salaries of over half a regiment of laborers, from the high priced man of affairs, who oversees and directs all, down to the humblest scrubber, who, while we sleep makes hall and balcony and step look spick and span; the orchestra of twenty and the leader of note; the office staff; a half hundred chambermaids and as many scrubwomen; a dozen porters and three times as many bell boys; twelve "boots" and twelve watchmen; three engineers and five plumbers, furniture men, bartenders, gardeners and waiters.

Then the bills for the dining room, gas, insurance, interest on the realty, repairs, wear and tear, refurnishing occasionally, etc.

Know, now, that all this has to be paid for in ten weeks (70 days), for it is only for that period that the great hotels in Saratoga remain open, and three weeks of that time are losing weeks, for the expenses always exceed the income during the early days and the last days. I was permitted to look at the ledgers of this hotel, showing the gross figures of outlay and income for the season of 1885. It was known as one of the dullest years in the history of Saratoga, owing to the country's mourning for General Grant's sickness and death, and in round numbers these are some of the items I saw:

A total of $242,000 for the gross outlay, and the gross income was $325,000, so that $83,000 was the difference between expenditure and receipts. To show the actual profit, however, the interest on capital must be deducted from the last named amount and the capital invested in the property I have been describing cannot be far short of a million dollars.