Work of Art by Sinclair Lewis

For weeks they had been holding acrimonious conferences, but it was in December, 1927, some six months after the opening of the Inn, that Pye and Charian told their partners, Myron and T. J. Dingle, what changes they were going to make in the management, to 'save' the place. and they had an excess of stock, to give them control. It was so peaceful-sounding a conference: the four men sitting in tilted chairs about Myron's desk, Pye's voice light and cheerful, Dingle polite and wary, Myron and Charian speaking slowly, as though nothing in particular was afoot--as, indeed, there was nothing, save perhaps as regarded Myron, and for him only the ruin of everything he had planned in his forty-seven years of life.

They would, announced Dick Pye, lower rates to six-to-eight dollars a day. To make it possible, they would consciously cheapen food and service; discharging Gritzmeier, with Clark Cleaver, and a certain number of chambermaids, waiters, bell-boys. The skilled floor-waiters would be replaced by ordinary tray-toters. The number of rooms served by each chambermaid would be increased from ten to fourteen, with a proportionate lessening in the dusting, sweeping, check of furnishings.