CLUBS IN QUEER STREET.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3135, 18 September 1922, Page 2

CLUBS IN QUEER STREET.

(My A. M. Mrice.) It is now a commonplace I hat most dubs—even those of the first magnitude—are finding the utmost difficulty in making ends meet. Annual subscriptions have risen from eight and ten guineas to 12 and 15 guineas; yet even these heroic remedies are still leaving the balance on the wrong side. The reasons for this collapse are several. First, of course, the increased cost of maintenance and .food. In prewar days manv big clubs used to spend! €IO,OOO to £15.000 on their staff. At the end of the war they found themselves involved in double that amount. Then rents have gone up, especially in Pal! Mall and other clubs where Crown leases have recently expired. In two cases alone the annual rental has jumped from C9OO to C3OOO, and m one case the Crown has required the expenditure of £15,000 on the exterior fabric of the clubhouse. A certain percentage of members has disappeared with the increased subscription; more than one club has lost over one hundred members on this ground. Even where a big entrance fee of £3O or £4O had already been paid, its restraining influence has not prevented the retirement of sixty members of one club I know. Undoubtedly extravagance has helped to the disaster. T know one firstrate club where the spirit of economy woke late. Then it was discovered that a half-pound sugar basin heaped up with sugar was included with every tea served. Perhaps two or three lumps were used; perhaps none; but the whole of the sugar left became "a perquisite" of the club steward, and inquiry showed that this had been the custom for over thirty years! Again, in another club, if nothing on the loaded sideboards and tables captured the fancy of a member, the club would send out at once for anything—not an economic method of marketing. Immense quantities of high-priced foods, such as game, salmon, fowls, asparagus, were daily wasted or consumed in the kitchen' " in the interests of economy." The remedies are simpler rationing —not the thirty different dishes now often offered for luncheon. Drastic revision in the contract prices with club caterers is needed. I know a club where the contract, even in pre-war days, was an all-round price of 2s a pound for any fish except salmon. More elasticity in club rules—the veto on smoking in every room on the ground floor is absurd. The modern custom of providing for the entertainmenl of ladies has saved some clubs hv keeping members who would othc-iv w'ise have gone. The high table-money for members (now often Is for lunch and Is (id for dinner, and double that for guests) is a tax which tends to empty tin l coffee-room. The long and short of the whole problem seems to be that the simpler life must he made possible. In the old. old days that was often achieved. But the note of more recent times has been unbridled prodigality and divided responsibilities, and it is through these that so many useful clubs are to he found to-day in Queer street.