100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Friday, June 21, 1918. Today is the first day of summer. A weather almanac for 1918 predicts that on this day “Warm, sunny temperatures will prevail.”
This morning, a Saratogian reporter walking through Saratoga Springs finds “a resident rapidly throwing bundles of booklets into a roaring stove.” The reporter asks why the man is burning books and gets the following answer:
“I’m throwing these blank, blank (remainder deleted by censor) almanacs into the fire to keep warm. I’d like to throw in the fellow that wrote them, too. Do you blame me?”
Saratoga County is experiencing unseasonably cold nights this week. Yesterday, Corinth and other parts of the county reported frost, at great cost to local bean and potato crops. It’s not quite that bad in the Spa City, but the mercury did drop to 36 degrees overnight.
“Bleak and dreary as winter is, it will have nothing – speaking in the language of the street – on today, in the opinion of those who were compelled to do their day’s work within chilly office buildings.”
“The only difference between winter and summer is that you don’t have to shovel snow in summer,” one such person complains. Increasing clouds and warmer temperatures are forecast for the next 24 hours, with showers possible on Saturday.
The Cure Question
Writing in today’s “People’s Forum” column, Dr. D. C. Moriarta notes that “The state has spent thousands of dollars in conserving mineral waters, and the city as much more to meet the demands of a modern Cure.”
When Moriarta asks “Are we progressing, as we should along the lines of a health resort,” his answer is, “Most assuredly not.”
Why not? The reason, Moriarta contends, is that people at the state and local level are more concerned with profits than with customer service.
“The truth is that Saratogians do not want people here who come in search of health, because their requirements are out of the regular routine; and this applies all along the line, from the cabman who meets them at the station to the boardinghouse keeper, the hotel and restaurant proprietor, and extends to the managements of the bathhouses.”
According to Moriarta, visitors tell doctors that “we have the most wonderful waters to be found anywhere, but the arrangements for taking the ‘Cure’ at Saratoga are impossible, and consequently many of them give up the Cure and leave the city.”
Criticizing the conservation commission’s fiscal conservatism, Moriarta warns that Saratoga Springs will never live up to its potential while “the ambition of our conservation officials is to show earnings for the State instead of the benefits to the invalided public.”
— Kevin Gilbert