<Begin Segment 24>

ET: See, my reason for joining was to learn how you could make money running a hotel. I never did learn what I should have learned because in order to make money you got to raise the rent. In my case I hardly ever raised the rent and that was a mistake.

TH: You know the times were such too and to raise rent you had to get everybody else to raise the rent. If somebody stayed low, you can't compete.

YM: Especially around '28 to '34, '35, you couldn't raise the rent.

TH: Yeah, after the '30s. During the '30s into... around the '40s it was impossible like you said.

ET: Was it 2 bits a night?

YM: Two bits? 20 cents.

TH: It was $6 a month at the most, I remember. When I registered for the office of price administration, right before the war they start rent control, I think it was.

DG: Well, Yoshito Fujii says it was 45 cents to 75 cents?

YM: A day?

DG: Including meals.

TH: Meals, yeah. It's possible. I'm sure it was.

ET: I think they used to have signs up "25 cents a night."

TH: Some places 20 cents. Well, during the Depression I think Ace Hotel on Second Avenue, that's the one Higano's ran, I don't know what kind of setup they had, but it was 10 cents a bed. So they must have had beds lined up like a dormitory. They had a great big sign on the wall "10 cents a bed."

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.