BATH AND BED FOR FIFTEEN CENTS IN MODERN HOTEL

M. Miyaguwa Solves High Cost of Living Problem and Adds "Must Do" Feature to Keep Guests Clean.

Fifteen cents for bed and bath, or --

Twenty-five to 75 cents for room and bath --

Pay your money and take your choice -- but a bath, anyway.

Such is the rule governing the cost of a night's lodging at the new Puget Sound Hotel, Sixth Avenue South and Dearborn Street, probably the most remarkable institution of its kind in the country. The ground floor is a "flop house," to filch a title from the vernacular, while the upper floors are devoted to rooms with snowy beds, clean floors and in some instances call bells and telephones.

The individual who takes this solar plexus wallop at Old High Cost of Living is M. Miyaguwa, a well-known member of the local Japanese colony, who declares he has old H.C. of L. out on a limb with a high wind blowing.

Of course, the feature of the institution is the free yet compulsory shower bath. The building is just a plain five-story brick structure in so far as the outside is concerned, but the casual passerby will notice there are two entrances and two lobbies.

The Dearborn Street entrance is to the "flop" house, but a flop house such as no itinerant ever saw elsewhere in the country. The guest first of all separates himself from three nickels and registers. He is then escorted into a locker room where he is required to disrobe.

Must Do Feature.

Then comes the bath, which Proprietor Miyaguwa explains gravely is a "must do" feature of entertainment Soap is furnished free and hot water is as plentiful as scandal at a sewing bee. When the guest has completed his ablutions -- and not until the attendant is entirely satisfied of their thoroughness -- he is admitted to the sleeping quarters.

The hardened patron of the old-time "flop" house, with its grime and poor ventilation and assortment of smells and sounds and things, gasps with wonder when he is first ushered into the sleeping room. Shining soapily in his birthday suit, he finds himself standing in a little partitioned off space per man as required by city ordinance. Each bed with its mattress and bedding represents an outlay of approximately $40 and is fit to aid in the slumbers of Knight of the Road or Ruler of a Principality.

In building this department of the hotel, Miyaguwa solved the very puzzling problem of what to do with the store buildings occupying the ground floor. He could find no tenants so he frosted the window panes and behind this curtain installed the equipment of his "flop" house.

Miyagawa, in leasing the new building, had to figure on the revenue from his store rooms to pay the rent, as does nearly every other proprietor of such structures, and the bed house, although less than two weeks old, is returning this revenue with interest. The hotel building was erected at a cost of $110,000 by A.V. Williams, well known Seattle real estate man, who has erected nine hotels in the southern section of the city. He has leased the hotel on a ten-year basis.

The upper part of the hotel, or that section above the "flop house," contains 444 rooms. Here the guest has practically every convenience -- not luxuries.

Much the same rules prevail in the hotel proper as in the "flop house." There is a card in each room instructing the guest of presence of two modern, sanitary shower baths on each floor, and also of four stationary laundry tubs, a convenience likewise possessed by the "flop house." Adjoining the shower room of the latter section are two stationary tubs and there every week -- Sunday is wash day -- the lodgers give their clothing the same antiseptic treatment required of themselves. The large furnace and engine room of the hotel is used as a drying room.