As the individual hotel has grown, hotel corporations and syndicates have developed. In New York City the largest, most complete hotels, almost without exception, are operated by hotel corporations. Two companies are each managing five of the largest hotels. Another company manages five hotels, two of which are in first class cities of New York State and three in other states. One company manages a group of fifteen smaller family hotels in New York City. Four hotels in four different up-state cities are managed by still another company. These corporation managers have united to form the New York State Hotel Men’s Association and the Hotel Association of New York City for discussion of standards of operation. This exchange of opinion has resulted in the turning of hotel managers’ thoughts to standards and policies in regard to labor, though as yet little of a concrete nature has been accomplished. * * * * * [Sidenote: The labor force in the modern hotel] The labor force required to furnish service in the modern hotel has necessarily increased enormously since the day when the host of the old-time hostel and his family personally cared for the needs of their guests. The following extract from a hotel manager’s pamphlet on the running of big hotels gives some idea of the problems of labor management: “The operation of a single metropolitan hotel is too complex an undertaking to be likened to a gigantic piece of housekeeping. When it comes to running a group of six of the largest hotels in the world ... the performance becomes of colossal size. The idea of employing 510 men just to cook food and another 925 just to wait on table, finding need at the same time to call in an average of 3000 waiters a month to help out on banquets, requiring 380 chambermaids to make beds and so on, must strike one pretty much as indicative of doing business on a wholesale scale.” Hotel managers, however, have been too prone to treat their business as housekeeping on a big scale. The transition from the small home industry with a few paying guests has been too rapid for adjustment to large scale method and standards. The attention of the hotel management, so far, has been directed toward standards of service to the public. It has only begun to think of standardization of conditions of employment for workers. It is perhaps the most backward and unregulated of industries from the point of view of wages, hours and living conditions, and comparable only with domestic service. It is one of the few industries which continues to house its employees as a part of the wage payment. It is one of the few industries in which tipping or the giving of gratuities to workers by the public persists.