Old Missoula

“Lambchops For Beefsteak”

Local Report from a Wry Missoulian Reporter

Missoula [Hotel] To Change Hands

Landlord Pierce Hates to Let the Old Hands Go.

Demand That Is Made By Them

Waiters, Cooks, Scullions et al Demand That a Girl Must Be Fired at Once.

While on no pretentious scale that will startle the world as have similar events over like difficulties, today will see a strike, lockout or wholesale resignation – call it what you will – that is likely to cause as much dismay to a large number of Missoula people as have strikes of greater magnitude.

At the Missoula hotel last evening the force of dining room girls and kitchen help signified in a positive manner to Landlord Pierce that unless Sophie Danielson a dining room girl at the hotel, was discharged, their resignations could be considered offered to take effect with the close of the dinner hour tonight.

What objectionable conduct Miss Danielson has displayed was not contained in the protest against her retention at the hotel, but from another source it is learned that other dining room girls – May Dunn and Kate Davis – criticize her tact in freely discussing affairs of hotel employees with outsiders. Merely in sympathy, Chef Ole Holt and George Cooper, second cook, sided with the right of grievance of the complainants and last night signified to Mr. Pierce that the aprons, caps and skillets that knew them well would be at the disposal of new help unless Miss Danielson was discharged.

That there is possible cause to take exception to the snap judgement of the majority in the trouble is shown in the fact that Proprietor Pierce refuses to discharge the alleged cause of trouble, and will consent to the departure of the help he knows to be skilled and regrets to lose, for the reason he considers them in the wrong.

Guests of the hotel await with eagerness a solution of the trouble, many expressing a willingness to accept lamb chops for beefsteak from inexperienced help to aid the cause of the comely and pleasant little woman who refuses to acknowledge that she has done aught to occasion such enmity and harsh treatment.

The article above appeared in The Missoulian on January 15, 1902.

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