History

Hotel Association of Worcester County

association · active 1908

Trade body of the county's licensed houses, which bought large advertisements in the Democratic Messenger through February and March 1908 to fight the local-option referendum. Its case was arithmetic: it printed Worcester's and Ocean City's tax bases, the liquor-licence revenue each stood to lose, indictment counts from dry Wicomico to rebut the claim that prohibition cut crime, and the Attorney General's opinion that the Worcester bill would close every drug store in the county. It also printed, over the Mayor and City Council's own words, their estimate that a dry county would cut rental values south of Talbot Street by 60 to 75 per cent. It lost.

In the record (1)

  1. 1920 · 1920-07-06

    In July 1920 the B.C.&A. told the Public Service Commission it meant to stop Ocean City trains Nos. 7 and 8 after 28 August — and the town's three biggest hotels fought it.

    The Cambridge Daily Banner, 6 July 1920, under "B. C. & A. ANSWERS HOTEL MEN — May Stop Ocean City Trains Nos. 7 and 8 After August 28": "The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway, answering Ocean City hotelkeepers' protest to the Public Service Commission, declared it was the intention of the company to discontinue Ocean City trains Nos. 7 and 8 after August 28, unless business warranted a continuance until and including Labor Day. The complaint against the proposed schedule filed by the railroad company was made by the Hotels Hamilton, Plimhimmon and Atlantic, and was to the effect that the proposed plan of not putting on the trains until July 10 and at the same time giving no definite dates as to when they would be discontinued were unsatisfactory answers." This is the retreat, in the open, a year before the Pennsylvania Railroad had to prop the B.C.&A. up to make its first-mortgage payments: a season shortened at both ends, the hotels reduced to arguing at a state commission for the trains that had built their trade, and the railroad answering that it would run them only if the business justified it.

    Atlantic HotelPlimhimmon Hotel / Plim PlazaBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway

    Source · checked 2026-08-06