Out of Saratoga Springs, N. Y. over the two miles to Saratoga Spa last week swarmed horseowners, trainers, jockeys, stablemen, gamblers, tipsters, touts. In the same direction swarmed Saratoga storekeepers, hotel keepers, boarding house keepers, restaurateurs, druggists, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, servants, socialites, priests, preachers, rabbis. In the same direction sped Governor Herbert Lehman, Mrs. Lehman, George Foster Peabody, many another dignitary.
Altogether about 5,000 people collected at Saratoga Spa. Governor Lehman mounted a platform, formally opened seven new buildings clustered around Saratoga's mineral springs dedicated to the curing of heart diseases, constipation, gout, rheumatism, nervousness and a stack of diseases which have not yet been catalogued.
The seven buildings (with two old bath houses and a new hotel) constitute Saratoga Spa. They cost the State of New York $6,000,000 plus a $3,200,000 loan from RFC. Saratoga Spa is the only establishment of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.* In equipment and luxury it surpasses the German Spas whose regimens of catharsis and bathing it imitates. With only two bathhouses operating last year Saratoga Spa gave 101,449 treatments at $1.25 to $1.75 a bath, $1.50 to $2.00 a colonic irrigation, 1¢ a tumbler of mineral water. With the whole establishment running, Saratogans expect 25,000 visitors to take the Saratoga cure each year and spend some $5,000,000 in the city where heretofore bank accounts fattened only during the August races.
Ten thousand ears cocked toward Governor Lehman's dedication: ". . . Saratoga Spa is not only a place for the chronically ill, but for those who although not afflicted with any organic or functional disorder, still are in need of rest and recuperation from unusual physical or nervous strain."
Ten thousand ears stayed cocked while Pierrepont Burt Noyes read lengthy telegrams. Mr. Noyes, president of Oneida Community Ltd. (silver plate), managed the spending of the last $4,500,000 on Saratoga Spa and is going to remain with the management to give the Spa éclat. Up to now Jews who learned the wisdom of mineral baths in Germany and Austria have been the most numerous and constant users of Saratoga Spa.
Mr. Noyes's most significant telegrams were from Bernard Mannes Baruch (in Paris): "This is a particularly happy day for me as the dream of my father to have a place where the suffering could be healed and made better able to face their daily problem comes true." And "Bernie" Baruch's brother, Dr. Herman Benjamin Baruch, wired: "This indeed is a permanent monument to our dear father . . . Dr. Simon Baruch."