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1837 · THE PRICE OF A BED, SETTLED BY REVOLT
The revolt: The earliest documented contest over the price of a bed in South Bend was won by the guests. The Eagle, the town's house at three dollars, stood at the head of a combination: the keepers of the town's houses organized to raise the rate to three dollars and a half. The patrons answered with a meeting the record itself calls an "Insurrection" — they rented the Collmer building and set up a rival boarding house of their own, and the keepers backed down. The episode survives whole in a hotel keeper's reminiscences printed in the county history: the town's hotel men attempting a cartel, and the town's boarders breaking it by becoming hotel keepers themselves, at the cost of one rented building.
Sources:
- The Hotels & Motels section of this history — Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, Samuel Leeper's hotel reminiscences, read first-hand: the Eagle's three-dollar rate, the keepers' combination at three and a half, the patrons' "Insurrection," the Collmer building rival house, and the keepers' retreat.