… is from page 351 of the late Daniel Boorstin’s indispensable 1973 volume, The Americans: The Democratic Experience:
In the United State, hotels continued to set the pace. As early as 1853, the luxurious Mount Vernon Hotel at Cape May, New Jersey, impressed Americans and amazed travelers from Britain by equipping every room not only with running water but also with a bathtub. By 1877, one medium-priced Boston hotel offered in each of its rooms a wash basin with running hot and cold water. But it was the early twentieth century before the private bathroom became normal for every room in better American hotels.
This historical example highlights yet another way in which ordinary people’s lives are made cleaner by capitalism.
