Raines law

The Raines law was passed on March 23, 1896, by the New York State Legislature. It was nominally a liquor tax, but its intention was to curb the consumption of alcohol by imposing regulations.

Among other provisions, it prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sunday—except in hotels. Most men worked a six-day week, and Sunday was the only full day for drinking at saloons. Under the law, however, hotels were allowed to serve liquor on Sunday, to guests only, provided it was served during a meal, or in the bedrooms of the hotel. [cite web|url=http://timesnewsweekly.com/Archives2005/Jan.-Mar.2005/021005/NewFiles/OURNEIGH.html|title=Reprising Our Niederstein’s Story, Now That It Is A Thing Of The Past|date=2005-02-10|accessdate=2006-11-20|publisher=The Times Newsweekly (Ridgewood, NY)] State statutes allowed that any business was considered a hotel if it had 10 rooms for lodging and served sandwiches with its liquor. Saloons quickly found a loophole by adding small furnished bedrooms and applying for a hotel license. Dozens of "Raines law hotels," often located directly above saloons, [cite book|title=The Long Day: The Story of a New York Working Girl|first=Dorothy|last=Richardson|publisher=The Century Company|year=1905, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC22750136&id=c3nYflCZS1QC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=%22Raines+law+hotel%22#PPA33,M1 p. 33] , "I made my first inventory of that block of Fourteenth Street where I lived. On each corner stood a gaudy saloon, surmounted by a Raines law hotel."] opened.

As a contemporary source put it, "This offered a premium on the transformation of saloons into hotels with bedrooms and led to unlooked-for evils," [cite book|title=Political and Governmental History of the State of New York
first=Ray Burdick|last=Smith|year=1922|publisher=Syracuse Press [http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC08192607&id=hlCb3BCZqvkC&pg=RA25-PA415&lpg=RA25-PA415&as_brr=1 p. 25] ] i.e. an increase in prostitution, as the rooms in many "Raines law hotels" were used mostly by prostitutes and unmarried couples. (In some cases these rooms may not even have been available at all; in a 1917 novel the protagonist sees "a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business." [cite book|title=Susan Lenox: Her Fall And Rise|first=David Graham|last=Phillip|year=1917|publisher=D. Appleton And Co.|location=New York, [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/450/450-8.txt Project Gutenberg eText #450] ] )

Jacob Riis wrote in 1902 of saloon keepers who mocked the law by setting out "brick sandwiches," two pieces of bread with a brick in between, thus fulfilling the legal requirement of serving food. He also writes of altercation in a saloon where a customer attempted to eat a sandwich which the bartender had served just for show; "the police restored the sandwich to the bartender and made no arrests." [cite book|year=1902|title=The Battle with the Slum|first =Jacob A.|last=Riis|publisher=Macmillan, [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0512007888&id=QYlGv3P01swC&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&as_brr=1 p. 224] ]

Such a shabby bar serves as the 1912 setting of the classic play "The Iceman Cometh", by Eugene O'Neill.

References

ee also

*Blue law
*Committee of Fourteen
*Free lunch

External links

* [http://www.godecookery.com/workcafe/workcafe.html The Worker's Cafe]