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To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich
To Evade Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws, New Yorkers Created the World's Worst Sandwich
Near the end of the 19th century, New Yorkers out for a drink partook in one of the more unusual rituals in the annals of hospitality. When they ordered an ale or whisky, the waiter or bartender would bring it out with a sandwich. Generally speaking, the sandwich was not edible. It was “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese,” wrote the playwright Eugene O’Neill. Other times it was made of rubber. Bar staff would commonly take the sandwich back seconds after it had arrived, pair it with the next beverage order, and whisk it over to another patron’s table. Some sandwiches were kept in circulation for a week or more.
Bar owners insisted on this bizarre charade to avoiding breaking the law—specifically, the excise law of 1896, which restricted how and when drinks could be served in New York State. The so-called Raines Law was a combination of good intentions, unstated prejudices, and unforeseen consequences, among them the comically unsavory Raines sandwich.
[...] The 1896 Raines Law was designed to put dreary watering holes like these out of business. It raised the cost of an annual liquor license to $800, three times what it had cost before and a tenfold increase for beer-only taverns. It stipulated that saloons could not open within 200 feet of a school or church, and raised the drinking age from 16 to 18. In addition, it banned one of the late 19th-century saloon’s most potent enticements: the free lunch. At McSorley’s, for example, cheese, soda bread, and raw onions were on the house. (The 160-year-old bar still sells a tongue-in-cheek version of this today.) Most controversial of all was the law’s renewed assault on Sunday drinking. Its author, Finger Lakes region senator John W. Raines, eliminated the “golden hour” grace period that followed the stroke of midnight on Saturday. His law also forced saloon owners to keep their curtains open on Sunday, making it considerably harder for patrolmen to turn a blind eye.
[...] Intentionally or not, the Raines Law left wiggle room for the rich. But a loophole was a loophole, and Sunday was many a proprietor’s most profitable day of business. By the following weekend, a vanguard of downtown saloon-owners were gleefully testing the law’s limits. A suspicious number of private “clubs” were founded that April, and saloons started handing out membership cards to their regulars. Meanwhile, proprietors converted basements and attic spaces into “rooms,” cut hasty deals with neighboring lodging-houses, and threw tablecloths over pool tables. They also started dishing up the easiest, cheapest, most reusable meal they could get away with: the Raines sandwich.
Law enforcement declared itself satisfied. “I would not say that a cracker is a complete meal in itself, but a sandwich is,” an assistant D.A. in Brooklyn told an assembly of police captains as the first Raines hotels sprouted up. Remarkably, the courts upheld these definitions of “meal” and “guest.” Reformers were understandably flabbergasted. The law itself was sound, Raines complained. It was the police and the courts that had made it laughable. He and his progressive allies had seriously underestimated just how far New Yorkers would go for a drink.
The court decisions were a turning point. With summer approaching, “Raines hotels” sprang up everywhere. By the next year’s election season, there were more than 1,500 of them in New York. Brooklyn, still a separate municipality at this point, went from 13 registered hotels to 800 in six months, and its tally of social clubs grew tenfold.
For the libertines of New York City, Zacks writes, the second half of 1896 was “too good to be true, a drunken daydream.” The hotel carve-out allowed drinks to flow at all hours. There was no obligatory last call, and the city’s liveliest drinking spots now offered cheap beds mere steps away. For Raines and the law’s other architects, this was the most alarming unintended consequence: their efforts to make New Yorkers virtuous had caused a spike in casual sex and prostitution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday June 10 2019, @04:18PM (2 children)
I have to disagree with that statement. Alcohol consumption, while it may have deleterious, medium to long term, effects on an individual, isn't inherently good or bad. What people do when they are *under the influence of alcohol* does present risk of harm. You may think I'm splitting hairs, but there are important differences between imbibing ethanol-based beverages and the irresponsible, violent and just plain stupid acts that many engage in after imbibing such beverages.
Given that (this is anecdotal) something like half of drunk people decide to be violent and/or destructive and make really poor choices while under the influence of alcohol, blaming the alcohol seems like a reasonable idea. However, given the prevalence of alcohol consumption (cf. Ken Burns' fine documentary [pbs.org], for example), blaming the substance is a recipe for failure and disaster.
The Temperance Movement [wikipedia.org] was a decidedly mixed bag, IMHO. While many (especially women) decried the violence and terror thrust upon the families of drunken men (and rightly so), there were many (especially hypocritical "religious" types) who deemed it 'ungodly' and 'sinful', in keeping with the decidedly repressive and conformist ideologies of Puritans, Methodists and others.
Rather than blaming alcohol itself, we should (and to a greater extent these days, we do) make an effort to mitigate the negative impacts of being under the influence of alcohol. Being drunk is no reason to do violence to other people or property. We have laws to address that sort of behavior regardless of alcohol impairment.
One of the really important things we *don't* do, is to provide broad-based access to public/semi-public transportation for those who are impaired by alcohol (or any other substance). In most places, there is little to no access to such transportation, which leads to injury, death and property damage when an impaired person has no choice but to drive while impaired.
This is profoundly stupid. Here's an impromptu and unscientific poll question you might want to ask of people around you: "How many times, after a night out drinking, have you woken up without a recollection of how you got home, even though you drove your car to wherever it was that served you alcohol, and that same car was sitting in your driveway?"
Many Americans who grew up in suburbs/exurbs/rural areas will have had that experience at least once, and likely more than once. A smaller number will tell you that there were dents/damage/blood or hair in their car's grille or other ominous signs, which they cannot remember or explain, after such a night.
Banning alcohol (as you rightly observe) isn't the right solution. However, there are many things we *could* be doing that we aren't. More's the pity.
I'd point out that I rarely (several times a year, perhaps) drink alcohol. What's more, if I never drank alcohol again, it wouldn't be a big deal to me at all. As such, I have no skin in that game. I just think it's more important to address the negative impact of impairment (and the reckless actions of impaired persons) than to blame the substance(s) which causes such impairment.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday June 10 2019, @04:48PM (1 child)
Well, but there's more to it than that. At the time a husband usually had legal control over his wife's money and property. Someone who was a drunken gambler could easily impoverish a woman who could otherwise support herself, or even herself and her family.
So the roots of the temperance movement are multiple. It was the wrong answer, but it was the only one available. Without the support of the wowsers, the women wouldn't have enough votes, so they couldn't just campaign to control their own money and property. Often they didn't even have the vote...which is why the women's movement started in the western states. (Yeah, that needs a more expanded explanation, but enough's enough.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday June 10 2019, @05:01PM
Absolutely. Like I said, many of the women involved in the temperance movement had a lot of good reasons (domestic violence just being the most egregious) to want the men around them to be sober.
Aside from New York and Maine, most states didn't give women the right to control even *their own* (as in those controlled by a women when she married) assets until well into the 20th century. And alcohol had nothing to do with that. Just straight-up, sober as a judge, discrimination
I'd also point out that credit card companies generally required women to have a male co-signer to obtain a credit card until the 1970s. It's been a long and difficult road for women in the US (and elsewhere). Fortunately, we've made some progress, with safe, affordable birth control and 'no-fault' divorce being two important areas. More recently, police treating domestic violence as a crime rather than just "marital issues" to be ignored is important too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr