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 new law did not come out of nowhere. Republican reformers, many of them based far upstate in Albany, had been trying for years to curb public drunkenness. They were also frustrated about New York City’s lax enforcement of so-called Sabbath laws, which included a ban on Sunday boozing. New York Republicans spoke for a constituency largely comprised of rural and small-town churchgoers. But the party had also gained a foothold in Democratic New York City, where a 37-year-old firebrand named Theodore Roosevelt had been pushing a law-and-order agenda as president of the city’s newly organized police commission. Roosevelt, a supporter of the Raines Law, predicted that it would “solve whatever remained of the problem of Sunday closing.”
In his crackdown on vice in New York, Theodore Roosevelt supported the Raines Law. MPI/GETTY IMAGES
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.
The Raines Law took effect on April 1, 1896. Progressives scored its first weekend in action a bone-dry success. Bars closed Saturday at midnight; the liquor flow on Sunday slowed to a trickle. RAINES MAKES A THIRST, a New York World headline quipped. But while the teetotalers celebrated over lemonade, plenty of booze-deprived New Yorkers were fuming.
It’s no longer free, but McSorley’s still serves its famed meal of cheese, crackers, and raw onion. ENDYMION120/CC BY 2.0
Behind this lifestyle tug-of-war lay a cultural conflict of national proportions. Those in favor of the Sunday ban, generally middle-class and Protestant, saw it as a cornerstone of social improvement. For those against, including the city’s tide of German and Irish immigrants, it was an act of repression—an especially spiteful one because it limited how the average laborer could enjoy himself on his one day off. The Sunday ban was not popular, to say the least, among the city’s Jews, who’d already observed their Sabbath the day before.
Opponents pointed out that existing Sabbath drinking laws were hypocritical anyway. An explicit loophole had been written into the law itself: it allowed lodging houses with ten rooms or more to serve guests drinks with meals seven days a week. Not incidentally, wealthy New Yorkers tended to dine out at the city’s ritzy hotel restaurants on Sundays, the usual day off for live-in servants.
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.
An idyllic scene of a New York bar, pre-Raines law. PUBLIC DOMAIN
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.
On this 1899 map of Broadway, Raines hotels are marked with an “R.” PUBLIC DOMAIN
The state government ratified a set of clarifying amendments a year later. The free-for-all atmosphere faded, albeit slowly. Still, for years following the passage of the Raines Law, a general state of confusion and case-by-case dealings reigned. Following a wave of enforcement in 1902, hotel proprietors arrived at a creative solution: charging a premium for the obligatory sandwich. The Waldorf-Astoria went the classy route, offering unwanted meat patties instead, but the result was the same: a 50- or 100-percent markup to each drink ordered. The police seem to have appreciated the clarity of this arrangement. As long as Sunday drinking remained “an expensive luxury,” the Times suggested, its excesses would be tolerated by the average upstanding citizen. And for many a Sunday drinker, even some of the poorer ones, the inflated tab was preferable to risking arrest in an illicit backroom. Raines himself saw this as “the only compromise that is possible in New York.”
The Raines Law tussle continued well into the 20th century. The New York Supreme Court ruled in 1907 that a Sunday meal must be ordered and delivered in “good faith” for the accompanying drinks to be legal. Under pressure, brewers started refusing to supply Raines hotels. A new state excise law in 1917 contained a minimum-room requirement that effectively prevented the opening of new ones.
But the Raines Law debacle was merely a prelude for what was to come. New York reformers had long allied themselves with the Anti-Saloon League, a civilian organization with Midwestern origins that would morph into one of the most powerful pressure groups in U.S. history. By 1919, the efforts of the ASL made nationwide Prohibition the law of the land, putting an end to such quaint half-measures as the Raines sandwich and replacing the Raines hotel with the speakeasy.
Feast of St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions Month of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus Dear Family of the Archdiocese of New York, While it is always difficult to be the bearer of bad news, you have told us, time and again, that you would like to hear such news directly from us. That is why I write to share the sad news that 20 of our beloved Catholic schools will not be reopening this September due to a substantial decline in enrollment in many of our schools brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. A more positive development will see three of our schools up in Orange County merge into one, stronger, more robust school community. (You can find a press release here.) Like so many families, businesses, and institutions around the world, the schools which will not be reopening are victims of the fall-out of the coronavirus. Despite $40 million in annual subsidy the archdiocese provides to our Catholic schools, our generous scholarship programs, and tuition kept as low as possible, many families, having already experienced their own loss of income, felt unable to plan ahead and re-register their students for the 2020-2021 school year. Add to that months of unopened churches and the resulting loss of parish funds which traditionally help support the schools, and it became clear that these schools, despite heroic efforts to save them, would not be able to reopen this September. Closing a school is something we never want to do. We all love these kids, and the moms and dads who work so hard to send them to our schools. Our educators, including your local principal and teachers, devote their lives to educating your children. That is why I am very grateful to our pastors and principals who are all on board in finding schools nearby where the affected families may continue their Catholic education. We are all committed to carrying on the 200-year legacy of Catholic education in New York. This news will be particularly difficult for those families who had to change schools last year and were just settling in at their new schools. To all of you, especially, we understand the pain this causes, and we will work tirelessly to help you find your next school. Some will understandably say that this announcement came late, considering school has been out for a couple weeks. While there’s never a good moment for news like this, we do regret the need for the unconventional timing. We could not have anticipated the effects of the coronavirus, and when it became apparent that some schools were in trouble, our team, led by Michael Deegan, Superintendent of Schools, and Susan George, Director of the Inner City Scholarship Fund, worked non-stop attempting to increase enrollment and get some of these wonderful schools off the list so they could reopen in the fall. I am pleased to say that, through their efforts, a number of schools originally thought to be in trouble will be able to remain open this September. But, Catholic schools will always be “the little guy.” Our schools will never enjoy the fiscal muscle enjoyed by government schools, which are provided billions of tax dollars. I am very concerned that if our elected officials in Washington don’t do the right thing and provide more assistance for our schools in the HEROES Act now making its way through Congress, we may be back here again in a few months shuttering even more of our schools. I hope you will join me in letting our elected officials know we are watching. I promise you, when these same politicians call me asking for answers about why these schools are not reopening, I’ll be ready with my own inquiry as to their support – or lack thereof – for this important legislation. Please know that none of the schools that are closing were “failing” schools. Each provided an exceptional academic experience and we owe it to the proud 200-year heritage of Catholic education to carry on. The world needs its next generation of leaders, neighbors and friends. It needs us to turn out adults who learn as children how to live their lives according to the greatest teacher of them all, Jesus Christ. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and please keep all of our school children, parents, teachers, and school administrators in your prayers. Faithfully in Christ,
Timothy Michael Cardinal DolanArchbishop of New York
Goods can come in to supermarkets from the EU through the Republic. The DUP have ensured that from January 2021 there will be an economic united
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, July 8, 2020
While the Assembly engaged in one of its periodic slugfests, this time about Bobby Storey’s funeral, important developments for future business and trade became public.
As usual however, the priority of pillorying Sinn Féin overrode any sense of proportion regarding real priorities.
Last Friday a leaked HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs] document showed that, contrary to repeated assertions by [Pime Minister Boris] Johnson and his sycophants, like the current proconsul here [NI Secretary of State], that there will be documentation required for goods traveling from Britain to The north; they will in fact be treated as exports. Businesses in GB – deal or no deal – seeking to send goods here will have to complete three forms for customs, security and transit. It’s called a ‘Goods Vehicle Movement Service’: all hauliers or owners of freight will need to have the forms completed before loading a ferry or aircraft to the north.
Since last October when Johnson agreed to the Irish Protocol he and his yes men and women have repeatedly said there will be no forms, knowing full well that that’s exactly opposite to what they signed up to. On one of his first proconsular visits the present incumbent, who’s busily dismantling what turns out to be the ‘New Decade Same Approach’ conjob, repeated in exactly the same words as Johnson that there would be no border in the Irish Sea despite everyone knowing the opposite is true.
For eight months the British government has been obfuscating, ignoring the pleas of businesses to provide some details. In the same category is the British government’s response to last week’s revelations, “Our approach, welcomed by businesses…there will be no tariffs for internal UK trade in any circumstances”. Businesses don’t welcome the government’s approach and “no tariffs” dishonestly ignores the documentation which constitutes non-tariff barriers to trade.
There are at least two inescapable facts which follow from last October’s deal which the British government has assiduously denied. First, goods arriving here from GB will be more expensive. Once you add three layers of paperwork, even if they’re amalgamated and electronic, it’s going to cost businesses money which they will pass on to sellers and buyers here. Secondly, many GB companies are going to conclude, especially after Covid-19, that they don’t need the extra bother and expense for such a small market and will stop trading and close their outlets here.
Now what is the Executive doing about any of this? In vain does South Down MP Chris Hazzard call for the entire Executive to come up with a coherent plan to deal with this economic crisis. Why does the Executive not even try to press for a deal – already offered by Michel Barnier – to wave through goods for the big supermarkets here, given that 80 per cent of their products come from the EU?
The answer is the DUP. They prevent a coherent response because, like the British government, they are in denial about the damage they have done to business (and agriculture) here. According to Chris Hazzard, Edwin Poots at agriculture is disregarding the work done by DAERA officials to develop essential infrastructure at ports, thereby blocking progress.
What is laughingly known as ‘Economy’ under Diane Dodds, a dyed in the wool Brexiteer, will do everything to support the British government’s headlong rush to the cliff top. Instead, she seems more focused on photo-ops with company managements than taking robust action to protect their prospects.
In short a coherent response is impossible. There is no Executive position. First and deputy first ministers speak to the joint committee overseeing the implementation of the protocol and exhibit diametrically opposed positions, though they won’t tell us what they say, or even what assurances they’ve asked for. Will there be exit declarations required from businesses here sending goods to GB or not?
Still, look on the bright side. Goods can come in to supermarkets from the EU through the Republic. The DUP have ensured that from January 2021 there will be an economic united Ireland.END,
A quick post about some of the Irish Americans who contributed to this nation, and who are featured in our new exhibition here at the Musuem.
The first American general to die in battle was Irish: Dublin-native Richard Montgomery is the first general to have been killed in battle during the American Revolutionary War. Montgomery was killed in the Battle of Quebec during the 1775 invasion of Canada.
Three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were born in Ireland: Three of the eight foreign-born men were natives of Ireland. These Irish patriots of the American Revolution are James Smith, from Northern Ireland; George Taylor, an Irish native and a member of the Committee of Correspondence; and Matthew Thornton, an Irishman who became a member of the Continental Congress in 1776.
An Irishman designed the White House: Irishman James Hoban designed the White House, modeled after an Irish building. The presidential residence is officially twinned with Dublin’s Leinster House.
An Irishman wrote the melody for the Star Spangled Banner: In 1913, on the song’s hundredth anniversary, a scholarly commission was formed to determine conclusively the song’s origins. It finally came to the conclusion that the music most probably originated in Ireland. While the original melody was a London drinking song called “Anacreon in Heaven,” created by John Stafford Smith in 1793, Smith never claimed authorship of the music. Experts on the commission narrowed the anthem’s origins to one of two possible Irish musicians who lived during the 18th century. The first was William McKeague from County Fermanagh, who some believed composed it as the regimental song for the Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers. However, the more likely writer of the famous melody is the greatest composer Ireland ever had – Turlough O’Carolan, the last of the Irish bards. The O’Carolan song regarded as the “ancestor” of the national anthem is his 1723 tune “Bumper Squire Jones,” is in fact metrically identical to Key’s famous song!
1775-1781: The Revolutionary War It is estimated that one-third to one-half of George Washington’s army were Irish born or first-generation, including 1,492 officers and 26 generals, 15 of whom were Irish natives, chief among them Commodore John Barry. Washington is quoted as saying: “When our friendless standards were first unfurled, who were the strangers who first mustered around our staff, and when it reeled in the light, who more brilliantly sustained it than Erin’s generous sons. Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country’s most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation. May the God of Heaven, in His justice and mercy, grant thee more prosperous fortunes, and in His own time, cause the sun of Freedom to shed its benign radiance on the Emerald Isle.”
An Irishman is the “father” of the Navy: John Barry, a native of Co Wexford, is known as the “Father of the American Navy.” He and his crew fought and won the final naval battle.
1879: Unions In 1879, Terence Powderly, a son of Irish immigrants, was elected head of the Knights of Labor, a national association of labor unions. Under his stewardship, the association grew to include more than 700,000 members. Mother Jones, Mary Harris from Cork, toured the country, advocating for workers’ rights – she was called “The Most Dangerous Woman in America.” With the increase in numbers, the unions were better able to facilitate strikes and dramatically improve working conditions for U.S. laborers. At the turn of the twentieth century, Sam Gompers and P.J. McGuire, a second-generation Irish-American, co-founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL). By 1910, nearly half the AFL’s 110 member unions were led by Irish-born or Irish-American men. In 1920, union membership rose to new heights, reaching five million nationwide. In 1955, George Meany, who began as a plumber’s apprentice, became the first head of the merged American Federation of Labor — Congress of Industrial Workers (AFL-CIO), the nation’s largest labor organization. In 1995, John Sweeney, a second-generation Irish-American, was elected president, serving 5 terms.
And of course, millions of anonymous Irish came to this country, fleeing famine, poverty, prejudice, seeking opportunity, and worked with others to build the canals, railways, and cities of their new home. They worked hard, passed on their heritage and culture to their children, and were proud to be Americans.
Happy Independence Day to everyone, especially all the people who come to America seeking a better life.
Three men feast on free lunch in this drawing by Charles Dana Gibson. PUBLIC DOMAINIn This StoryPLACEThe Wishbones of McSorley’s Old Ale HouseDESTINATION GUIDENew York State
