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The New York State liquor tax law of 1896, also known as the Raines law, was authored by the New York State Senator John Raines and adopted in the New York State Legislature on March 23, 1896."An act in relation to the traffic in liquors, and for the taxation and regulation of the same, and to provide for local option, constituting chapter twenty-nine of the general laws." Chapter 112 of the Laws of 1896, volume 1, pages 45–81, enacted 23 March 1896. It took effect on April 1, 1896, was amended in 1917 and repealed in 1923.
Among other provisions, the Raines law increased the cost of liquor licenses, raised the drinking age from sixteen to eighteen, and prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays except in hotels, as well as in lodging houses with at least 10 rooms that served drinks with complimentary meals.J. Raines. The Raines Liquor-Tax Law, The North American Review, Vol. 162, No. 473 (Apr., 1896), pp. 481-485
Most men worked a six-day week, and Sunday was the only free day for recreation, so the new law was not very popular. Answering the demand, saloon owners quickly found a loophole by adding small slightly furnished rooms, complimentary food and applying for a hotel license since state statutes seemingly allowed that any business was considered a hotel if it had 10 rooms for lodging and served at least sandwiches with its liquor.
The widespread breaking of the law benefited the Tammany Hall machine, since saloon owners had to pay large kickbacks to the police in order to stay open. Morris, Edmund (1979). The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Vol. 1. To 1901. Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 978-0-698-10783-0. Chapter 19.
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 wrote of an altercation in a saloon where a customer attempted to eat a sandwich that the bartender had served just for show; "the police restored the sandwich to the bartender and made no arrests.", p. 224
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," p. 25 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, Susan Lenox: Her Fall And Rise, the protagonist sees "a Raines Law hotel with , indicating that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business.", Project Gutenberg eText #450
To fight the Raines law hotels the so-called Committee of Fourteen was organized in 1905.John P. Peters. Suppression of the "Raines Law Hotels", The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 32, November 1908, p. 558
By 1911, the Committee had successfully lobbied for the shutdown of many of the Raines law hotels.
A bar named the Raines Law Room, at the Williams Hotel in New York City, is named in commemoration of the impact of the law.
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