d
in 1896, and was intended to regulate the sale of alcoholic liquor in
all its phases throughout the State. The grounds for bringing it forward
were that the number of drinking saloons was excessive, that there was
no fixed licensing fee, that too much discretionary power was allowed to
the local commissioner; while, above all, the would-be Puritanic
legislators wished so far as possible to suppress the drinking of
alcoholic liquors on Sunday. To achieve these objects the licensing fee
was raised to four times its usual amount previously to this enactment;
heavy penalties, including the forfeiture of a large surety-bond, were
established, and more surely to prevent Sunday drinking only hotels, not
ordinary drinking bars, were allowed, with many stringent restrictions,
to sell drink on that day. In order that there should be no mistake, it
was set forth in the Act that the hotel must be a real hotel with at
least ten properly furnished bedrooms. The legislators clearly thought
that they had done a fine piece of work. "Seldom," wrote the Committee
of Fourteen, who are by no means out of sympathy with the aims of this
legislation, "has a law intended to regulate one evil resulted in so
aggravated a phase of another evil directly traceable to its
provisions."[212]

In the first place, the passing of this law alarmed the saloon keepers;
they realized that it had them in a very tight grip, and they suspected
that it might be strictly enforced. They came to the conclusion,
therefore, that their best policy would be to accept the law and to
conform themselves to its provisions by converting their drinking bars
into real hotels, with ten properly furnished bedrooms, kitchen, and
dining-room. The immediate result was the preparation of ten thousand
bedrooms, for which there was of course no real demand, and by 1905
there were 1407 certificated hotels in Manhattan and the Bronx alone,
about 1150 of these hotels having probably been created by the Raines
Law.

But something had to be done with all these bedrooms, properly furnished
according to law, for it was necessary to meet the heavy expenses
incurred under the new conditions created by the law. The remedy was
fairly obvious. These bedrooms were excellently adapted to serve as
places of assignation and houses of prostitution. Many hotel proprietors
became practically brothel keepers, the women in some cases becoming
boarders in the hotels; and saloons and hotels have entered