Monday, January 23, 2012

Barring Hotels

Laws, especially the moralistic ones, always get gotten around. In the process, some ingenuity is triggered. Vikram Doctor writes in ET:

When Theodore Roosevelt was police commissioner of New York, he enforced a highly unpopular measure called Raines Law, designed to cut down on drinking by banning the sale of alcohol on Sunday -- the most popular day for drinking.

The one exception was for hotels which could serve alcohol with food or in rooms, and almost at once bars started opening 10 rooms -- the minimum number required -- and turned into hotels. Of course, the bars were not averse to the rooms being used in any way. Very soon a huge boom in prostitution took place. 

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