Raines law hotel. State statutes allowed that any business was considered a hotel if it had 10 rooms for lodging and served sandwiches with its liquor. Saloons quickly found a loophole by adding small furnished bedrooms and applying for a hotel license. Dozens of "Raines law hotels," often located directly above saloons, opened. 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" (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
1896 United States presidential election in New York average. Bryan, running on a platform of free silver, appealed strongly to Western miners and farmers in the 1896 election, but held little appeal in the Northeastern United States. Consequently, he performed especially weakly for a Democrat in New York, losing every county in the state except for Schoharie County upstate. This included New York City, where McKinley outpolled Bryan by about sixty thousand votes. McKinley would lose New York City to Bryan in their 1900 rematch four years later, and New York City would not vote Republican again until 1920. 1896 United States presidential election in New York The