History
In 1875, ''A free lunch-counter is a great leveler of classes, and when a man takes up a position before one of them he must give up all hope of appearing either dignified or consequential. In New-Orleans all classes of the people can be seen partaking of these free meals and pushing and scrambling to be helped a second time. t one saloonsix men were engaged in preparing drinks for the crowd that stood in front of the counter. I noticed that the price charged for every kind ofThe repast included "immense dishes of butter," "large baskets of bread," "a monster silver boiler filled with a most excellentliquor Liquor (or a spirit) is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit drink, distilled beverage or ha ...was fifteen cents, punches and cobblers costing no more than a glass ofale Ale is a type of beer brewed using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet, full-bodied and fruity taste. Historically, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to bal ....
Free-lunch fiend
The nearly indigent "free-lunch fiend" was a recognized social type. An 1872 ''New York Times'' story about "loafers and free-lunch men" who " toil not, neither do they spin, yet they 'get along,'" visiting saloons, trying to bum drinks from strangers; "should this inexplicable lunch-fiend not happen to be called to drink, he devours whatever he can, and, while the bartender is occupied, tries to escape unnoticed." In American saloon bars from the late 19th century until Prohibition,came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than aA 1919 novel compared a war zone to the free lunch experience by saying "the shells and shrapnels was flyin round and over our heads thicker than hungryrupee Rupee is the common name for the currencies of India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Africa, ...a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Controversies
TheIn the cities, there are prominent rooms on fashionable streets that hold out the sign "Free Lunch." Does it mean that some hilanthropistnbsp;... has gone systematically to work setting out tables ... placing about them a score of the most beautiful and winning young ladies ... hiring a band of music? Ah, no! ... there are men who do all this in order to hide the main feature of their peculiar institution. Out of sight is a well-filled bar, which is the centre about which all these other things are made to revolve. All the gathered fascinations and attractions are as so many baits to allure men into the net that is spread for them. Thus consummate art plies the work of death, and virtue, reputation, and every good are sacrificed at these worse thanA number of writers, however, suggest that the free lunch actually performed a social relief function. Reformer William T. Stead commented that in winter in 1894 the suffering of the poor in need of foodMoloch Moloch (; ''Mōleḵ'' or הַמֹּלֶךְ ''hamMōleḵ''; grc, Μόλοχ, la, Moloch; also Molech or Molek) is a name or a term which appears in the Hebrew Bible several times, primarily in the book of Leviticus. The Bible strongly co ...shrines.
would have been very much greater had it not been for the help given by theHe states that "in many cases the free lunch is really a free lunch," citing an example of a saloon which did not insist on a drink purchase, although commenting that this saloon was "better than its neighbors." Stead cites a newspaper's estimate that the saloon keepers fed 60,000 people a day and that this represented a contribution of about $18,000 a week toward the relief of the destitute in Chicago. In 1896, the New York State legislature passed thelabor unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...to their members and for an agency which, without pretending to be of much account from a charitable point of view, nevertheless fed more hungry people in Chicago than all the other agencies, religious, charitable, and municipal, put together. I refer to the Free Lunch of the saloons. There are from six to seven thousand saloons in Chicago. In one half of these a free lunch is provided every day of the week.''
See also
*References
{{Meals_navbox Drinking culture Restaurant terminology Free meals Lunch Marketing techniques