Free lunch
A free lunch is the providing of a
The hardships of the
The concept of a free lunch is critiqued in the phrase "no such thing as a free lunch", popularized in part by authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and Milton Friedman.[2]
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. [At one saloon] six 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 of liquor was fifteen cents, punches and cobblers costing no more than a glass of ale.
The repast included "immense dishes of butter", "large baskets of bread", "a monster silver boiler filled with a most excellent
Fiends
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."[3]
In American
The custom was well-developed in
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 a rupee 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.[6]
A 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 hungry bums around a free lunch counter".[7]
Controversies
The temperance movement opposed the free lunch as promoting the consumption of alcohol. An 1874 history of the movement writes:
In the cities, there are prominent rooms on fashionable streets that hold out the sign "Free Lunch." Does it mean that some [philanthropist] ... 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 than Moloch shrines.[8]
A number of writers suggest that the free lunch actually performed a social relief function. Reformer
would have been very much greater had it not been for the help given by the
labor unionsto 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.
He 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.[9]
In 1896, the New York State legislature passed the Raines law which was intended to regulate liquor traffic. Among its many provisions, one forbade the sale of liquor unless accompanied by food; another outlawed the free lunch. In 1897, it was amended to allow free lunches again.[10]
See also
- National School Lunch Act, a 1946 United States federal law
- Oslo breakfast, a free breakfast program for Norwegian school children
References
- ^ a b "Free Lunch in the South: A Custom Peculiar to the Crescent City" (PDF). The New York Times. February 11, 1875. p. 4.
- Edge.org. Retrieved April 25, 2024.
- ^ "The Loafer and Free-Lunch Men;" The New York Times, June 30, 1872, p. 6
- ^ Drinking in America: A History - Search for Consensus: Drinking and the War Against Pluralism, 1860-1920 – Lender, Mark Edward & Martin, James Kirby, The Free Press, New York, 1982
- ^ "Old Things Passing Away," The New York Times, March 5, 1886, p. 2
- ^ Kipling, Rudyard (1930). American Notes. Standard Book Company. (published in book form in 1930, based on essays which appeared in periodicals in 1891)
- ^ Barney Stone (1919). Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie. The Sherwood Company.
- ^ Stebbins, Jane E.; T. A. H. Brown (1874). Fifty Years History of the Temperance Cause: Intemperance the Great National Curse. Hartford, Connecticut: L. Stebbins., p. 133
- ^ Stead, William T. (1894). If Christ Came to Chicago. Laird & Lee., pp. 139–140
- ^ "Revolt in Clubdom; Probability of Passage of Amendments to Raines Law Causes Consternation; Free Lunch to Come Back" The Boston Globe, April 9, 1897, p. 12