From The Mirror

(The punctuation and spelling are as they appeared in the original document.)

Equalizing Whites and Black in Restaurants, Saloons & C

July 31, 1872

   The Legislature of the District of Columbia recently passed a “social rights bill,” which went into operation on Saturday. It has reference to restaurants, ice-cream saloons, barber shops, and the like, and is stringent in its terms.
The act requires that keepers shall display conspicuously in their places of business scale of prices to be charge for articles or services, and provides a penalty of not less than $20 nor more than $50 for failure to do so. Any proprietor of any such place of business for refusing to sell to or wait on any respectable, well-behaved person, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude, or refusing under any pretext to serve any well-behaved respectable person in the same room and at the same prices as other well behaved and respectable persons are served, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor or and upon conviction fined $100 and forfeiture of license.
   The dealers have united in a sort of protective association, and in order to prevent their houses from being crowded with negroes they have fixed their tariff of prices as follows, which is posted in a conspicuous place in almost all of saloons.

   “Whiskey, $2 per drink; brandy, $5; gin, $2; ale, $1; all mixed drinks, $5; all bitters, $1."

   The bill of fare is as follows:

   "Steak. $2; chops, $2; ham and eggs, $2; boiled eggs, fried eggs, coffee, tea, bread and butter, $1 each: fish of all kinds, $2; raw tomatoes, 50 cents.

   A liberal deduction made to our regular patrons."