CHAPTER I

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GAMBLING IN THE NEW WORLD.

It may be questioned whether any other country on the globe affords a more striking illustration of the prevalence and the power of the gambling mania than does the great Republic of the North American Continent. Nor are the reasons far to seek. Hereditary titles of nobility are not recognized by the American constitution. In the general scramble for position and power, wealth counts for more in the United States than in any other land under the blue vaulted dome of Heaven.

At the same time it should not be supposed that an insane desire to accumulate fortunes lies at the root of American gaming. The hard, practical common sense of the average Yankee convinces him that he is not likely to win a competence at the green cloth. A large majority of American gamesters (_i. e._, local, as distinguished from professional) gamble because their brains are in a constant whirl of excitement. Rest has no charms for them; they seek recreation in the substitution of one form of mental stimulant for another. The “operator” on the exchange, whose days are spent in watching the rise and fall of commodities purely speculative, finds the ordinary paths of life too quiet, too monotonous, to elicit more than a passing thought. From the moment when he leaves “the floor” until he returns to it next day, his brain is in a mad whirl of excitement. What more natural than that he should seek relief for an overtaxed mind through exchanging one avenue of activity for another?

The application of these remarks, however, cannot be confined to “stock- jobbers” and manipulators of “corners.” The same spirit pervades all classes of society. This accursed thirst for gold—_sacra auri fames_—enters every American home, as the serpent insinuated his wiles into the Garden of Eden, and destroys at once domestic happiness and individual peace. The mechanic stakes and loses his week’s wages; the clerk risks his month’s salary; the husband and father ventures upon the turn of a card the money which should be devoted to the support of wife and children. Yet, as has been said, this reckless improvidence cannot be ascribed solely to a hope of acquiring rapid gains. The feeling of dissatisfaction with his condition which lurks in the breast of the average American, leads him, insensibly to himself, into all sorts of rash excesses, among which is gambling at cards.

American gambling, however, presents some distinctively characteristic features. In the first place it is mainly conducted on the floor of the exchange, rather than in public gaming rooms. The Stock and Produce Exchanges are sapping the very vitals of the country’s morality. For “stakes” are substituted “margins;” for “winnings” read “profits;” while the designation of “players” is changed into the more euphonious appellation of “speculators.” With these changes in nomenclature, the game is the same in principle; the same in the method of its manipulation; the same in its demoralizing results. Even “suckers” are known, but they are termed “lambs.”

Professional gamblers have not been slow to recognize this fact, nor have they scrupled to avail themselves of it. From this circumstance has sprung into existence the “bucket shops,” those preparatory schools for the penitentiary in which the young, the poor and the unsophisticated are incited to avarice, duplicity, embezzlement and actual theft. The school boy, the artisan and the bootblack read or hear of colossal fortunes, accumulated on the “floors” of commercial exchanges. To operate a “corner” is beyond their means; but the conviction is not slow in forcing itself upon their minds that they may at least follow humbly in the footsteps of men whose faults the public is willing to condone in view of their success. Herein lies the chief danger—to the perpetuity of the Nation—in those marble halls wherein gambling is conducted upon a scale in comparison with which that at Monaco and Monte Carlo is dwarfed into insignificance, and where one man rides triumphantly into wealth and power upon a sea whose bottom is strewn with wrecks.

Yet another form of gambling which prevails in the United States more than in any other civilized nation on the globe is the mania for lottery speculation and particularly for “policy playing,” by which latter term—as is elsewhere more fully explained—is meant betting on the

## particular numbers which will win a prize at any given drawing. These

forms of gaming are confined to neither sex, nor do they know the limitation of age, occupation or social rank. The official list of drawings is scanned with equal solicitude by the leaders of society and the outcasts of the slums; by the reckless young “blood,” who “takes a flyer” by day and leads the german at night and by the decrepted old negro, who risks his last dime upon “4-11-44;” by the veteran and the school-boy, by the philosopher and the proletaire. That the general sentiment of the country as voiced by the exponents of public opinion has uniformly and unhesitatingly condemned the practice is unquestionable. While the vice is peculiarly American, in the number and character of its devotees, it is totally _un_-American in so far as the moral countenance of the Nation is concerned. Minor principalities of Europe have sought to replenish treasuries drained by the extravagance or debauchery of their rulers through the institution and legal authorization of lottery schemes, whose world-wide advertisement might draw to the country English pounds, French Napoleons and American Eagles. It has remained, however, for the State of Louisiana to bring disgrace upon the Republic by accepting, through her law-makers, a direct pecuniary bribe to consummate her public shame. Even the new State of North Dakota with its farmers crying for seed wheat showed the moral courage to resist the fastening into its vitals of the delicate, but deadly tendrils of the octopus which saps the morals of the commonwealth which tolerates its embrace as does its physical prototype the very life blood of the individual victim on which it fastens its fangs. Louisiana prides itself on its cognomen of the “Pelican” State. What a misnomer! While the pelican robs her breast to minister to her young, her mistaken namesake robs her own young to feed the vulture which first whets its appetite on her own offspring and later gorges its distended veins and arteries on the very vital fluid of other States and Territories. Out upon the indifference to public morals which recognizes, in this matter, a mere question of sectional lines. Shame upon the venality which would bring a nation into disrepute before the whole world in order that a purchasable Syndicate of corrupt law-makers might be enriched. The remedy for such a state of public morals is not easy to find. It is idle for any given community to insist that their chosen representatives do not represent the average morals of the district which places the latter in positions of responsibility. And yet the commonwealth of Louisiana would consider its character impugned should the palpable inference be drawn. It remains to be hoped that the legislators of the future may be able to devise some method by which the escutcheon of this great State may be relieved of the shadow which just now dims its brightness. This sort of dissertation, however, is hardly in place in the present connection. Gambling on the exchange and in the bucket-shops is discussed elsewhere. The history of the Louisiana lottery, from its inception, is given in another chapter. Nevertheless in an introduction to the general subject of American gambling, it is impossible to avoid these allusions although they are, perforce, of a somewhat desultory character.

What we are particularly considering in this section of the volume, Part II, is gaming as practiced in the halls, the club room and private houses in the United States. For those who, from poverty or other causes, are unable to gratify their taste for public gambling in rooms devoted to the purpose there is a multiplicity of devices, found upon fair grounds and at various other localities at which large crowds are wont to gather, which offer to the casual gamester an opportunity for gratifying his thirst for excitement at an expense sometimes trifling and sometimes costly.

At the gaming houses proper, the preference is given to what are known as “banking games.” By this term is meant games where the deal never passes from hand to hand, and where all players bet against one central fund, known as the “bank,” which is owned and operated by the proprietors of the resort. Of this class of games, faro, roulette and rouge et noir, are by far the most popular, the star of the former being decidedly in the ascendant. Another game of this description which holds a high place in public favor is keno (a full explanation of which may be found in