Gambling Device Swindle Is Exposed in the Army and Navy—The Scope of Fraud Is World-Wide.
Gambling Device Swindle Is Exposed in the Army and Navy—The Scope of Fraud Is World-Wide.
There Is No Such Thing As An Honest Gambler—Suicides Are Common—Gambling Kings Go Broke, and Often Die in the Poorhouse—It Is a Hard, Cold, Brutal Road the Gambler Travels—It Ends Badly.
There Is No Such Thing As An Honest Gambler—Suicides Are Common—Gambling Kings Go Broke, and Often Die in the Poorhouse—It Is a Hard, Cold, Brutal Road the Gambler Travels—It Ends Badly.
We do not believe that many young men DELIBERATELY take up the gambler's career. They drift into it through weakness, temptation or accident. If any young man DOES imagine that in the gambler's life he can find more money, less work and more happiness than in honest living and honest work, he is the victim of a dangerous delusion.
A most miserable creature is the gambler. He knows himself, and therefore he hates himself.
No man can gamble and be honest, even with his friends, even with his family. The idea of the gambler is to get from another man what he has not earned from that man, giving nothing in exchange. And when a man spends his time trying to get away the money of others with no return he soon drifts into throwing aside ALL honesty, even the gambler's brand.
The unsuccessful gambler is one of the worst of wrecks. He runs his little course of dissipation, dishonesty, cheating and swindling. He is over-matched and eliminated by the bigger, keener, self-controlled gambler, who eats him up as the big spider eats up the little spider. Hanging around saloons,begging for a little money with which to bet, doing the dirty work of the bigger gamblers—that is the fate of the little gambling cast-off. He is not worth talking about.
THE FOOLISHLY HAPPY LIFE.THE FOOLISHLY HAPPY LIFE.Artist Palenskeherewith forcefully presents the lamentable contrast of the man who delights to play poker when his boon companions call, and his other self when the wife pitifully and hopelessly pleads for money to meet household expenses. The "poker fiend" will lose his week's wages in a night. Sometimes, to boot, he loses money not his own, but he thinks it the part of the "game sport" if he hides his misfortunes behind the mask of a smile. "Be a good loser" is his never-failing motto. In the long run it is the neglected wife and family that are the REAL LOSERS.
THE FOOLISHLY HAPPY LIFE.Artist Palenskeherewith forcefully presents the lamentable contrast of the man who delights to play poker when his boon companions call, and his other self when the wife pitifully and hopelessly pleads for money to meet household expenses. The "poker fiend" will lose his week's wages in a night. Sometimes, to boot, he loses money not his own, but he thinks it the part of the "game sport" if he hides his misfortunes behind the mask of a smile. "Be a good loser" is his never-failing motto. In the long run it is the neglected wife and family that are the REAL LOSERS.
Artist Palenskeherewith forcefully presents the lamentable contrast of the man who delights to play poker when his boon companions call, and his other self when the wife pitifully and hopelessly pleads for money to meet household expenses. The "poker fiend" will lose his week's wages in a night. Sometimes, to boot, he loses money not his own, but he thinks it the part of the "game sport" if he hides his misfortunes behind the mask of a smile. "Be a good loser" is his never-failing motto. In the long run it is the neglected wife and family that are the REAL LOSERS.
Artist Palenskeherewith forcefully presents the lamentable contrast of the man who delights to play poker when his boon companions call, and his other self when the wife pitifully and hopelessly pleads for money to meet household expenses. The "poker fiend" will lose his week's wages in a night. Sometimes, to boot, he loses money not his own, but he thinks it the part of the "game sport" if he hides his misfortunes behind the mask of a smile. "Be a good loser" is his never-failing motto. In the long run it is the neglected wife and family that are the REAL LOSERS.
The gambler's life is simply the life of a criminal. And, like every other successful criminal, the successful gambler has got to work very hard. What the burglar gets, what the pickpocket gets, what the gambler gets, is money painfully accumulated. The successful burglar, or pickpocket, or gambler must work hard and be forever on the alert. He must be remorselessly cruel in taking money from those that cannot stand the loss. He must be indifferent to all sense of decency, for he knows that he is robbing women and children.
The criminal in ANY line, gambler or other, cannot be a self-indulgent man if he is to be successful. The young man who imagines that the gambler's life is a gay and easy one is badly mistaken. If he tries it he will live to envy ANY honest man who has a right to look other men in the face.
The statistics of crime prove beyond all cavil that gambling is the king's highway to fraud and theft. This is not merely because it loosens general morality and in particular saps the rationale of property, but because cheating is inseparably associated with most actual modes of gambling. This does not imply that most persons who bet are actually cheats or thieves; but persons who continue to be cheated or robbed, half conscious of the nature of the operations, are fitting themselves for the other and more profitable part if they are thrown in the way of acquiring a sufficient quantity of evil skill or opportunity. The "honor" of a confirmed gambler, even in high life, is known to be hollow commodity, and where there is less to lose in social esteem even this slender substitute for virtue is absent. What percentage of "men who bet" would refuse to utilize a secret tip of a "scratched" favorite or the contents of an illegally disclosed sporting telegram? Thebarrier between fraud and smartness does not exist for most of them.
(Gamblers cheating at cards)
Serious investigation of the gambling process discloses the fact that pure gambling does not afford any economic basis of livelihood, save in a few cases where, as at the roulette table or in a lottery, those who gamble know and willingly accept the chances against them. And even in the case of the roulette table the profits to the bank come largely from the advantage which a large fund possesses in play against a smaller fund; in the fluctuations of the game the smaller fund which plays against the bank is more than likely at some point in the game to be absorbed so as to disable the player from continuing his play.
If a man with $5,000 were to play "pitch and toss" for $5 gold pieces with a number of men, each of whom carried only $50, he must, if they played long enough, win all their money. So, even where skill and fraud are absent, economic force is a large factor in success.
Since professional gambling in a stock broker, a croupier, a bookmaker, or any other species involves some use of superior knowledge, trickery, or force, which in its effect on the "chance" amounts to "loading" the dice, the non-professional gambler necessarily finds himself a loser on any long series of events. These losses are found, in fact, to be a fruitful cause of crime, especially among the men employed in business where sums of money belonging to the firm are passing through their hands. It is not difficult for a man who constantly has in his possession considerable funds which he has collected for the employer to persuade himself that a temporary use of these funds, which otherwise lie idle, to help him over a brief emergency, is not an act of real dishonesty. He is commonly right in his plea that he had no direct intention to defraud his employer. Heexpected to be able to replace the sum before its withdrawal was discovered. But since legally a person must be presumed to "intend" that which is a natural or reasonable result of his action, an indirect intention to defraud must be ascribed to him. He is aware that his act is criminal as well as illegal in using the firm's money for any private purpose of his own. But in understanding and assessing the quality of guilt involved in such action, two circumstances which extenuate his act, though not the gambling habit which has induced it, must be taken into account. A poor man who frequently bets must sooner or later be cleared out and unable, out of his own resources, to meet his obligations. He is induced to yield to the temptation the more readily for two reasons. First, there is a genuine probability (not so large, however, as he thinks) that he can replace the money before any "harm is done." So long as he does replace it no harm appears to him to have been done; the firm has lost nothing by his action.
This narrower circumstance of extenuation is supported by a broader one. The whole theory of modern commercial enterprise involves using other people's money, getting the advantage of this use for one's self and paying to the owner as little as one can.
A bank or a finance company is intrusted with sums of money belonging to outsiders on condition that when required, or upon agreed notice, they shall be repaid. Any intelligent clerk in such a firm may be well aware that the profits of the firm are earned by a doubly speculative use of this money which belongs to other people; it is employed by the firm in speculative investments which do not essentially differ from betting on the turf, and the cash in hand or other available assets are kept at a minimum on the speculative chance that depositors will not seek to withdraw their money, as they are legally entitled to do. In a firm which thus lives by speculating with otherpeople's money, is it surprising that a clerk should pursue what seems to him substantially the same policy on a smaller scale? It may doubtless be objected that a vital difference exists in the two cases: the investor who puts his money into the hands ofa speculative company does so knowingly, and for some expected profit; the clerk who speculates with the firm's money does so secretly, and no possible gain to the firm balances the chance of loss. But even to this objection it is possible to reply that recent revelations of modern finance show that real knowledge of the use to which money will be put cannot be imputed to the investor in such companies, and that, though some gain may possibly accrue to him, such gain is essentially subsidiary to the prospects of the promoters and managers of these companies.
(Group of gamblers commuting)
It is true that these are not normal types of modern business; they are commonly designated gambling companies, some of them actually criminal in their methods. But they only differ in degree, not in kind, from a large body of modern businesses, whose operations are so highly speculative, their risks so little understood by the investing public, and their profits apportioned with so little regard to the body of shareholders, as fairly to bring them under the same category. In a word, secret gambling with other people's money, on the general line of "heads I win, tails you lose," is so largely prevalent in modern commerce as perceptibly to taint the whole commercial atmosphere. Most of these larger gambling operations are either not illegal or cannot easily be reached by law, whereas the minor delinquencies of fraudulent clerks and other employes are more easily detected and punished.
But living in an atmosphere where secret speculation with other people's money is so rife, where deceit or force plays so large a part in determining profitable coups, it is easy to understand how an employe, whose conduct in most matters is determined by imitation, falls into lax ways of regarding other people's money and comes in an hour of emergency to "borrow" the firm's money. This does not excuse his crime, but it does throw light upon its natural history.
Publicity and education are, of course, the chief instruments for converting illegitimate into legitimate speculation, for changing commercial gambling into commercial foresight. This intelligent movement toward a restoration of discernible order and rationality in business processes, by eliminating "chances" and placing the transfer of property and the earning of industrial gains on a more rational foundation, must, of course, go with other movements of social and industrial reforms which aim simultaneously at the basis of reformation of the economic environment. Every step which places the attainment of property upon a sane rational basis, associating it with proportionate personal productive effort, every step which enables men and women to find orderly interests in work and leisure by gaining opportunities to express themselves in art or play under conditions which stimulate new human wants and supply means of satisfying them, will make for the destruction of gambling.
Two-fifths of all the crimes committed every year are estimated to be attributable to race tracks. Five men have been convicted this year of stealing money from the United States postoffice, and every one of them confessed he lost the money at race tracks. The mania for gambling is growing stronger, and as it grows the defenses of honesty crumble away.
What may be called gambling thieves are not so numerous in Chicago as in some other cities, for the reason that no race tracks are permitted to exist in Cook county. But there are many gambling swindlers in this city. A large proportion of the men in the county jail are there because gambling wrecked morals in them, and hardly a week passes that does not find at least one person before the courts charged with robbery because money was wanted to bet.
This is not all of the injury that gambling does to thecommunity. Because the state's attorney's office and the police have not suppressed gambling the city is full of sharpers who make their living out of men foolish enough to think that they can get rich by betting on horse races, faro or roulette. These sharpers are an organized band of law breakers, preying on society, disorganizing it as far as is possible, their whole existence a menace to decency and order.
The passion for gambling can probably never be eradicated from human nature. But civilization should be able to prevent rogues and rascals from profiting by it in the way usual in Chicago. Professional gamblers—professional swindlers, should be sent to the penitentiary and kept there. There should be some means under the law to send all such to the penitentiary and keep them there.
Race-track gambling has unexpectedly become an issue of importance in New York, and widespread discussion of means to rid the city of its race tracks is taking place.
Discussion, however, is unnecessary. The way to end the plague of betting on races is plain. Let the grand jury indict officials of the Western Union Telegraph Company for complicity in bookmaking and send them to jail. Without gambling race tracks would be deserted. Without the aid of the Western Union there would be no gambling worth mentioning. Strike at the Western Union and the race tracks would go out of existence.
The Western Union Company is the one great encourager of gambling in this country. But for its reports of races, hundreds of thousands of young men would be saved from ruin every year. It is in partnership with sharpers who fleece the foolish. It shares their gains in payment for the use of its wires. The money that flows into its coffers from that source is taken by trickery from the public. The race track swindlers rob a man and hand over a part of their loot to the WesternUnion, because without the Western Union's assistance they could not have robbed him.
Do they think about us at home? We air having such a good time hear a lone.Do they think about us at home? We air having such a good time hear a lone.
Do they think about us at home? We air having such a good time hear a lone.
But for the Western Union Telegraph Company not a single race track would be in operation in the United States, for without the Western Union's aid race tracks would not be profitable.
The way to stop race tracks gambling and drive race courses out of existence is to compel the Western Union to observe the law which forbids just such practices as those of which it is guilty every day. That can be done only by sending a few Western Union officials to jail and keeping them there until their company concludes to dissolve partnership with crooks.
Mere driftwood on a restless wave;A shuttlecock that's tossed by Fate;Year follows year into the grave,Whilst thou dost cry, "Too late! Too late!"A life that's but a wintry day,Whilst chilling storms blow thee about;A tempter thou durst not say nay;A conscience long since put to rout.Who gets by play a loser is;The gambler stakes his very heart;What's prodigally won's not his;Who wagers takes the knave's foul part.Thou shouldst not steal nor covet whatAnother hath by labor earned;No man who hath with wisdom wroughtBut this base sport hath ever spurned.Why haggard thus thy fair, young faceWith vigils, passions, aimed at gain?Is this thy mission in this place—This idleness which brings disdain?Be not a weakling, nor of wax;Let mind be master over thee;See that its shaping of thy actsPrepares thee for eternity!
Mere driftwood on a restless wave;A shuttlecock that's tossed by Fate;Year follows year into the grave,Whilst thou dost cry, "Too late! Too late!"A life that's but a wintry day,Whilst chilling storms blow thee about;A tempter thou durst not say nay;A conscience long since put to rout.Who gets by play a loser is;The gambler stakes his very heart;What's prodigally won's not his;Who wagers takes the knave's foul part.Thou shouldst not steal nor covet whatAnother hath by labor earned;No man who hath with wisdom wroughtBut this base sport hath ever spurned.Why haggard thus thy fair, young faceWith vigils, passions, aimed at gain?Is this thy mission in this place—This idleness which brings disdain?Be not a weakling, nor of wax;Let mind be master over thee;See that its shaping of thy actsPrepares thee for eternity!
Mere driftwood on a restless wave;A shuttlecock that's tossed by Fate;Year follows year into the grave,Whilst thou dost cry, "Too late! Too late!"
A life that's but a wintry day,Whilst chilling storms blow thee about;A tempter thou durst not say nay;A conscience long since put to rout.
Who gets by play a loser is;The gambler stakes his very heart;What's prodigally won's not his;Who wagers takes the knave's foul part.
Thou shouldst not steal nor covet whatAnother hath by labor earned;No man who hath with wisdom wroughtBut this base sport hath ever spurned.
Why haggard thus thy fair, young faceWith vigils, passions, aimed at gain?Is this thy mission in this place—This idleness which brings disdain?
Be not a weakling, nor of wax;Let mind be master over thee;See that its shaping of thy actsPrepares thee for eternity!
Art thou thy brother's keeper?
Most emphatically, yes, if he be not sufficiently strong to refrain from doing that which is injurious to himself and those dependent upon him.
When the law declares against gambling, and advertisement and sale of even "fair" gambling paraphernalia, why is it that the righteous majority, which would not stoop to this form of speculation, sits inertly by, allows crooked devices to be advertised and sold, permits hundreds of men to waste their time and substance, and dozens to blow out their brains as a consequence?
Why do "good" men prate on "personal liberty," which is merely their way of washing their hands of the responsibility for good government.
Does it eradicate the evil to say a man is a free moral agent and need not lose his money gambling unless he wants to; that "virtue is its own reward;" that "honesty is the best policy," or that taking without giving return is a sin?
Would it not be better for this inactive majority of talkers to elect incorruptible men who can do something besides talk—men who would enforce the laws and provide heavy punishments for concerns which make gambling machines in which the unsuspecting have absolutely no chance to win?
Are we going the way of Greece and Rome? Is there a menace in the rapid increase of wealth in the United States? Are we allowing the moral tone of society to sink?
The present tendency is toward speculation, even from childhood. In most cities the child barely able to walk can find slot machines in candy stores and drug stores from which he is made to believe he can get something for nothing. Is this the proper training to give children? Is it right to get something for which no return of money or labor is given? And is it rightto thus lure children when adults know that their pennies more than pay for what they get—premiums and all?
Children in school should be taught to calculate probabilities as a part of their course in elementary arithmetic. Then they would know better than to play slot machines or buy prize packages. And when they grew up they would shun the bookmaker, the lottery, and the roulette wheel.
The ordinary gambler speculates partly because he loves the excitement and thrill of the game, but mainly, he will assure you, as he assures himself, he is buoyed up by the hope of winning. He does not stop to figure out his chances. If he sees a hundred to one shot he will play it, seeing only that by risking a dollar he has a chance to win a hundred. If he had been taught in school to see that really the chances were 200 to 1 against him, and that he was betting a dollar against fifty cents, he would keep his money in his pockets. Of course the man who plays the races knows the odds of the book are against him. He prides himself, however, that he is a wise reader of the "dope sheet," and that can overcome the odds by a superior cunning.
He knows that he can't win on his luck, for this "breaks even" in the long run.
But the man who plays against a machine, if he has taken the elementary course in the law of probabilities, can suffer under no delusions and cannot give himself any reasonable excuse. He is bound to lose. The odds on the machine are against him. And even if they were not, it is entirely likely that the machine would win. An old gambler contends that if a man matched pennies all day every day for a month against a purely mechanical device he would quit a heavy loser. The only way he could keep even would be to start out with "heads" or "tails," and then go away and leave the machine at work, never changing his bet. If he remained to watch the operationhe would, be sure to lose his head and begin to "guess" against the relentless mechanism, and then he would lose.
In the ordinary coin-paying slot machine, the dial shows alternate reds and blacks, interspersed here and there with quarters, halves and, perhaps, $1. The player wins 5 cents on the black, 20 cents on the quarter, 45 cents on the half, and 95 cents on the dollar. The dials differ, but suppose there are thirty reds, thirty blacks, ten quarters, five halves, and one dollar. The chances are against you, then, on the red or black, 46 to 30; on the quarter, 66 to 24; on the half, 71 to 24, and on the dollar, 75 to 19. Most players, it is said, prefer the larger sums as a hazard in the coin machines, although the probabilities against them are much greater. Again, they are dazzled by the chance of winning a large sum at a small risk. Really, they are betting their nickel against 3 cents on the red or black, and against 2 cents or less on the larger sums.
If the children knew this they would not fool away their money in the machines when they go for a boat ride on the lake, and it is reasonable to suppose that grown men and women would beware of them if they had learned to figure chances when they were in school. In the penny machines in the cigar stores the probabilities are harder to figure. You play a cent in the machine, and if you get two pairs from a revolving pack of cards, always exposing the faces of five, you win a 5-cent cigar. In most of the machines you must get "jacks up or better" in order to win. Any poker player will bet you a chip on any deal that you will not have as good as a pair of trays, and the chances that you will have two pairs as good as jacks up must be at least twenty to one.
Some of the machines consist of wheels of fortune which revolve from the weight of the penny dropped in the slot. In any event the child gets a penny's worth of goods, and there are chances to get two or five cents' worth. Gum machines give analleged cent's worth of gum, with a chance for a coupon, which is good for a nickel's worth without extra charge.
(Men playing slot machine)
How many steps is this apparently harmless form of amusement removed from the deceptive slot machines in cigar stores? And, in turn, how many steps are these cigar machinesremoved from those in the saloons? The boy who wins five cents worth in the candy store will take cigarette tobacco or a cigar, if the dealer be unprincipled. Next he tries for a cigar in a cigar store, and then for a cigar in a saloon. If he is lucky in the last named, he is asked to a friendly game of poker. Beyond asking if it is a pleasure to either lose to or win from a friend, and to express the opinion that even though the game be perfectly square, and there be no rake-off, it still remains true that the time lost, and money spent for drinks and cigars, far outweigh in value any pleasure that may be experienced.
Men who make a business of conducting and playing poker games stop at nothing to get the money. The expenses of running the place, and the free lunches, drinks and cigars dispensed must be paid for by some one, and the proprietor is not in business to lose money. The game in which there is no rake-off cannot possibly be square, and where there is a rake-off the odds against you are prohibitive, if you play fair. With seven men in a game of "draw," three of whom are "house" men, the amount which goes into the "kitty" nightly is usually about equal to the losses of the other cheat who dares not be found out.
Ordinarily the owners and saloonkeepers divide the winnings of all slot machines. In a fair machine the winnings fall into the receptacle A. Most of the money gambled by players found its way into this depository. It did not please the owner of this machine to share his profits equally with the saloonkeeper. The winning player was paid from the nickels which lined a zig-zag chute ending at C. The owner changed this scheme by inserting the secret bag B. Then he cut a hole in the chute at D. and arranged a spring which diverted one out of three nickels into B. As long as thechute was empty below the point of entrance of A the nickels kept on filling the zig-zag runway.
Slot Machine Proves a Fraud.Slot Machine Proves a Fraud.
Slot Machine Proves a Fraud.
When the machine was seized, in the box where all the gains were supposed to be, $60.20 was found. These two sums represented the total proceeds of a day.
Confederates, mirrors, words, signs and hold-outs are used. A player dealing from a stacked deck will inform his confederate how many cards to draw by uttering a sentence containing that number of words. Men lounging behind a player will "tip off" his hand. Cards are marked in a manner imperceptible to the eye of the novice, and sometimes liquid refreshment is spilled on the table in front of the dealer, so that his opposite can read the reflections of the cards as they are dealt face downward across the board. The last-named scheme is used where the table has no covering.
There are many who believe that talks of crookedness at card tables are only sermons by "goody-goodies," who know not whereof they speak. Let the following advertisement, recently sent broadcast over the country by a large concern located in the business center of one of America's largest cities, refute such claims: