Gambling and its Graft.
The Gambler's Fate--The Handbook, Other Games of Chance and Their
Protection--Police Profit--All Gambling Crooked--A Warning.
In the very heart of every man, woman and child is an instinct to risk the
tangible and present for the intangible and the possible future things.
Since the beginning man has played some game of chance in his struggle for
existence. He has counted his own possibilities as against those of his
enemy, he has abided for what seemed the most opportune time and then he
has risked and taken the leap. Often the goddess of Chance has been with
him. More often that strange goddess has risen against him.
The boy risks his marbles against those of his playmate. The girl casts
her jacks against those of her small companion.
It is the desire of risk showing itself in the immature mind.
As civilization went on and reason developed, the game of chance became a
sport which had for its object a lucrative gain in some manner or other.
It became gambling:--the risking of something valuable on the basis that
the risk may prove profitable to the risker.
The pages of history are dotted with evidences of gambling in every age.
Gambling has passed through a million forms. In our present day life it is
looked upon by the general public as a sport.
It is the purpose here not to dissertate on gambling as a moral and
commercial evil alone, but to show that it is nothing today but another
asset of the Vice Trust, stolen out of the not too plethoric pocket of the
sucker public.
It is our purpose to show that a gambling ring, backed by millions of
dollars, headed by powerful men and strengthened by the support of the
members of the Vice Trust, thrives in Chicago, adding one more stain to
her already besmirched municipal escutcheon.
It fattens on those men and women who have already been fleeced by the way
of the social evil and on those who have not fallen victims to that sin,
and whose besetting sin is gambling.
RUIN, PRISON OR DEATH, THE GAMBLER'S END.
Yearly, thousands of young men are hurled to financial ruin, sent or
headed to the penitentiary because of the gambling houses in the city of
Chicago that run full blast with the officers of the law walking blindly
past their open doors.
The gambling vice grasps its victims in a clutch as powerful as the grip
of the drug habit or as unyielding as the toils of immorality.
The gambling combine in Chicago is as strong as the most powerful house of
finance. It is bulwarked by every possible protection. You cannot beat it,
in the long run, no matter what your talents, judgment and experience may
be.
The average man or woman would stand a fair show of winning in the average
gambling game in Chicago were that game "on the square." But it is not;
the entire system is crooked. That is how its profits are enormous.
The thousands of persons who play the handbooks during the day, the poker
games and other forms of the gambling evil at night, have no more choice
of emerging with the "long green" bulging from every pocket than has the
mouse that is caught by the soft-pawed cat in a room and played with until
tired and then killed. There is no escape. Everything is crooked and the
gambling sucker is dubbed the "bleating sheep" the minute he enters where
the chips rattle on the table or where the man with the dirty dollar
smears your name on a chart with a stub pencil.
Each year hundreds of men and women end their blasted lives after they
have emerged from the dens of the gambling lords, robbed of their last
cent and face to face with ruin, disgrace, and punishment.
Each year, men are sent to our state prisons because they dipped their
trembling hands into the gold in their employers' till to make up the
money the gambling fraternity had taken from them.
Each year, hundreds of women see their homes crumble beneath them, stand
with tear-stained eyes and watch their social positions taken from them,
lose the love and protection of their husbands and are turned adrift to
stray into the hell houses we have described, because the gambling germ
was imbedded and flourished in their blood and drove them on to unnameable
ruin.
There is no way of estimating the evils consequent on the vice of gambling
as it exists in Chicago today.
A GAMBLER'S END.
As a specific instance of the destructive power of the gambling combine a
Chicagoan recently committed suicide after dissipating a fortune in
flirting with the goddess of Chance.
In his pockets, stained with blood from the bullet wound through which his
life had ebbed away, was the following note:
"Several persons have the right dope on the dive, gamblers and the police.
They let a victim go there until they get all and then they blackball him.
Why not destroy these vicious people and close the dives and save people
from committing suicide?
"This is the raving of a dying and ruined man but I know what I am doing
just the same."
Do the police dare tamper with these men flaunting their violations of the
law in their faces?
Even if they desired they could not do them harm. The gambling kings are
in direct alliance with members of the Directorate of Ten of the Vice
Trust. They turn over to it fifty per cent of their enormous income for
the privilege of making the other fifty per cent.
Even in the face of a rigid and apparently sincere recent crusade against
the unholy combine between police and gamblers, gambling continued to
carry on its trade within a stone's throw of the City Hall and underneath
the shadows of certain big police stations.
The gambling kings are even more avaricious and selfish in their wealthy
combine than are the members of the combine living off the social sin.
A POWER SUPREME.
No one dares attempt to come into the chosen circle unless by direct
consent of the big lords, and after he has sworn abject allegiance to the
gambling chiefs. He must show the proper spirit by yielding up a large per
cent of profit. If this is not forthcoming, the police suddenly and
mysteriously awaken to the fact that the unfortunate man is running a
gambling establishment. He is raided, arrested and put out of business,
while a chosen servant of the fraternity shovels in the golden harvest
from the suckers across the street, drops a few choice coins into the
hands of the police who raided the opposition place and plies his trade in
perfect quiet, comfort and security.
That is the power of the gambling kings. They are the high "lieutenants"
of the Vice Trust. They are given big concessions and extraordinary powers
because they are in position to show their fealty by the payment of
thousands of dollars of tribute weekly.
[Illustration: GOD WORKS MIRACLES TODAY.
Copyrighted 1910 by The Midnight Mission.
Used by permission of owners of copyright.
A hardened heart softened by the appeal of a fellow man.
A drugged conscience awakened by a word picture of men's and women's shame
and degradation.]
The gambling organization is so perfect today that there is no chance to
beat it.
To perfect the system now in vogue it was necessary to do away with all
forms of competition and opposition. This was finally accomplished after
the expenditure of thousands of dollars by the gambling combine in control
today.
CHICAGO'S BOMB WAR.
It was the spirit of competition and the rivalry of factions that led to
the bomb throwing epoch which has left such a deep stain on the history of
Chicago.
Dynamite, gun cotton, nitroglycerine and other dangerous combustibles were
used to whip the enemies into line.
The bomb throwing era which was the talk of the nation, was nothing more
than the outward expression of the gamblers' hate. The bombs thrown were
the means of eliminating the competitor and bringing the enemies into the
ranks of the favored as mere slaves.
In three years, fifty bombs were hurled by gamblers in the city of
Chicago. A million dollars' worth of property was destroyed, men were
maimed and families broken up in this terrible war. The first bombs were
directed against the men in command of the gambling forces. These men then
realizing the power of the dynamiters, employed them to destroy the
enemies of the protected organization.
As a result the gambling combine today is based on dynamite and
gunpowder. The police knew who threw the bombs but dared not arrest the
criminals.
Every form of gambling controlled by the gambling combine can be found in
Chicago. The high-priced forms are found in the loop district, the
gambling handbooks are found everywhere, and the cheap forms can be met
with in any part of the big city.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE GAMBLING COMBINE.
There are nine residents and property holders of Chicago in the
directorate of the gambling fraternity and combine. These men control the
vicious gambling situation today.
These men control one of the largest and most influential systems in the
world. They employ thousands of men to do their bidding and exact
thousands of dollars daily from the pockets of an unwary public.
These men as a combine, are subsidiary to the great Vice Trust. These men
play directly into the hands of the Directorate of Ten which we have shown
as feasting off the well laden tables of prostitution, sin and women. They
derive their terrible and crushing power through the big vice masters.
They divide the profits with them. They pay high protection in order to
operate the thousand and one forms of gambling which they back daily, from
the cheap crap games to the highest and most money yielding games of
bridge or to the most lucrative, whirling roulette wheels.
One of these men controlling this terrible vice is today a member of the
city council making Chicago's laws for righteousness; one is a former
member of the Illinois State legislature; one holds a high place in City
Hall circles, and another is a prominent business man carrying on a
business as a veil to his real and disgraceful profession.
THE HANDBOOK EVIL AND ITS GRAFT.
There exist in Chicago 1,000 handbooks.
A handbook, for the benefit of the unsophisticated reader, is a record
made in a local place of horse races which are being run off at a
distance. As for instance, a cigar store in the loop district makes bets
on races which are being run off at Jacksonville, Florida.
The handbooks are run in saloons, cigar stores, hotels, and on newsstands.
Here the dollars of the sucker patrons are drawn from their pockets as by
magic, turned over to the agents of the gambling trust, never to return.
Clerks, stenographers, office boys, all classes of salaried men and women
are the victims of the handbook habit in Chicago.
Day after day this unseeing public scratches its head of "solid ivory,"
puzzles its brain in desperation and goes out to "beat" the combination
that never has known a real defeat.
Barnum said "there is one sucker born every minute." Truly there is. The
birth statistics of the Chicago sucker, male and female, mostly male, is
greater than the birth rate of innocent children. This is a queer world.
THE WOMAN GAMBLER.
In quiet and refined neighborhoods, in the rear of candy stores and even
dry goods stores, women who are considered spotless by their social
associates drop in daily, nervously look over the "dope sheet," pick their
winner, and hurl their husbands' hard-earned dollars into the yawning
pockets of the gambling combine.
THE GAMBLING VEINS OF THE COUNTRY.
These thousand handbooks daily furnishing the names of horses running on
every track in the United States, must have some means of acquiring that
important information.
The Vice Trust is never at loss to furnish a medium through which its
graft may be increased.
The members of the Vice Trust looked about for men trained to the fine
arts of separating the innocent and unwary from their dollars, and found
the men who today are the leaders of the gambling combine.
These men incorporated themselves secretly into a powerful
corporation,--the gambling industry, capital unlimited.
The superintendent of the strangest gambling news agency in Chicago is
Mont Tennes, for twenty years associated with the gambling world in one
way or another. Through a news service, which leases telephone and
telegraph wires, this man gathers into his clearing houses and exchanges
in Chicago, the daily news of the race tracks of the world.
This news, once gathered into "headquarters," is sold to every handbook
runner in the city at prices ranging from $12 to $250 a month.
This news is the same to every place in the city to which it is sent by
telephone, or telegraph. The price for that news varies in proportion to
the size of the place receiving the service and the amount of the daily
profits scraped from the skins of the sucker patrons.
This wire service is national, not local. It is the veins and arteries
through which the gambling fluid flows daily to many cities in the
country.
On the circuit, furnishing gambling news, there are twenty-nine cities
that are receiving gambling information daily and paying for it.
In each of these cities, this gambling magnate has an agent selected to
receive his information and to distribute to places in that city demanding
it on the payment of high sums of money.
The agent pays for the right of such dissemination. This man in the
aggregate receives $40,000 a month from the agents in twenty-nine cities
on his circuit who reap vast fortunes from the sending of the gambling
news to the handbooks in their respective territories. The "boss" is not
satisfied with the swollen profit. He demands a certain percentage in the
various cities from the profits of the local men using his service.
THE HANDBOOK PROFIT AND GRAFT.
Sixty thousand "pikers" in Chicago feeding the gambling goddess through
her handbook mouth daily!
Is that figure something to startle you? It is true.
The "piker" plays in small spurts from fifty cents to three dollars a day.
Then the bets soar up the ladder until you reach the rich sucker who
shovels out as much as $500 a day on an average. Bets are paid as high as
$10,000 in one day on downtown handbooks.
One man in State street has maintained a $25,000 a day business for ten
years on an average. This has been actually proven.
There are twenty places downtown where handbooks are maintained that do an
average business of $5,000 a day year in and year out, with men who dream
and plan to beat the unconquerable combine.
Police officials who have consented to talk because they have been
disowned by political masters and a former partner of the present gambling
head declare that $300 is a fair and conservative estimate of the income
from a horde of suckers of each of the 1,000 handbook establishments
daily.
This means $300,000 per day changes hands in the race of men to exercise
their gambling interests.
The betting combinations are so arranged, according to experts, that the
one sucker is pitted against his brother and not against the house.
The placement of money on horse flesh is so arranged that no matter how
the horses run, a profit of at least ten per cent accrues to the
bookmaker. He is never the big loser. In cold cash that means $30,000 a
day to the handbook men of the city.
Few of the races or the racing tips are "on the square." The sucker plays
and attempts to defeat a system which is nothing more than one crooked
scheme within another.
Fifty per cent of that is needed by the handbook men to operate their
places. It is used in the payment of salaries to hirelings, wire service,
rent, telephone service, printing and miscellaneous financial obligations.
The balance or $15,000 is split between two mighty factors. Seven thousand
five hundred dollars are kept by the poolroom combination and an equal sum
is paid, through members of the police force, or other collectors, as
protection money to the great powers of the Vice Trust.
THE POLICE PROFIT.
The local police for their vigilance in steering reformers from the door
of the gambling holes, carrying on fake raids and helping the sucker to
forget the loss of his bankroll by rubbing his injured pocketbook with the
salve of warning to keep away and learn a lesson, must be given their
share. Then the "big fellows" who in the department are the spokesmen for
the Vice combine must dig out their share. Then the remainder,--a large
remainder,--must go back to the Directorate of Ten.
Stop and think how swollen and bloated this figure becomes when
considered from the standpoint of an annuity.
Two million six hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars are paid each
year to the Vice Trust and the big political lords for the right to rob
the general public, prey upon its tempting instinct to dare a chance, and
drive the individual to ruin, starvation and death.
That same amount of money is split up yearly between the handbook
combination and the agents throughout the city.
OTHER FORMS OF GAMBLING AND GRAFT.
The handbook which we have described in its method of operation and its
graft for police protection is the common man's expression of his gambling
instinct.
There are five hundred other temples of the goddess of Chance, in which a
variety of gambling games are played nightly. In some of these places
every form of chance game can be found in full force each night. In
others, a specialty of one kind of game is made.
The principal forms of gambling that flourish today are roulette, poker,
stuss (a Jewish form of poker), fan-tan, faro, whist, craps, black jack
and hearts.
In a Michigan avenue hotel at Twenty-second street a roulette wheel is
spun nightly to the tune of $3,000. Hundreds of men and women crowd into
the stuffy room, filled with smoke and the fumes of beer and wine, and
stake their all on the whirling colors.
The man that plays to break the bank at that place is playing the same
game as the man who starts out to tear the cast-iron bottom out of the
bank of Monte Carlo.
It can't be done.
Behind the whir and hum of that maddening wheel is $50,000 held by the
keepers of the game. Try to break into that treasury with pick, axe or
jimmy and you will be caught, trapped and bled to death.
In a house recently closed because of the objectionable notoriety it had
obtained, the gambling and vice powers are said to have cleaned up over
$100,000 in three months. That place was located in Michigan avenue near
Thirteenth street. All forms of chance were thrown into the gambling pot,
melted and handed out to the "pikers" as so many gold bricks nightly.
In a famous, or rather infamous, whist club in a downtown building, whose
doors open in the face of the offices of several prominent lawyers,
$20,000 a night is cleaned up by the keepers.
There are a dozen similar places in the loop district where the money that
changes hands in one night, averages $10,000. Men acquainted with the
situation declared that $500 a day is a very conservative average of money
changing hands in the various gambling holes in Chicago.
For the 500 places this means an exchange of $250,000 a day.
Oh, will a freshly awakened civic conscience save a demoralized public
from itself, or will the lethargy which is upon Chicago allow the
thousands of young men, men with wives and families, to hurry themselves
on to ruin and to death?
The gambling houses, according to old time gamblers, on all forms of
gambling, make a "rakeoff" of about seven per cent on each dollar cast by
a victim before their greedy eyes.
This means $17,500 a day. Fifty per cent of that or $8,750, is retained by
the gambling house keepers for expenses. The remaining profit goes the
old, old way, one half--$4,375--is split between the gambling under lords
and the gambling kings.
An equal amount, goes to the Vice Trust for the protection received from
the police.
GAMBLING IN CONCLUSION--ITS CROOKED CHARACTER.
So greedy and avaricious are the big chiefs of the gambling fraternity and
the members of the Vice Trust that after all is said and done, there is
little left for the game keeper.
As a result even the little sporting instinct he may have is sacrificed
and he becomes crooked in every dealing he has with the paying public.
"Ninety-eight per cent of the gambling games in Chicago today are
crooked," declared a well-known gambler. "There is no money in the
profession unless the public can be hoodwinked."
Science, electricity, hypnotism, sleight of hand, or other means are used
to deceive the player.
Unless you can note the swift touch of the gambler's foot on the electric
button, which drops the little ball into the red hole when you bet on the
black, you face ruin every time you face the roulette wheel.
Can you see the invisible hand that is doping the racetrack sheet? If you
cannot, stay away from the handbook or be prepared to look into the dark
and murky waters of the river as a final hiding place of shame.
Do you think the friendly game of poker is on "the square"? If you do you
are mistaken. The house has two men, professional sharks, fishing for your
money. They are out to get it and they will succeed. They will whip-saw
you back and forth until they exhaust you and tire your alertness. Then
they will crucify you on the cross of your own cupidity and zeal to make a
millionaire's fortune in a night on the income of a counter clerk.
The game has not been beaten. That is why the gambling combine is strong.
That is why it has the support of the Vice Trust. Like the man who hopes
to withstand the temptations of the crime-centers, and as the woman who
ventures is poisoned unto death with the venom of sin, so the man who goes
forth to tempt Fate and win a kiss from the cold lips of Chance, is
enmeshed before he is aware of it and borne onward in the terrible
maelstrom which hurls him into the bottomless pit of infamy and shame.
The gambling curse is a terrible one. Its stigma burns on the cheek of its
victims forever. Scarcely any hope can be held out to the man who is
trapped by its subtle lure.
To those young men and young women of the city and the country, we write
this warning. We have shown that you "cannot beat the game," no matter how
intelligently you try.
The Vice Trust has never known defeat. It will not know defeat in this
enormous source of revenue pouring into its coffers annually from the
favored, police-protected, bomb-throwing, life-destroying Gambling
Combine.
[Illustration: IF HOLDUPS INCREASE.
By Courtesy of The Chicago Daily News.
STEPPING OUT TO POST A LETTER
May take the form of an armed sortie.]