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.
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.
[Illustration: THE FOOLISHLY HAPPY LIFE.
ARTIST PALENSKE herewith 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.