Gambling system

“ Bucket-shop and gambling on the tape on the prices quoted on the Stock Exchange is as common in New York as it is in London; but one ingenious method of improving on the bucket-shop was brought to light in the course of this investigation. The disadvantage of the gambling in bonâ fide Stock Exchange securities is that they are often sluggish, and do not go up and down with sufficient rapidity to stimulate the excitement of the gambler. In New York a bogus commission agency established a system of gambling which beat the bucket-shop hollow. ”

“ Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without offering an equivalent in money or time or skill, is either the product of theft or gaming. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come into the same category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, schools and churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same denomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with any instrument, or game, or time, or place, or think the principle depends upon whether you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred shares in Camden and Amboy. ”

“ It remains to say a few words about the press, which is largely responsible for the great evils of gambling, particularly of the professional betting system, under the plea of devotion to sport, which even the Duke of Devonshire seems to consider is being overdone, according to a recent speech made by him in public. ”

“ Another magistrate giving evidence before the same committee, said, “It is a scandal to the Government, thus to excite people to practise the vice of gaming for the purpose of drawing a revenue from their ruin. It is an anomalous proceeding by law to declare gambling infamous; to hunt out petty gamblers in their recesses, and cast them into prison; and by law also to set up the giant gambling of the State Lottery, and encourage persons to resort to it by the most captivating devices which ingenuity uncontrolled by moral rectitude can invent.” ”

“ I assume that no one can say a word in favour of gambling, nor even excuse it. It is no doubt a feeble apology to claim that there are degrees of gambling, that every race-course and every Bourse exhibits a more pernicious and more damaging form of “play” than can be laid to the charge of the Casino. The gambler at Monte Carlo injures no one directly but himself. ”

“ Nowadays, everything insurable can be insured; you can be compensated for accidents; if your plate glass windows are broken, if hail spoils your crops, or if your cattle die; the fidelity of your servants can be guaranteed: in fact, this field of permissible gambling is fully covered—whilst betting on horse racing rears its head unchecked, stock jobbers thrive, bucket shops multiply, and so do their victims. ”

“ It may be bad for the public, this legalized gambling, but all gambling is bad, and certainly state-controlled lotteries are no worse than licensed or unlicensed pool-rooms and bucket shops, winked-at dice-throwing in bar rooms, or crap games on every corner. ”

“ When its operations are diverted into illegitimate channels it becomes a source of incalculable injury to society. As a great market place, it plays an important part in modern civilization; as a gigantic agency for the promotion of gambling in the commodities of the world, it is a snare, a delusion and a curse.
Not all the gaming hells of the country combined afford facilities for gambling equal to those furnished by these organizations. The faro dealer places a limit upon the stakes wagered; upon the floor of ’Change one may bet without limit. ”

“ It is not surprising that a people so intensely speculative, excitable, and eager as the Americans, should be desperately addicted to gambling. Indeed, the spirit of gambling has incessantly pervaded all their operations, political, commercial, and social. ”

“ The whole science of gambling-houses and their gains rests upon three things: the impassibility of the bank; the even results called "drawn games," when half the money goes to the bank; and the notorious bad faith authorized by the government, in refusing to hold or pay the player's stakes except optionally. In a word, the gambling-house, which refuses the game of a rich and cool player, devours the fortune of the foolish and obstinate one, who is carried away by the rapid movement of the machinery of the game. ”

“ So, even where skill and fraud are absent, economic force is a large factor in success.
Since professional gambling in a stockbroker, a croupier, a bookmaker, or any other species, involves some use of superior knowledge, trickery, or force, which in its effect on the “chances” 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 men employed [17] in businesses where sums of money belonging to the firm are passing through their hands. ”

“ We enact and try to enforce laws against all forms of gambling; we claim the right to invade the privacy of homes, even, where card playing for money is an occasional evening's pastime, and the law says that a gambling debt is no debt at all. We even assist the loser in gambling by allowing him to sue and recover his loss, when, as a matter of morals, he is just as guilty as the one who wins; and yet we allow these stock-gambling offices to open on all sides. ”

“ My companion also informed me that no one can recover money lost in gambling, because gambling itself is illegal. But debts of that nature are as secure as any other, especially among professional gamblers, and they are seldom repudiated. ”

“ This last fact is generally recognised: all gamesters denounce betting on “certainties.” Again, both on the turf and the stock exchange chance may be reduced or even eliminated by an actual manipulation of the forces so as to yield a result favourable to the interests of some of those who pose as gamblers. But when the result supposed to rest on chance is known or controlled by any sort of skill, fraud, or force, the case is not one of pure gambling; for though it is a matter of significance that gambling commonly keeps company with cheating, the latter is not gambling. ”

“ Under existing law the illegality of gambling by betting is recognized in the refusal of the courts to enforce debts or contracts incurred under a bet. If the principle were logically carried out, it would afford a safeguard to society which, as yet, moral sentiment appears to have been unable to extend. ”

“ Gaming, as it springs from a principle of our nature, has, in some form, probably existed in every age. We trace it in remote periods and among the most barbarous people. It loses none of its fascinations among a civilized people. On the contrary, the habit of fierce stimulants, the jaded appetite of luxury, and the satiety of wealth, seem to invite the master-excitant. Our land, not apt to be behind in good or evil, is full of gambling in all its forms—the gambling of commerce, the gambling of bets and wagers, and the gambling of games of hazard. ”

“ When the double fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are the more noticeable because exceptions.
V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevitable cause of dishonesty. Robbers have robbers' honor; thieves have thieves' law; and pirates conform to pirates' regulations. But where is there a gambler's code? One law there is, and this is not universal, pay your gambling debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to win—what law is there? What will shut a man out from a gambler's club? ”

“ If the practice is neither a crime nor a trespass, then it is not rightfully subject to public regulation. I have demonstrated to the candid judgment that, of itself, gambling is not essentially wrong. I insist that, at least, in the absence of fraud and chicane, it is neither sinful, nor criminal.223 To gamble with another is not to assault his person or property by main force. To wager or bet upon the laws of chance, deceit aside, is not to kill, maim, rob, or cheat your fellow man; the players freely participate in the hope of gain or for amusement. ”

“ But these baneful institutions and the gambling clubs are fed by the life-blood of the people, whose hard-earned money flows by the thousand retail conduits of street and factory bookmakers to these gambling marts and clearing houses. It is not only where working men and women gather in numbers, but in the home, amongst domestic servants of both sexes, in the shop, the office, on the journey, in educational establishments, even in the Sunday school and the juvenile social club and class, that betting is discovered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The local government put forth no effort to prevent gaming, and numerous rooms were re-opened. Faro and poker enjoyed a steady patronage, which, however, during the racing season they had to divide with an occasional keno game. The gamblers were encouraged, and openly predicted that gaming was again about to become popular. Public opinion, however, spurred by the perpetration of several embezzlements and minor crimes which were traceable to gambling, brought about a change. ”

“ These peripatetic sporting men are adepts at all card games and thoroughly versed in every fraudulent device. They combine the arts of the card sharp and the confidence man. For them honor is a by-word and virtue a mockery. They are destitute alike of conscience and of pity, and ill fares the luckless wight who falls a victim to their blandishments.
Hitherto, except in a few comparatively isolated localities, legislation has proved powerless to repress gambling in the United States. ”

“ Being a stranger in the town, I went into almost all the houses, and found them playing, in some with dice, and in some with balls, at the different games, the names of all of which I do not know: but gambling was going on to this extent, and no check to it, whatever, was put by the local authorities. At the same time, upon the race course, the thimble men were in hundreds, with their tables, as well as by the roadsides on every approach to Doncaster, playing, and cheating the people out of their money, as fast as they could induce them to play. ”

“ This enthusiastic laudation of the game is all very well, but the naked facts remain, that whatever argument may be advanced against any form of gambling, may be urged with equal force against poker; and that this game sanctioned as it practically is, by the countenance of the reputable men who never set foot within a gaming house, has done more to weaken the moral sense of the country at large as to the general question of gambling than any other single agency. ”

“ It may also strike them that the gambling laws may be reasonably amended in such a way as to make betting profitable to the State, as it is now in almost every other country in Europe, as well as in the Colonies, and at the same time to do away with the evil and temptation which besets the working man in what is termed street betting.
To abolish betting altogether, as some faddists would have you attempt, is known by all practical people to be impossible. ”

“ The gambler avoids, as a rule, the named illegal games and turns to others. Blackstone remarks upon his infinite shifts and the varieties of his expedients, so that to pass laws especially applying to some games only merely drives him into other courses.
The true principle is that no game in itself is illegal, but that the gambling upon it may be. While the present laws make special regulations and enforce specific penalties upon certain games, others which may easily be as noxious cannot be dealt with. ”

“ Do not begin gaming as a relaxation, for it will soon become a business. Avoid pool-rooms, race-courses, faro banks, cockfights, policy shops, lotteries, raffles, betting 624of every form. All such things are perilous. Where one grows rich, one hundred grow poor, and the one who wins is poorest of all. No man is as pitiably poor as the man who has money won by gambling. This form of evil doing will tempt you everywhere, on rail train and steamboat, in hotels, clubs and barber shops ”

“ Its public use may have been put down, but in private houses and in clubs the roulette-table has multiplied its numbers. Here again, in connection with gaming-machines, corruption has spread and gone lower down. The automatic machines, at first used for the sale of sweetmeats, have been altered so as to be made the vehicles of gambling amongst the poorer classes, and especially children. They have already done irretrievable harm. ”

“ His gambling was a very trifle as far as money went: an affair of all but life and death as far as principle was concerned. There is nothing like the amount of in-door gambling that there used to be; but there is no great improvement in taking it to the downs and the open air, and making it librate on the muscles of horses instead of on the spinning power of a top or the turning up of cards. And whoever gambles, whether at rouge-et-noir or at Fly-away versus Staywell, will find that the laws of gambling are, like those of the universe, unalterable. ”