Lottery

“ THE IGUANAS OF HONDURAS
[52] But what is most interesting about the lottery at present is not whether it is or it is not conducted fairly, but that it should exist at all; that its promoters should be willing to drag out such an existence at such a price and in so fallen a state. This becomes all the more remarkable because the men who control the lottery belong to a class which, as a rule, cares for the good opinion of its fellows, and is willing to sacrifice much to retain it. ”

“ What would you say to a fellow who should ask you to take tickets in a lottery where the chances were five thousand to one against you—or rather to take one ticket, and that at the price of all you were worth? ”

“ Everyone “plays the lottery.” The young lady on her way home from church stops to buy a ticket, or at least a “piece” of ticket, as innocently as she would a ribbon; school children enter their classrooms loudly discussing the merits of the various numbers they have chosen; the number of persons losing sleep, or going to sleep on the job, figuring up what they will do with the hundred thousand reis they are always sure of winning is beyond computation. ”

“ At present there are two kinds of lottery in Europe. One is called the Italian or Genoese lotto, or merely the lotto; the other is the common lottery well known in England. Of the former, which has been long proved to be attended with great deception, and must soon be universally acknowledged to be hurtful, I do not mean here to treat, but only of the latter, which at any rate may be honourable or harmless, if we do not take into account the delusion it occasions to credulous and ignorant people, by exciting hopes which have little probability in their favour. ”

“ But he, by a quick change of scene, saw before him his lottery shop in Nunzio Lane, on glowing Friday evenings and anxious Saturday mornings, when the gamblers crowded to the three wickets in his shop, their eyes lighted up by hope, their hands quivering with emotion. He saw again the placards in blue and red letters that incited gamblers to bring more money to the lottery. He saw again the number of advertisements of Cabalists' newspapers and the mottoes: 'So you will see me'; 'It will be your fortune'; 'The people's treasure' ”

“ Quack doctors—a class which formed so peculiar a feature in village life of old—sold medicine at a high price, giving those who purchased it tickets in a lottery purporting to contain silver and other valuable prizes.
The eagerness of the populace grew with the opportunity. The newspapers teemed with proposals; and the rage for gambling reigned uncontrolled. Every ravenous adventurer who could collect a few articles advertised a lottery. Shopkeepers, compelled by the decrease of business, took the hint, and disposed of their goods in lottery. ”

“ On the 31st of August, 1731, a scene was presented which strongly marks the infatuation and ignorance of lottery adventurers. The tickets for the State Lottery were delivered out to the subscribers at the Bank of England; when the crowd becoming so great as to obstruct the clerks, they told them, “We deliver blanks to-day, but to-morrow we shall deliver prizes;” upon which many, who were by no means for blanks, retired, and by this bold stratagem the clerks obtained room to proceed in their business. In this lottery “her majesty presented his royal highness the duke with ten tickets.” ”

“ In the lottery, too, the risks were generally so small that the ticket-buyer alone suffered; whereas now, whole families are often involved in financial ruin, if not in disgrace, by the operations of a father, brother, or near relative. ”

“ A crowd of needy adventurers have hurried to the lottery office, eager to know if fortune has assigned them lucky numbers. Jews, misers, and all sorts of gamblers, including a mob of hardy rogues who have purloined their employers' property to tempt the smiles of the fickle goddess, are darting from the office in dismay. An unlucky female, who has ventured her all, and even risked the means and belongings of others on the chance of winning a prize, has come to inquire her fate. ”

“ The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. ”

“ The Italian’s eminently practical nature makes him utilize his dreams in “playing the lotto,” as the buying of lottery tickets is called. To dream of certain things indicates that you will be lucky and should play. The choice of the number is the chief preoccupation of the hardened lottery player. It is decided by the oddest chance,—the number on a banknote which one has lost and found again, the number of a cab which has brought one home from some delightful festivity. The number must always be associated with something lucky. ”

“ Every peasant, every servant, every beggar plays at the lottery. The vice is national; it is in the blood; it is part of the Neapolitan character. There are a hundred superstitions among the people concerning the lottery. If you meet a white horse you play such and such a number: if you meet a funeral, if you hear a donkey bray, if you see a man with red whiskers—whatever happens, the Neapolitan takes it as an augury of a certain number, and he plays it accordingly.
Some of the priests have great success in foretelling successful numbers. ”

“ The lottery farmer chooses, every day, one out of thirty-four characters of the alphabet as the lucky one for that day. He keeps the secret of his choice to himself, and leaves those people who are of a speculative turn of mind to guess the particular letter he has chosen. Everyone is at liberty to try his luck. The gambler goes to one of the numerous writers of lottery tickets and names a letter. The writer slowly inscribes the letter upon one of the sheets of paper. ”

“ The chief features of a lottery are “procuring through lot or chance, by the investment of a sum of money or something of value, some greater amount of money or thing of greater value. When such are the chief features of any scheme whatever it may be christened, or however it may be guarded or concealed by cunningly devised conditions or screens, it is under the law a lottery” (U.S. v. Wallace, 58, Fed. Rep. 942) . In 1894 and 1897 Congress forbade the importation of lottery tickets or advertisements into the United States. ”

“ Today you approach a gambling-hell by this door, tomorrow the inner passages of the house are mysteriously changed, and it is impossible to track them without being frequently misled; meanwhile the alarm is sounded throughout the building, and very speedily every trace of guilt has disappeared. The lottery is another popular temptation in the quarter. Most of the very numerous wash-houses are said to be private agencies for the sale of lottery tickets. ”

“ Since lotteries have become illegal there have been a great number of judicial decisions defining a lottery. In general, where skill or judgment is to be exercised there is no lottery, the essential element of which is chance or lot. ”

“ The friends of the lottery adduce many arguments in its support. They claim that it is the least objectionable form of gambling; that it is conducted “on the dead square;” that as the larger drawings take place but once a month, and the price of the ticket is low (the usual ticket one-twentieth or one-fortieth costs $1.00) , one can at most lose but $12.00 a year, even if he “plays lottery” every month and invariably loses; that there have been no scandals growing out of the monthly drawings, nor any instance of a man who has sunk his fortune, or resorted to embezzlement to play. ”

“ I stake (or play as they call it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy what numbers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery office, where I purchase the ticket; and it is stated on the ticket itself.
Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident and circumstance is provided for, and has a number against it. For instance, let us stake two carlini—about sevenpence. On our way to the lottery office, we run against a black man. When we get there, we say gravely, "The Diviner." ”

“ To-day the lottery is a widespread, almost national, affair, its tickets not only sold in certain shops but universally hawked in the streets by men, women and children, who gain a penny on every one they sell. ”

“ The lottery being over, till the next drawing, those persons think no more of their effects, provided they are within two or three of the winning numbers; and thus they gamble away almost every thing belonging to them, even to the very clothes on their back. This is so true that it is not, I understand, at all uncommon in Paris, for a Cyprian nymph to send her last robe to the nearest pawnbroker's, in order to have the chance of a prize in the lottery, and to lie in bed till she obtains the means of purchasing another. ”

“ I will undertake to prove before all the mathematicians in Europe that the king is bound to gain one in five in this lottery. That is the secret. You will confess that the reason ought to yield to a mathematical proof?”
“Yes, of course; but how is it that the Castelletto cannot guarantee the Crown a certain gain?”
“Neither the Castelletto nor anybody in the world can guarantee absolutely that the king shall always win. What guarantees us against any suspicion of sharp practice is the drawing once a month, as then the public is sure that the holder of the lottery may lose.” ”

“ I should think it might be sold, with a reasonable profit, at sixpence or eightpence a pound.
Drawing of the Lottery in Guildhall, 1751.
Death of the Lottery.
In the spring, and for three weeks after midsummer, 1826, the lottery-office keepers incessantly plied every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom, and its dependencies, with petitions to make a fortune in “the last lottery that can be drawn.” Men paraded the streets with large printed placards on poles, or pasted on their backs, announcing “All Lotteries End for Ever! ”

“ Lottery tickets are everywhere, in every window, and urchins of all sizes and genders moon about the streets selling little twentieths [214] to such as haven’t the ten dollars to buy a whole one. Guests at dinner play cards for lottery tickets paid for by the losers, Englishmen bet lottery tickets that the Esmeralda won’t bring the mail from home, and natives dream of lucky numbers, to go searching all over town for the pieces that bear the figures of their visions. ”

“ I saw at once that they were talking about a lottery, but why were they disputing? Tiretta told me they were a pair of knaves who had won thirty or forty louis of him by means of the book, which he handed to me.
"Sir," said one of the gamesters, "this book treats of a lottery in which all the calculations are made in the fairest manner possible. It contains twelve hundred leaves, two hundred being winning leaves, while the rest are blanks. Anyone who wants to play has only to pay a crown, and then to put a pin's point at random between two leaves of the closed book. ”

“ It is observed, that if the lottery office keepers of the present century could be credited, their adventurers enjoyed greater gaming privileges than the world ever produced; and yet it is an indubitable fact, that in the early state lotteries the advantages offered were eminently superior to those of recent times. ”

“ October 18. Death of the Lottery.
If any thing can be believed that is said by the lottery people respecting the lottery, before the appearance of the next sheet of the Every-Day Book the lottery will be at an end for ever.
Particulars respecting the last moments of this “unfortunate malefactor,” will be very acceptable if transmitted immediately; and in order to an account of lotteries in the ensuing sheet, information and anecdotes respecting them are most earnestly desired. ”

“ Art Unions were legalized by the Art Unions Act 1846. The last lottery prominently before the public in England was that of Dethier’s twelfth-cake lottery, which was suppressed on the 27th of December 1860. As defined at the beginning of this article, the word lottery has a meaning wide enough to include missing-word competitions, distributions by tradesmen of prize coupons, sweepstakes, &c. ”

“ A throng of peasants always crowded at the door, with open mouths; they formed in a circle and mounted on the benches to see.
The tradespeople of every sort turn their shops into a lottery: lottery of plate, of books, of little objects of ornament, etc. The tradesman and his wife distribute cards, price one sou, to the servant-maids, soldiers, and children, who compose the crowd. Somebody draws; the gallery and those interested stretch their necks eagerly forward. The man reads the number; a cry is heard, the unguarded sign of an overflowing joy. ”

“ Many years ago a lottery scheme, dis [Pg 296] playing splendid prizes, was formed in London. Adventures to a very large amount was the consequence, and the night of the drawing was signalized by fifty cases of suicide!
5. Success in lotteries is hardly less fatal than failure. The fortunate adventurer is never satisfied. He ventures again and again, till ruin overtakes him. After all the tempting promises of wealth, which are made by those concerned in this iniquitous system, how very few, except managers of lotteries and venders of lottery tickets, has it ever made rich! ”

“ The proprietor of the lottery pays the state annually forty thousand dollars for his privilege. The tickets are one real, or twelve and a half cents each. They who cannot buy ten, twenty, or a hundred, can buy one. In this lies the secret of its success and mischief. It finds a dupe wherever it can find a fool with a penny. The venders of these lottery tickets hawk them through every street and lane, and from the stepstones of every church in Lima. ”