GAMBLERS ALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 108, 10 May 1939, Page 9

GAMBLERS ALL.

PEOPLE OF MANILA. FRENZIED SPECULATION. ! SOLE PURPOSE IN LITE. The city which may boast to-day of holding a record in gambling, the city where the most frenzied speculation is going on, which lives in an atmosphere tense with the excitement of losing and winning, Jβ not Monte Carlo, whose famous Casino has lost much of its old lure. It is not Macao, the Portuguese colony in China, known mainly as a gambling resort, and not even Rio with ite ill-famed secret gambling dens. The city where gambling eeems to be the sole purpose in life to-day is Manila, capital of the Philippines. Everybody gambles in Manila; the wealthy at the stock exchange; the less well-to-do at the races and other sweepstakes; the poor take a chance of losing or winning a few cents at cockfights. Everybody gambles: your hotel boy, the grocery delivery boy, the elegant lady who drives to downtown Manila at noon to study quotations, the j-oung girl and her black-haired boy friend, the millionaire and the beggar, your taxi chauffeur and your baby'e nurse, the serious business man and the jazz band player. Is there anybody who does not gamble in Manila, you wonder? ; Manila has three stock exchanges handling the same stocks, and this, too, is a record. Xew York, London, Paris. Amsterdam, have only one major stock exchange each. Ask an old-timer in Manila as to the I reason why, ar.d he will advise you to visit one of the exchanges, perhaps the International Stock Exchange, says the "Dominion." You will see crowds of jmen and women jamming the floor, [standing tightly pressed to each other,

etaring spellbound at the huge black- c board, before which small Filippino boys t run to and fro all the time, writing ] figures, erasing, writing other figures. s During the immediate post-war boom * they speculated so madly in Manila that 5 the old stock exchange became inade- 1 quate. It was moved to a modern skyscraper and yet it failed to accommo- , date the crowds, as more and more peo- ] pie were flocking to the. stock exchange, j and more and more money was being , invested. The International Stock Exchange was then opened. The dawn of the golden era of the Philippines broke over Manila. They began to discover the immense natural resources of the islands—gold and fc-on, copper, manganese and molybdenum and many other things, for there is hardly a mineral that could not be" found in I that blessed soil. Mining country experi-i enced a boom without precedents in thej, stock market history of the world. The two exchanges could not accommodate |. buyers and sellers, and on February I,|< 1937, huge posters announced that the ( Central Stock Exchange, the third in J number, was open for business. How- < ever, if things continue much longer atL the present pace, they will soon have to build a fourth stock exchange in Manila. , Most of the downtown section is taken \ r . up by stockbrokers' offices. Not offices j' as we find in London or Amsterdam, or;£ even New York, however. The stock-; f brokers of Manila occupy enth-e floors j a with large, airy halls, to which rows upon rows of comfortable armchairs * give the appearance of theatres, with the only difference that the place of the * stage is taken by huge blackboards. Before these boards the people of Manila sit at all hours of the day studying ! quotations. Among them there are ! numerous senoritas of the best families I in their rich and beautiful national cos- ' tumes. They carry on a lively conversation, but not about clothes, men or 1 iballs; listen to them and you will gat many a tip on the Virac or on Paracale Geld, and you may hear a senorita say that she is "positive"- about something going on at the Salacot Mines. In the streets, too, you hear people talk of nothing but stock, and in tie department stores as well. Most of the large store* have tickets and boards, so that their women patrons can keepj j abreast of quotations without having to' 1 interrupt their shopping. All big offices]

display posters with regulations how to behave in the event of a typhoon. But when you have lived in Manila for some time you realise that, should such, a calamity befall the city, eyes would still turn anxiously to the blackboards rather than to the posters. People who have been through the depression elsewhere wonder what would happen in Manila if something similar occurred there. Who knows? Just now the country is experiencing a fantastic boom, it is easy to get rich quick and nobody cares about to-morrow. The millionaire of to-day may be a multimillionaire next year; or a beggar. Nobody can say. The Filippino is not thrifty by nature. He earns easily and quickly, but he I spends even more quickly, on cars in I the first place. Terms are easy and j tempting and in the circumstances a [car is within the reach of almost anyjbody. Manila is the Dorado of the 'automobile salesman to-day and every Icar shipped to the Philippines has been disposed of months before. The most luxurious limousines flash paet, mostly of American make, of course, since American goods enter duty-free. At night Manila resembles a gold mining town in the days of a rush. There is no other place in the Far East where money may be spent so easily and pleasantly, that has so many fine boulevards, movies, dances, night clubs and restaurants. Movies in Manila open at 10 a.m. and stay open for 12 or 14 hours. Dancing halls are open all night. It is not easy to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, unless you live in an outlying residential section. Lottery tickets are sold out immediately, one lottery follows the other, because everything that reeks of gamming is a priori assured of success ia Manila. Why hasn't the boy arrived this morning? Every white housewife in Manila has had this experience but she does not inquire as to the reason why. If the boy hasn't come at the usual hour, he won't come at all any more, because he has made a few hundred pesos the day before and prefers to loaf around in brokers' offices and sip iced whisky. ! | To-day everything is booming, money ijis plentiful and people are having * >! wonderful time. When will Manila Jj begin to realise that it is overdone s] things!