AMERICANS LIKE EASY MONEY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 19

AMERICANS LIKE EASY MONEY

Gambling Craze Sweeps United States^

Betting on “football pools,” with investments as low as a penny, is the most popular form of gambling in England to-day. It has been said that since the pools began more people are betting in the hopes of “easy money” than ever before. A similar increase in gambling has taken place in the United States in the last few years. Not many years ago race track betting was illegal almost throughout the United States, writes a correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” To-day 18 states have made it legal and have introduced the totalizator (called in America the pari-mutuel machine). In 1935 the total amounts wagered in these 18 states on horse or dog races were about £50,000,000. There are other states where betting is winked at, although not officially permitted, and throughout the country many thousands of persons wager smallsums on horses through illicit bookmakers. These may perhaps amount to another £50,000,000 annually. Although lotteries are illegal in the United States, large sums are risked on lotteries conducted in other lands. Of these, the most popular is the Irish hospital sweepstakes. On one of these drawings recently it is estimated that Americans had expended about £4,000,000. The Federal Government, seeking to discourage gambling of this .sort, has forbidden the use of the post to newspapers containing the names of winners. Most daily journals, however, carry this news in all local editions, circulated in other ways. Gambling of the casino variety—roulette, chemin de fer, and other games involving cards or dice or both—is illegal almost everywhere in the country, and in some areas the police make a real attempt to keep it in check. In a few areas, such as the states of Florida and Nevada, it is subject to almost no interference. Until recently slot ma-

chines X known in American slang as “one-armed bandits”) were to be seen in nearly every public place in Florida, and the money spent on them has been estimated at £20,000,000 annually. In Nevada, which still retains many of the customs of the old “wild West,” nearly every sort of gambling is conducted openly, seven days . a week. The “Numbers Game” A recent development, beginning in New York City, is the “numbers game” or “policy racket.” (The origin of the word “policy” in this connexion is obscure ‘and hotly debated.) This type of gambling began in Harlem, the negro quarter of New York, and consists in daily wagers on the digits that will be found in some official number, also issued daily. For a long time the last three digits in the total bank clearings each day of the New York Clearing House Association were uspd. Racketeers whose livelihood as bootleggers was destroyed with the repeal of Prohibition took up the numbers game, and have undoubtedly reaped fantastic rewards. Chances may be purchased for as little as 2d, and the customary bet is less than Is. Agents of the numbers game are innumerable and can be found in all, parts of the city

and in every walk of life. TMB police have made attempts frozril time to time to destroy this lottery in which the odds against the individual may be as high as 998 to one, but they have never succeeded erf cept temporarily. Cinema Lotteries In recent years gambling has been associated with the cinema. During the depression the managers of some cinemas in the Middle West, faced by declining attendances, began offering prizes to their patrons. Whenever you bought a ticket you were also given a numbered coupon. A similar coupon bearing the same number was deposited in a box, and once a week—usually on Monday night, when the attendance is normally the poorest—the winning number was drawn- from the box and the holder, if in the audience, would receive a prize, in cash or in goods, ranging from £2 to £2O. If the winner was not in the audience the amount of his prize was added to that offered the following week, so that sometimes these accumulated prizes would amount to £IOO or more. "Within a short time thousands of cinemas throughout the country were engaged in this type of enterprise, and it still goes on to a large extent, although in some localities it has now been prohibited by law.