BIG “SWEEPS” AND LITTLE “SWEEPS.”

Dunstan Times, Issue 3128, 31 July 1922, Page 2

BIG “SWEEPS” AND LITTLE “SWEEPS.”

(By Colliuson Owen).

“What have you drawn?” Once a year a golden thread of romance creeps into the grey lives of the English people. Once a year there is a race called the Derby, and for days and weeks before that great event hundreds of thousands of people who never think of such things at any other time of the year are pinning ail sorts of hopes and desires on the chances of a ticket in a sweepstake. Nobody has ever yet been able to count how many sweepstakes aro arranged in the weeks preceding the Derby, and nobody ever will. At this season the gambling fever affects us all, and what even Stiggins is horrified at during the rest of the year, he surreptitiously indulges in during tliis special period of dispensation. The sweepstake habit has developed hugely since the war, and the fact that so many girls and women are new employed in commerce and industry has largely accounted for this. In England alone the total of money locked up in sweepstakes at this moment must run into several millions. They are made up of the humble shillings of the office boys and the) youngest typist flappers; the half-crowns of the clerks and the general nm of employees; up to the ten guinea tickets of those people who are known as smart clubmen. Sweepstakes are as varied as society itself. Towing above them all is the great Calcutta Sweep. Its first prize was £70,000 last year, and will probably be rather more this year. The second prize last year was £35,000, and the third £17,500. This year nearly 300,000 tickets have been sold, chiefly in India and in tins country, hut spreading all over the world. So that at the present moment there are 300,000 separate hearts, more or less, beating only for the result of the draw for the Calcutta Sweep, which will take place to-morrow night in Java, or Clapham, or somewhere there lives somebody who in a few clays will be richer by £70,000 or more. The fortune may tumble anywhere. It may fall into the lap of a dean or prebendary—parsons are great subscribers to the Calcutta Sweep--glorify the declining years of a prim maiden aunt, or tinkle into the coffers of a millionaire. There is no end fo its romantic possibilities. It recalls the “gros lot lot” of the French State lotteries, which has produced innumerable human comedies — and some tragedies. The “big prize” of the French lotteries is usually a million francs, which before the war meant the comfortable sum of £IO.OOO. Now that has tumbled in value to £20.000. So that there is nothing in the world like the massive first prize in I lie Calcutta Sweep. It is the Olympus on which sits the Goddess of Chance. We have, however, some really respectable sweeps in England. The Stock Exchange Sweepstake liars 25.000 tickets at £1 each, and the first prize is £12,500, the second £6,000. and the third £2,500. The Baltic Exchange has a £IOOOO sweep, with prizes in proportion, and the sweeps at many of the leading London clubs run up into thousands. Behind these, again, are the countless smaller sweepstakes arranged in qffires, factories, banks, golf clubs, in the servants’ halls of great mansions—in fact, everywhere yon can think of. Everybody’s doing it; the habit, once a. year, is as universal as breakfast. There are curmudgeons who refuse to give sixpence to a hospital on a. flag day. The man has not yet been met who, when the office list is put before him,- has refused' to risk his mite in the offie “sweep.” It all raises the old question whether or not we are hypocritical. If we can all gamble with such delightful abandon once a year, why may we not gamble at all times, and have lotteries whenever we want them? The truth of the matter is that not the people of England but the laws of England are hypocritical. Many a judge on the bench will have his ticket in a sweepstake. A judge even —how delightful it would be-—might win the first prize in the Calcutta. But that would not prevent him from frowning with great displeasure on some delinquent brought up for transgressing those vague ordinances known as the Lottery Acts. . . As somebody once truly said, we aro a strange people.