BLIND CHANCE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 16

BLIND CHANCE

ITALY UNDER THE SPELL OF THE LOTTERY.

• The big business of *Italy is not the manufacture of antiques or spaghetti or macaroni; it is not the shipping of marble, either in blocks or busts; it is not the bottling and kegging of .wines, though that is a very flourishing 1 industry ; it is not pressing oil from the olives that' are gathered on her sunny slopes that we might have excellent salad dressings; it is the lottery. The Italian Government's biggest source of income —now that the wine tax ha« /been abolished—is not derived from the State-op-erated railways, nor the post, nor the tobacco and salt monopolies, .nor the Customs, nor income taxed; it is the lottery/ .

The national sport of Italy is not Soccer football, nor motor-cycling and bicy-cling—-which are very popular, nor boxing—and this is so popular that a magazine devoted especially to the manly art finds many readers; nor mah jong—it is the lottery. This is a game that practically everyone in Italy plays. It is the popular" sport of all. classes.- It makes no "distinction between prince and peasant. Generals and" privates buy their weekly lottery ticket. Old women and flappers buy one. The rich old dowager suffering from gout, and her maid, .-undergoing an attack of housemaid's knee, manage to wa-bble to the office and buy a lottery ticket. Everybody is-doing it. It is Italy's' national sport.'lt has millions more enthusiasts than our baseball or England's cricket There was spent last year by the Italian people—and the.y\ are a very, very poor people, compared to our standards—more than 600,000,000 lire on lottery tickets' ■