FRENCH CASINOS

Evening Star, Issue 21099, 11 May 1932, Page 4

FRENCH CASINOS

GREAT DECLINE IN PATRONAGE la the world crisis, like a brisk dancing of autumn leaves, the French casinos have come buttering down. From the bumper gambling year of 1928 they have spiraled steadily downward until they have now reached so low a point that some of them say they will have to go out of business altogether unless they can persuade the Government to remit part of their taxes. In order to maintain the national industry of pursuing tho nine for gold the Government has promised to introduce a Bill reducing the State tax on gambling (writes a correspondent in the Now York ‘ Times ’). ' The trouble is not the lack of gamblers. There are more casinos in France to-day than ever before, and in all probability more gamblers to fill them; but the golden torrent which used to pour across the tables has shrunk to a mere trickle. Gamblers who used to bet with 1,000-franc pieces have been betting with 100-franc pieces. Those who used to bet with 100-franc pieces now bet with 20-franc pieces. And those who used to bet with 20-franc pieces now wander restlessly around the tables, smoking cigarettes and worrying about the rent at home.

People are spending money like glue. Tho hearty fellows who used to look at notliing but champagne now make one small vichy last all night. The {icople who used to eat lobster now eat fried potatoes. And what has become of the English? At Deauville last summer they did nothing but sit on thd decks of their yachts in Trouville Harbour reading the ‘ Daily Mail.’ People sit in tho theatre listening to the joyous abandon of ‘Hiccup Time in Burgundy’ with the opaque expressions of billposters. The tax on theatre seats is something awful, and the thought of what is going to become of his actors and actresses oppresses the casino proprietor almost as much as the thought of what is going to become of his shareholders '(and even of himself) if things continue to go on as they are going today. , Tho fact is that some of the casinos seem to be going broke —an idea which is certain to moisten the eyes of any tender-hearted gambler who has himself ever gone broke at their green oval tables. it is easy enough to understand why the world-wide crisis should prove disastrous to other industries, but it is less easy to understand why it should prove disastrous to an industry whose croupiers have nothing to do but to scoop up the flung money of more gamblers than the tables can seat. At the end of every draw the cagnotte takes its percentage of the little heaps of notes and the 100-franc and 20-franc pieces which tho gamblers have flung down in the endless quest for the conquering nine. The cagnotte is the casino’s income, or would be if the casino were permitted to retain it intact. But it now appears that the State and the commune between them sooner or later scoop out the lion’s share of the cagnotte and bear it triumphantly away, leaving behind only a handful of francs which v the luckless casino can call its own. GOING BROKE. It used to be that when a gambler was cleaned out at the tables he would totter weakly from the room, and all the other gamblers would stuff their fingers into their ears to keep out tho sound of the revolver shot from the darkness of the gardens 'But gamblers who go broke at the French casinos nowadays usually succeed in turning up at home and presently are discovered selling matches in the Strand. It is some such fate as this which now appears to be approaching the casinos themselves. Three years ago out of 413,000,000 francs in tho combined cagnotte of all the French casinos the croupiers at the little oval tables scooped up 327,000,000 on their enormous paper knives and poured them into the lacquered bowl to be borne victoriously away to tho State and communal treasuries as taxes. The following year times were so bad that only 100,000,000 were poured into the lacquered bowl, and what remained in the cagnotte was not enough to pay tho croupiers. Now the lacquered bowl is expected to contain less than 50.000,000, because between the weather, the crisis, and the taxes some of the casinos are going broke. However, instead of shooting itself in its own gardens, the Syndicate of Authorised Casinos has had the presence of mind to send a deputation .to M. Laval, the French Premier, to explain that unless the State relents in its raids on the cagnotte some of the syndicate’s members will have to lock up their casinos and join the ex-gam-blers with the little trays of matches in the Strand. This is very serious. The French resorts are the most successful resorts in Europe. Nowhere else has the art of beguiling the lotus-eater been brought as near perfection as along the French Riviera, in Biarritz, Deauville, Lc Touquet, Aix-les-Bains, and a hundred other “ stations thermales, baineares et climatiques.” And who made the French resorts? The English, you will answer instantly, and there you will be wrong. The English merely discovered and colonised them. Long ago the English were dispossessed everywhere, except perhaps in Cannes, and even there Frenchmen have been kriown to seize tho most desirable tennis courts by hurrying through their cafe complet while the English were dallying over bacon and eggs—tho cafe complet, as everybody knows, is a form of semi-starva-tion which the French have adopted for tiro sole purpose of annoying the English.

And what has enabled the French to supplant the Bass and boredom of the once mighty milord with the modish devilry of the present Riviera? What has brought larks, ravioli, and wiener schnitzel into the same street with chopps, bifsteaks, and the 5 o’clock a tout heure? What has enabled the French horses to win races on Nice tracks—surely one of the unkindest cuts imaginable from a town whoso promenade was once des Anglais! What is the source of the Riviera’s “ dances, balls, redoutes, vogliones, kermessos, bazaars, flower shows, and fetes,” to quote the official programme of any French syndicate of initiative? What is it that sends a French mayor dancing down the grande rue at carnival time in a morning suit, a black silk hat, and a large false nose, swinging a bladder on a stock with which to thump any Pier-rot-clad butcher’s boy whom he happens to meet? Gambling is the answer. The cascading gold of the green oval tables. The galvanising glow of money for nothing. The ace, the king, the queen, the jack, and the ten have nothing to do with it. They count for nothing. _ It is all done by the beautiful and victorious nine, and by those who hunt the nine for money 1 . The French license gambling, they supervise it, and by taxing it they make it contribute to roads, charities, and the social services. More than that, the casinos are called upon for heavy subscriptions to local advertising, theatrical performances, fetes, concerts, race meetings, regattas, golf, polo, tennis—to every amenity which the ingenuity of the most highly nervous society in the world can devise for the attraction and

entertainment of the holidaying foreigner. Thus streams of squandered francs flow into tho State, tho commune and the community. “ Thus gambling, which has hitherto been so much reviled, discredited, and repressed, becomes legitimised and in some sense ennobled.” Would there bo any French Riviera to-day if there had been no gambling? Perhaps there would be, but the English would run it, and Nice would be another Brighton. VARIED EQUIPMENT. The typical French casino has much more than merely gaming rooms beneath its domed and bannered roof. It has tea dances as well as chemin de fer. It is haunted by gigolos, mannequins, and cocktail-mixers, as well as by croupiers. It has a theatre, a ballroom, a cafe, a bar, and a lounge, and in its corridors you will find the microscopic shops of* the same perfumers and jewellers and dressmakers as you find in Paris. Individually the casinos vary from tho hectic flamboyance of the vast Palais do la Mediterranee in Nice (which to-day, has eight casinos) down to the modest little wayside shrine with only one Paris train a day. In these variegated temples of chance tho faithful may worship their goddess with whatever frenzy of ritual they findcongenial. At one extreme is the very pretty game of some austere and dignified casino, and the loss of anything more than a 100-franc note * would constitute a deplorable lapse of taste. At the other extreme is tho 5,000-franc minimum of the spacious yellow drawing room at Deauville —one of the innermost sanctuaries of the world’s worship of chance—where the dinner-jacketed onlookers press six deep against the brass rail which surrounds a single baccarat table in tho centre of the room, and thirteen elderly automatons, with one croupier, sit all night in a subdued and solemn hush, winning and losing small fortunes in the pursuit of the elusive nine.

Years ago, when the Blanc dynasty discovered the Golden Fleece at Monte Carlo, the rest of the Riviera made a note of it. “ Black loses and Red loses, but White always wins,” said Papa Blanc in the days when Monte Carlo was younger than it is now. Nevertheless, the rest of the Riviera has drawn its own moral from the world-famous Blanc regime. Between the French and their casinos the French have always remained on top. Long before the Blanc’s flamed across the sky the French finance law of 183 G prohibited all games of chance, and as far as is known that law has never been repealed. However, perhaps it is necessary to draw a distinction between public and private gambling, for public gambling is still regarded as illegal in France. Licenses to run private gambling clubs in recognised resorts were granted before 1830, and are still granted. There are at present 160 licensed casinos in Franco and its colonics, all in recognised resorts and all private clubs as far as their gaming rooms are concerned. You have to show your passport and buy a ticket before you can play in any one of them. Only such games as baccarat, chemin de fer, escarte, and boule are permitted. Roulette and trente et quarante are not legal in France —a grievance which has been hymned for years by the Syndicate of Authorised Casinos. Still, the French casinos have not done badly. So far as the French resorts are concerned, gambling has been the goose that laid the golden eggs, and the French resorts have played a considerable part in the devolojunent of the national industry of tourism, which is estimated to bring 12,000,000,000 francs a year into the countrysay, £125,000,000. ' Nearly twenty-five years ago the State clapped a modest tax on the casinos of 15 per cent, of their gross receipts—i.e., the cagnottc. At the same time the communes put on a 10 per cent, tax also on the gross receipts. So, down to the war, their total gambling taxes came to only 25 per cent. But in 1920 the State adopted a sliding scale of taxation, which ran up to 50 per cent, where the gross receipts exceeded 5,000,000 francs a year, and a further treasury tax of 10 per cent, was also imposed. And in 1920 the State tax rate took another jump. The present rate, as then adopted, runs from .15 per cent, where the gross receipts are under 100,000 francs, up to 05 per cent, on gross receipts over 15 000,000. Also, since the war some of’the communes have increased thentax rates, to as much as 20 per cent. The result has boon that since 1926 the French gambling industry has paid an annual average of 250,009,000 francs to the State and 40,000,000 to the communes. The Syndicate of Authorised Casinos, which represents 156 of the 160 casinos, told M. Laval recently that in 1928 the seven principal casinos in the countiy —Deauville, Aix-les-Bains, Le Touquec,

Nice, Cannes, Biarritz, and Dieppe—produced a combined profit of a little less than 10,000,000 francs on gross receipts of 240,000,000.