GAMBLERS ATTACKED

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4954, 11 February 1937, Page 2

GAMBLERS ATTACKED

Alaska, which for decades tolerated gambling as >an essential part of the gaudy era, has turned at last against the professional gamester. The United States Marshal’s office, aided by the police in Anchorage and Juneau, announced the starting of a drive against the professional cohorts of Lady Luck. The suave, steel-eyed, taper-fingered gambler, quiet about his past, who appears and disappears like a ghost in a fog, now finds the cards stacked against him. “It’s the boys who make a living that way that we are after,” S. S. Daniels, Chief of Police, said. ‘Daniels ordered his police to aid deputy marshals in the drive. The first round-up netted fifteen men, some of them suspected as professional gamblers, others merely being “customers.” Brought befox’e Mr. W. S. Stump, Assistant United States Attorney, they were warned' to cease gambling activities or face charges. “There is no intention to interfere with purely a social or friendly game of rummy with reasonable . stakes,” Daniels said, “but there have been complaints that fishermen and workmen were losing their stakes or salaries. Merchants complained that men who owed them bills were losing fiheir money to professional gtanU biers. “The games have gone beyond the ‘amateur’ or ‘social’ status into the professional class.”