TRADING IN HOPE

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

TRADING IN HOPE

THE LOTTERY INDUSTRY

(By

O. E. W.)

What would it feel like to go to bed in a “doss-house” wondering just where breakfast was coming . from and wake up worth anything between £25,000 and £50,000? People do have that experienceall sorts and conditions of people, in ail sorts and conditions of places. But for every one who does, there are a paltry few million who don’t. However, considering the condition of the people who don’t is poor entertainment. Let us imagine the terrible mental condition of the people who do. Perhaps, as one New Plymouth business man to whom the writer submitted the hypothesis said, “it would be a dreadful nuisance.’’ No bank would take half a million pounds on any consideration whatsoever. If one bought industrial stock with it, something drastic would happen on the market. It fact, after worrying to a shadow about the disposal and. retention of the half million, the ordinary man would be fortunate if he drew a paltry £5OOO a year from his “gilt edged” investments. However, if you really want to experience the sensation and all the attendant harrying, have a word in the ear of old Dame Fortune and buy a ticket in the Christmas Lottery at Madrid; but be sure that the whispered word is a convincing one. For your triumph 199,500 people are going to be disappointed and 499 only partly satisfied.

Without hope, as a certain gloomy German philosopher said, the average human would hardly be bothered to live; and perhaps that essentially is the principle on which more than 20,000,000 average human beings buy a 100,000 to one chance of untold, fortune every y ear __each one hoping against hope that his will be the hundred thousandth chance.

It is a strange but perfectly true statement that more money is invested in this industry of exploiting human hope, controlled by the worlds great lottery organisations, than in the motion picture industry. It is perhaps less strange but none the less true that the charities in the name of which the business is undertaken receive slightly less than half the immense profits made in the industry. This, however, is due to the operation of the great foreign lotteries on the Continent and in South America. Anglo-Saxon people are usually more scrupulous in seeing that when tickets are sold in the name of a charity, most of the proceeds go to that charity. The history of the world’s great lotteries is studded with strange and amusing twirls of fate. Not long ago in New York, the story goes, an unemployed German pastry cook pocketed £25,000 and re-paid charitable institutions for the food he had been receiving to keep breath in his under-nourished body for months. Then he bought a steamer ticket so that he could go home to Silesia to bake a cake for his uncle’s wedding anniversary. In India, a high gambling mahrajah bewailed the fact that he held 100,000 tickets in the Irish sweepstakes for which he had paid more than £5OOO, and did not draw even a consolation prize. In Spain an obscure shopkeeper found overnight that his 200,000 to one chance had come home, and that he was worth more than £500,000 when the Gordo the greatest of the world’s lotteries was drawn. In Russia the Soviet authorities last year, woke up to the fact that they held 90 million roubles in unclaimed lottery prizes belonging to indifferent peasants who- thought that the ticket-seller was just another Government tax collector! Fortune indeed has a peculiar sense of humour. ■ . Are you a gambler in a big way? The sort of gambler who can take a 100,000 to one chance in the barrel and take -t calmly when you find yourself worth anything from £30,000 to half a million. Well, here are the world’s really big lotteries, but whether or not you can buy a ticket in one of them, since the sale is prohibited by law in New Zealand, is entirely a matter for your own conscience and your ability to find out where to send your money. The Irish Hospital Sweepstakes: Three sweeps are drawn each year based on three famous horse-races, the Derby in June, the Grand National in March and the Cambridgeshire in October. The first prize is approximately £30,000 . and the total prize money is in the vicinity of £5,000,000. a . The French National Lottery: An indeterminate number of drawings are held each year in the famous Trocade.’/i Theatre at Paris. The first prize is approximately £70,000 and the total revenue from each sweep is about £25,000,000, of which the Government for general purposes receives about half. The Loteria Nacional Para la Beneficencia Publica: The great Mexican lottery of which drawings are held on 38 Fridays, 44 Tuesdays and 46 Sundays each year. Prizes amount to £4,000,000 and Mexican charities receive £5,000,000 revenue. , . The Calcutta Sweepstakes: The classic gamble operated by the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, based upon the result of the English Derby. The first prixe, these days, is only about £50,000. .The Cuban National Lottery: Conducted by the Cuban Government and drawn three times a month, the first prize is as much as £25,000, but owing to the operations of a multitude of taxgatherers and other painful methods of extraction in foreign countries, the authorities never publicly announce the prize winners. The ■ Liechtenstein: Almost unknown in the Southern Hemisphere, the Leichtenstein is a lottery which attracts millions of pounds in subscription every year. The first prize totals £50,000 and the lottery is drawn on the result of the Lincolnshire Handicap. . ' The Spanish Loteria Nacional. Drawn three times a year at Madrid, the great Christmas prize is worth sometimes halt a million pounds. . Well, perhaps it is an encouraging thought that some 50 or 60 ordinal y people, with none but a 100,000 to one chance of ever realising their most secret ambitions, are favoured thus by the goddess of fortune every year that goes by.