SWEEPSTAKES.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIII, 7 August 1922, Page 4

SWEEPSTAKES.

BIG “SWEEPS” AND LITTLE

“SWEEPS.”

(By Collinson Owen)

AV hat have yon drawn?”

Once a year a golden thread of romance creeps into ihe 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 all 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 arc 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 hoirified at during the rest of the year, he surreptitiously indulges in during this 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 mo. ment 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 run of employees; up to the ten guinea ticket®

of those people who are known Js smart clubmen. Sweepstakes are « varied as sexiety itself. Towing above them all is th< g real Calcutta Sweep. Its first prize Ka . £70,000 last year, and will probably be rather more this year. The second prize last year was £35,000 and the thud £17,500 This year nearly 300,000 tickets l lafe . been sold, chiefly in India and in thit country, but spreading all over the world. So that at the present moment there are 300,000 separate hearts, mon or less, beating only for the result <tf the draw’ for the Calcutta Sweep, whieh will take place to-morrow night in Java or Clapham, or somewhere there li vs somebody who ■ in a few’ days will, be richer by £70.000 or more. The I™

tune may tumlilit- anywhere. It tall into the lap, of a dean or preben. diary -parsons are great subscribers t« the Calcutta Sweep—glorifj’ the declm. ing years of a prim maiden aunt, or fin. kle into the coffers of a millionaire. There is no end to its romantic |iossi. bilities.

It recalls the “gros lot lot” of the French State lotteries, whic h has pro. dueed innumerable human comedieoand some tragedies. The- “big prize’ of the French lotteries is usually a million francs, whic h before the war meant the comfortable sum of £40.000. Now that has tumbled in value to £20,000. So that there is nothing in the world like l the massive first prize in the Calcutta Sweep. It is the Olympus on which sits the Goddres of Chance.

We have, however, some really respectable sweeps in England. The Stock Exchange Sweepstake ha s 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 £lO.OOO sweep, weith prizes in proportion, and the sweeps at many of tbs leading London clubs run up into thousands. Behind these, again, are the countless smaller sweepstakes arranged in offires, factories, bunckis. golf dubs, in the servants’ halls of great mansionsm fact, everywhere you can think of Everybody's doing it; the habit. on« a .'ear, is as univ-erbal as breakfast There are curmudgeons who refuse to give sixpence to a hospital on a fia| day. The man has not yet been me who, when the office list is put before hum, has refused bo risk .his niite in the offie “sweep.” It all raises the old question whether or not we are hypocritical. If we can all gamble with such delightful cibandon once a year, why may we not gamUe at all times, and have lotteries whenever we want them? The truth of the matter is that not tlie people of England but the laws of England are hypocritical. Many a judge on the liench w’ill have his ticket in a sweepstake. A judge even—how delightful it would be —might win the first priw 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 Lotter Acts. - As somebody once truly said we are a strange people.