KING DEATH.
An Average of 200 Suicides a Year at Monte Carlo—Many Bodies Are Secretly Thrown Into Sea by Authorities of This, the World's Greatest Gambling House.
Paris, Nov. 20.—Three thousand known suicides and murders have been committed in Monte Carlo in the space of fifteen years. The known suicides average fully 200 a year, and some weeks there have been as many as three a day. The Casino authorities do everything to hush up scandals and news of tragedies. A large force of plain-clothes men are engaged to either prevent suicides or to hurry the body of the dead unfortunate out of the way. It is estimated that more than one-half of the tragedies of Monte Carlo are never heard of except by the Casino staff. The corpse is rushed quietly to the morgue—a secret morgue. Here it is kept some time to see whether relatives or friends are going to interfere or kick up a row.
THE END OF THE ROAD
Bodies Thrown in Ocean.
Every once in a while a small steamer slips out of the harbor at dead of night. Its cargo is secured at the secret morgue. At sea the bodies are thrown overboard, duly weighted, without toll of bell or muttered prayer. There are countless graves of unknown dead in the Monte Carlo cemetery. But these are only those whose death has become known to the public. The Casino authorities have a special bureau, whose duties are to relieve persons ruined at the tables. The ruined gambler can get from this bureau enough money to take him to his home, or to some spot far from Monaco. Few know of this, perhaps, or there would not be so many deaths. The "dead-broke" gambler is taken through many inner chambers and before stern-faced men, to whom he has to tell his history in detail. He is also confronted with the different croupiers, who testify as to whether he really lost as much as he may claim.
Banish the Dead Broke.
Then the wretched man has to sign a document banishing himself forever from Monaco. His name and particulars are written in the "black book," his photograph is taken and given to the doorkeepers and other officials to study, and then the man is taken to the railway station, a ticket bought, a few dollars given him, and an official escorts him as far as the frontier. Should he return it would not avail him. The police would turn him back again into France or Italy. It is related that an American who was "broke" and anxious to get back to the United States heard of this feature of Monte Carlo. He had not gambled there because he had no money, but he managed to make his way to Monte Carlo and demanded to see the authorities. He coolly asked for a steamer ticket to New York. Inquiries revealed that he had only just arrived in Monaco, and had never put a foot inside the Casino, but despite this the authorities gave him a steerage ticket to New York and saw him on his way.
Bonapartes Big Stockholders.
There is also the case of an important Indian army officer who went broke. The authorities gave him first-class passage to Calcutta, and $250 expense money. He had lost several thousands. As much as $2,500 has been paid out to a big loser so that he could settle up his hotel bill and take himself and family home. Should such money be paid back the Casino might again welcome the man. The sums usually paid range from $25 to $200, and an average of 1,000 people a year apply for this relief. The profits of the Casino are immense. Last year they were $7,500,000, an increase of $760,000 over the previous year. Seventy per cent was paid to the shareholders. The majority of the shares are held by the Blanc family, the leading member of which is the Princess Marie Bonaparte, whose father was Prince Roland Bonaparte, and mother the daughter of M. Blanc, the founder of Monte Carlo. She is the wealthiest princess in the world, and was lately married to Prince George of Greece, who is an impecunious princeling and needs the money.
Prince Owns no Stock.
The prince of Monaco has not a single share in the enterprise. But he derives his entire income from the sum paid him by the Gamblers' Company for the lease of Monaco. The prince is of especial interest to Americans, because of his American wife. She was Miss Alice Heine of New Orleans. When she married the prince she was a widow, the Dowager Duchess of Richelieu. The prince is a "divorced" man. He first married Lady Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, and a son and heir was born. But eleven years after the marriage the pair were so unhappy that an appeal was made to the pope. The Catholic church, of course, does not recognize divorces, but the pope issued a special pronouncement declaring his 11-year-old marriage invalid, for the reason that the Lady Mary's mother "over-persuaded her to marry."
Receives Enormous Income.
The prince, in return for the gambling concession, has been getting an annual income of a quarter of a million dollars and all the expenses of running the State of Monaco, including the maintenance of the army and the royal palace. He recently granted a further contract to the "Monaco Sea-Bathing Company," or to give the gambling concerns the full title "La Societé Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Etrangers à Monaco."
This concession now extends to 1947, and the annual income of the prince has been raised $100,000. Every ten years it will be raised an additional $50,000. In six years time the Casino will also have to pay him a lump sum down of $3,000,000. It is stated that the prince of Monaco is by no means in favor of the Casino, and that he abhors the gambling and the consequent scandal in his state, and that could he do so, he would at once stop it. But in the old original contract it was agreed that the concession should be extended to 1947, and the prince is not rich enough to break this contract and pay the indemnity which the law would quickly assess.
Gambling Kings Go Broke; Often Die in the Poorhouse.
Some one has advanced the statement that every human being is a gambler at heart. Yet for a man to go into the business of establishing a card gambling house under modern conditions is to attempt one of the riskiest businesses in the world. Recently one of the most noted gaming-house keepers in the country seems to have suggested a further anomaly in the situation in his utterance in a court of record:
"When I conduct a house on a 10 per cent basis of profit it is only a matter of time until my steady patron 'goes broke.'"
In the face of this statement, however, the innocent layman may be still further at sea when it is recalled by old habitues of the gaming table that nearly every gambling king of modern history has finished close to the poorhouse and the potter's field! How is it possible that the gambler with the insidious, certain 10 per cent which inevitably wrecks the man who goes often enough to the green table almost invariably dies in poverty?
Must Have Fortune to Invest.
Today it is the gambler king who at least has an ephemeral show to gain fleeting riches. But in order that these riches shall approach riches as they are measured in other businesses, the man who opens the gambling house must have a fortune for the investment. His outlawed business itself will make it certain that he pays the maximum rental or the highest price for the property which he chooses for occupancy. To sustain this he will need to seek out the wealthy patron who not only has money to lose, but who may have a certain influence which may tend toward immunity for keeper and player alike. The "establishment" will need to have the best cuisine and the best cellars, with palatial furnishings and a retinue of servants in full keeping.
And somewhere money will be necessary in blinding officials to the existence of an institution which is visible to the merest tyro in passing along the street.
A constitution of iron, the absence of a nervous system, the discrimination of a King Solomon and the tact of a diplomat are requisites for the successful gambling king. Considering the qualification of the man for such a place and the final ending of the gambling king's career, it might be a sociological study worth while to determine where, on a more worthy bent, such capacities in a man might land him.
In real life, however, it must be admitted that the gambler king is looked upon in exaggerated light. Almost without exception the big gambler is posing always. Conventionality has demanded it of him. But for more than this, in order to command the following which he desires, he must have a certain social side which is not too prominent, but which with tact and judgment he may bring out on dress parade. To the layman the gambler is the dark, sinister figure pictured in melodrama. He bears the same relation to gambling that Simon Legree bore to the institution of slavery of fifty years ago.
Story of One Gambler King.
One of the noted gamblers of his time in this country passed from laboring on the docks into the prize ring. When his ring work was ended the gambling house was an easy step onward in illegitimate fields. On the docks his reputation was not above a bit of "strong arm" work in separating a man from the money which the dock walloper wanted. Naturally, under the Queensberry rules, there were things in the ring which he could not do in overcoming an antagonist, and he learned to make concessions to fairness—which was education.
Opening a gambling house that was adapted to the wants of a rich clientele, it was a necessity that he preserve this educational regard for his patrons, and that he should add to it. Soon he was in a position where it was imperative that his reputation for fair dealing be kept intact. He became the "gentleman gambler" whose "word" carried all the accepted concomitants of his gentleman's business. In the course of events he attained a high legislative office under the government. But it may be said for those who knew the man as a man, not one ever ceased to regard him at heart as the dock walloper, with the inherent and unreconstructed disposition to regard other men as legitimate prey. Had other conditions and circumstances made a card sharp of him, he would have held to the promptings of his nature.
In the conduct of a gambling house of the first class, the gambling king needs for himself and for his patrons the assurance of uninterrupted play. Men of money and position will not go to a house where there is menace of a police raid. The small gambler may subsidize the policeman on the beat in which his house stands, but he cannot placate the whole Police Department. And even when it is thought that the gambler king is impregnable in his castle someone may break over the barriers and raid the place in the name of the law and order.
Within a few years New York has given to the world some of the inside working of the gambling business. When Jerome raided the place of places which had been considered immune, the proprietor of the house was considered worth a million dollars. Before the litigation was done and the fine paid the gambler king was out $600,000, his "club-houses" were closed, and he had been branded officially as a common gambler, pursued in the courts for payment of lawyers' fees, which he designated as outrageous and a "shrieking scandal." Yet this man was of the type whose word had been declared as good as his bond.
Dice, Faro and Roulette.
Dice, faro and roulette are the principal games of the gambling house and, considering these, the experienced player will tell you that he is suspicious of a "petey" in the dice box, a "high layout" in faro, and a "squeezed wheel" in roulette, in just the proportion that the gambling house keeper has not recognized that he cannot indulge them because of the fear of detection. The gambler holds to the gambler's view of the gambler—and it is not complimentary to the profession.
That the gentleman gambler is justified in his attitude toward the gentleman player, too, has been shown in the New York revelations. There one gentleman player, loser to the extent of $300,000. compromised with the "bank" for 130 bills of $1,000 denomination. There a gentleman player who had lost $69,000 to the bank tried to compromise on $20,000, but was in a position where the bank could hold him. How much the gambler king may loan and lose in the course of a year scarcely can be approximated. The gambling debt is "a debt of honor," and even in business not all such debts are paid. Whether a borrowed debt or a debt of loss to the bank, this honor is the security, unless in emergency the gambler king discovers that he can blackmail with safety to his interests as a whole.
In general, the gambler who is "on the square" operates on a 10 per cent basis for his bank. In addition there is the "unknown per cent" which is his at the end of the year. The roulette wheel, for example, presents to the player just one chance in thirty-seven of winning on a single play, while the winning on that play is paid in the proportion of only 34 to 1.
More Nerve to Win Than Lose.
The one great characteristic in human nature on which the gambler counts is the fact that it requires more nerve in a man to win than is required of him to lose! It is startling for the layman to be told that $5,000 in a night is a big winning for a player, while $5,000 is only an ordinary loss in a big establishment.
This fact is based on subtle psychology. There are two types of players, one of which gambles when it is in a state of elation and the other when in a state of depression. With either of these types winning, it is a gambler's observation that the man who will play until he has lost $25,000 when luck hopelessly is against him cannot hold himself to the chair after he is $5,000 winner.
Gamblers have made money—fortunes—in times past, only to be buried in the potter's field. There are several reasons assignable for this end. Extravagant living appeals to the gambler, and when he has left his own special line of gaming it does not appeal to him strongly as either pastime or means for recouping his fortune. If he turns to gaming at all it is likely to be in fields where he does not know the game. Sometimes he goes to the Board of Trade—sometimes to the stock market. Playing there he is without system and without knowledge of conditions. He is likely to bull the grain market two days after the weather conditions have assured the greatest grain crop in history.
Once a gambler, always a gambler, is his condition; and it is only a matter of time until someone has a game which beats him out.