II. LOTTERIES.
The lottery business of New York is extensive, and, though conducted in violation of the law, those who carry it on make scarcely a show of secrecy.
The principal lottery office of the city is located on Broadway, near St. Paul’s church. It is ostensibly a broker’s office, and the windows display the usual collection of gold and silver coins, bills, drafts, etc. At the rear end of the front room is a door which leads into the office in which lottery tickets are sold. It is a long, narrow apartment, lighted from the ceiling, and so dark that the gas is usually kept burning. A high counter extends along two sides of the room, and the walls back of this are lined with handbills setting forth the schemes of the various lotteries. Two large black-boards are affixed to the wall back of the main counter, and on these are written the numbers as soon as the drawings have been made. There is always a crowd of anxious faces in this room at the hour when the drawings are received.
The regular lotteries for which tickets are sold here, are the
Havana Lottery, which is conducted by the Government of the Island of Cuba, the Kentucky State Lottery, drawn at Covington, Kentucky, and the Missouri State Lottery, drawn at St. Louis, Mo.
The Havana Lottery is managed on the single number plan. There are 26,000 tickets and 739 prizes. The 26,000 tickets are put in the wheel, and are drawn out one at a time. At the same time another ticket inscribed with the amount of a prize is drawn from another wheel, and this prize is accorded to the number drawn from the ticket wheel. This is continued until the 739 prizes have been disposed of.
The Kentucky and Missouri lotteries are drawn every day at noon, and every night. The prizes are neither as large nor as numerous as in the Havana lottery. The drawings are made in public, and the numbers so drawn are telegraphed all over the country to the agents of the lottery.
“The lottery schemes are what is known as the ternary combination of seventy-eight numbers, being one to seventy-eight, inclusive; or in other words, ‘three number’ schemes. The numbers vary with the day. To-day seventy-eight numbers may be placed in the wheel and fourteen of them drawn out. Any ticket having on it three of the drawn numbers takes a prize, ranging from fifty thousand dollars to three hundred dollars, as the scheme may indicate for the day. Tickets with two of the drawn numbers on them pay an advance of about a hundred per cent. of their cost. Tickets with only one of the drawn numbers on them get back first cost. On another day only seventy-five numbers will be put in the wheel, and only twelve or thirteen drawn out. And so it goes.
“The owners or managers of these concerns are prominent sporting men and gamblers of New York and elsewhere. Considerable capital is invested. It is said that it takes nearly two million dollars to work this business, and that the profits average five hundred thousand dollars or more a year. The ticket sellers get a commission of twelve per cent. on all sales. The tickets are issued to them in lots, one set of combinations going to one section of the country this week, another next; and all
tickets unsold up to the hour for the drawing at Covington, are sent back to headquarters. In this way many prizes are drawn by tickets which remain unsold in dealers’ hands after they have reported to the agents; and the lottery makes it clear.”
It is argued that lotteries, if managed by honest men, are of necessity fair. This is true; but there is a vast amount of questionable honesty in the whole management. The numbers may be so manipulated as to be entirely in favor of the proprietors, and in the fairest lottery the chances are always very slim in favor of the exact combination expressed on any given ticket being drawn from the wheel. The vast majority of ticket buyers never receive a cent on their outlay. They simply throw their money away. Yet all continue their ventures in the hope that they may at some time draw a lucky number. The amount annually expended in this city in the purchase of lottery tickets is princely. The amount received in prizes is beggarly. The effect upon the lottery gamblers is appalling. Men and women of all ages are simply demoralized by it. They neglect their legitimate pursuits, stint themselves and their families, commit thefts and forgeries, and are even driven into madness and suicide by the hope of growing rich in a day.