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.'"