One of the purposes of Cuba’s revolt against Spain was the suppression of the lottery. For years the new republic sternly frowned down any tendency toward a return of this particular form of vice. To this day it is unlawful to bring the tickets of the Spanish lottery into the island. But blood will tell, and the mere winning of political freedom could not cure the Cuban of his love for gambling. Private games of chance increased in number and spread throughout the island. The Government saw itself losing millions of revenue yearly, while enterprising persons enriched themselves; for to all rulers of Iberian ancestry the exploitation of a people’s gambling instinct seems a legitimate source of state income. New palaces and boulevards cost money, independence brings with it unexpected expenditures. By the end of the second intervention the free Cubans were looking with favor upon a system which they had professed to abhor as Spanish subjects. The law of July 7, 1909, decreed a public revenue under the name of “Lotería Nacional,” and to-day the lottery is as firmly established a function of the Government as the postal service.
There are two advantages in a state lottery—to the government. It is not only an unfailing source of revenue; it is a splendid means of rewarding political henchmen. Colectorías, the privilege of dispensing lottery-tickets within a given district, are to the Cuban congressman what postmasterships are to our own. The possession of one is a botella (bottle), Cuban slang for sinecure; the lucky possessor is called a botellero. He in turn distributes his patronage to the lesser fry and becomes a political power within his district. The whole makes a splendidly compact machine that can be turned to any purpose by the chauffeur at the political wheel.
The first and indispensable requisite of a state lottery is that the drawings shall be honest. Your Spanish-minded citizen will no more do without his gambling than he will drink water with his meals; but let him for a moment suspect that “the game is crooked” and he will abandon the purchase of government tickets for some other means of snatching sudden fortune. The drawing of the Cuban lottery is surrounded by every possible check on dishonesty. By no conceivable chance could the inmost circle of the inner lottery councils guess the winning number an instant before it is publicly drawn. But there is another way in which the game is not a “fair shake” to the players, though the simpler type of Cuban does not recognise the unfairness. The average lottery, for instance, offers $420,000 in prizes. The legal price of the tickets is $20, divided into a hundred “pieces” for the convenience of small gamblers, at a peseta each. Thirty thousand tickets are sold, of which 30% of the proceeds, or $180,000, goes to the government or its favorite henchmen. That leaves to begin with only fourteen of his twenty cents that can come back to the player. Then the law allows the vender 5% as his profit, bringing the fractional ticket up to twenty-one cents. If that were all, the players would still have even chances of a reasonable return. But the “pieces” are never sold at that price, despite the law and its threat of dire punishment, printed on the ticket itself. From one end of the island to the other the billeteros demand at least $30 a billete; in other words the public is taxed one half as much as it puts into the lottery itself to support thousands of utterly useless members of society, the ticket-sellers, and instead of getting two-thirds of its money back it has a chance of rewinning less than half the sum hazarded. The most optimistic negro deckhand on a Mississippi steamboat would hardly enter a crap game in which the “bones” were so palpably “loaded.” Yet Cubans of high and low degree, from big merchants to bootblacks, pay their tribute regularly to the Lotería Nacional.
Barely had we arrived in Havana when the rumor reached me that the billeteros could be compelled to sell their tickets at the legal price, if one “had the nerve” to insist. I abhor a financial dispute, but I have as little use for hearsay evidence. I concluded to test the great question personally. Having purchased two “pieces” at the customary price, to forestall any charge of miserliness, I set out to buy one at the lawful rate. A booth on a busy corner of Calle Obispo, a large choice of numbers fluttering from its ticket-racks, seemed the most promising scene for my nefarious project, because a traffic policeman stood close by. I chose a “piece” and, having tucked it away in a pocket, handed the vender a peseta.
“It is thirty cents,” he announced politely, smiling at what he took to be my American innocence.
“Not at all,” I answered, blushing at my own pettiness. “The price is twenty cents; it is printed on the ticket.”
“I sell them only at thirty,” he replied, with a gesture that invited me to return the ticket.
“The legal price is all I pay,” I retorted. “If you don’t like that, call the policeman,” and I strolled slowly on. In an instant both the vender and the officer were hurrying after me. The latter demanded why I had not paid the amount asked.
“The law sets the price at twenty cents,” I explained. “As a guardian of order, you surely do not mean to help this man collect an illegal sum.”
The policeman gave me a look of scorn such as he might have turned upon a millionaire caught stealing chickens, and answered with a sneer: