These statements, however, apply, of course, only to the first-class and most prosperous establishments. The places next in order ape them in everything, but are far below them in all. A second-class house has sometimes even more of glitter than its rival, but it is easy to see that it is pinchbeck grandeur. There is an absence, too, of the refined taste which presides over the decoration and furnishing of the better house. These rooms are glaringly painted, filled with odds and ends of furniture of all ages and patterns, so that they look not unlike the wards of a hospital for superannuated and diseased household goods turned over in their old age to the auctioneer’s hammer. The suppers and liquors, however, most plainly proclaim the lower caste of the place. While the variety of both is abundant, the first are execrably cooked and served, and the quality of the latter would not be strange to the most experienced patron of the ordinary Bowery saloons, which are proverbial for furnishing every kind of beverage except good.
But if the second grade houses are bad in these respects, there are some below them which are much worse. If a man can digest the so called “game suppers,” and survive any considerable drinking of the liquids which are offered as pure whiskey and brandy in the lowest classes of faro houses, he ought to be able to insure his life on the most favorable terms, and the appointments of these houses are in keeping with their entertainment. The chairs, sofas and carpets were of the most tawdry description when new, but are ragged with long and ill usage; the gambling checks, which range in price from twenty-five cents to one dollar, are grimed and dented with much handling; the faro table, elsewhere enticing with its newness and cleanliness, here is old and smeared with grease; the dealing-box, which in first-class houses is of pure and polished silver, here is of pewter, and dingy. So are all the minutiae of these places. They are repulsively suggestive of squalid and unprosperous vice; and if by any chance a gentleman enters, he leaves at once, to lose his money under more elegant, or at least cleaner, auspices.
Faro houses in New York have rarely exceeded one hundred in number, except during the latter part of the war, when speculation, going mad in Wall street, stalked over the land, demoralizing and ruining thousands. In those feverish times faro-playing naturally increased with stock gambling, and the faro houses multiplied until they fluctuated between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty in number. Of late years, however, they have decreased, and a few years ago, when public excitement on the subject had given rise to the sensational statement that the city contained six hundred of them, ninety-two was the largest number that could be found open at any time. The number seems small in comparison to the size of the city, which, beside the large resident reckless population, contains tens of thousands of strangers, anxious not to miss any of the sensations of the metropolis. Yet these faro banks not only are enough to do all the business presented and enticed to them, but some of them have a very precarious life owing to the lack of custom. The first and second-class houses are under very heavy expenses, a principal item of which takes the shape of rent. They must be and are located in the principal thoroughfares near the leading hotels, with the exception of those anomalous institutions known as “day games,” which are found in Ann, Fulton, and Chambers streets, for accommodation of the business men, many of whom have acquired the bad habit of seeking solace for the vexations of legitimate transactions in the delights of faro. A seizure was made of these places lately, upon the ground that they are of all the gambling establishments in the city the most dangerous to the public. It is not necessary to endorse this statement in order to justify the attempt to suppress day gambling, but if activity in this direction is intended to excuse the toleration of all other houses, it will result in more of evil than good. The night houses, into which strangers are inveigled and robbed, are the resorts of young men of fortune, who here take the first step on a downward road which leads them and their families to shame and ruin, are worthy of at least equal attention. Beside being more frequented, these night houses have a much greater number of hours for play. The day houses are in full operation four or five hours per day, but in the night houses a game can be had in the afternoon and at any hour at night, while the average of play, take them altogether, is fully eighteen hours of each twenty-four. In the absorption and waste of capital, the half-score of day houses cannot be compared to those where most of the play is at night.
It is well-nigh impossible to get accurate statistics upon this point, and resort must therefore be had to approximate figures, which are, however, very near the exact truth. The faro banks of New York have as capital a little less than one million dollars, which is very unequally divided, as the ninety-two houses vary from $2,000 to $50,000 each, although only three or four have the latter amount, and the average banking capital is about $10,000. It is impossible to say what amount of money changes hands upon this basis. It is asserted that the average yearly winnings of all the banks taken together is about fifty per cent. over and above the expenditure required to keep up the establishments, so that every year these gamblers absorb about $500,000, while the gross profits are more than 100 per cent. These figures are conclusive that the way of the transgressor, if he be an occasional player rather than a dealer, is hard.
“Bunko Land,” on Broadway, of a fair summer evening, extends from Twenty-third to Thirty-third street. Here, meandering softly along in the twilight, or boldly facing the glare of the electric lamps, New York’s gamblers are to be seen in mid-summer and mid-winter alike. They know well enough who their friends in authority are. They are fully convinced that charges against McLaughlin and Carpenter, like charges against Williams—which have been so often and so unsuccessfully made—are not likely to come to anything as long as their friends are on deck. And that means, of course, just as long as the gamblers’ weekly stipend is forthcoming.
Until the furor over the raids on Nos. 86 Fulton street and 15 Ann street shall have faded out, as all the anti-gambling furors do, it will no doubt continue to be true that “gambling has stopped in New York.” That for the public. Of course, gambling never stops; it is only a little harder now to find a “game,” and a little harder to get into it after it is found. A couple of years ago all gambling was stopped in New York—officially—for eighteen months. John Daly moved from his familiar stand, No. 39 West Twenty-ninth street, to a private house on Forty-second street, and only admitted his “true friends,” and such of the public as could produce at the door, cards of invitation. There was a similar and general shifting of quarters and barring of doors in Ann street, Fulton, Barclay, Fourteenth streets, and at the famous old 818 Broadway, which goes on forever, apparently, however raids come and go. That sudden revolution in the habits and habitats of Gotham’s “sports” was due, just as their present stringency of circumstances is due, to a raid from authorities other than those locally in charge of the precincts where the gambling houses are situated.
All raids, to be in any degree effectual, must be made either directly from Police Headquarters, or by Comstock’s or Whitney’s men. This bold assertion is not made—everybody knows it is true—for the purpose of warranting inferences as to the integrity of the officers immediately in charge of the district where the games are in progress, but because it states an undeniable fact. Inferences are easy. This is one of the few readily accessible facts about gambling.
WHERE GAMES ARE RUNNING NOW.
There are gambling games to which the initiated can gain access now at No. 39 West Twenty-ninth street, in Fourteenth street, the second door from Thiess’, at No. 818 Broadway, at Gallagher’s in Barclay street, at Delacey’s in Chatham Square, at Nos. 12 and 15 Ann street—all close together—Bret Haines’ in Barclay street, and at a good many quiet haunts of tigers so well trained that their footsteps are like velvet and their howl is inaudible. So it is scarcely necessary to go for mere sport to Phil Daly’s Long Branch Club, against which “Baron” Pardonnet has been waging such an ineffectual warfare, or to the famous Saratoga Club, at which “Colonel” Shepard has been vainly launching the awful curse of his boycott.
The raid which made John Daly move, and which produced so great a stringency in the chip market for the time being, started at No. 1 Ann street. It is rarely that an eye-witness describes, from the inside, an official descent on a gambling house. There are generally too many personal reasons for silence. Here is a description by a player at the time of that famous raid. It might also serve as a good description of almost any raid on New York games: