| NUMBER OF DRAWINGS PER YEAR. | NO. TICKETS PRINTED. | PRICE PER TICKET. | VALUE TICKETS SOLD. | PRIZES WON. | PAID OUT FOR SALARIES AND COMMISSIONS. |
| 2 Grand Semi-Annual, | 200,000 | $40.00 | $5,600,000 | $3,080,000 | $600,000 |
| 10 Monthly, | 1,000,000 | 20.00 | 13,000,000 | 7,150,000 | 1,200,000 |
| 313 Daily, | 21,900,000 | 1.00 | 1,320,000 | 892,000 | 198,000 |
| 325 Drawings, | 23,100,000 | —— | $19,920,000 | $11,122,000 | $1,998,000 |
Year by year the business of the company has increased and its financial standing has advanced in an equal ratio. Since its incorporation in 1868, it has sold tickets to the value of $168,000,000, paid prizes amounting to $92,400,000, and expended in commissions to dealers in New Orleans and elsewhere $16,000,000.
Its stock has, for some time past, paid an annual dividend of 85 per cent. on its par value, and is quoted on the market at 900.
THE HOPPER OF THE SERPENT.
In New Orleans, lottery playing is universal. It is safe to say that 50,000 fractional parts of tickets are purchased monthly, the smallest fraction of a chance sold in a monthly drawing being one-twentieth, and in the semi annual distribution one-fortieth. Among the purchasers there is no distinction of sex, age, color, social position or occupation. Men, women, whites, blacks, Mongolians, Mexicans, the old, the young, leaders of society and the “bums,” one and all buy, the crowd of these deluded speculators being swelled even by recruits from the ranks of the clergy.
The friends of the lottery adduce many arguments in its support. They claim that it is the least objectionable form of gambling; that it is conducted “on the dead square;” that as the larger drawings take place but once a month, and the price of the ticket is low (the usual ticket one-twentieth or one-fortieth costs $1.00), one can at most lose but $12.00 a year, even if he “plays lottery” every month and invariably loses; that there have been no scandals growing out of the monthly drawings, nor any instance of a man who has sunk his fortune, or resorted to embezzlement to play. As regards the daily drawings, it is pointed out that as that the ordinary purchaser only risks twenty-five cents and the prizes stand to the tickets in the ratio of one to three, it is impossible that much financial harm can be done.
These arguments, of course, utterly failed to take into consideration the powerful incitement and stimulus which this sort of gambling imparts to the vice in general. While the immediate effects of investing in lottery tickets may not be sudden and pronounced financial ruin, the consequences are apt to be far-reaching. Neither do the advocates of the lottery take into account what is essentially the very worst feature of the whole business—policy playing. While the aggregate amount of money lost through this means may be insignificant as compared with that squandered upon the monthly and semi-annual drawings, the ultimate results flowing from this description of gambling are, perhaps, worse than those attendant upon any other. Policy is played by the very poorest classes—and particularly by the negroes—who cannot afford to lose a solitary cent. The amount of suffering entailed upon the families of the poor through this agency is so large as hardly to be susceptible of computation.
At present there are some eighty policy shops in New Orleans, the business of all of which is based upon the daily drawings of the Louisiana Lottery. The keepers of these places sell, on an average eighty slips each day, making the total sale in the city about sixty-four hundred every twenty-four hours, or two million three thousand two hundred per annum. The low prices at which these “slips” (or fractional part of the tickets) are sold—twenty-five and fifty cents, places them within the reach of all. There are probably two thousand or three thousand regular policy players who buy tickets every day and who have a system of combinations which they believe is certainly bound to win in the end. In addition, there are about twenty-five thousand others who make a similar venture about once a week. All these have made policy playing a profound study, and understand all its intricacies and know all about “horses”, “saddles”, “gigs”, “all day”, “first place”, etc. They are firm believers in “luck”. In fact, nowhere are so many “fortune telling” and “dream” books sold as in New Orleans, principally for the purpose of interpreting dreams which the buyers believe indicate numbers which they should play. Clairvoyants and fortune tellers abound and prosper; and there are men whose only means of obtaining a fair support is travelling the streets with cages of trained canaries or parroquets, which for the trifling consideration of five cents, will select from a case an envelope containing a number supposed to be a “sure winner.” Blindness is regarded with reverence, for the reason that a blind man is supposed to be invariably lucky. “Age cannot wither nor custom stale[stale]” the folly of these inveterate policy players. Their infatuation and superstition know no limit. They are constantly looking for “signs”. If you should say to one of them that you expected to be thirty-six years old on the sixth of December, the chances are that he would rush off around the corner to play the combination 6-12-36. They are perpetually looking for numbers by day and dreaming of them by night, and their first act on arising in the morning is to consult their “dream-books”, to ascertain what they shall play that day. The negro house servants are among the best patrons of the policy shops, often squeezing a quarter or half dollar from the market or grocery money, to place it on a “gig” or “saddle”.
The aggregate amount thus squandered is, as has been said, enormous. Yet it is usually spent in small sums and leads to no graver crime than petty pilfering, which, however, is bad enough. Still, occasionally a “plunger” tries this form of gambling, and once in a while a dishonest clerk who has been systematically robbing his employer for years will seek to arouse sympathy by attributing his entire peculation to the insidious fascination of daily drawings.