Of course the fight was what gamblers term a “stall,” i. e., a trick by which another gang of sharpers might have an opportunity of resorting to the same tactics employed by professionals who travel about the country “snaking” cards. In other words, and plainer English, the “fight,” however seemingly earnest, was in reality a sham. Five sharpers were confederated in the perpetration of the scheme. Three of them engaged in the scrimmage, one of them took advantage of the melee to “ring in a cold deck,” and the other, handsomely dressed and imperturbable of demeanor, quietly saw his confederates “pound” one another, and then quietly bet upon the descent of the cards from a pre-arranged pack which had been substituted in the receptacle for those placed there by the proprietor’s employes.
I hardly know how I could more fittingly close my exposition of gambling than by a description such as that given above. Nothing could more aptly illustrate the remorseless tactics of the professional scoundrel; nothing could better show the gullibility of the dupe; nothing could better exemplify the hollowness of the adage that there is “honor among thieves.”
O, young men of the only republic which has demonstrated its past vitality by the average virtue of its citizens; O, parents, to whose tender care has been committed a charge which God Himself has denominated a sacred trust; O, law-makers, to whose wisdom is entrusted the framing of statutes for the repression of vice and the propagation and perpetuation of public morals—listen to the voice of a penitent who has sounded the utmost depths of degradation. The enlightenment of the intellect, the awakening of the conscience, the conversion of the will—these are the agencies which Divine Providence may employ to avert from the American people the wrath of Him who has said that the casting of the lot is in the hands of the Lord.
“OLD HUTCH.”
No description of the Chicago Board of Trade would be complete which failed to bring out, in bold relief, the figure of the daring speculator whose mysterious movements have long proved an enigma to his fellow members, the sphinx of the chamber, the “king of the wheat pit,” Mr. Benjamin Peters Hutchinson, better known to his friends and to the country at large as “Old Hutch.” The accompanying cut is a good likeness of this remarkable man. Born in New England, he emigrated to the West while a mere youth, and has “grown up” with Chicago. Endowed by nature with indomitable pluck and marvelous energy, he has carved out his own success. He is beyond question the largest operator on the floor of ’Change in the city of his choice, and his ventures are as bold as they are gigantic. In a business enterprise he fears no foe, as he recognizes no friend, and his tall, spare form looms up as a tower of granite in the midst of the turbulent waves of speculation which surge around him.
NATURE AND EFFECTS OF GAMING.
Gambling holds a high place among the vices of society. It proposes to the young that they secure money without earning it honestly. It thus asks thousands of persons to disregard the noble pursuits and to become gamblers. True manhood is made by the following of an honorable industry. If we contrast Watt, who made the engine, with some gambler, the difference at once appears between the noble callings and the games of chance. The lawyer, the physician, the mechanic, the inventor, the writer can show a reason of existence. With the gambler this is impossible. He has no reason for being in life.
The first evil of gambling is this intellectual loss, incurred by being turned away from all those honorable pursuits which create mental power. Astronomy helped make Newton,[Newton,] art made Angelo, the law helped make Burke and Webster, traffic made Peabody and Peter Cooper, the press made Greeley and Raymond, but gambling will take the best mind the age can produce and degrade it to the level of the brain of a trickster or a thief. There is nothing in gambling except a kind of sneaking hope of a shameful success. It is a contest in which victory is as shameful as defeat.