The agent pays for the right of such dissemination. This man in the aggregate receives $40,000 a month from the agents in twenty-nine cities on his circuit who reap vast fortunes from the sending of the gambling news to the handbooks in their respective territories. The “boss” is not satisfied with the swollen profit. He demands a certain percentage in the various cities from the profits of the local men using his service.
THE HANDBOOK PROFIT AND GRAFT.
Sixty thousand “pikers” in Chicago feeding the gambling goddess through her handbook mouth daily!
Is that figure something to startle you? It is true.
The “piker” plays in small spurts from fifty cents to three dollars a day. Then the bets soar up the ladder until you reach the rich sucker who shovels out as much as $500 a day on an average. Bets are paid as high as $10,000 in one day on downtown handbooks.
One man in State street has maintained a $25,000 a day business for ten years on an average. This has been actually proven.
There are twenty places downtown where handbooks are maintained that do an average business of $5,000 a day year in and year out, with men who dream and plan to beat the unconquerable combine.
Police officials who have consented to talk because they have been disowned by political masters and a former partner of the present gambling head declare that $300 is a fair and conservative estimate of the income from a horde of suckers of each of the 1,000 handbook establishments daily.
This means $300,000 per day changes hands in the race of men to exercise their gambling interests.