There are a dozen similar places in the loop district where the money that changes hands in one night, averages $10,000. Men acquainted with the situation declared that $500 a day is a very conservative average of money changing hands in the various gambling holes in Chicago.
For the 500 places this means an exchange of $250,000 a day.
Oh, will a freshly awakened civic conscience save a demoralized public from itself, or will the lethargy which is upon Chicago allow the thousands of young men, men with wives and families, to hurry themselves on to ruin and to death?
The gambling houses, according to old time gamblers, on all forms of gambling, make a “rakeoff” of about seven per cent on each dollar cast by a victim before their greedy eyes.
This means $17,500 a day. Fifty per cent of that or $8,750, is retained by the gambling house keepers for expenses. The remaining profit goes the old, old way, one half—$4,375—is split between the gambling under lords and the gambling kings.
An equal amount, goes to the Vice Trust for the protection received from the police.
GAMBLING IN CONCLUSION—ITS CROOKED CHARACTER.
So greedy and avaricious are the big chiefs of the gambling fraternity and the members of the Vice Trust that after all is said and done, there is little left for the game keeper.
As a result even the little sporting instinct he may have is sacrificed and he becomes crooked in every dealing he has with the paying public.
“Ninety-eight per cent of the gambling games in Chicago today are crooked,” declared a well-known gambler. “There is no money in the profession unless the public can be hoodwinked.”