The Race-Track Gambling Mania
RECENTLY a quite successful effort was made by the city authorities of Chicago to stamp out race-track gambling in the western metropolis. In an account of this effort, contributed by Mayor Harrison of Chicago to the Saturday Evening Post, he speaks of the extent to which this form of the gambling mania was found to be invading all districts and classes of the city. He mentions a girl stenographer who “studied the ‘dope sheet,’” “knew the vocabulary of the race-track,” “knew the horses,” and “was as proficient as a race-track ‘tout.’” This girl “gave her commissions when she could not get to a pool-room or to the track.” It was discovered that “pool-rooms were operated especially for women,” and “to these places went the highly respectable women of family.” The business was acquiring a systematic hold upon the city in general. On this point he says:— As with the stenographer, so with the great army of workers who fill downtown Chicago during the day—not every one a race-track ‘fiend,’ but every one exposed to the same temptation that had converted the stenographer into one. A glance at the crowds in the cars going to the races or at the crowds in the grandstand, the club house, or at the rail will be sufficient to give an idea of the scope of the race-track mania. We discovered that the big down-town buildings were so saturated with the craze for gambling that agents of pool-rooms made it a practise to visit office after office to obtain commissions for bets. The gambling solicitor was as regular a visitor as the man with a fresh towel supply. The book agent and the peddler might be refused admittance, but the gambling solicitor entered without hindrance. From the stenographers, clerks, and even the trusted men of the office he took the money that was badly enough needed for legitimate purposes, but which was risked in the insane effort to profit by hazard. We discovered that these solicitors worked the elevated trains and surface cars just as a baggage collector does a through train: not only the cars to the races but the cars carrying people to and from their work. The people of this age are crazy to do anything which gives them even a doubtful promise of a little worldly gain; but in the infinitely greater profit that is to be for eternity, through godliness, they feel no interest. Well says the Scripture that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.”