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There can't be a
And there are mighty
It's probably the simplest mani-#
festation of the inclination to gam-
ble that seems to be born in most
of us. The toss of a coin looks
fair enough, but even on a ‘‘fifty-
fifty"’ break such as that you can’t
be sure that in a given number of
tosses, say 100, half the tosses will
be “heads’’ and half “tails.”
In all games of chance the prob-
ability of winning is against the
player, even if he can be sure the
game is “on the level.” Yet man
has gambled from time immemo-
rial. It makes little difference wheth-
er his purpose was to relieve the |
monotony of everyday existence or
always been willing to take a |
chance.
Gambling was popular, even fa- |
mous, in ancient Babylonia, China |
and India many centuries before |
the birth of Christ. History tells us
many tales of games of chance |
among the Greeks and Romans.
Germans gambled in the first cen-
tury of the Christian era.
Monte Carlo “Wide Open.”
Hundreds of years ago gambling |
was recognized as a menace to so- |
ciety. In England the first law |
against it was enacted in 1661. In
1698 lotteries were made illegal;
gambling was further curtailed by |
acts of Parliament in 1845, 1853 and |
1906. In 1838 France suppressed |
gaming tables, and in 1872 Germany
closed gambling resorts, even the
world-famed ones at Baden-Baden
and Hamburg. Belgium clamped
down on gambling in 1902, and to-
day the only spot in Europe where
the resorts ‘‘run wide open’ is at
Monte Carlo, in the tiny principality
of Monaco.
Roulette wheels, gaming houses,
faro, ‘policy’ rackets, bookmaking
lotteries and wheels of fortune are
pretty generally forbidden in civil
ized countries today. The laws of
the different countries vary, how-
ever, as do even the laws among
the states of the United States.
Inside or outside the law, gam-
bling flourishes in every section of
the country. Thousands upon thou-
sands daily visit the race tracks.
Throngs invest in tickets on the
Irish sweepstakes. Crap games are
going on in big city alleys and in
the back rooms of stores. Apart-
ment kitchens have their Saturday
night poker parties. Ladies gamble
at bridge in the afternoon.
Outside the Law.
It is impossible to say exactly or |
even approximately, how big the |
gambling industry is in the United
States, for most of it is conducted
outside the law, just as saloons were
conducted during the prohibition
era. But a few representative fig-
ures are at hand to show that the
total must be an enormous one.
Nevada; slot machines, no matter
whether they operate on pennies,
nickels, dimes, quarters or half-dol-
lars, are licensed for $30 a quarter.
Last year Reno gambling houses
paid taxes of $94,245.12.
city received $38,424.08, the state
and county $52,232.76, and the mu-
nicipality of Sparks, three miles dis-
tant, $3,588.30.
Gamblers fall
types. There is,
three main
of all,
into
first
the first throw. But if ‘‘seven-elev-
en’ is missed, repetition of the first
throw is unlikely, and the seven is
now working against the player and
the net effect is against him.
Even chess, generally accepted as
the most intellectual of all games,
depends upon chance, says Prof.
Von Neumann. He points out that
‘““white,”” which has the first move,
can always win, although if ‘black’
is wise to the theory, he can play
defensively and tie “white.”
In poker the chances are one in
300,000 to obtain any certain com-
| bination of five cards. Chance is
also introduced in this type of game
| by the action of the opponent, and
| intellectual reasoning is sometimes
| needed. There is little chance of
| improving the original hand in pok-
er, so the most legical places for
the exercise of skill are in making
Cn nm —————— -
superstitious gambler. He believes
implicitly that Luck is a sort of
supernatural power, a god that can
decide his fate. He woos luck by
talking to his dice, or by carrying
a rabbit's foot in his pocket. He
seldom thinks about the mathemat-
ical possibilities of winning or los-
ing; if he wins, Lady Luck is with
him; if he loses, he is suffering a
ing.”
Another type is the seeker after
thrills. Usually this is a person of
some means. It is largely this type
which frequents the fashionable
gambling houses of Palm Beach, or
those in the large cities where the
turnover may be half a million
dollars a week for a single ‘“‘club.”
Craps Not Fair.
The third classification embraces
the professionals. They make their
living at gambling, and ti know
the ropes. Usually they are figures
on the fringe of the underworld, and
not infrequently they become mixed
up in scrapes which have only a
minor relation to their gambling ac-
tivities. The professional, more like-
ly than not, is fully capable of cheat-
ing with marked cards, loaded dice
and other implements beyond the
ey
HE illustration shows the outfit
8s you receive it and to operate
the humidor, it is supplied with
chuing ot snch end, which allow it
to hang in full view of customers
in the cigar case. The batteries are
concealed in any convenient loca
tion. Connections between batteries
and humidor cannot be seen when
installed according to simple in.
structions that accompany each or.
der A space wight inches square
ot each end is under the operators
control. ln appearsnce this magnet
resembles any ordinary cigar coun
tor humidor.
Neo. 622. Humidor Counter Mag
net. with switch, 4 Hot Shots, 30
fost of connecting wire. instruc.
tions and 3 White Dice, Com-
PAE conssssimsmin w— LX
betting on the races is conducted
with the use of pari-mutuel ma-
chines there has been $224,000,000
wagered in a single year; this does
not include the five tracks in New
York state, where the ‘‘take” is
enormous.
Four Irish Sweepstakes drew
about $19,500,000 in American mon-
ey, for which the Yanks received
in return some $11,500,000 in prize
money. In England the wagering
on swee| , horses, greyhounds,
Is and the like totals more than
,000,000 a year; Scotland Yard
the British Home Office are
Iping the churches to fight them.
Types of Gamblers.
Probably the most wide-open town
in the United States is Reno, Ne-
vada, where state, city and county
realize a sizable revenue in taxes
upon the gambling houses. The lat-
ter live off the idle hours and loose
purses of the hundreds who come
to Reno to live for a few weeks that
obtain divorces; most of
ars pretty well to do,
gambling.
roulette,
All banking games—faro,
~are taxed $165 a gq in
he can get away with it. He sel-
dom dies a natural death.
Whatever class to which a gam-
bler belongs, he will sooner or later
make a bad risk in the anticipation
of feeling the emotional stimulation
of seeing a “long shot” come in.
He knows there is such a thing as
“loaded” dice, but thinks he is too
smart to be fooled with them. What
he forgets is that dice are mathe-
matically loaded against him, even
if they are perfect dice.
Prof. John Von Neumann, mathe-
matician of the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study at Princeton, warns
students in his lectures that it is
impossible to win over a long period
in a crap game. The magic “seven-
eleven” combination is by far the
most frequent throw, he says, but
if it doesn’t turn up on the first cast
the chances are reversed. “That
leaves a 490 winning average, so
the game is not fair,” he explains.
In dice explicit hazards are in-
troduced
{ the discards, and in deciding wheth-
| er or not opponents are “‘bluffing’’
in their bets.
Poker and Bridge Chances.
Here are some of the most soug!
after hands in poker,
One pair
Two pairs
Three of a kind
Flush
Full house
| Four of a kind
Straight flush
Royal flush
In a game
635,013,550,600 possible
tions of You
chances out of that many
a '‘perfect” .
suit, Here are t}
other distributions:
13-1
-2
3
of bridge
hands
1
After your cards
tained there is
chance that those
holds will not “go well”
In gambling houses it is healthy
to remember that the odds are al-
ways in favor of the house. If it
were not they could not afford to
stay ‘in business very long. As it
is, they make a profit and pay enor-
mous taxes or, if they are operat-
ing illegally, they are forced to
“kick in" handsomely to the “‘syn-
dicate’ or gang which usually op-
erates them as units in a chain, or
to politicians and police for *“pro-
tection.”
Roulette furnishes a good example
of the manner in which the bank
always enjoys an advantage over
the player. Suppose a wager is
made on any part of the board, ex-
cept on a given number, and the
zero appears. The player is re-
quired to give up half his stake or
let the wager stand for the next
play. The zero pays everything for
the house at Monte Carlo, if all the
wheels are in operation.
4,000,000 Sweepstakes Tickets.
Authorities consider lotteries or
sweepstakes, if they are conducted
iement of
part
. +h rey
n them.
ati!
SLi
of gambling. The losing player need
part with no more than the original
there are usually millions of tickets
sold in the big lotteries.
In the Irish Sweepstakes, for in-
are usually sold.
in 133,333 to win one of the grand
prizes—$150,000, $75,000, or $50,000:
one chance in 6,667 to win a sec-
ondary prize of $3,500, and one
chance in 4,000 to win a small prize
of $500.
The most vicious of all gambling
rackets is the ‘numbers’ game
which flourishes in many of the big
cities, despite the honest efforts of
the law to stamp it out. In some
of these games the chance of win-
ning is as small as one in 1 billion.
Slot machines may actually be set
so that the house takes in 80 per
cent of all the money played, and
they frequently are. Few slot ma-
chines pay the house as little as 60
i
i
“Murder on Soochow Creek”
By FLOYD GIBBONS
Famous Headline Hunter
ERE’S a tale from China, where life is cheap. They'll kill
you for your shoes in that desperate, over-crowded, half-
starved country. Or they'll kill you for nothing at all. I've seen
Chinese killed by the dozen over there for no reason, as far as I
could see, but just for the sake of killing. In no country in the
world, except possibly revolutionary Spain, is death spread with
such a careless hand.
Yes, life is cheap over there in China
for something that wasn’t worth a Chinese
Adventurer of the day
once when his life wasn't worth two cents.
That was in February, 1932. Miit Weaver was in the United
States Marine corps then, and the Marines were stationed in Shang-
hai protecting our nationals and the International Settlement dur-
ing the fighting that went on between the Chinese and the Jap-
anese.
Many a man has been killed
dollar. But our Distinguished
Milton Weaver of New York City—saw the time
Along the Shores of Soochow Creek.
y remember the little dug-on
that surrous
I sure do.
wosphere
out that,
ng was goi
buns 3
member
mm
kept trying to force their
behind Settlement walls.
d get in n
At the Mercy of the Chinese.
It was about five in the morning when Milt saw a sampan,
loaded with Chinese, making its way across the creek. Imme-
diately Milt shouted to them to go back. but on they came until
the nose of the boat touched the shore. Then Milt saw he was in
for an argument—maybe even a little trouble. But if he'd known
how much trouble it was going to be, he'd have sounded the alarm
unl called out the guard before he tried to do anything else about
in,
As the boat touched shore Milt stepped aboard and began telling the
coolie who ran it to turn around and go back. “I had to do this in sign lan-
guage,” Milt says, “because the coolie, apparently, didn't understand
English. The coolie appeared to be doing what I told him. He was try-
ing to swing the boat around when a small tugboat came along and
rammed into his sampan. At ne time it pushed the sampan out
into the middle of the stream, impossible for me to jump
ashore again.”
And then, all of a sudden, the demeanor of the Chinese in the boat
changed. A few seconds before Milt had represented authority, with a
guard of soldiers at his lI. Now, out in the middle of the
he was alone—helpless—and darned well those Chinese knew it.
began swarming toward him, babbling, lating, threatening.
Milt saw what was coming—saw that he had one chance fo
get away, and that was to jump aboard the tugboat. He turned
toward it, and then a thing happened that put him completely at
the mercy of the occupants of the sampan.
As he t
there stream
They
gesticula
irned toward the tug, a puff of smu
flew straight in his eyes. He was blinded!
It was only for a few mome , but during those few moments of
blindness Milt experienced the worst fear of his whole life. The natives,
that gets mobbed by a crowd
of Chinese natives has darned little chance of getting out alive.
Desperate Fight on the Sampan.
“They came at me with bamboo sticks,” says Milt, “trying
to push me overboard into the filthy waters of the creek. I
knew I was doomed if I let them get me into the water, for once
I was in it they would push me under and hold me there until
I drowned. I blew my whistle for help. I had a pistol in a holster
at my hip, but I couldn't see to shoot it. But I also carried a baton
~like a policeman’s nightstick—and I began swinging it around
my head as best I could.”
Milt says he doesn't know how he managed to stay on his feet all
through the hullabaloo. He could feel bamboo poles poking at him,
and he could feel that his own stick was doing some damage, too, for
every once insa while it came in contact with something that felt like a
coolie’s head. But little by little he was being forced back toward the
edge of the sampan.
Milt was getting desperate. Another step or two and he'd be over-
board. He was thinking of drawing his pistol and firing blindly into the
mob, when suddenly he heard English voices on the bank, mixed in
with the native shouting and cursing.
That stopped the coolies. A minute before, Milt had been a lone,
hated foreign devil. Now he was backed by authority again. They put
the boat back to shore, and Milt was helped ashore by English police-
men and a few of his own pals, the American Marines. They gave Milt
first aid treatment for his eyes, and for the cuts and bruises he had re-
ceived, and Milt says he was mighty doggone glad to get his feet back
on the ground of the International Settlement where good old American,
British and French law and order were in force and life was worth more
than a couple of plugged Chinese pennies.
©-WNU Service.
ke, full of fine bits of coal
First Before British Royalty
Born in 1744, Abigail Smith be-
came the wife of a young Masea-
chusetts lawyer, John Adams, when
she was twenty. Acknowledged as
one of those who helped shape a new
nation, John Adams was rewarded
with the appointment of first United
States minister to Great Britain in
1784, and his wife and eighteen-
year-old daughter Abby joined him
in London. The following summer
they curtsied, as the first bona fide
Americans, before British royalty—
thereby leading off a picturesque
procession which a favored few of
their sisters have continued for
years.
Claims First Sleeping Car
That the first sleeping car to be
built and placed in actual service on
this continent was designed and
made in Canada is stated in an ar-
ticle in the Canadian National Rail-
way Magazine. The plan for a sleep-
ing car was prepared in 1859 in prep-
aration for the of the then
Blondes and Brunettes
The brunette is thoughtful, im-
aginative, serious and tenacious.
When they start anything they see
it through. They are conservative
and more stable than blondes, de-
clares a writer in Pearson's London
Weekly. They are emotional and it
is remarkable that many of the
great religious cults have been
founded by brunettes. The brunette
is slower than the blonde, not so
brilliant, but sometimes more sure
of “getting there” in the end. The
blonde is the builder, the go-getter,
seeker after fresh fields and pas-
tures new. They are the explorers
and inventors, the civil engineers.
Frocks Made Gay
With Stitch Flowers
Fashion decrees that flowers
bloom on our dresses in embroid-
ery this Spring and Summer.
Give this smart touch to that new
frock—surprise yourself and all
your friends too by what it will
Pattern 5801.
last y So easily done in si
and running stitch, ye |
fun to embroider these
| nosegavs Choose
for WOMEN only
CARDTI is a special
the relief of some of the
ine for
sufferin
which results from a oy
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nj use has been
has helped »
rished won
worn
agreeable, and, when its
ke pt up awhile,
on to re
This medi
+1") has
recommended by
any years. Find
out whether it will help you by
giving it a fair trial ir
not benefited, consult a physician,
poorly nou
strength from thelr food,
cine pronounced
been nd
women for many, many
“Card-u
used =
Of course,
Foe's Anger
The anger of an enemy repre-
sents admonishes us
of the d more heartiness
than
Tel
dayior.,
‘Constipated
30 Years
“For thirty years | had stubborn
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Now | eat sausage, bananas, pie, any-
thing | want ang never felt better. |
sleep sound y all night and enjoy | fe."
~Nrs. Mabel! Schott.
If you are suering from constipation,
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thirty minutes after taking Just one
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Dr. BH. IL. Shoub, New York, tefloribs
“In addition to intestinal cleensing,
chocks the growth af intestinel bacteria and
or fale
our faults or
Give your bowels a real cleansing
with Adierika and see how good you
feel. Just one spoonful relieves GAS
and stubborn constipation, At al
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anywhere, Duley
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Lams all season. 200
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DEPARTMENT
CIGARS
Miss Florida Tampa Cigars, box of one
hundred postpaid three dollars, satisfac
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Dillon, 119 8. Salina Si, Syracuse, N. ¥,
SOUVENIRS
Own Valuable Beautiful ket 53
President FRANKLIN D. QOSEVEL
triotic victory souvenir copper ooin.,
ach 50c delivered, Large silver dollar,
Properties Charleston, FE.
Berkowits .
FLOWERS
Gladisius Selected large he bulbs, §
ea. 5 varieties labeled al Pie-
$l rye Catalog free. Rishelag
an 126 Wesdrew Ave. Richmond Va,
STAMPS
U. 8. STAMPS, MINOR DEFECTS @ %
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at Boe for 30 TT cos abone
" one,
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