Behind the whir and hum of that maddening wheel is $50,000 held by the keepers of the game. Try to break into that treasury with pick, axe or jimmy and you will be caught, trapped and bled to death. In a house recently closed because of the objectionable notoriety it had obtained, the gambling and vice powers are said to have cleaned up over $100,000 in three months. That place was located in Michigan avenue near Thirteenth street. All forms of chance were thrown into the gambling pot, melted and handed out to the "pikers" as so many gold bricks nightly. In a famous, or rather infamous, whist club in a downtown building, whose doors open in the face of the offices of several prominent lawyers, $20,000 a night is cleaned up by the keepers. 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." Science, electricity, hypnotism, sleight of hand, or other means are used to deceive the player. Unless you can note the swift touch of the gambler's foot on the electric button, which drops the little ball into the red hole when you bet on the black, you face ruin every time you face the roulette wheel. Can you see the invisible hand that is doping the racetrack sheet? If you cannot, stay away from the handbook or be prepared to look into the dark and murky waters of the river as a final hiding place of shame.