Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the WorldWooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
History
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Wooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
Crime -- Illinois -- Chicago; Police -- Illinois -- Chicago
Publicity and education are, of course, the chief instruments for
converting illegitimate into legitimate speculation, for changing
commercial gambling into commercial foresight. This intelligent
movement toward a restoration of discernible order and rationality
in business processes, by eliminating "chances" and placing the
transfer of property and the earning of industrial gains on a more
rational foundation, must, of course, go with other movements of
social and industrial reforms which aim simultaneously at the basis of
reformation of the economic environment. Every step which places the
attainment of property upon a sane rational basis, associating it with
proportionate personal productive effort, every step which enables men
and women to find orderly interests in work and leisure by gaining
opportunities to express themselves in art or play under conditions
which stimulate new human wants and supply means of satisfying them,
will make for the destruction of gambling.
GAMBLING DON'T PAY.
Two-fifths of all the crimes committed every year are estimated to be
attributable to race tracks. Five men have been convicted this year
of stealing money from the United States postoffice, and every one
of them confessed he lost the money at race tracks. The mania for
gambling is growing stronger, and as it grows the defenses of honesty
crumble away.
What may be called gambling thieves are not so numerous in Chicago as
in some other cities, for the reason that no race tracks are permitted
to exist in Cook county. But there are many gambling swindlers in
this city. A large proportion of the men in the county jail are there
because gambling wrecked morals in them, and hardly a week passes
that does not find at least one person before the courts charged with
robbery because money was wanted to bet.
This is not all of the injury that gambling does to the community.
Because the state's attorney's office and the police have not
suppressed gambling the city is full of sharpers who make their living
out of men foolish enough to think that they can get rich by betting
on horse races, faro or roulette. These sharpers are an organized band
of law breakers, preying on society, disorganizing it as far as is
possible, their whole existence a menace to decency and order.
The passion for gambling can probably never be eradicated from human
nature. But civilization should be able to prevent rogues and rascals
from profiting by it in the way usual in Chicago. Professional
gamblers--professional swindlers, should be sent to the penitentiary
and kept there. There should be some means under the law to send all
such to the penitentiary and keep them there.
HOW TO END RACE-TRACK GAMBLING.
Race-track gambling has unexpectedly become an issue of importance in
New York, and widespread discussion of means to rid the city of its
race tracks is taking place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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