The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-09-28
DOWN WITH THE GOLD GAMBLERS!


From the " Y. sun
There are laws for the suppression of COM
mon gambling houses, which the police and
the courts occasionally enforce. If the civil
authorities have the power to shut up the
places where faro and roulette lure men to
ruin, why should not the same principle ap
ply to the Gold Room, where not alone the
fortunes of the participants are staked, but
where the peace and prosperity of the COM
bling ''hell," as the place where games of
hazard are played is very justly termed the
welfare of individuals only is jeoparded. The
risk is well defined. There are certain
chances in favor of the "Bank, and the
player stakes his own or somebody else's
money with his eyes open. No respectable
gambling-house keeper nowadays resorts to
marked cards or loaded dice, but, content with
the percentage in his favor, ''plays on the
square, and, if he loses pays his money with
the same seeming Indifference with which he
would rake in his gains.
Ordinary gambling may lead John Jones,
clerk, to rob his employer or beggar his
family and blast his own reputation, and
there is the end of it; yet the law denounces
the practice as immoral and criminal, and
society makes war upon the common game
ster, and consigns him to the common Jail.
But when brokers', bankers, and capitalists,
ness community, engage in colossal gambling
operations, by which monetary values may be
so deprecated as to bring thousands to ruin;
when the national securities may fall in price
SO seriously as to obstruct the whole course
of Government; when the bread of the poor
man may be enhanced in cost, and the value
of his labor be lowered when all the necessa-
ries of life are appreciated, all the essential
elements that make up Il well-ordered state of
society are disorganized and overturned, and
there is no assured stability anywhere. are we
to be told that there is no remedy to reach
the case? Gambling conducted on SO gigantic
q scale becomes legitimate and respectable,
forsooth no matter how disastrous it's con-
sequences to the community at large!
Out upon such canting stuff The men
who conspire to 'corner" gold are no more
respectable than the men who play across
the green table. Tho latter, if they be not
utterly destitute of the ''honor' that is said
to obtain even ''among thieves" scorn to
take more than the chances of the game,
while the former resort to deliberate fraud.
Knowing that they hold the game in their
| own hands, that nowhere but of them can
the commodity they buy of their dupes be
obtained, they go on inveigEng men into
their tolls, and having secured an artificial
scarcity of the article they sell, put up the
prices to any fabulous figures their want of
gambling, as it's votaries assert, is certainly
downright swindling. By superior cunning
and the power of combination, they get their
victims into ''corner," and then offer them
the alternative of being robbed or ruined.
We have no sympathy with the bulls or
bears. They are alike Indifferent to us, as
| individuals, whether they lost or won in the
| late encounter; and were the consequences of
these transactions visited solely upon them,
their practices might perhaps be tolerated.
| But their Vaccinations are productive of such
| widespread disaster to innocent parties all
over the country, that they assume the mag
nitude of public evil which demands sup
| preston. 1t is conspiracy against trade and
commerce in which they are engaged, and our
statutes provide for the punishment of such
conspiracy. The law of conspiracy has been
repeatedly invoked against laboring men
seeking to uphold the price of their labor;
why should it not be applied to these conspi-
rators upon grander scale ?