The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1883-09-29

One of the commonest of the stories
told in the daily papers isthe story of the
frank gambler who eontides to the re-
porter the methods of his class. In SUBJ
stance it is always the Same story the
gambler leading the sucker OF. ''pro-
Queer or victim on until he is
cleaned out and then seeking or wait
ing, rather. TO be sought hy--a freshin-
stallment of victims. suckers or pro-
ducers And the point upon which the
contiding gambler insists most strong
ly is that the man who attacks a game
from the outside, whether it be a
brace game. a skin game or
square game, is sure in the end to
lose. Il sfsiN
As to the truth of the story there is
NO doubt. 1t is attested by the expert
snce of hundreds in every city in the
land. 1t is in the nature of things. in
deed, that it should be true Men who
engage in business as gamblers, who
deliberately embark in the pursuit of
obtaining the money Of other people by
games of alleged chance, are not at all
business can be made certainty they
will, naturally, make it so.
The wonder Is that with the natural
probabilities against success OH the
part of amateur gamestcrs in strug-
Cling with the professionals and with
the uniform record of just such failure
and loss as are to be expected, the num-
Der of victims Is constantly on the in
crease Every new greenhorn seems to
be fired with the belief that he has some
extraordinary gift denied 10 his plucked
predecessors, and that the unvarying
DEGREES of fate are to be suspended in
his case. His success. he thinks, will be
all the more remarkable because Of the
long list of failures preceding it. And
upon this belief and ambition the pro-
fessional gambler thrives so well that
he can afford every month in the year
to tell his story. and frankly to confess
that there really is no such thing as
"chance' in the business.
Most remarkable Of all Is the childlike
confidence of the sucker who chooses
Wall Street as the place and ''stocks"
as the method Of parting with his capt.
tai. The credulity demanded of him who
believes the banker at faro takes his
chances with the players is very great
But it is insignificant compared with
the credulity which looks forward to
realization Of profits in playing against
the game that is dealt in Wall Street.
Yet such credulity is common. 1t is
manifested every day by men who
seem, in respect TO all other matters, to
be gifted with ordinary shrewdness and
intelligence.
If u total stranger had asked the
cashier of bank to let him have one
or ten thousand dollars without seeuri-
ty upon his declaration that he was go
ing into a profitable mercantile opera
ton, and his promise to divide the
profits, he would have refused. He
would have felt that the stranger, If he
made good thing, would probably
keep the profit, even if he returned the
advance. He would have seen, in
word, that the proposition was unbusi-
nesslike and unsafe, and probably a
swindle. But because the total stranger
called himself .'broker" and proposed
to gamble with the banks money or
rather with the money intrusted to it,
instead of going into mercantile OPP.
Grafton, he turned it out to him as free
ly as if he had secured return Of fifty
per cent. on it. 1t never occurred to
him that the interests of the
,.broker," so called, were wholly an
tagonistic to his, or that he could do
far better for himself with the money he
sent him than to return 1t increased
thousand fold. On the contrary, he
expected, with child-like confidence,
that he would so return it, and he con-
tinued to expect this until his ,defalca-
tons could no longer be concealed.
The case Of this bank official IS the
case Of hundreds Of others. tits a case
of almost daily occurrence. There
seems to be no such thing in this mat
ter Of stock gambling as learning from
the experience of others. But it does
seem as though the stockholders and
directors in the banks Of the country
might profit SO far by the common ex-
perience as to keep better watch over
their servants in places Of trust. De
tr0it Free Press.