The Forrest City times., 1888-01-28
THE eANe OF NEW YORK.
The Buxz-saw of wall Street ana ,h.
 Betting Craze


 Betting Craze.
 A casual observer of metropolitanl life, who came down from a rural ra- treat recently to take his first peep ae the city declares in his haste that auI New Workers are gamblers, says 7h. Commercial Advertiser He says that, as far as he could see there was scarcelv . resident of the city. outside the Tim. its of infancy. penury. and lunacy, who did not habitually or occasionally. in1 dulge in some method of stalking moneu or possessions upon chance. He said there might be. and he was willing to admit that there were. many worthy persons who conscientiously summed even the innocent but expensiye grab-bag at the church fair but hs could not find them. He observed that what with stocks and wheat and races and "tickets" and policy and .patent clocks the whole energies of man seemed to be turned to some form of gambling.
 Of course this innocent rustic did tho metropol is great injustice. It is only sour-minded cynic or an unbalanced ascetic that would consider these things gambling. The Wall street man whose life is passed in betting whether certain figures come up or come down is shocked at the stupidity of world that would call his occupa- ton gambling. It isn't called gamb- ling to take your wife down to Sheeps- head Bay and buy pools for her on Little Minch and Fremont, it isn't called gambling to put up $50 for margin on 1000 bushels of wheat that never existed. It isn't gambling to bot your friend . case of champagne that it will rain the day you wan. to go down to Rocksway beach duck hunting. Nor to match dollars. nor to pitch quarters at a crack, nor bet hats on election. nor shake" nor put money in yacht race. nor guess tho number of beans in glass for the drinks, nor do 150 other things that men do every day of their lives to risk loss upon. There was an old super sttion among people once that these things were gambling. but it has pass ed away with the belief that the earth was flat and that witches could raise the dead and other curious fancies of the dark ages. Gambling bless my soul! is very difficult Gambling is where some rough men with slouch hats and revolvers sit around table in pine shanty somewhere in the dreadful west and with pack of greasy cards play rude games of chance and kill each other over the result. There is no more gambling-Not in New York anyway.
 1t must be confessed. however, that if our moral friend, in his untutored way, Is bound to call these innocent things gambling. his remark is not al- together without justification. There are interested groups around every ticker, and there Is ticker in every hotel, big saloon, and brokers office in New York. The interest that a very large part of the population takes in the stock market seems to be enor. nous. The excitement over horse. race at Jerome park is out of all pro- portion to any interest in the affair m trial of speed. There is no event 50 trivial that bets are not made on it. l It must also be admitted that some of the people who indulge their interest in this sort of thing do bear some faint resemblance to the notions of real gamblers gathered from travellers who have been where gambling is practiced 1 You will notice some of them around | almost every ticker. There is the old. worn-out wreck of Wall street for in- stance Who has not seen him' With his seedy clothes and his dejectsd l mien, his poverty, his nervous watch' ing of the tape. his gaunt. pinched face, his restless eyes. He is the 1 familiar of the street. He has no money invested in the stocks; he has not money enough to buy him bread. 1 1t can not make any difference to him whether Lake Shore is up or Union Ps' ] citic Is down. Yet he watches the re- i cord hour after hour with absorbing interest as though his life depended on the figures. He dropped all he had in the street long ago-all he had and all he could borrow. and all he could beg and all he could get at pawnshops Tor his furniture aud clothes. In niis cases out of ten he was well-to-do once and prosperous. Now he is a tramp who sleeps no one knows where ana lives on charity and what he can getG tho free-lunch counters before tho agilo bar-keeper runs him out. See him' Why, the neighborhood of Wall stree' knows him by heart and has always known him. There are SO many d him that tho brokers have ceased long ago to take any interest in him as an awful example of what they themselves may como to. For all the world isnt he just like the poor creatures wh0 have been ruined by a passion TOT gambling, who hang around the gamO' ling tables with sort of awful fasclna' ton long after their last chance " ever staking sou has left themP
 Then there is the nicely dressea man. with the shiny silk hat puliea 1 aggressvely forward, the cigar stucK upward to meet the hat, the big walcn chain, and the wide-striped trousers He is always at the ticker, too. n' swaggers around with an air of indT ference whichever way the figures go and orders wine in loud voice, snu is full of ''tips" about the state oi 'a' market He looks so much like sn' pictures tn t have been drawn of son' of the moths that flutter around 'a' gaming-ta table candle. and some day "