St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1890-12-06
The Early Use of Lotteries.

upon all lotteries in general and the
Louisiana Lottery IN particular can DC
regarded by the Informed students OF
American history as an imputation upon
the character of the founders OF the Re
public for more than the first half OF the
century. They base their hostility upon
the ground of the alleged immortality of
leaving anything to chance, and the
control 10y taxation or otherwise OF any
sort Of business that does not square
with the strait laced notions of pursuits,
what little human nature they possess
find vent in some other form more CON
genial to their feelings, moro consonant
to THEN selfish interests.
For more than sixty years lotteries
were resorted to by the people OF all the
States TO raise money for works OF pub
lie Improvement, to establish and cnuoW
schools, to build bridges and levccs, to
dig canals and even to erect churches.
Christ Church in New Orleans was start
cd with the proceeds of lottery. Tween
ty-ninc Of the principal colleges and uni
vcrSitics of the United States were be-
gun and in part supported for years with
lottery money. Harvard and Yale arc
in the list; also the universities of
prnnSy lvania, of Michigan, of North
Carolina, Of Blown, of Georgia, of In
diana, of Vermont and many others.
Amherst OF Massachusetts, Dartmouth
of New Hampshire, Rutgers of New
jersey, in Il word nearly all the most ia
NOUS and successful colleges Of the
country were indebted to the lottery for
Il part Of their origin and endowment
money. In nineteen of the atates, the
public school systems were founded in
whole or in part i'll lottery grants. More
than fifty Of the principal rivers and
dozen OF more harbors have been i'm
proved by the use of money derived
from lotteries.
The ants can only reply to the array
of stubborn facts thus presented: but
the lottery is immoral. Would you
teach school children to gamble?' This
is the vcriest rot. The question whether
lottery is immoral or not is an open
one of ethics, the answer to which de-
ponds somewhat upon the temperament
and circumstances of the referee. 1t is
Of practical utilization to dismiss the
matter with the wave of the hand or the
shake of the head. Nearly all the States
of the Union have subordinated what
preiudiccs they may have had against
| lotteries to their wonderful power of
raising money for the fostering of pub
| lie institutions and the prosecution OF
public works which, without such aid,
would have languishcd OF persisted al
together. Yet when the people OF Loul-
siana express q wish to resort to the
same easy and effective method to raise
means, the surprising discovery is sud
denly made that the plan is bad because
the means are immoral.
We have no school system worthy of
| the name and when money is offered to
! build it mp to what it should be, the enc
mics Of education, not daring to state
hide behind their alleged consciences
and shrek: mot from that source ~
| Better the Zimmerman gloom and weak
ness of a conspicuous illiteracy than the
| adoption of the methods Of the first five
| presidents of the Republic and the ''im
| muraln statesmen who surrounded and
advised them
Our levees are broken, but they can
| stay so, waiting for Hercules rather than
| accept the feasible plan offered for their
construction. Our old veteran soldiers
must be left to glide down to the tomb
| without an effort to cheer them rather
| than be contaminated with dollar of
lottery money! And the city of New
| Orleans is to be further taxed for drain
age rather than be allowed to touch the
| 100000 a year so freely offered.
All this is hypocrisy Of ruinous kind.
The opponents of public education know
they have a powerful ally in the poverty
of the people. That the very idea of
additional taxation makes property
owners vince. There is some doubt of
| the sincerity of the authors of the oner
| Gus and odious new levee policy of the
administration. Not being friendly to
| the levees any more than to the schools
| they would not be at all displeased to
see that whole system fail.
Our ants have had their imitators in
all the other States. The friends of
education seventy Years ago had to fight
| for the money to establish schools, but
they won against y bitter opposition.
An authority writing Of the struggles OF
those times thus sums up the result,
which was largely due to the efforts OF
President Jefferson:
III the condition of affairs then existing lot
teries presented themselves as Il solution Of
all these difficulties. They allowed the money
needed for public purposes to be raised with
out bonds or excessive taxation; and more
over, as Thomas Jefferson pointed out in his
pamphlet. Thoughts on Lotteries" they
| offered at once the cheapest, simplest and
| most satisfactory mode of raising eXtra0rdl-
| nary revenues. That the money they obtained
by them was a tax, he admits, but d volun-
| tary tax. Surely no one was compelled TO
contribute to it who did not want to do SO, and
it was to be supposed that no one would con-
tribnte who could not afford it.
Taking this view of the matter, every State
in the Union chartered lotteries and utilized
the revenues thus obtained for schools and
public improvements of various kinds The
rapid development between 1776 and 1886 was
due almost exclusively to lottery money, as
over nne+y per cent of the schools and col
leges, the roads and bridges, were constructed
out of the Sc lottery funds.
Louisiana will take the same "yiew Of
the matter" at the next election, and
overwhelm the Ants with a vote that
will bury them out of sight forever. The
people will have their schools and their
levees will take care of their veterans,
and New Orleans must be drained. Anti
fanaticism, playing on it's single string
of immortality" will not be even listen
ed to when the time comes for the pe0-
pie to take their affairs in their own
hands.