The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-07-27

but ruined on these steamships. I also
have over dozen letters from ships cap
tains and ex-commanders deploring
the evil and protesting that any
movement for its abolition would
meet with their hearty support. But this
is all nonsense. Any one with common
sense knows that any ships commander
could abolish it on his ship in an instant,
with single sentence. But he does not.
One can hardly believe he profits from it.
The company itself is in small business to
permit, with its cognizance, organized
bands to travel on their vessels for the pur-
pose of robbing those it is their duty to
protect. And yet they do. One can find
no motive for the infamy save the paltry
one that the environment of poker and
daily pool-selling. in other words the anx-
iety and excitement of the ordinary gamb-
sales of liquors at the bar. But it does.
There is not a recorded passage between
Liverpool and New York of any steamship
upon which one or more men have not been
robbed at cards. Every effort is made by
ships officers and agents to suppress not the
concerning them. Not content with the
plumber of ordinary card-sharks and sweat
cloth devices in the smoking rooms of the
cabin, the most gorgeous suites of state
rooms are engaged by publicly known swim
oilers for extra-hazardous and profitable
enger lists; select their victims; attend to
every little detail of information regarding
their quarry with the incest calculation;
and, with what practically amounts to con-
nivance by the ships officers, have their
man in hand by the time he steps aboard
the ship. They even know how much
ready money he has with him; the amount
of his bills of exchange. in what form they
are, and on what banking houses they are
drawn. If by some inexplicable mischance
he is not we'll done for aboard-ship, their
confederates are ready to accompany the
or even Florence and Naples. An affair of
this kind had its sequential termination
while was in Algiers in the early part of
the present year, where flock OF this spe-
cies of birds of prey, after winning nearly
81. 900 at cards from their victim on ship
London and Paris, finally, by downright
forgery, possessed themselves of the last
dollar the brilliant American possessed.
amounting to some So, 700, at Algiers. Nor
is this the worst feature of this or
ganized, ocean swindling; for these
large booties usually fall from the
purses of those members of our later
American aristocracy who can afford the
loes and prefer to do SO in silence rather
than suffer the humiliation of exposure.
In the second class cabin and also in the
steerage are the same seductive smoking
room AuO UdE. SllllNub u AOWcI OIOcI
conduct precisely the same kind of robbing
in these. After the second day out, at any
time of day or evening every imaginable
device for swindling at cards with besot
ting accomplishments is in progress. 1t is
saying little to assert that dozens of poor
fellows are thus utterly ruined. There are
perhaps four remedies for this shameful
state of things. The companies' officials
could at any moment drive the whole gang
from every one of their vessels. The press
of the United States could in three months
time compel the abolition of the growing
evil. Ships officers could at will re-
duce the insulting o6ensiveness of it
all to decent passengers by at least
restricting its operations to the pluck
ing of rich fools in private suites,
the character of whose occupants should }
made known to apparent Victims. And If
10 per cent of all those to which gambling
IN any form is abhorrent should fatty refuse
to take passage on liners whercnpon It is
universally known to be allowed or make
condition of such patronage that it should
be vigorously prohibited in all cabins and
smokinR-rooms. an end to the whole nefa-
rious business would come at once. As the
matter stands. ocean gambling and swim
ding exceeds IN shamelesanees and enor-
NIFTY the darkest chapters and epochs OF
piracy ever known upon the high seas
EDGAR Z. WAxEIAN.