The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1890-10-29
THE EARLY USE OF LOTTERIES.
[City Itenr.I

upon all lotteries in general and tie Lou
isiana Lottery in particular can be re-
garled by the informed students of Anne
rican history as an impntation upon the
character of the founders of the Republic
for more than the first half of the centu-
ry. They base their hostility upon the
ground of the illegad immortality of leav-
irg anything to chance, and the control
by taxation or otherwise of any sort of
business that does not square with the
straight laced notions of pursuits, Or
rather those who let the old Adam in
what little human nature they possess
find vent in some other form more con-
genial to their feelings; more consonant
to their selfish interests.
For more than sixty years lotteries
were resorted to by the people of all the
States to raise money for works of public
improvement, to, establish and endow
schools. to build bridges and levees, to
dig canals and even to erect churches
Christ Church in New Orleans was start
ed with the proceeds of a lottery. TWEEN
ty-nine of the principal colleges and uni
rersIties of the United States were begun
and in part supported for years with lot
terry money. Hazard and Yale are in the
list; also the universities of Pennsylva-
mia, of Michi. IAN, of North Carolina, of
Brown, of Indiana, of Georgia, of Yer
mont and many. others. William and
Mary College of Virginia, Amherst of
Massachusetts, Dartmouth of New Hamp-
shire, Rutgers Of New Jersey,-in a word,
nearly all the most famous and successful
colleges of the country were indebted to
the lottery for part of their origin and
endowment money. In nineteen of the
States the public school systems were
founded in whole or in part in lottery
grants. More than fifty of the principal
rivers and a dozen or more harbors have
been improved by the use of money de-
rived from lotteries.
The Ants can only reply to the array
of stubborn facts thus presented: "But
the lottcr, is immoral. Would you teach
school children to gambler This is the
veriest rot. The question whether a lot
terry is immoral OF not is an open one of
ethics, the answer to which depends sonle-
what upon the temperament and circum-
stances of the referee. 1t is too late after
two or three generations of practical util-
ization to dismiss the matter with tue
wave of the hand or the shake of the head
Nearly all the States of the Union have
snbordinated what predjadices they may
have had against lotteries to their won
dertul power of raising money for the fos-
terin3 Of public institutions and the pros
ecution of public works which, without
such aid, would have langnished or per-
ished altogether. Yet when the people
of Louisiana express % wish to resort to
the same easy and effective method to
raise means, the surprising discovery is
suddenly made that tbs plan is BAG because
the means are immoral.
We have no school system worthy of
the name and when money is offered to
build it up to what it sho"ld be, the ene-
mics of education, not daring to state the
true grounds Of their opposition, hide be-
hind alleged c0nsciences and shrek: "not
from that sourcew Better the Gimme
rian gloom and weakness of conspicuous
than the adoption of the meth
DDS of the first five presidents of the Re-
public and tile Immoral" statesmen who
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 soliers
aust be left to glide down to the tomb
without an effort to cheer them rather
han be contaminated with a dollar of
ottery money! And the city of New Or
cans is to be further taxed for drainage
'ather than be allowed to touch the $780,.
100 year so freely offered. II
Ali this is hypocrisy of ruinous kind.
ne opponents of public education know
hey have a powerful ally in the poverty
# the people. That the very idea of aa- |
litional taxation makes property owners
vince. There is some doa5t of the sin !
'eiity of the authors of the onerous and
'dioHs new leyse policy ofsthe admins
ration. Not being friendly 10 the levecs ]
my more than to the schools they would
lot be at all displeascd to see that whole {
ystem fail.
Our Ants have had their imtators in c
ii the other States The friends of edu.
alton seventy years ago had to fight for \
he money to establish schools, bnt they
ron against bitter opposition. An an Il
hority writing of the struggles of those
ines thus sums up the result. which was Y
lrgely due to the efforts of President
efferson: T
In the condition of affairs then existing
'ttcrles presented themselves rs - solu- G
on OF all these difficulties. They alloy
Il the money needed for public purposes Y
, be raised without bonds or excessive
tXati0n; and moreover, as Thomas ,Jefier- j
IN points out in his pamphlet, ''rhoughts
u LOTTERIES" they offered at once the G
leapest. simplest and most satisfactory
ode OF raising extraordinary revenues
hat the money they obtained by them =
as Il tax, he admits, but Il voluntary tax. {,
lrely no one was compelled to contribute u
1t who did not want to Go so, and il
as to be supposed that no ous would y
who could not afford it,
Taking this view of the matter, every
tate IN the Union chartered lotteries
nj utilized the revenues thus obtained y,
II schools aud pnbiic improvements of