The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-15
The LOTTERY FIGHT.

/ The Louisiana state Farmers Alliance
/ is reported as having pooled issues with
| the Anti-Lottery League. The whole state
| is divided into a lottery and an anti-lottery
| camp. The party that opposes the renewal
| Of the lottery charter is led by Governor
/ Nichols, West Point graduate, who lost
! his leg leading a Confederate brigade at
| Charlottesville. If he wins this tight he
will be congratulated by every honest man
North or South. The preliminary battle
will be in the primary elections to choose
delegates to the party convention to be
held this fall. The anti-lottery men have
the best of the fight 50 far, but the lottery
party hope to secure the support Of
the negroes, and to commit the
Republican party, Of which the
coiored voters make up the bulk,
to the lottery by lottery plank in the
convention platform. The Rev. DR..
Palmer recently delivered powerful SER
| mon against the Louisiana Lottery Com
pany, denouncing lottery gambling as i'm
moral and utterly corrupting to public
thrift and integrity. 1t is curious fact,
which illustrates the steady growth of a
clearer public moral sense, that DR..
Palmer's church, the First Presbyterian,
obtained in 1922 a lottery charter from the
the church were the directors of the lot
terry.
Times have changed and also the stand
ard Of morality in both Europe and Amer
ica- Lotteries were once employed by all
modern governments as a source of rev.
enue, but have been suppressed because Of
the demoralizing influence upon the people
and especially upon the poor. Between
1915 and 1873 they were in use by the
French government of the restored BOur-
bons. Louis the Eighteenth and Charles the
Tenth, and yielded an annual income of
10000 francs. They were suppressed
in May, 1896, and in January following it
was found that 525 300 francs more were on
deposit in the savings banks Of Paris alone
than had been there in the same month of
the previous year. Parliamentary lotteries
existed in England from 1903 until 1923,
but it required four years Of agi-
tation to secure their suppression. Lot
teries were employed in colonial times
and in the United States until 1883 in aid
Of all kinds of enterprises. Harvard Col
Iege resorted to lottery to replensh its
exhausted treasury before the Revolution
and after, and by the agency Of lotteries
colleges, hospitals and churches were
built, and roads, bridges and other public
works constructed. The old capitol at
Albany, y. Y, was constructed in the first
decade of the century largely through
| money raised by state lottery, but New
York for many years has forbidden lot
teries, and they are no longer permitted
even at church fairs. Pennsylvania began
the movement for the suppression of lot
teries in 1888, and by 1875 twenty-six states
had adopted laws forbidding them, and
making the advertisement of them or
foreign lotteries a penal offense.
The United States government has by
law denied the Louisiana lottery the use
of the mails, and under her new constitu-
ton. just adopted, Kentucky has abolished
lotteries and prohibited their re-establish-
ment. An effort to introduce lotteries
! into North Dokota in 1880 was defeated bv
| the opposition OF the governor, so that to-
| day Louisiana is the only state where they
are allowed. In Louisiana, under q gem
| eral law, lotteries were at one time forbid
| den, but the carpet bag" legislature OF
| lS6S chartered the Louisiana State Lottery
for term of twenty-five years, at an
annual license fee OF $4,000. In
1879 bill for the repeal of the
charter was passed by the legislature. but
the company raised the point that, as part
| OF the license fee for that year had been
paid by the company, the repeal was in
valid, since II was 3 violation of contract
with the state. The new constitution of
that year declared that the repeal legisla.
ton was invalid but ordered that all lot
ieries shall cease after January 1. 1895.
This same constitution authorized the
granting Of other lottery privileges in ad-
dIilon 10 peFpetuating the charter of the
Louisiana State Lottery. The company
was thus made secure until 1893, when its
charter would expire.
In the spring of 1890 the lottery company
sent Governor Nichols 10000 for Ievee
purposes, which was returned the same
day by the governor. who said that as the
company would seek a new charter of the
legislature in May he would not consent
10 place the state under any obligation to
the company. The governor II his mes