St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1892-01-30
BUSINESS REASONS.
How 1t Affects the Retail Dealers
Why All Business Men Should
Vote A9aint the Lottery.

Vote Againt the Lottery.
The following from the New Delta, adj
dressed to the business men of New Or
leans, will apply to that class throughout
4he State; for if the Lottery should sue
ceed, it will probably establish lottery
shops in all the larger country towns.
/. The lottery has made a combination
with the hoodlums and ward bosses which
means the triumph of misrule and bad
government in the city, and the conse-
quent injury of all interests, public and
private, and all trade, wholesale and retail,
2 No business man sells anything until
he knows what is the value OF the thing
sold. No inquiry was made by the Iegls-
lature into the value OF the grant made to
Morris None of the lottery papers or ora
tors dare tell you how much the lottery
will make out of the Morris grant. 1t
means 81 for the State and ten ($l01 dollars
for the lottery. Ii the people want a lot
terry, let them have one which will give the
State $40 and keep 81 for themselves
s. The Morris lottery is a dishonest and
and dishonest. In the monthly drawing
it proposes every month to sell the public
$4,000 600 worth of tickets and to give back
in prizessonly S1,054, 400, thus making the
public lose 94540o month.
In the daily drawing the percentage
against the players is SO enormous as to
amount almost to highway robbery.
4, Every dollar that goes to the lottery
from the people of New Orleans is lost to
the retail tradesmen and people of this
city, If there was no lottery to play every
day and every month, the people would
buy more bread and meat more groceries,
more clothes, more shoes and better furn1-
ture and household effects. How much
they get from the people of New Orleans is
To ealn lafa Fl1ayr r4Th
worth of tickets every year III the monthly
drawings. OF which they actually sell about
70 per cent or about $19,600,0o0. Seven per
cent of these tickets are sold in Louisiana
and G out of this per cent in New Orleans,
making the sales of tickets in the monthly
drawing in New Orleans amount to 81, ,iT6,-
900 per annum. Supposing the tickets sold
in New Orleans draw their share OF the
prizes the ticket buyers would be bound to
lose 1864, ,430 every year.
BY actual count of the police authorities
there are 103 policy shops in New Orleans
were tickets in the daily drawings are sold
The receipts of these shops average $6o each
every day, or $3.50 for the whole per day,
The wheel turns 313 times every year
which makes the receipts from these policy
shops amount to the enormous sum of 81
2S2a d year OF this sum about 40 pei
cent, goes back in prizes, SO that the lottery
keeps $i,2l6,s4i which the people lose.
monthly drawing and it clearly appears
that the lottery takes from the people Of
New Orleans every year the enormous sum
of about Sl,7Sl,0 600, or more than S500o0e
more than they propose to give the State
for their franchise.
According to the directory there are
about 5000 retail business houses IN New
Orleans where bread, meat, shoes, hats
clothes, groceries, household goods, articles
of adornment and pleasure are sold tc
mainly the wage-earning people. This
enormous sum stolen by the lottery, prin:
cipally from this elass of people, represents
an average trade of nearly $500 per annun
10 each one of these tradeFs--or $50 pei
month from each of them.
What do you get in return for this ener
nous loss in trade? You get bad paying
customers, embezzling clerks, thieving ser
wants, dissatisfied patrons, generally de
fnoralized community and diminishing