St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1892-01-09
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BUSINESS REASONS.
How 1t Affects the Retail Dealers
Why All Business Men Should
Vote Againt the Lottery.

y
The following from the New Delta, adj
dressed to the business men of New Or
leans, will apply to that class throughout
the State; for if the Lottery should sue
ceed, it will probably establish lottery
shops in all the larger country towns.
l. The lottery has made combination
with the hoodlums and ward bosses which
means the triumph of misrule and bad
government in the city, and the conse-
qHent injury Of all interests, public and
private and all trade, wholesale andretail.
q No business man sells anything until
he knows what is the value of the thing
sold. No inquiry was made by the Legis-
latnre 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 (S10l dollars
for the lottery. II the people want lot
terry, let them have one which will give the
State $40 and keep 81 for themselves.
3. The Morris lottery is dishonest and
unfair lottery. Its schemes are rascally
and dishonest. In the monthly drawing
it proposes every month to sell the public
S2OO0D00 worth of tickets and to give back
in prizessonly ST. ,0o4 400, thus making the
public lose 945. 400 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 furni-
ture and household effects How much
they get from the people of New Orleans is
easy to calculate They offer $2s,0o0,00o
worth of tickets every year in the monthly
drawings. of which they actually sell about
10 per cent or about $19,600,0o0. Seven per
cent of these tickets are sold in Louisiana
and 6 out of this per cent in New Orleans,
making the sales of tickets in the monthly
drawing in New Orleans amount to u, l,lT6,-
900 per annum. Supposing the tickets sold
in New Orleans draw their share of the
PRICES the ticket buyers would be bound to
lose 1854 ,430 every year.
By actual count Of the police authorities
there are 103 policy shops il. New Orleans
were tickets in the daily drawings are sold
The receipts of these shops average $50 each
every day, or $61s0 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 ~
2S2 AGO a year. OF this sum about 40 pei
cent. goes back in prizes, SO that the lottery
keeps 81 PIE, ,S44 which the people lose.
Add to this the $564,4S0 lost on the
monthly drawing and it clearly appears
that the lottery takes from the people q
New Orleans every year the enormous sun
of about S1,TS1,o00, or more than S500,0of
more than they propose to give the State
for their franchise
According to the directory there art
about 5000 retail business houses in New
Orleans where bread, meat, shoes, hats
clothes, groceries, household goods, articles
of adornment and pleasure are sold tt
mainly the wage-earning people. Thi:
enormous sum stolen by the lottery, prin
eipally from this class of people, represents
an average trade of nearly $500 per annun
to each one Of these traders-or $50 pei
month from each of them.
What do you get in return for this enor
NOUS loss in trader You get bad paying
customers, embezzling clerks, thieying ser
moraiized community and Diminishing