St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1892-01-23
BUSINESS REASONS.
How 1t Affects the Retail Dealers
Why All Business Men Should
Vote rainf the I,offanr

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
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 a combination
with the hoodlums and ward bosses which
means the triumph of misrule and bad
&sgovernment in the city, and the conse-
i &uent 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 Legis-
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 It
means 81 for the State and ten ($10) dollars
for the lottery. If 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 a dishonest and
unfair lottery. Its schemes are rascally
and dishonest. In the monthly drawing
it proposes every month to sell the public
$20O0000 worth of tickets and to give back
in prizessonly Sl,054 400, thus making the
public lose 945400 a month.
In the daily drawing the percentage
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. Ii 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 S2s,0o0,000
worth of tickets every year in the monthly
drawings, of which they actually sell about
10 per cent or about $l96000o0. Seven per
cent of these tickets are sold in Louisiana
and 8 out of this per cent in New Orleans
making the sales Of tickets in the monthly
drawing in New Orleans amount to $1,f76,-
900 per annum. Supposing the tickets sold
in New Orleans draw their share of the
prizes, the ticket buyers would be bound to
lose 1854, ,49o every year.
By actual count of the police authorities
there are I03 policy shops in New Orleans
were tickets in the daily drawings are sold
The receipts of these shops average $50 each
every day, or $6lS0 for the whole per day.
The wheel turns 313 times every year
whicftanakes the receipts from these policy
shops amount TO the enormous sum of 81
2S2,f00 year. Of this sum about 40 per
cent. goes back In prizes, sothat the lottery
keeps 81 ,2l6,S44 which the people lose.
Add to this the 1854 4.4s0 lost on the
monthly drawing and il dearly appears
that the lottery takes from the people OF
New Orleans every year the enormous sum
of about Sl,7af 900, or more than $5o0,000
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 adornnent and pleasure are sold to
mainly the wage-earning people. This
enormous sum stolen bv the lottery, prin-
cipally from this class of people, represents
TO each one of these traders-or $50 per
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
wants, dissatisfied patrons, a generally de-
moralized community and diminishing