The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-15
GAMB1INq ArNARnAGANsErr.
Automatic Machines Arc Numerous
 and Reap Small Fortunes,


 To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:
 Narragansett Pier, August 10, 1898.
 Good people will be surprised aud grleved to learn that Narragansett Fler Is addicted to gambling. It nss been supposed heretofore that Narra- gansett was a place where all the mo- ralities flourlshed; where virtue was rampant, vice quiesoent; where inno- oency could walk abroad alone without being spoken to by rude ruffians, and where purltanical purity in pretty and primitive petticoats could pout, pucker or prattle without police protection and without pharisaical imputation. Alas! There are public gambling tables with unavoidable vicious accompaniments in several of the leading places, and even along the bathing beach overlooking the pure waters of the bay. The Narragansett gambling tables are peculiar. To understand them the reader must have a previous knowledge of a roulette table, As the readers of the Journal and Courier are Center church, or equally pious, people, how Is this information to be obtained? If the ecclesiastical establishment to the south, where more extended knowledge of secularities exists, refus- es information, and if sportive neigh bors are not to be trusted, application might be made to some one of the so- cial institutions which are to be found on Chapel street between Temple and York. No member will withhold kind and sympathetic hand from any earn est searcher after truth. The roulette table being mastered, the Narragansett table is easily understood, for it Is a combination of the roulette table and the slot machine. The candy, or "your true weight" slot machine is such a simple, childlille and innocent device that even Center church deacon can explain it and with safety be left alone with it. The Narragansett gambling table is therefore, primarily self-act- ing. It does not require "croupiers" to run it. It runs itself. This makes it all the more dangerous, because suspi- cion is disarmed. When innocency sees live gamblers manipulating a rou- lette or rouge ct noir' gambling ta- ble at Monaco it takes alarm; that is if the innocency be bona fide innocen- cy. It withdraws; it retreats; it says: My mother would not approve. will have nothing to do with those naughty men," But when the same innocency is introduced to a self-acting gambling table, is shown how to work the me- chanism, and is convinced that there is no wicked man connected with it; why then innocency, unless of double-dyed seraphimisnn, will become curious When once curious, wild horses can't draw innocency away from temptation When once seriously tempted every body knows what is sure to happen This shows the fearful enoPmity of the Narragansett gambling table. In the Narragansett table the multi-colored disk is not horizontal, as in the roulette table, but upright; and the winning color is not selected by the laws of friction and gravitation acting upon a small, whizzing ball, but the disk itself is made to revolve and the winning col- or is the color remaining at the exact zenith when the disk has ceased it's revolutions. Only the top of the disk is exposed to view. The rest of it is hid- den In the ominous case which conceals the complex mechanism which ope- rates the various slots. Under the ex- posed part of the disk are slots cor responding in color and number to the number of colors used in the divisions about the circumference of the disk. Generally there are five slots and as many colors to the divisions. You put your money into one of the slots. You touch a spring which passes your cash into the body of the monster; then you press hard upon a crank which starts the disk whirling, and you must hold on to the crank until the disk stops ab- solutely still. Then if your color be at the exact top, your winnings will come pouring out of a nozzle on one side of the case enveloping the machine. Nothing could be more simple. Noth- ing apparently could be more fair. But hold on a bit If there were but five colors about the disk and each color occupied an equal fifth of the circum- ference of the disk; and if when your color came Up you won five times your money, why then the gamble would be upright and honorable, and no church deacon, unless radically exposed to the doctrine of election and the science of chances, could find any more fault with the machine than with a Sunday school lottery. But let the deacon ex- anime with me the details of any one of the machines, and then we will to- gether raise our mutual Ebenezers against the abominable iniquity.
 One of the machines here nay be taken as a typical in- strument. The circumference of it's disk is divided into sixty-four spaces. Of these twenty-three are red, twenty three black, eight green, four white, four pink, one yellow and one blue. There are seven slots, one correspond
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