The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-04-13

Outside of his family 1t is doubtful whether he ever spent a dollar careless ly. unless he had good reason to be-
 The men he employs. and there are hun
 dreds of them, get salaries that the average clerk wouldn't work for. He never buys drink for anybody but Al
 body but Al Adams. he is essentially a close man; in the sporting world he is rated almost a miser. And yet fn building up his policy system
 ams has spent a fortune. Money to pay the police Al Adams calls an investment. Combined with the placing here and
 there. at a good salary. of a police ofh- ciars relative, and maxi ig the brother.
 in-law of a man powerful in the Police Department his assistant mahager, it has purchased him an immunity not en- toyed by any other professional law breaker or set of Jaw rbeakers in the blow every struck Al Adams had to come from body of citizens.
 Al Adams Is a remarkable man. not alone because of the nature of the bus mess which has kept him so long in the public eye, but because of certain char acteristics which make him in domestic lie the very reverse of the Al Adams the world knows. This man who so will lingly and systematically robs the poor has genuine affection for his family. He has a wife, three sons and two daughters. He has educated the boys and girls at colleges and surrounded them with every luxury on the money the city. He has striven hard to pro- tect his family from the bad name his trade has accrued him.
 Early in his career he decided to be personally unknown. In measure he has been successful. for while the name
 of Al Adams has been a byword in New fork for years, comparatively few per-
 sons know the policy king by sight. Fat Sheedy cannot walk block on Broadway without a hundred heads turn
 ing to look at him and he is a man who has in the last ten years been little in New York. Al Adams could walk | other between Fourteenth. and Forty second Streets. and it is doubtful wheth- CT a half dozen persons would turn to look at him. He is personally unknown. and there is nothing in his appearance
 to attract the attention of the casual ob- server.
 He is tall. rather stout with iron-gra hair and gray mustache. He always ready-made neckties and white linen.
 Outside of a scarf pin, a watch attached
 to heavy gold chain and two or three
 badges of secret societies to which he
 belongs he never wears jewelry.
 His face is not intelligent and he has
 rather shifty eyes. His general appear
 ance is that of a prosperous business
 man, and out of dozen selected at ran
 dom he would be about the last who
 would be picked out by a stranger as Al
 Adams, the policy king.
 He has carried the policy of self-con- cealment to the extreme. He rarely goes to see anybody connected with the policy business. They always go to see him.
 His s2,00o000 worth of real estate has furnished an excuse to hide behind legitimate business. For years he has had office room in some real estate office, the door of which bears some other mans name. About all the other man Las done has been to manage the Adams real estate, and that has kept him pretty busy. Three different men have acted as shields for Adams in this way in the past few years
 In his private office the door of which is always marked Mir. Adams the policy king meets the men who assist and the men who allow him to loot the poor of New York. His runners. his managers, his quiet" men go there to take his orders. and. 1t Is from an inno- cent-looking real estate office that the tremendous policy syst sm is conducted
 Adams gets around for work by o'clock in the morning at the latest and sometimes before 8. He works harder than the poorest paid of his clerks, rare ly taking more than a few minutes for luncheon. and never quitting before oc clock.
 He goes straight home from his office, and most nights he Is in bed and asleep by 10 or II o'clock. He has few pleas that he doesn't go to the theatre more than twice a year. and then only to some vaudeville show. His mania is making money and keeping 1t. and his only weakness is his children.
 It is a strange antithesis that a man so utterly lost to all regard for the rest of the world as to be willing to plunder it's poorest creatures should have so fine "a Hirnpf1nn da cried like child when newspaper, in describing the marriage of one of his daughters, mentioned that she was the child of Adams, the policy king.
 On Eighth Avenue. near where he lived. a few years ago, when his ueighbors dubbed one of his apartment hohses the ''. cd and black fiats," Adams said that it was shame to hound d mans family in this way, and made a public statement that he had quit the policy business, which was a lie. He moved to Sixty ninth Street, but one night there was fire in his house. and his name got into this intrl sion on his private life and moved to a hotel, where he now lives.
 Adams is an illiterate man, and he cEerishcs the ambitions so often found in men of no education but ample means. For himself, he aspires to noth- ing. but the social elevation of his chiI- dren IS a mania for him. For years he has believed that his money could pur-
  daughters, and in spite of many rebuffs he has not given up yet.
 Adams's rise as a gambler has been rapid. He absorbed every trick of the 1 policy game as a runner for Zachariah Simmons, and to the surprise of that in began writing for himself and using Simnonss drawings at the end of few years apprenticeship with the policy king of Tweed days.
 Policy is not difficult game to master; 1t was in the organization of his enorm- ous system that Adams showed his ge- nius, if that is the proper name for 1t. l The numbers used are from l to IS in- elusive, and there are four drawings a | day. supposed to be made at Covington. ky, the headquarters of the two lot teries used, viz, the Kentucky and the State
 At the morning drawings twelve of the $ s9venty-eight numbers are drawn for one lottery and thirteen of the seventy-eight for the other. All over the country the two columns of figures made up of the numbers drawn are watched by policy fends. Similar drawings again later in the day are made, the object being to give the packers two whacks at their victims in twenty-four hours instead of one.
 To play policy you select d gig, that being d combination of any three num- bers from 1 to IS, inclusive, and bet that one lottery or the other. whichever you designate. If they do come out. you are repaid at the rate of dollar for a l cent.
 The player can bet that two of his will be ln the State lottery and l one in the Kentucky but if he does the | odds are less. and the policy tiends. who |