The Savannah morning news., 1902-03-30

ly describes a large percentage of Al
Adams victims. Honest men and wo-
men have become thieves to get few
cents with which to play policy, and
on the East Side there are hundreds
of little children who take the pen
MES given them by charitably disposed
persons for candy, and spend it on
policy gigs instead. Al Adams has
placed the opportunity to gamble with
in the reach of every person with
cent, and his tremendous fortune, ac-
cumulated in a few years, shows in
what fruitful soil he planted his seed.
The Money Madness of Adams.
To-day AL Adams is as money mad
as he was on the day, many years ago,
when Zachariah Simmons, percelVlng
in him talents which have since devel-
oped even beyond all expectations, in
duced him to give up his position as
brakeman on the New Haven rail-
road and become a policy runner.
Even now, with a fine prospect of go
ing to Jail unless he can prove the anti
policy law unconstitutional, an expen-
sive undertaking, by the way, Adams
is still raking in the small change of
the poor just as fast as he and his
swindling game can get it. Every day
sees the value of his real estate hold
ings increase, every day his outside
banking and brewing, are worth more
to him, yet so greedy is this several
times over millionaire that he continues
his plundering of the poor through the
medium of a game, not of chance for
the player, but of certainty for him.
self for it's manipulation is one of the
improvements which AL Adams has
made on the original Simmons game.
and ali the while he is paying the eX-
penses of one of his own writer's, who
is testing the constitutionality of the
policy act of the last legislature,
service which he declined to do for his
men until he himself was arrested, and
in need of a favorable precedent on
which to build a defense.
AL Adams is a mean man in all that
the word implies. Outside of his fam
lily it is doubtful whether he ever spent
a dollar carelessly, unless he had good
reason to believe that it would bring
him back two. The men he employs,
and there are hundreds of them, get
salaries that the average clerk wouldn't
work for. He never buys drink for
anybody but Al Adams he never buys
a cigar for anybody but Al Adams, he
is essentially a close man; in the sport
ing world he is rated almost miser.
And yet in the building up of his
policy system. in the effecting of its
| complete protection, Adams has spent
a fortune. The buying of the police AL
Adams calls an investment. 1t GER
tainly has been a good investment for
him. Combined with the placing here
and there at a good salary, of a police
| officials relative and making the
| brother-in-law of the deputy commits
! sioner of police his assistant manager,
it has purchased him an immunity not
! enjoyed by any other professional law
breaker or set of law breakers in the
| country. The first and only complete
! blow ever struck at AL Adams had to
come from a body of citizens, the only
| men hostile to him, that Al Adams ever
encountered and could not buy.
+ Adams a Domestic Man.
AL Adams is a remarkable man, not
| alone because of the nefarious bust
ness which has kept him so long in the
public eye, but because of certain char
acteristics which make him in domes-
tic life the very reverse of the Al
Adams that the world knows. This
man, who so willingly and systematic
ally robs the poor. has genuine affec-
ton for his family. He has a wife,