The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-03-27
GAMBLERS ON
THE HONOLULU
BOUND LINERS
Steamship Managers Trying to Exclude the
PROFESSIONALISM Angeles Youth Who
Lost $4,000 to Card Sharp.

to sue. That's why I'm refusing you
transportation-becau the company
expects and hopes that you will sue
And if we don't lick you out of court
it won't be for the lack of trying
THAT nervy shark was as good as
his word. He entered suit against the
company for refusing to sell him trans
portation to Honolulu on one of its
steamers without good and sufficient
cause and he put in another suit
against the steamship agent for de-
famation of character. Those cases
have not yet been ,alled, and there
is a lot of speculation out in San Fran
cisco as to what the outcome is likely
to be. Most of the speculation con-
geals on the point as to whether the
steamship company will be able to
produce as witnesses against the
sharper men who have been bitten by
him on ocean voyages: I thing I may
say that such witnesses will be pro-
duced.
when the professional gambling
evil on the Pacific boats first became
manifest number of more or less
feeble efforts We're made to shut off
the sharks but none of these efforts
embodied the idea of refusing trans
portation on the boats to the swindlers.
The companies were afraid of that
method. One of the schemes to knock
the operations of the sharks on the
Pacific liners was to instruct the
higher officers of the steamers-cap-
tains, pursers, first and second Off
GERS and surgeons-to pass the word
quietly around among male passengers
when known shark turned up as a
passenger on one of the steamers.
This scheme was never fully sue
cessful, for new sharks, hearing about
the richness of the Pacific steamer
graft, We're showing up all the time,
and were, of course, unknown. It takes
considerable watchfulness on the part
of steamship officers to get one of these
newcomers down so pat as to be able
to tab and label him as professional
shark
so it happened that that class of
foolish male voyagers who permit
themselves to be inveigled into card
games with men they don't know, got
it bad before the steamship companies |
realized how great the evil had be- |
come. Of course, the victims them |
selves rarely squeal, but often their
friends and fellow voyagers who don't |
play cards themselves do the squealing |
for the soft marks.
And the victims wives are not
chary about squealing. either. Most
Of the Pacific steamship companies
have letters on file-pretty violent let
ters, too, some of them-from the
wives of men who have been badly
lone by the professional sharks on the
steamers. After man has been pick
ID clean in the course of an ocean trip
oy man with whom he has had no
shore acquaintanceship and who ap-
oears to be unknown by all the rest of
he passengers, he sometimes actually
las the wisdom to conclude, toward
he end of the voyage, that he has
,een had b., a crook, and he is also
pretty likely to tell his wife of his
uspicions, in order to square with her
lis purse f1abby condition. 1t is from
.ngry wives of soft marks that the
teamship companies have received
erhaps the bulk of the complaints
bout the seagoing sharks.
perhaps the largest sum ever II
ropped on a steamer to shark was
st about nine months ago by a prof
gate young chap from Los Angeles to
professional on a ride from San
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