The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-07-26

no more prosperous looks than the man who has system of betting on races at home.
 The lottery eaters to the American contingent on the Isthmus It has gotten, out circular in English ex- plaining the workings of the enterprise. and asking them to try their luck They. are invited to be present at the drawings in order that they might be convinced of it's fairness The lottery management says that 1t does not ask you to buy many tickets. but that 1t without occurring at least one ticket and in this manner trying your luck. The lottery is veritabie gold mine to those who own it, Each ordinary drawing brings in sIo.0e0. one dollar for each ticket issued. The grand prize takes ss.oo0 of this. the next nine prizes calling for q total of ,soo, the next ninety for. a total of $450, the next 300 for a total of si,sU0. and the eigh- teen approximations winning q total of Sz70. They. thus pay out $6420 in prizes out of the totalsof s10.000. Out Of the. remainder they pay the five per cent which goes tosthe ticket sellers, and the five per cent which the Pana- ma government charges for the conces- sion. leaving the net proceeds s2,5S0 per drawing LOT s1s4.oo0 year. Out Of this they have to pay for the main tenance ofsa one man office in Colon. and maintain a force of some five people, at the home office here. The net profits are considerably above
 Tn spite of the fact that only GA per cent of the receiptssfrom the sale or tickets is given out in prizes, there | is yet plenty of takers, and by Friday of each week the tickets put on sale the Sunday previous have about all been sold, and sometimes it is very hard to get one. This is especially true since the Americans came on the EIsthmus. Before that time the lottery business was pretty slack everybody being perennialiy broke but since American occupation tickets have been in strong demand There has always been supervision that all unsold tickets should remain in the possession of the company. and if they. happened to hold the one which won the grand prize they were just that much ahead
 The lottery was established about the time the French came to the fsth- mus, mainly for the purpose of getting money out of them. Itrwas chartered by thetcolonbian Government. and the concession. was to run until 1918. When the Republic of Panama took over the government of the Isthfnus dt recog- nized the charter of the lottery conn pany. It fB probable no way will De found to stop this lottery, though the United States is doing everything it can to limit the evil in the Canal Zone. It might prevent the transportation of the tickets to Colon and it might make 1t unlawful for any one on the Canal Zone to have asticket in, his possession. but even these measures, would hardly overcome the lottery fever which has more victims here than malaria.
 There are all sorts of stories afioat R.-tk q a.1 L. good luck that have come to Americans as result of the lottery. Tn one case a grave and respected Senator of the United States--one who helped to pass the anti-lottery law at home, is said to have bought asticket and won the grand prize. In another case an off, cial of the canal, one not so low down in rank at that, was sitting in poker game. He, had lost his last cent and in a it of desperation put his lottery ticket into the jackpot at face value. It was for the grand monthly draw ing. where the grand prize is S7.5oo gold. His luck was still against him and he lost when the drawing came off that ticket carried the grand prize.
 A little stay at Panama will demon strafe to any one how far ahead of South America. the United States is in the matter of morality. The fact that one has. to run the gamut of a half 0Oxem IlCkeL BeAleTS. 0n ms way LO SoC the bishop is but one instance in a thousand of the different point of view the Americans and the Latin-Americans have of things. A bull fight at home would not be thought of. yet 1t Is great event in Panama Cock lighting is o1tlawed in the States, yet c guest at the Tivou might imagine there were 10. o00, fighting. cocks here by the num- Der he hears growing all: night long. Craps, is absolutely tabqoed in America, hut, in sPanamanian tereitory it is an eninentlyj respectable game- No mat ter that the bull fights are tame be- cause Of the lazy indifference of the bulls, no matter, that the lighting cocks at Panama do not put up as game fight as many farm yard rooster does at home. no matter if the crap game is so small that you have to look through a rnagnifying. glass to see the size of the jackpot, the spirit or the gambler and the professional lighter is 10, be found everywhere among the Panamanfans Many Americans whose propensfties in this direction have been held in. check by stringent laws at home. come down here and take part
 in these things. But their stay in the
 Isthmus is not long.
 The Canal. Commission has pretty
 good measure of every man in it's ems
 ploy, and before long the gambler | finds himself out of job 2,30O miles from home: The Commission says that gambling and working does not go very
 well together. The trouble they expe-
 rience is that the lottery ticket ts a seductive thing. and that the quiet young American. who never gambled at home, once he wins a little in the lottery here gets the gambling fever, and a hard attack at that. destroying his usefulness to the canal. What the Commission would like to do would be
 to tear up the lottery root and branch. just as was done in the United States.
 But they have never found the way ICopvrfEht. 1908. by Frederic J. Has