The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-08-12
FAKE BASEBALL
 POOLS CAPTURE
 LOTS OF MONEY

" - % @ -. qNM - P @ Fans playing ir1& public baseball pools will do well to read how they are "stung." The September Baseball Magazine has an article exposing the crooked work We quote part of the. magazine article: A gambling spirit seems to have seized upon the national game. In many parts of the country colossal crooked syndicates, lotteries or pools have sprung up attained a mushroom growth, sucked a tainted fortune out of the life blood of the game, and withered away in the fierce glare of legal retribution, only to be succeed | ed by other syndicates elsewhere. So 1 widespread is the evil, so menacing in it's scope, that the concerted effort of baseball, aligned with the authori- ties of law and order, is imperative1y reequired to preserve the game from that same malignant influence which has b1ighted so many other favorite sports.
 Honest baseball pools are no new thing. They exist in small and anna teur scale in almost every office building in every hamlet in the coun- try. It has. become a habit with young men to set apart fifty cents or a dollar a week of their savings to place in a pool with their associates.
 
 the week, to the. fortunate individual who selected the team scoring the greatest number of runs This GUS tom is rather, mild symptom of general love of risk and chance which reaches a far more sinister form in the patronage of public pools. But fake public. pools, the open, 1aw-defying swindles of the profession al gamblers, merit no such passive in difference These pools, like poison n1I h. To1o sIo the sphere of the game, but rather batten upon it's public popularity and confidence, and. in the end tend to break down. and destroy the solid structure of the sport itself. Such pools are a real menace. As typical of the methods pursued by these parasites may be taken the case of the so-calIed Keystone Pool This pool operated in Pennsylvania. as it's name implies, but it had ram ifications all over the eastern United States and the middle West. A list of it's prize winners for one week shows names scattered over no less than six states.
 Some revelations of the size and scope of the Keystone Company were brought to light in the trial which exposed the working of the colossal swindle.
 We quote from the sworn evidence as produced in that trial, when the
  cern which did all the printing for the syndicate. was undergoing cross | examination:
 What was the average number of lottery slips and tickets printed for the Keystone ?''
 ''It ranged from 25,000 to 75,O0O| three times a week."
 How many tickets did you print weekly for the Keystone PooI?"
 Well. the highest for a week was 25O,oO0."
 Well, what was the average weeks quantity?''
 They started at about 15O,OOO al week and kept increasing every week.
 In passing, it is well to mention that the gross receipts from these tickets at thirty cents apiece was, for the highest week, $75,00
 Pres. Dreyfus, of tile Pittsburg Club, said in the Baseball Magazine:
 we investigated and found that the pools were getting more money out of PittSburg- than the Pittsburg Ball club In one week we estimated as nearly as we could on the actual figures that they absorbed thirty thousand dollars from that. one city. We also investi- gated and found that a considerable number of alleged prize winners didn't live at the addresses that appeared or were missing from the city directory or hadn't received any prize money. One of the worst features of all these pools IS that even With the heavy odds against him that are the na- l ture of a, lottery, the purchaser of one of the lying tickets doesn't get a fair chance to win. He has mem bers of the concern to compete against and all kinds of crooked work to con tend with, so that the prizes which are actually given are the smaller ones and-in no case the larger amounts alleged in the 1ists.''
 The Keystone Pool distributed it's tickets through fifty agents, who in turn had three hundred sub-agents, who supplied sixty-five thousand steady customers. It's payments for police protection and other forms of 1 illegal connivance with the authori- 1 ties total1ed ST. O0O for one week It 1 maintained an office staff of thirty l clerks, and yet it's weekly profits
 were $5o, 1000. The Jumbo Pool aver, aged a profit of $1S,000, the Wind sor $25,OOO, the Great Eastern, the i Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Erie, the 1 Elm and many others all cut their in 1 dividual slices from the juicy melon l of public gu1libility. For amid all l these colossal operations the fact
 stands out conspicuous that the only prizes actually given were the smaller 1 ones, except in certain wen-marked | cases where new territory were being I-exploited. There may be honor l among theives. but the lottery Kings
 it's they hogged the whole.
 Tate Will Box Dave