The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-08-07
By Associated Press


 Havana, Cuba. August 6.-What baseball Is to Uncle Sam and cricket to John Bull, that and more Is the National lottery to Liborio, who IS Cuba personifed by the cartoonisls But baseball never has threatened the constitution nor cricket lha Magma Charta, while the lottery has shaken the very foundations of the 2o-year-old Cuban republic.
 In the significance of the lottery to Liborio Is included the willingness of some hundreds of thousands of Cu- bans to take chance three times a month, and the opportunity this has given those managing the lottery to direct the republics destinies
 Created Is years ago during the ad . ministration of the late Joe Miguel Gomez and after being banned by the provisional American government, the lottery was modelled after that which flourished for decades under Span ish rule.
 Charmed Circle
 Just as the records of the Spanish governors general throw little real light on the intimate workings of che | nineteenth century gamble. so does the legislative tangle surrounding it's | twentieth century successor today keep almost everybody outside a charmed circle from knowing just low the wheels go round. From the snappy legal excerpts appearing on the back of the tickets 1t can be estimated that if the government gets all 1t legally Is entitled to, and the 38 yearly drawings are all a5- sorbed by the public. said public will have paid roughly s7.50O,oOo year
 for the three dozen shots at the usual big prize of s100,000 and his smaller brothers.
 But Just as the lottery has drawn away from the secretary of the treas- ury, so do the prices paid In the street for tickets differ from the legal scale. The director of the lot tery. responsible only to the Presi dent. has eclipsed in importance 1 post of the cabinet members, and the \prices paid peddlers for tickets are I from 20 to 30 per cent above par. During the dance of the millions that marked wartime sugar profits they were double the legal rate. These rhenomCna have afforded grounds for bitter rhilippics by political outs and opponents of gambling on the size and recipients of these extra receipts. 1000 Names Printed
 | lOuNo scdi d iiSt Ol l.UU names IS | published in the Official Gazette pur- 1 porting to be those who have been granted the tri-monthly privilege of securing 32 full tickets from the gov ernment at sls each and selling them ! at not more than $21. The publica- | tion of the last list. on May l, was I followed this year by charges filed in criminal court by Representative Enrique Mazas that not only did per | sons long dead and others in insane asylums figure in the list. but that | $s,24o,000 a year of lottery receipts wore being diverted to purposes to him, and to the Cuban public, un- | known.
 Although Judge Antonio Garcia Sola, who investigated these charges ! to determine whether there existed l grounds for indictments, announced he had found the lottery records in perfect order. the sensa tion produced by the publication of charges that had been going the round for months fixed the attention of both the public and Congress on the lot l tery and the mysteries thereof. There was little surprise when 1t was learned that one of the famous ten memoranda submitted to President Alfredo zayas last month by Major General Enoch H. Crowder. who