Easy Money; Being the Experiences of a Reformed Gambler;
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^EASY MONEY Being the Experiences of a Reformed Gambler All Gambling Tricks Exposed \ BY HARRY BROLASKI Cleveland, O. SEARCHLIGHT PRESS 1911 Copyrighted, 1911 by Hany Brolaski -W.. , ,-;. j jfc. HV ^ 115^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Pages Introductory : 9-10 CHAPTE-R II. My* First Bet 11-25 CHAPTER III. The Gambling Germ Grows—A Mother's Love 26-5S CHAPTER IV. Grafter and Gambler—Varied Experiences 59-85 CHAPTER V. A Race Track and Its Operation 86-91 CHAPTER VI. Race-track Grafts and Profits —Bookmakers 92-104 CHAPTER VII. Oral Betting 106-108 CHAPTER VIII. Pool-rooms 109-118 CHAPTER IX. Hand-books 119-121 CHAPTER X. Gambling Germ 122-123 CHAPTER XI. Malevolence of Racing 124-125 CHAPTER XII. Gambling by Employees 126-127 CHAPTER XIII. My First Race Horse 128-130 CHAPTER XIV. Some Race-track Experiences—Tricks of the Game 131-152 CHAPTER XV. Race-track Tricks—Getting the Money 153-162 7 — 8 Contents. CHAPTER XVI. Pages Women Bettors 163-165 CHAPTER XVII. Public Choice 166 CHAPTER XVIII. Jockeys 167-174 CHAPTER XIX. Celebrities of the Race Track 175-203 CHAPTER XX. The Fight Against Race Tracks. 204-219 CHAPTER XXI Plague Spots in American Cities 220-234 CHAPTER XXII. Gambling Inclination of Nations 235-237 CHAPTE-R XXIII. Selling Tips 238-240 CHAPTER XXIV. Statement Before United States Senate Judiciary- Committee—Race-track Facts and Figures International Reform Bureau 241-249 CHAPTER XXV. Gambling on the Mississippi River 250-255 CHAPTER XXVI. Gambling Games and Devices 256-280 CHAPTER XXVII. Monte Carlo and Roulette 281-287 CHAPTER XXVIII. Games and Schemes of Deception 288-313 CHAPTER XXIX. Some Gambling Stories 314-320 CHAPTER XXX. Gambling .321-325 CHAPTER XXXI. An Effective Prohibition.... 326 CHAPTER XXXII. Conclusion 327-328 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. I shall endeavor in these writings concerning gambling and gamblers to follow the injunction which the Spartan father gave to his son—to "shoot straight and speak the truth." I am now forty years of age. During twenty- one of those years I have been connected with gam- blers ; at first as their victim, and afterwards -as their confederate. Bret Harte doped our literature with Mother Shipton and John Oakhurst, but his deified sport is as much the offspring of pure fiction as his sanctified strumpet. I assert, without fear of suc- cessful contradiction from those who know, that not one professional gambler in a thousand is at all times absolutely square. He will occasionally, if not always, throw loaded dice, deal from the bottom of the pack, introduce marked cards, extract aces from his sleeve, pull cards from a faro box with a "snake" in it, whirl the ball around an advantage wheel, and control the outcome of a race by doping horses and bribing jockeys. I have been, as a professional gambler, not as bad as the worst of them, but probably as good as the best of them. Like the farmer who does not al- ways put the smallest strawberries at the bottom of the box, and the biggest adjacent rock in the middle 10 Easy Money. of the hay bale ; or, like the Wall Street broker who does not always bucket the orders of his customers, I have often been square with those who dealt fairly with me. At other times I have been a follower of the golden rule of David Harum to "do unto others what they would do unto me if they had a chance, and to do it first." I have left the race track and the card room forever. I have revolted from the associations and practices of twenty-one years. I am writing these sketches partly from the selfish motive of so shut- ting the doors of gambling rooms and pool-rooms in my own face as to make my return to them im- possible, and partly from the unselfish motive of warning others away from the pitfalls into which I was beguiled in youth, and into which I afterwards aided to beguile others. Whether my reformation from gambling to decency is due to the teachings of Christianity, or to the influence of Halley's Comet, is a matter of no consequence to the reader. What- ever the cause, or whatever the consequences, I am going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. CHAPTER II. MY FIRST BET. , Until I reached the age of eighteen years, I was an honest, hard-working lad, living with my parents in St. Louis, and acting as assistant clerk on a Mis- sissippi River steamer, of which my father was captain and part owner. It was in 1888, and gam- bling on river boats was no longer practiced, or even tolerated, as in the years before the war. The pre- historic southern "Majah," with broad brimmed sombrero, white necktie, gold-headed cane and courtly demeanor, the "Majah" who put up a fifty- dollar bale of cotton for his "ante," and raised his opponent a one-thousand-dollar "nigger" after the draw, had vanished from the Mississippi River steamers, and was now in evidence only in the pool- rooms and at the race tracks, where jockeyed, weighted, trimmed and doped horses had taken the place of marked cards. The excursion steamer was to take the place of the old-time gambling on the Mississippi, in which business I became engaged in later years, as related within these pages. One bright moonlight evening in 1888, as I was enjoying my eighteenth year of life by pacing up and down the hurricane deck of my father's steamer, the Annie P. Silver, as she lay at th§ foot of Olive Street, St. Louis, two gentlemen—that is, they were 11 12 Easy Money. gentlemen in dress and manners—came on board and accosted me. "Mr. Brolaski, I presume," said the elder of the two. 1 admitted that such was my name. "My name' is Morris. You have forgotten me," said he, "but I had the pleasure of an introduction to you last week during the excursion trip of this boat up the river, and your name has since been mentioned to me by mutual friends as that of a young man in whose discretion and secrecy I could confide." I admitted that I was discreet, and not given to babbling. "Mr. Brolaski," said he, "I am betting commis- sioner for one of the largest stables at the race track, and I am necessarily in a position to make some money out of advance information, but I cannot act openly or I would lose my position. This man that I have brought with me is the trainer of one of the horses to be in a race tomorrow, and it has been 'fixed' for that horse to win. He cannot bet openly on that horse, neither can I. We want somebody to place bets and we desire, if possible, to make an arrangement with you to do so for us You can profit by the knowledge we give you to make bets with an absolute certainty of winning. In return for this information we will require you to share your winnings with us. It is a sure thing. The odds will be ten to one against the horse that is 'fixed' to win, and you can take down one thousand dol- ! 14 Easy Money. lars—which will be five hundred for you—for every one hundred dollars you put up. I suppose you have a hundred dollars that you can command?" I had two hundred and fifteen dollars, that it had taken me all summer to earn by working about eighteen hours a day. The jew-fish within me opened wide its mouth to swallow the offered bait, and I advised Mr. Morris of the condition of my finances. "Well," said Mr. Morris, "bring this money with you to the race track tomorrow. Don't say a word to any living soul. This horse trainer has been robbed of his earnings for the season by a stable hand who ran away with the money, and I am doing this to help the man and his little family. I want but little for myself. You will have half of what you win, the other half goes to us. If this is satis- factory, Mr. Brolaski, I will see you at the race track tomorrow. Don't address me there until I first speak to you, for we will have to be cautious." The gentlemen departed, leaving me to a sleep- less night of anticipation. Well has Doctor Johnson said that "hope is sweeter than possession." How much better is the money that we are going to get than the money we do get. Oh, the things we can do with it, the luxuries we will buy with it, the friends we will help with it, the European tours we will take with it "What," I said to myself, "is the use of working, when there are fabulous sums of easy money wait- — —— My First Bet. 15 ing to be picked up at the race track?" I had slaved all summer to make and save a poor two hundred and fifteen dollars, and now I would double or quad- ruple it in one afternoon. I would in a short time become a king of finance. I would strut through the corridors of the Southern Hotel with a diamond pin like the head light of a locomotive. I would make all my acquaintances kow-tow to the Young Napo- leon of Finance. It would be "I, I, I itself, I— The inside, the outside, the what and the why ; The when and the where, the low and the high All I, I, I itself, I." But how, thought I, about the right and wrong of it? Would it be honest to obtain money in this way? But I quieted my conscience with the stock reflection that the devil puts in the brain of thieves that "somebody would get it in this way, and I might as well be that somebody." The morning dawned.