Flynn’s Weekly. Vol. 22, No. 3, March 5, 1927

Believers by Alvin Harlow

Believers are born. Not made. Their affliction is not necessarily contagious, but in the majority of cases it is incurable.

Somewhere in Shakespeare there is a con man named Autolycus, who indulges in those soliloquies which are so uncommon in life — save on the streets of New York, where there are plenty of nuts who go around talking to themselves — and this chap had a little private laugh all alone to himself one day, the motif of his chortle being, “Ha! Ha! What a fool Honesty is!”

Now I admit that Honesty is sometimes pretty easy in the matter of loaning money, and often gets beautifully trimmed in a trade involving strictly all-wool clothing or absolutely fresh eggs; but I’d like to handle the affirmative side in a public debate with Autolycus on the proposition: “Resolved, That Honesty isn’t one-tenth as big a boob as Dishonesty,” and I’d want one bookmaker, one professional gambler and one confidence man on the committee of judges.

But when I set forth this great ethical truth, which I’m surprised that no one has even promulgated before, I’m not talking about professional dishonesty or dishonesty in the first degree. I’m not referring to such things as using your employer’s money to play the stock market, or taking a bribe to throw a baseball game, or making crooked political deals; nor even to the rougher stuff, like robbing banks and sticking up jewelers’ shops.

I’m not setting out to preach that Honesty is the Best Policy, nor that the Wages of Sin is Death. I’m talking about that little streak of roguery — call it cupidity if you like — in the majority of all human beings which is constantly egging them on toward the endeavor to get something for nothing; the streak that tends to make of them what the world of graft calls “Believers.”

What is a believer? Well, speaking in a general sort of way, it’s a fellow who, in spite of all advice and all precedents to the contrary, is so bamboozled by his own ignorance, cocksureness and sapheadedness that he thinks he can beat the other man’s game.

Believers are born, not made. Their affliction is not necessarily contagious; it is hereditary; and, in the majority of cases, incurable. Once a believer, always a believer, is the general rule, because cupidity is one thing that it’s almost impossible to eradicate from the human system.

Everybody loves fairy stories of one kind or another, and that is why ’most everybody loves the greatest of all fairy stories, “A Christmas Carol.”

The marvelous change of old skinflint Scrooge into a generous, open-faced, all-round good fellow is pretty to read about, but nothing like it ever happens in life.

Say what you will, cupidity and dishonesty are pretty close kin. An avaricious man is never entirely on the square with his fellow human beings. Of course you’ll point out that greed and shrewdness are often combined in the same man.

True enough, but let an avaricious man be as shrewd as they ever are, and there’s always some weak joint in his armor; some game for which he will fall. His eagerness for gain weakens his judgment and makes him believe things which a less arduous man would be apt to reject.

Hordes of otherwise shrewd business men gamble and bet on the races and get caught in jams into which they walked with the fatuous belief that they were about to skin somebody else.

I ought to explain at the start that I don’t wear a white necktie and mutton-chop whiskers, nor am I the chairman of any sort of anti-this or that. I’m a fellow who has lived off believers practically all his life.

I’ve given them every possible opportunity and means of exercising their credulity, from my bookmaker’s blackboard — which I place at the top as theoretically least vicious and formerly even approved by the law — on down through the various con rackets to the lowest of them all, the shell game.

I haven’t any fear of giving away my stuff or injuring the good will of my business. I know that many believers never read anything, others nothing beyond a dream book, a racing tip sheet, an oil stock circular, or the scandal news in the yellow journals, and those who read even more don’t learn anything.

A true believer could read a volume of warning on the subject, and then go right out and fall for the first new con game or gambling device that was shown him, simply because it wasn’t specifically described in the book. The old cupidity makes them blind and deaf — they’re already dumb — as soon as the “something for nothing” offer is made.

That hoary old gag, “dropping the poke” — i. e., the pocketbook found on the sidewalk — has been written up thousands of times; it does seem as if everybody in the world ought to have heard of it — and yet it can still be worked in every city, large and small, in these United States.

I can set up a little table to-morrow at any county fair or street carnival and begin moving three walnut shells and a pea to and fro on it, and inside of five minutes I’ll have a crowd around it with popping eyes and dribbling chops, many of them ready to bet me that their stupid optic nerves and fungus brains are cleverer than my trained fingers.

In my own special code of ethics it is written that a chump who will go up against so ancient and flimsy a game as this isn’t entitled to protection, any more than the nut who goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel or takes a header off the Brooklyn Bridge.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever heard of was the complaint made by certain citizens down at Atlantic City some time ago to the municipal authorities because auction rooms were selling them shoddy goods.

You know the sort of place they referred to — a storeroom full of flashy, plated silverware, phony jewelry, colored glass necklaces, gaudily tinted china, cheap manicure sets, and the like, and a blatant auctioneer whose mug and manner alone ought to be a warning to anybody with the brains of a good, bright rabbit.

I claim that in this age, when information is on tap everywhere, a grown-up person who buys anything in a place like that deserves the skinning he gets; and he cuts a mighty poor figure when he runs whimpering to papa and wails that the naughty man has cheated him.

Laws against gambling, horse racing and stock speculation are and will be futile as long as the conditions revealed by our army mental tests prevail. Such things will never be eliminated until the human race grows up. As that will be — if ever — long after my time, I’m not worrying.

How many really great men are there in and around Wall Street? It wouldn’t take more than one pocket adding machine to count them all; but they are the ones who are not believers. They deal with cold, hard facts.

The rest of the birds in that realm are decreasingly successful in inverse ratio to the strength of their belief in their ability to beat the market gambling game. Right at the bottom of the heap are the little twenty-five dollar a week clerks and hangers-on who would bet their last dime on a tip from a source which a sane person would laugh at.

I was plumb sorry when the Curb Market moved under a roof a year or two ago. Formerly, whenever I had had a streak of bad luck in my business, whenever a supposed sucker turned out to be brighter than suspected, and I had a tendency to get low in spirits and feel that the day of opportunity for an earnest young man striving toward success was past, I could go down there in Broad Street and watch those zanies waving their arms and wiggling their fingers and renew my faith. It made me feel that the lark was still on the wing and the hillside dew-pearled.

And, notwithstanding incessant propaganda against bucketeers, notwithstanding sensational exposures and scandalous bankruptcies of bucket shops, the public continues to support numbers of such places — yea, they fairly storm the doors and crowd money into the hands of the operators; and then, when the blow-off comes, refuse to prosecute or appear in the matter in any way, for fear of being advertised as saps.

They remind me of the old, old story of the farmer who had a boy whom he regarded as a hopeless dunce. He took the boy with him to town one day and left him alone in a public place for an hour or so while he attended to other business, cautioning the youngster not to talk to any one. “If you so much as open your mouth,” said he, “they’ll find out you’re a fool.”

So when some came by and asked the boy his name, he said nothing; and when they asked him where he lived and where his father was and other questions, he just looked at them and said nothing. “The boy’s a fool!” they said to each other. “He’s just a numbskull!” Wherefore, when his father came back the boy was in low spirits. “They found it out,” he blubbered, “and I never said any word!”

I wonder what your opinion of human intelligence would be if I should tell you how many smack hustlers are operating daily in New York and making money? Don’t know what a smack hustler is? You’ve matched pennies, haven’t you? Ever see a man slap a coin on the back of his left hand with his right when matching with another fellow? That gesture gave the name to the racket.

Smack hustlers always work in pairs and use the odds game. For the benefit of the uninitiated I may explain that when three persons lay down coins, there will usually be one head and two tails up, or one tail and two heads, and the odd man gets the pot. It was an old dodge years ago for two fellows to fleece another who had never seen the game by regularly alternating between tails and heads so that their two coins would never be the same, and therefore one or the other of them would always be the odd man.

No such crude methods are used nowadays. Too many people are familiar with the old trick, and, besides, it’s a surer bait to take the sap into partnership and let him think he is skinning somebody else. This is how it is worked:

The team searches for its prey around the cheaper hotels and other places where there are particularly apt to be fine, fresh specimens of the genus Boob with from fifty to a hundred dollars in pocket.

Hustler No. 1 now scrapes acquaintance with Mr. Sap and make himself very agreeable. Presently Hustler No. 2 butts in and proves to be a braggart and a generally obnoxious person. He steps away for a moment to get a cigar, and No. 1 says to Sap: “Don’t that feller give you a pain? He’s such a wise guy — let’s take a fall out of him.”

Mr. Sap is quite willing, and No. 1 outlines a scheme to draw the stranger into an odds game. Either they fix up a system of simple signals, or they agree to alternate regularly in putting down heads and tails, so that one of them will always be odd. Mr. Sap, being a true believer, takes it for granted that the stranger has never heard of the ancient odds game.

When the supposed outsider comes back, he is inveigled into the matching game, for half a dollar or dollar stakes, and he loses steadily. There are about seventeen ways of ending this game.

Occasionally — not often — the victim is given counterfeit money. Sometimes one of the others, after finding out approximately how much money Sap has, may propose a big stake on a single throw, at which time Sap’s partner crosses him “accidentally,” allowing the stranger to win.

Or, after they have been playing for some time, the stranger grows suspicious and angry and says: “See here, this looks like a frame-up to me. I believe you two fellas are a coupla crooks!” and is about to call a policeman, thus fairly frightening Mr. Sap out of his money.

Or the stranger may so manipulate his coin that it is nearly always the boob’s partner who wins; and finally Mr. Sap — and the stranger as well — being cleaned out, No. 2, taking his loss good-naturedly, remains chatting for a few moments with the victim — who is impatiently awaiting the opportunity for the division of the spoil — while No. 1, still carrying the money, steals out for a moment to the lavatory or the cigar stand. He never comes back.

The stranger presently says his adieux, and Mr. Sap is left disconsolate. There are still other ways of ringing down the curtain on the farce.

Is this a popular game? Well, I know of at least fifty teams of smack hustlers who are operating in New York to-day.

Nine out of ten confidence games are based on this little dishonest streak I’ve described in human nature: and I’ll put myself on record as asserting that no strictly honest man, no man who hasn’t a drop or two of larceny in his veins, is ever caught by such a game.

You’ll notice that crooks seldom try any of these get-rich-quick con rackets on a preacher, even a high-salaried or wealthy one; which is a frank admission that the minister is too honest to endeavor to get money by such tactics.

Of course not every clergyman is an incipient angel, but even if he should have the carnal streak in him, the ethics of his profession hold him to the straight and narrow so well that not one in a thousand would listen to a con racket unless he’s so simple that he can be persuaded it’s a perfectly ethical and legitimate transaction; and the average clergyman nowadays is getting a bit more sophisticated than that.

Some wise birds who know ancient history will doubtless pop out of his hutch right here and remind me of Canada Bill’s alleged offer to a big railroad system several years ago of twenty-five thousand dollars royalty per annum for the privilege of practicing confidence games on their lines, with the sporting stipulation that he would work nobody but preachers.

Whether this last clause is correctly reported or not I don’t know; but I do know that the rackets that Bill and other con men practice on the sky pilots are mostly sob stuff — the prodigal son, the poor man robbed of his life savings, the husband whose wife is dying for need of an operation, and about seventeen hundred other such fairy stories which bring tears to the eyes of bishops and other prosperous-looking parsons and money from their pockets without hope of profit.

Analyze the average con racket, and you will find that it is usually designed to make the victim think he is getting easy money by some unfair means.

Such are the wire-tapping game and the fake bet on the races made by men who have inside information, thus taking advantage of the bookmakers and the general public. Such is the case with the pocket-book found on the sidewalk. There is never any suggestion that the supposed finders advertise the wallet or scan the Lost and Found columns in an effort to restore it to its rightful owner. The whole idea of the plot is, “Finders are keepers. Let’s divide the loot.”

Such also is three-card monte, Canada Bill’s favorite game — for Bill, like many other good hustlers, was versatile and varied his racket from time to time. In his day he was the monte king.

Such was his slippery reputation that when his coffin was being lowered into the grave, one of the mourners who stood by offered, in a hoarse whisper, to bet the man at his elbow a thousand to five hundred that Bill wasn’t in the box. The other man failed to take the bet, for the reason, as he said, that he “had known Bill to come through tighter squeezes than this.”

Does any one fancy that the hoary-headed old monte swindle has gone out? If so, he’ll have to guess again. There are still plenty of folks who have never heard of it.

In the vicinity of big racing meets, prize fights, county fairs, and other sap carnivals I can show you monte games going forward on a plank laid across the head of a barrel or other makeshift table and believers crowding around it, eager for a chance to give their money to the jolly gambler. Every boob who gets stung on the monte racket does so because he thinks he sees a chance to cheat. Here’s why:

The game is a simple one. The spieler just throws three cards face downward on the table and invites the public to bet with him on which one is, say, the queen.

The outsiders, having only one chance in three to be right, would naturally be a little slow to wager: but now and then the spieler throws the cards down so carelessly that one or two of them slide off the table. A capper, standing directly in front, picks up the cards, glancing slyly at their faces as he does so, and, seeing that one is the queen, he bends the corner slightly.

He takes care that two or three of the come-ons who stand by him shall see the operation, as if by accident. When the spieler throws the cards down again the capper names the card with the bent corner and wins the money.

Two or three of the easy marks are now encouraged to bet on the next throw, but this time the spieler, with a dexterous twist of the finger, straightens out the bent corner of the queen and bends another card. The result is that the boob betters lose.

They have no comeback, no excuse for uttering a word of complaint. They tried to cheat and failed, and, of course, are ashamed to admit it; so they just sneak away silently, and other believers take their places and are stung in precisely the same way.

When I was a boy in my teens I was employed for a time by a gang of swindlers who were working one variety of the race-betting game. I posed as a jockey; dressed in my silks and full paraphernalia, with my saddle over my arm, I would rush up to the leader — he was called “Senator” Grady — who had the sap in town, just as they were entering the grounds, draw him aside and whisper in his ear. Then I would hurry off.

“See that?” Grady would whisper to his victim. “That’s the jockey who’s going to ride Thunder Bird in the third race. He tells me that it’s absolutely fixed for Thunder Bird to win.” The sight of his mentor being tipped off by a real jockey was sufficient to land the victim; he would hand over his money to a supposed betting commissioner, and that was the last he ever saw of it.

The chances which these con artists seem to take are astounding to one who lacks their experience. In order to get the mug well within their clutches they will often permit him to win hundreds of their cash. But how well they know the mental habit of the believer!

They know that once his confidence in their ability to pick “winners” has been thus established, he couldn’t be driven away from them with a club. They are bound in the end to get all the loose change he has.

They also know that a man, let him be considered ever so wise a bird in business, if he has even a tinge of the gambling propensity in his blood, is apt to be a believer.

Take John Jiggs, for example, who keeps a saloon or perhaps a billiard hall in a city of a hundred thousand population where a racing meet is just beginning. John deals with all sorts and conditions of men, and regards himself as being just about as silly as a fox.

A big, handsome, well-dressed stranger walks into Jiggs’s place, buys a few drinks or shoots several games of pool, fills his pockets with cigars, and gets well acquainted with Mr. Jiggs, who learns that his name is Desmond. Next clay he comes in again, and, making himself agreeable for a time, finally draws the proprietor aside and displays a roll of money.

“Listen, Mr. Jiggs,” he says, “I wish you would put this in your safe for me for awhile. I’m apt to be kinder careless with money, especially when I get a few drinks aboard, and I want this little life raft to stay where I can get my hands on it if needed. Won’t you take care of it for me for a few days?”

Mr. Jiggs obliges, as he has frequently done before for good fellows like this, and stows the money in his safe.

Either at this visit or one immediately before or afterward, another of Desmond’s gang swings into action. He is a quiet, colorless chap, and little attention has been paid to him since he came in.

But immediately after Mr. Desmond goes out the newcomer slides along the counter and says in a low tone, “Mister, did that man cell you anything about the races?”

Jiggs, looking coldly upon this butting-in stranger, says, “Races? No.”

The other’s eyes search Jiggs’s face eagerly to see whether he is telling the truth. “Don’t you know who that man is?” he asks, in an awe-struck tone. “Say, look at this!”

He pulls a folded piece of newspaper from his pocket and opens it up. It is a single page, the racing page of a newspaper from, say, Cincinnati. And there in one column is a portrait of the man who has just gone out.

He is referred to as Robert J. Desmond, the new King of Plungers. The article relates how he hit the talent hard during the Latonia meet just closed, his winnings having been reported as being in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand dollars. Of course the newspaper is a faked affair, a careful imitation in typography of the Cincinnati paper, but printed in a job shop in New York or Chicago.

“That man is a wiz!” says the stranger to Jiggs. “He knows more about the ponies than you or I will ever know about our own businesses. If he ever tells you anything, for God’s sake give me a tip on it, mister. I’ll remember you for it.”

When Desmond comes in next clay, Jiggs leads the conversation around to the races, and the visitor shows much familiarity with the sport, but is inclined at first to be reticent as to his own connection with it. Jiggs keeps pumping and hinting, however, and Desmond finally admits that he has a horse or two at the track.

“Do you ever go out to the races?” he asks politely.

“I went yesterday,” Jiggs replies. He does not add that his interest had been stimulated by learning the identity of his customer. “And I thought I might go out to-day. Maybe you’d give me a tip or two if I came out?”

Desmond looks a bit embarrassed but says, “Oh, yes! Certainly! Be glad to see you.

“By the way,” he goes on, “I may need that little roll of mine to-morrow. If I haven’t time to drop in during the forenoon, will you bring it out to me?” This is done to demonstrate his frank, unsuspicious nature and perfect confidence in Mr. Jiggs, which in turn breeds in Mr. Jiggs a confidence in Desmond.

“You’ll be apt to find me at my stable,” says Desmond in parting, giving the number and location.

When Jiggs goes out to the track he heads toward that particular stable, and Desmond meets him on the way. Or it may be that the sharper stands in with some real horse owner — I’ve actually known such to be the case — and so is found loafing with a proprietorial air near the door of the stable.

He and Jiggs walk aside and have been talking but a few moments when a man hurries up to Desmond and thrusts a rumpled roll of bills into his hand, muttering, “Ten thousand, six hundred — first race.” There is a yellow-back on the outside of the roll, and Mr. Jiggs, of course, has no means of knowing that the bills inside are all ones. Desmond thrusts the roll into his pocket without counting it, and says, “You know what to do on the next one, do you?” to which the man replies, “Yes,” and hurries off.

“Mr. Desmond,” says Jiggs, apologetically, “I’d certainly appreciate it if you’d let me in on some of these good things.”

“H’m!” says Desmond, embarrassed.

“I’ve got a little money with me,” says Jiggs.

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

In spite of himself, a slightly scornful expression appears on Mr. D’s face. “You’ll pardon me, Mr. Jiggs,” he says, “but that isn’t even pin-money around here. If you want to put up some real money, I might—” lowering his voice, “I might place it for you, though really I’m not supposed to do that sort of thing.

“You see, in this betting, I represent three or four wealthy friends, and I’m pledged not to let anybody else in on what I know. But you’ve been mighty decent to me, and... well, I’ll bet that five hundred of yours to-day, and if you want to bring out some real money to-morrow, we’ll see if we can’t pick up a good thing for you.”

He takes Mr. Jiggs’s five hundred dollars and bets it on some horse which is practically a sure thing: if he can’t find anything surer, he’ll bet it on the favorite in some race “to show” — which means that he bets that the horse will run first, second or third. Of course Desmond and his pals have the very best of the inside dope, which they do not scruple to get, by bribery whenever necessary.

Perhaps Desmond wins another little bet for Jiggs that afternoon; the favors aren’t very large ones, but Jiggs thinks that may be because of the disgracefully small sum of money he had, and he is properly grateful for the titbits granted him.

Next clay Jiggs comes out with as large a roll as he can muster — anywhere from one thousand, five hundred dollars to five thousand dollars or more. Maybe he has borrowed some to add to it, or let two or three friends in on the good thing.

Desmond pretends to bet it for him on some thirty to one shot, which he knows hasn’t a ghost of a chance of winning; but, making a great pretense of secrecy, he whispers to the gull that this horse has been held back in several races to lengthen the odds on him, and the owner is now ready to make a killing on him.

Desmond shows great anxiety when imparting this momentous secret, and begs Mr. Jiggs not to give it away. Jiggs, tremendously awed, makes a solemn promise. Believe it or not. I took a noted Kentucky statesman into an outbuilding at Latonia one day and made him hold up his hand and swear that he would not reveal to any living soul the dark secret which I was about to impart to him and which he believed I had secured from stable employees at the risk of my life.

I think he was more impressed by that vow than when he took the oath of office as Senator.

“I’m betting ten thousand dollars on him myself,” whispers Desmond, handing Jiggs’s roll and another wad from his own pocket to his runner, who is supposed to place it with the bookies; but, as a matter of fact, he just ducks around a corner and stuffs it into his pocket, and the gang divides it later.

When the horse loses, Desmond, with a lugubrious countenance, tells Jiggs that he was pocketed by a clique of other jockeys — or that he had a sudden slight attack of colic — or that he stepped in a hole in the track and strained a muscle — anything for an alibi.

“Just one of those unpreventable accidents that happen even to the best informed handicappers,” he adds. If the long shot should unexpectedly win, Desmond and his pals would just have to vanish before Jiggs could lay hands on them; but they take care to pick a horse who has hardly a chance in the world.

I used to work this “point-out” game, as it is called, in a simpler way with only one partner: and I have worked it not only in America, but across the water at Ascot. Epsom, Goodwood, Doncaster, Longchamps and elsewhere.

The Cincinnati Kid and I turned it on a youthful scion of the house of Rothschild at Longchamps, and found him just as easy to fool as a grocery clerk: and he wasn’t the only prominent one, either. I could mention two or three American names — but let that go.

The Kid and I are both able to look the part of thoroughbred gentlemen. He would plant himself near the prospect — whom he had previously studied as to his approachability, and. if a Frenchman, as to his knowledge of English — and would borrow a light for his cigarette.

This would lead to conversation with the stranger about racing. Presently out from the Kid’s pocket comes a newspaper clipping with a portrait of me — we had hundreds of them printed in a job shop in New York — and news of how Mr. Egerton, believed to be a betting commissioner for a syndicate of wealthy Easterners, had recently made big killings at Hawthorne, Jamaica, Saratoga and elsewhere and was believed to have cleaned up more than half a million for his crowd during the current season.

They would talk about me for a few moments, and suddenly the Kid would nudge his companion and exclaim in an awe-struck whisper, “Look — there he is now!” And sure enough, there I would be, not six feet away, scribbling something on a racing program. At that moment my pencil point breaks: I feel in my pocket and find I have no knife. An exclamation of annoyance escapes me.

The Kid eagerly steps forward and proffers his pencil. I accept the loan with a gracious smile, and the Kid is encouraged to tell me, with boyish assurance, that he recognizes me. I grow chilly immediately and hint at presumption; but after some cross-fire I thaw a bit.

Thus runs the old familiar stuff; presently I am reluctantly agreeing to place a bet for Lord Soanso or the Hon. Mr. Whatzis. Some of those European victims don’t yet know that they were trimmed.

The dropping-the-poke and point-out games are now being combined with great success. When the con men and the sap find the pocketbook they open it and discover not only a sum of money, but the owner’s card, or perhaps his name gold-lettered on the leather. “Why, this belongs to A. T. Desmond, the big betting commissioner,” exclaims the hustler as soon as he recovers the breath which has been knocked out of him by awe. “I know where he lives — at the Hotel Admiral. Let’s take this around there together. Maybe he’ll give us a tip on the races,” et cetera, et cetera.

We used to use the electric saddle in some of our rackets; in fact, it’s used yet. The charged saddle, which sent little stinging shocks into the horse’s body through the jockey’s spurs, has sometimes been used by crooked owners on a lazy horse, causing him to run like a scared rabbit, but it isn’t safe in general practice, because it would make some horses jump over the grand stand.

But I’ve shown the device to many a gull and whispered to him that it was going to be used on Madfire in the fourth race, and that the horse wearing an electric saddle never failed to run away from the field.

What’s the odds whether the race track believer falls into the hands of the swindler or not? He can lose his money with equal facility to the bookies or to the — theoretically — highly moral pari-mutuel machines, which are the elegant modern substitute for the uncouth bookmaker; but he loses just the same.

The percentage of probability is always against him. Nevertheless, you may see the believer in trolley cars, on suburban or subway trains, in hotel lobbies and on park benches, studying, with furrowed brow, a form sheet or tipster’s circular or the racing page in the daily newspaper — perhaps cutting a section out of the latter and stowing it away in his pocket.

Notice his worried look. He may be beggaring his family and himself to indulge in the pastime. The tipster whom he patronizes may have a “sucker list” of four or five thousand names.

He may be one of those crooks who scatter the names of four or five of the most likely horses in a race among various groups of their patrons in order to be sure to win on some of them. Why, speaking of tips, some of us a few years ago used to put an ad like this is the New York papers now and then:

Did we get replies? Scads of them! And then we wrote and demanded a nice little fee for the tip, of course. That game has been worked time and again.

It never seems to occur to the believer that the bookmaker’s business isn’t gambling. No bookmaker with the brains of a last year’s bird’s nest need ever have any worries. The odds which he gives are all figured out almost as carefully as an insurance company’s dope on the probability of life; and the percentage is always very definitely in favor of the bookie.

There was a fellow who thought he had figured out a system to beat the bookies’ percentage. He got all possible information on the horses, had a group of friends put up enough money to insure them all plenty of margin, employed an expert professional handicapper — and even then the system flopped! They always do.

When he dolefully wrote up his experience for a magazine, he figured that the percentage against him was seventy-five to one. I think he was too optimistic, at that; but if he, with all his dope and his experienced handicapper. had only one chance in seventy-five, what do you suppose are the odds against the ordinary poor dub who has nothing but tips and rumors to go on? I’d say about seventy-five thousand to one, as an average rate.

There have been bookmakers who were inclined to be believers themselves, and who suffered some terrible wallops as a consequence. There used to be one named McCarty — not White Hat McCarty, but Move Up McCarty, so called because he so often rubbed out the odds on his blackboard and moved them up a peg.

McCarty was an eccentric bird, who had a habit of walking along the street talking to himself — usually telling himself how much smarter he was than those other mutts around the track, who weren’t born with any brains, and then never grew up.

One day a friend of McCarty’s had a horse — let’s call him Barney B — entered in a certain race, and told McCarty not to take any long bets against him, giving Mac some definite information to prove that the horse was going to win. With intent to lead on the other bookies, Mac offered thirty to one against Barney B to win, ten to one to place, and five to one to show, not expecting many bets, and intending to cover all that were given him by placing similar wagers of his own on Barney B through dummies with other bookmakers.

Now, the horse’s owner also gave the tip to another friend, who was in the trucking business. This friend couldn’t attend the races that afternoon, so — it being Saturday — he handed several of his drivers and helpers a hundred dollars each and told them to put it all on Barney B.

These fellows, some of them in overalls, got out to the track early, and, seeing the favorable odds offered by McCarty, they all began drifting his way. The first one placed seventy-five dollars on Barney B to win and twenty-five dollars to show. Mac called out to his sheet writer, “Seven hundred-fifty to twenty-five, first, and one hundred twenty-five to twenty-five third.”

He was just on the point of sending a boy to place a bet with another bookie on Barney B when a tout came along and whispered to him that the favorite, Henry H, was a sure thing — couldn’t lose.

Notwithstanding the inside dope which he had, McCarty at once lost his faith in Barney B and laid bets of two thousand dollars, all told, on the favorite, meanwhile taking numerous bets at long odds on Barney B from the supposed boobs in jumpers and old clothes.

The story of the race is soon told. Barney B ran away from the favorite like a jack rabbit from a terrapin, and McCarty came near being cleaned out. That evening he went down to the Hoffman House — for the race had been run at Guttenberg — and arranged with the head waiter to have a table all to himself.

Then he ordered an elaborate dinner, from soup to roquefort — a planked steak, a magnum of champagne and all the trimmings. When this was all placed on the table, he called for his bill and paid it. He then told the waiter to go out to the bar and bring him a sandwich of ordinary bar cheese and a glass of water.

“There, Mac, you blank-dashed fool,” he growled to himself, “that” — indicating the sumptuous dinner — “is what you’d have et if you’d had any sense; but you made a double-dyed jackass of yourself, and now, dash-blank you, this” — biting into the cheese sandwich — “is what you get.” And he didn’t touch a morsel of that elegant dinner, either!

How much have conditions improved over the old days when bookies were permitted to operate openly at the tracks? Personally, I think they’ve backslid. Several States had spasms of virtue and drove the bookies away from the tracks. Some even stopped racing for a time.

But to-day there are more tracks than ever before. The mutuel machines, which the law regards as moral and harmless — though betters lose money through them just as they did to the old-fashioned bookmaker — have made race tracks an enormously profitable business.

The machines are operated by the track owners, who take only from three to five per cent of the money that passes through them, but on this small percentage make millions.

But, at the same time, bookmakers are operating in theoretical secrecy by hundreds and thousands in all the larger cities. They have big central headquarters and agencies in cigar stores, pool rooms, and drug stores, to say nothing of salesmen in factories, large department stores and office buildings.

Other bookies lurk in and around the tracks and accept bets under cover. And all these under-the-rose bookmakers pay less than the track odds. Most handbook-makers will pay no more than fifteen to one, no matter if odds at the track have been fifty to one: but many a better doesn’t find that out until after his horse has won.

These bookies get eighty per cent of their profits, not from the big sport, but from what they genially call the “dollar boob.” They have a saying that “Our gravy is in the grind” — that is, in the two dollar, one dollar, half and quarter dollar bets made by poor dubs, who have to go without a meal — or deprive their families of one — to squeeze out the money.

Bookmakers are afraid of big bets, and frequently refuse them. When I was a bookie and man came at me with a roll about as thick as a beer keg I side-stepped it. Either he had inside info or else he was likely to make trouble for me.

Having repented and given up bookmaking years ago to enter other lines of work more frankly and honestly illegal, I do not blush to quote Mr. Pierre Lorillard’s remarks, made several years ago in listing his reasons for severing connection with the turf.

He declared that the bookmakers rob the public and rob the owners of horses. A bookmaker could not live unless he bet against horses, and in the course of plying his trade he steals stable secrets and buys up jockeys and trainers.

“The bookmakers are, with few exceptions, rascals who would be fit subjects for the prison when their profitable trade of robbing the public on the race course is at an end.”

But a British racing authority, James Runciman, came nearer putting the blame where it belongs when he said that “Bookmakers are simply shrewd, audacious tradesmen who know that most people are fools, and make profit out of that knowledge.”

Under the present system the bookies are making more money than ever, and the mutuel machines have given racing its greatest boost. They make so much money for the tracks that the annual amount offered in purses is enormously greater than it was a few years ago.

A few races are paying the same that they did a decade or two back, some a little less; but many of them have increased prodigiously. Omitting the disturbed years of the war, here are a few startling increases:

Considerably more than ten million dollars is being paid out yearly in purses; millions are invested in racing plants, and more millions are spent yearly in maintaining them; millions are invested in horses, and millions are spent yearly in jockeys’ and other salaries, in stable expenses, pasturage and transportation. And where does all this money come from?

Why, every cent of it comes out of the pockets of believers who bet on the races. But, you will object, the race tracks collect large sums in admissions, for score card privileges and so on.

Granted, but with mighty few exceptions, the people who pay admissions to race tracks and buy score cards are betters; they go there for that purpose. Not one person in five hundred is going to pay two or three dollars just to get into a park and see a lot of horses in which he has no interest gallop around a ring.

How is the better to know that all the jockeys in a race are straight? Many believers, no doubt, read periodicals devoted to racing, and in those very columns find numerous charges and hints at crooked riding and other dirty work; yet even that doesn’t stop them from betting.

A prominent bookmaker and horse owner, in a volume of reminiscences which he wrote a few years ago, told what he thought was a very funny anecdote illustrating jockey characteristics. He asked a well-known jockey, “Say, Jack, on the level, did you ever pull a horse when you were riding?”

“Never — I swear it!” was the reply. “I’ve got left at the post on a few and may have gone a little wide on the turns in some places.”

Many a jock — either at the instance of some one who has bribed him to cheat his employer or by the order of the employer himself — has choked his mount or “taken him the longest way home” — i. e., ridden wide at the turns to keep him from winning.

More than one jockey has been found to be the owner of race horses — an unsavory condition. And what person connected with the turf doesn’t remember the scandal when “Little Pete” a well-to-do Chinese restauranteur and jockey Club habitue of San Francisco, some years ago bought the services of four or five jockeys and cleaned up one hundred and fifty thousand dollars before his scheme was discovered.

All of that money came out of the pockets of believers who thought the races were being run on the square.

But the jockey’s personal obliquities don’t hit the believer as hard as the strategy of the horse owner. One never knows what tricks are being worked. A horse may be run in ordinary shoes one day and in plates the next.

Bandages full of quicksilver may be attached to his legs. All sort of devices are employed to slow him up and prevent him from winning until the owner is ready to make a killing.

Sometimes he is worked so hard in his practice runs that he is tired when he comes to the post; or, if he is a horse who needs plenty of work to keep him in condition, he is not given enough. Finally, after he has lost several races and the odds against him lengthen to thirty or forty to one, the owner turns him loose, bets a roll on him, and cleans up.

I recall a case where the jockeys were changed almost at the moment of going to the post, and the horse won at twenty to one. The believers who aren’t in on all these secrets are the ones who pay the bills.

A shrewd chap — let’s call him X — came out of the West a few years ago with a clever idea. He had his own private jockeys and two or three cockroaches whom he entered in race after race. They never won anything, but he did.

He entered his plugs — usually two at a time — in none but the short races — half to three-quarter mile, and all his two jockeys had to do was to get near the favorite early in the race and either jostle or pocket him temporarily. They were experts in doing this in a seemingly natural way.

By the time the favorite had got into his stride or shaken off the hindrance, some other horses would have got too far ahead for him to catch them in the short distance.

X never bet on any particular horse; he simply bet against the favorite to win. As his own horses never finished in the money, no one suspected for a long time that he was playing a clever game — not until he had taken at least a hundred thousand — some say more than that — out of the pockets of believers who were betting the other way.

When he was finally thrown off the tracks he bought a string of motion picture theaters with his winnings.

If you were to suggest a bet on the races to him to-day, he would give you a loud, hoarse laugh.

“Not until I get another scheme as good as my last one,” he may say, if he knows you well enough.

How many of the most famous races in history have been won by tricks darkly hidden from the poor fish who were doing the betting will never be known.

Take the Kentucky Derby of 1892, for example. I could tell of more recent ones, but ninety-two is so far back in the past that the story won’t hurt anybody now.

There were only three horses in the Derby that year. Ed Corrigan, “the Master of Hawthorne,” had two, Huron and Phil Dwyer, while the third was Azra, a Kentucky horse. Colored jockeys were predominant then, and three of the smartest in the business were on these horses — Monk Overton on Phil Dwyer, Jack Britton on Huron, and Al Clayton on Azra.

With intent to deceive the public and the bookmakers, Corrigan declared on Phil Dwyer to win. In a loud tone so that many could hear him, he ordered Britton to go out and set the pace with Huron so as to take the heart out of Azra early in the race. Overton was then to bring Phil Dwyer on and win in the stretch by a length.

Secretly his intentions were just the opposite. Huron was the better horse of his two and was scheduled to win, and Corrigan was slyly placing his bets accordingly. The bookies made his two entries prohibitive favorites. I don’t think Azra won another race that year, and those Kentuckians who bet on him did so only out of State pride.

The race was on. Azra and Huron took the lead and seesawed on almost even terms through the first mile. The distance was then a mile and a half. Huron failed to shake off the little Kentucky horse as easily as expected. Azra could not have won, however, had it not been for smart work by his rider, Al Clayton.

Making the last turn, Clayton glanced back and saw that Phil Dwyer was not overtaking them. Urging Azra to a final spurt, he drew alongside Huron and succeeded in getting a leg-lock on Jockey Britton — that is, hooked his leg over the other’s so that the faster Huron went, the faster he would drag Azra with him, provided the two boys stayed in their saddles.

It must be remembered that jockeys in those days rode with much longer stirrups than now. Britton could do nothing. He dared not hit either Clayton or Clayton’s mount for fear of being disqualified, and Clayton had him crowded against the rail so that he could not escape.

The trick could not have been seen save by some one directly in front of or directly behind the two horses. And thus Huron carried Azra with him under the wire, the latter winning by a whisker, amid the yells of the faithful Kentuckians who had bet on him.

Britton, as soon as he dismounted, was so eager to find Clayton and lick him that he failed to lodge a complaint in time, and the race went to Azra.

A complaint must be made immediately or it’s too late to save the betters who lose by the crooked work: for as soon as the judges hang up the winning numbers the bookmakers pay off bets, and then it’s too late to rectify matters.

One of the sappiest of all believers is the chap who plays games of chance with strangers, or who risks his money in a public gaming house. Here is the perfect example of trying to beat the other man’s game. It is a mistake, by the way, to apply the term “gambling house” to a place where roulette, faro, baccarat, rouge et noir, and such-like indoor sports are offered for the public delectation.

The word gamble, according to the dictionaries, means “to risk or wager something of value on a game of chance.” The proprietors of such a house risk nothing at all. Their business is the surest in the world.

The wheat crop may fail, boll weevil may ravage the cotton, tariff may hurt imports and exports, war may destroy certain foreign markets, but the crop of believers never fails, and the professional’s profit on a gambling game is inevitable.

He sells nothing at cost, never has to put on a bargain sale. Even if a spasm of civic virtue should wipe him out after three or four years of business, he has by that time earned enough to retire, to buy a string of rum ships, or open up on a big scale somewhere else.

The only real gambling occurs in a game in which the participants are all believers and nobody is clever enough to stack the cards.

Strange that the enormous prosperity of public gambling houses doesn’t convey any warning to the mind of the poor moth who flutters around them. The person who goes into a great casino like that at Monte Carlo, whose profits support a whole principality, and tries to beat the game really ought to be examined by an alienist.

When the roulette ball in that casino stops at zero only one hundred and twenty-times in a counted run of more than four thousand turns of the wheel, what chance has the better? Roulette is one game in which the house doesn’t need to cheat.

Of all these games, faro would give the outsider the nearest a fair chance to win if it were played squarely, but it isn’t. Often some believer has expressed to me his opinion that So-and-so’s faro bank was on the square, or asked me if I didn’t think it was, and as I was a bit on the queer myself, it wasn’t up to me to spoil sport, so I usually answered, “Certainly it is! So-and-so wouldn’t think of running a crooked game.”

Had I been sincere I would have sneered, “You poor boob, why is it that the faro dealers at So-and-so’s and all other big gambling houses are among the highest paid men in the business? The mere mechanical part of their work is nothing. A fifteen year old boy could shuffle the cards and draw them out of the box. The truth of the matter is that a man with the craftiest brain and fingers to be found among a million is necessary in the dealer’s chair to protect the money of the house. On the square? Ho-ho! and three loud Ha-ha’s!”

There is a certain wealthy “Easterner” whom I knew in the Southwest a number of years back, when he was getting his start with a crooked faro box, electrically operated.

At that faro table he laid the foundation for his present fortune and social position, but I cannot recall the name of a single man who played across the table from him who now has money enough to wad a gun with.

Several years ago another man with an idea came out of the West and stood the Eastern gamblers on their heads. His racket was the vulgar, old-fashioned game of craps, and he played it in a seemingly foolish way.

He went around to the various gambling houses, laid down a thick, yellow-backed roll and said to the habitues, “Come on, boys, shoot at it! I’ll make any kind of a bet with you, but, just as a little inducement to me to accept any bet you offer, you must pay me five cents on every dollar we bet. Now come on if you want some fun. All I want is the nickels.”

He found plenty of willing believers. If they wagered fifty dollars with him, they must pay him a commission of two dollars and fifty cents; if one hundred dollars, his percentage was five dollars; but there were so many bets of two dollars, five dollars, and ten dollars, on which his commissions ran only from ten to fifty cents, that it seemed as if he were fooling with pin money.

A man accompanied him every night to carry away in a canvas bag the nickels, dimes, quarters, halves, and even larger money which he garnered. But what was the big idea? The other birds scratched their heads over it and couldn’t make out.

He seemed to have no carefully thought-out system of betting, and sharp watching failed to disclose that he had any knack of or any desire for ringing in loaded dice. He was equally careful to see that nobody else did so. As a matter of fact, he seemed to lose about as often as he won. Was he just plumb foolish?

Some of the poor dumb-bells who played against him never would have fathomed his racket, but the gambling house proprietors saw that the man’s helper was getting round-shouldered from toting away that heavy bag of silver and currency every evening, and they began to keep tabs on him.

Presently they discovered that his commissions sometimes amounted to three hundred or four hundred dollars in a night. It didn’t matter whether he won or lost in the dice playing: that was a minor issue. The game would average itself up in the course of a year: but meanwhile that little five per cent commission was rapidly making him wealthy.

He was simply running a public gambling game in another man’s quarters and letting the other fellow pay the rent and overhead. When they got this through their noodles, the boss gamblers became wrathy. Hitherto they had rather welcomed him as a drawing card; now they fired him out of their halls and calmly adopted his system themselves, charging five per cent commission thereafter on dice games.

But by that time Winn — for that was his highly ominous name — had cleaned up a competence, and had no need for worry.

Wherein lies the golden text: Take the cash and let the hazard go. A sure, steady five per cent in any business, but particularly if it be based upon the foolishness of believers, is worth all the possible capital prizes in the universe.

The man who guesses for a living, even on fifty-fifty chances, is apt to make a darned poor job of it.