Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1885 — A Mania for Policy. [ARTICLE]

A Mania for Policy.

“I guess that old man must have spent over $60,000 on policy,” said a gentleman to a reporter, pointing to a gray-whiskered, stoop-shouldered, trouble-faced-looking person, who had just emerged from a suspicious-looking “exchange office” on the Bowery, New York. “I knew him in New Orleans,” he continued, “when he was in business for himself, and was worth at least $40,000. To-day he is not worth a cent. He makes a precarious living as a copyist, and never gets hold of a dollar but what he will invest a portion of it in policy. In his palmy days he would invest hundreds of dollars in lottery tickets; now he often plays a *‘gig” for 2 cents, and upward. He never patronizes a gaming-table, but policy-playing has been a mania with him for the past thirty years, and of the thousands he has squandered I do not believe he ever received 1 per cent in return. I have often given him a dime or a quarter. I tell you, this gambling business —any way you may fix it—is worse on a man than drink.— New York telegram.