Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1913 — Page 3

WHEN MEN PLAYED FOR BIG STAKES

AMBLING for big stakes was a common thing in the west a few yearß ago. In nearly all sections the evil has been suppreSSetr cy law. In the few portions where it is still followed it is carried on under cover and in constant dread of police interference.

Not bo long ago, however, the cry of the 4 roulette man and the click of the ball could ' be heard in the lobbies of many of the principal hotels. This was particularly true “of El Paso, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Goldfield, Butte, the Coeur d’Alene, and many other sections. The practice prevailed to a greater or less extent In the larger towns. Everybody has money in the early days of a mining camp. It was an era of speculation. ...The. country had not “been proven,” and hence a “find” in a new section resulted in a great rush to that locality. Property changed hands at fabulous prices overnight The ragged prospector of today might be rolling in wealth tomorrow. It has happened so many times. When there is money to throw at the birds, the gamblers, like so many vultures,

assemble at the point to which It is being cast by the thoughtless and improvident possessors. Games were played where the stakes ran into the millions. A man wealthy in the morning sometimes bad to borrow money to avoid going to bed hungry at night A stockman in Colorado “sat into” a poker game in Denver, and by midnight had not only lost all the cash he had with him. but had exhausted a large bank balance. • He owned, on the range in Colorado, the neutral strip ("No Man’s Land,” now extreme western Oklahoma), and in Texas ten thousand head of cattle, worth twenty dollars a head, or a total of $200,000. He possessed land in three states and a handsome residence In Denver. He made a bet of a thousand steers—worth twenty thousand dollars —and lost. He continued this until the herd of ten thousand head of stock belonged to another man. Day dawned, and he was still playing. Breakfast was Bent in from a restaurant maintained at the end of the gambling hall for Just men'PM&le./" . .-a “Now,” he said to the men who had won his cattle, “you have the critters, but no place to keep them. I will play you my Texas ranch.” 1 He lost that Then followed the Colorado ranch, finally the residence in Denver, together with the furniture, his horses, his watch and chain. . At eight o’clock at night—twenty-four hours later—he was penniless, and started for the Rio Grande country of Texas, where he found employment hauling logs to k\ sawmill. He had lost more than a quarter of a million dollars in twenty-four hours! "Will you oblige me by taking off your shoes r* asked a road agent politely, while he held a revolver menacingly in the face of a passenger who stood up in a line with others. The hold-up man had stopped the stage going Into Leadvllle to "collect tolL” He had just purchased the road, he said, and needed the money. He passed down the line and, by means of a pasenger whom he forced into service, gathered up all the money and jewelry, until he came to the last man in the line. Then he asked the man to take off his shoes. He found four thousand dollars under the inner soles! Several nights later the man who had been outwitted by the hold-up man was sitting in the dealer’s chair of a faro game in the "Cloud City,” as Leadvllle is called. Before him sat a man who lost money steadily. The gambler “raked In” the money carelessly and with the utmost uhconcern. The player lost something like five thousand dollars and then pushed back his chair. “All' in?” asked the gambler, arching his brows. “Yep—you’ve cleaned me out.” “Then we are even for that little incident the other night, when you collected your road tax from me.” SSJ » “Yes, you!” • The hold-up man knocked down half a dozen loiterers in his rush to reach the door and escape. A well-known mining man, who was noted for his judgment in "knowing a hole in the ground” when he lodked into it, had just made a purchase In Cripple Creek. He had money, and he was willing to spend it for anything that looked good. After having tramped over the hills all of one day, he “sat into” a poker game in the lobby of the principal hotel that night, and engaged In a friendly game with a number of acquaintances. They were playing for twenty-five cents a corner. While the game was in progress a ragged prospector appeared and attempted to inject himself into the company. The mining man explained that It was simply a private game between friends—outsiders, and particularly strangers, were not wanted. “I have money that has never been spent” "We don’t know you.” “Oh, that’s it! Then let me Introduce myself.” There was no way to gtet rid of him apparently. Then, like an inspiration, and in an annoyed manner, the operator said: "How much money have you?” "Eight hundred dollars.” "Sit down!, and I’l show you how to play poker.” - In less than fifteen minutes the prospector withdrew. Shortly after he returned with a thousand dollars more. This was interesting. He lost it Then he lost a diamond pin, following it with a watch and his "bayuse.” When he pushed back his chair the operator asked: "Are you broke now?” ‘1 have a claim over on the hill.” "What do yefti value it at?" "One hundred thousand dollars.” This staggered the mining man for a moment

“You have been a good loser; I’ll put in with you and play a hundred thousand against your claim.” The prospector lost the claim "Now I will play you for your services tomorrow to show me where the claim is and where to open the ore. For that I will consider that you have five thousand on the. table.” The prospector lost that. The next day he traced out the lines of the claim for the winner, who organized a company, with a stock of one million, the shares of which went for sixteen dollars each! / Millions were taken from the mine within a few years. It became one of the moßt famous in the entire Rocky Mountain country. In the early days of the Comstock Lode, in Virginia, Nevada, some men made money so fast that they did not know what to do with It Those who were not making it spent their time devising ways and means to talk the others out of a portion of their wealth. Gamblers were in full evi- • dence. and ffrarw ware Brrnia huf it—remained for a bunch of Mexicans to play for the largest stake on record in the United States — without the use of cards. , L: One of the many claims, located in the midst of the district, had not shown any ore. Even the men who had millions hesitated to sink a shaft on it. The people were in a fever of excitement. The Mexicans owned practlcaly nothing. In fact, the “greksers” could not get a "look in.” Altogether it was very discouraging—to them. Then it occurred to some bright genius to capitalize the labor of the Mexicans. Gathering a bunch of them together*, it was proposed that they sink a shaft on one of the well-known claims, which was twelve hundred feet in length. "For each foot you sink, we will give you a one-foot surface interest in the claim,” thy were told," provided you sink to ore.” In other words, if they abandoned the work at any time before reaching ore, they would get nothing, and the owners would have the shaft It looked like a cheap way to prospect. The Mexicans pow-powed and jabbered at one another for half a night and then started to work.

Everybody laughed. They were comparatively poor men. They could ill afford the expense they were undergoing. They drilled by hand, fought the hard granite, and gradually lowered that shaft . They balled water that flowed in so fast that it threatened to drown them, but they stuck to the work with desperation. At three hundred feet they uncovered the richest portion of the world-famous silver deposit and, from the vein they opened, more wealth was taken out than from any other portion of that richest single mile of ground in the world. The Mexicans’ share was one-quarter. Nearly one hundred million dollars came out of the hole they sank! It was a gamble pure and simple. They played for high stakes —and won. In the Coeur d’Alene, of Idaho, when that mining region was the center of the earth, there were some big games. The story is told of one man who conceived the idea, that he could make money in gambling faster than he could take it out of the ground. It was so much easier. With what cash be had, after selling his mine, he could count up to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He had evolved a wonderful system. “I simply can’t lose,” he told his friends. His plan was to play steadily for sixteen hours daily, and, by a complicated series of bets, to retrieve when he lost Everything went along swimlngly for the first few days. At times he was as much as twentyfive thousand to the good. ~ Nine days after he started top lay he suddenly found that he was just where he had started — he had one hundred and fifty thousand dollars when the cards came a certain way, which would Involve, according to his system, betting the entire amount on a single "turn.” He played the queen to win, and the fickle creature played false to him. “Women are the cause of all trouble, anyway.” he muttered, as he rose from the table. “I ought to have known better than that, for that was the queen of spades, and I should not have made that bet except when all thfe queens except the queen of hearts was out” It was the irony of fate that, when the queen of hearts came cut of the box. It so happened that it won. In the days when Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the headquarters for the cattlemen of the northwest, gambling ran wide open. When the cowboys came to town they made things hum. Money grew on trees. The gaming spirit was in the air. A dealer standing behind a roulette table one night suddenly motioned the proprietor. A few moments later he was paid off. It is customary to pay a gambler his salary at the end of each

This dealer took a seat in front of the table and In the course of a few hours had won fifty dollars. Then he stopped. . He would pass in and out a dozen times a day, play a little here and some there, but always he would bring up in front of the roulette* table, and more often than otherwise left it winner. His luck was amazing. He started a bank acocunt He was saving his money to get into business with, he said. He won so steadily that it made the proprietor of the place shiver every time he came in. One day, while the ex-dealer was playing, an old man dropped in and, glancing around the room for a moment, asked: “Who runs this place?” "I do,” answered a bewhlskered individual who was watching his former employe rake in the cash. “Will you do me the favor to tell me where you got that wheel?” he asked, pointing to the one that proved such a hoodoo. “I know it’s a Jonah. That fellow over there wins allthe time. 1 ” “So?” said the stranger. He walked over and watched the man lay his bets. Returning to the proprietor, he said, as he passed out a card: “I represent this house, which, as you see, deals in gaming devices. I take It that the man sitting at the wheel makes a ’killing’ every day?” “He does, stranger, to the tune of fifty or a hundred.” “For a thousand I can tell you how to bust his luck and make him look the living picture of remorse. You would have to agree to purchase A new wheel from me, also.” • “If you. show me, I’m game.” “It’s a bargain," said the drummer. Walking over to the wheel, he waited until the ball dropped, stopped it, and turning to the proprietor asked: “See anything strange with that wheel?” "No.” "Well, see, there are two nlneteens and two twenty-threes on this wheel. They are unusual numbers —so that the fellow who plays them has about the same percentage in his favor, on those numbers, that you have when a man plays on a regular wheel. We made this wheel more than thirty years ago. It was sold to a house by a couple of ‘sure thing* men, who almost broke the outfit Then we lost track of It” The ex-dealer had noticed the double numbers, and therein was the secret of his “luck.” How the numbers had escaped attention so many years is one of those mysteries of gambling that can never be explained. When Seattle was the big noise in the Northwest gambling world, and the primeval forests were closer to her doors, some big games were played.

One night a stranger stepped into one of the principal houses and took a seat at a faro table. An hour later he had lost more than fire thousand dollars. The proprietor sent him a fiftycent cigar. A few moments afterward the stranger had a couple of hundred dollars, and within an hour had regained his live thousand. Then commenced a streak of luck that has seldom been witnessed in any gambling house. The “roof” had been raised "to the' sky" and Mr Stranger “coppered” the king and doubled a bet of five thousand. He tried it again for a repeat V, with ten thousand, and drew back twenty yel* low v chieps, worth one thousand each. After that he made bets of a thousand each, and before he had smoked the cigar he was tweth ty-eight thousand to the good! Then he quit Who he was, where he came from, where he went no one ever knew. His coming and going were as mysterious as bis winnings were sensational. Probably one of the greatest stakes erer hung up was raked down on a mole race in'Arisons. A man owned a "hole In the ground.” He was satisfied that it was worth a fortune. His friends thought he was crazy. He refused to go to other "diggings” where the prospects were better. He was more than twenty-fire miles from water, which had to be carried in on the hurricane deck of a mula He worked away nursing his claim and sticking It out alone. Then he went to a settlement some dlstanoe away. He became excited orer the performances of a mule owned by another man, and in a moment of exuberance bet his claim against one owned by a prospector from another section that his male could outrun the other fellow's. He lost He had the privilege of piloting the winner to the "mine” and saw him take more then seventy thousand dollars’ worth of silver, net out of a pocket elmost on the surface of the ground! Bine* then the property has produced millions It all came about because one mule could not run so fast as another.

day. Many of them have the faculty of losing it back oyer the very table where they know the odds to be against the player. In roulette there is a distinct percentage in favor of “the house.” Everybody knows that.

TURKEY INDUSTRY SHIFTS TO THE WEST

(BY C. M. SHULTZ.)

Many a city family man, when he comes to pay from $5 to |7 for his Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey, will be quite ready to affirm that personally he has no objection to the passing of the turkey forever, even as a holiday piece de resistance. Last year in the largest cities firstclass birds brought from 25 to 50 cents per pound, and a $6 bill was hardly adequate to secure a bird that would sufficiently serve an ordinarysized family. The fact is that fewer turkeyß are being raised every year, the decline in the industry having started six or seven years ago, when the terrible disease of blackhead began to destroy the flocks in the Nfew England states. The ravages of this disease have become so great that in Rhode Island, which was once the great turkey state, very few are now being raised. The disease has spread to other states throughout the east, and its ravaging effects have been so disastrous that thousands of fanners in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New Hampshire, all'formerly good turkey states, have practically given up the business. This disease has invaded the west to some extent, but its ravages have been checked because the means of preventing it are now much better understood than ever before, owing to the industrious and intelligent investigations started several years ago by the Rhode Island experiment station .and supplemented by the work of the U. S. department of agriculture. Blackhead is a’ disease of the liver and intestines which produces a form of dysentery and is caused by minute parasites, and csfted blacklto&d because. the heads of the affected birds turn black at a certain stage of the disease, • In many cases birds die from complications induced by the presence of the disease rather than from its immediate effects. Blackhead destroys about four-fifths of the young turkeys before they are six weeks old, and of the remaining one-fifth, according to Prof. Cooper Curtiss of the Rhode,. Island station, one-tenth to one-fifth die at a later date. While there has not been great progress made in the control of this disease the limits of Ignorance have been clearly defined, and it is believed that the scientists will, in a very short time, discover effective remedies. The advice given by experts in the disease is to quit breeding turkeys

TOOL CHEST VERY HANDY FOR FARMER

List of Implements Given That Are Quite Indispensable— Reduce Repair Bills. Pleasure and profit meet in the farm tool chest. The good workman takes a Just pride In bright well kept tools. They cut down repair bills. They avoid the delay and cost of sending for a carpenter. They are especially needed at this time of the year in repairing buildings for the winter. The exact tools to be provided yary with the nature of the work to be done, the size of the farm and the means and personal tastes of the farmer. Every fame* should have at least the following tools: Hammer, rip saw, hand saw. Jack plane, square, ratchet, brace, expansive bit; bits %. %. % and % in.; chisels % and 1% In.; maUet, drawknife, screw driver, rule, marking guage, wood rasp, oil stone. Buy good tools. Cheap materials even at a little lower first cost, do not mean economy here. Have a place for every tool and every tool In Its place. It does not take long to lose quite a bit of money If tools are carelessly thrown about by children or hired help.

Buff Turkeys.

wherever it appears, and this is responsible in a very large degree tor the rapid curtailment of the industry in the eastern states. The hope of the turkey-raising industry appears at present to lie la the west, and those portions of the south which have so far escaped this dreaded disease. Breeders have now learned, at least in a preliminary way, how to prevent the disease, and in the west, where it has not prevailed to any considerable extent, farmers have., taken up turkey breeding, encouraged' by the tremendously high prices that have prevailed during the past few years and by the hope that they willi be able to escape the losses suffered by the eastern breeders who did not know how to cope with the disease. As farmers receive about 65 per cent, of the retail price of turkeys, there is-good profit in the business, provided the birds escape disease. Turkey-raising is no more difficult than the raising of any other kind ofl poultry. It requires just as much, but no more trouble than should be> devoted to the raising of guineafowls, well-bred chickens, or squabs. In fact, where extensive range can be secured, the rearing of turkeys Is les» trouble than that of chickens. Turkeys are great rangers, but aa they quickly become attached to their attendant, it is not difficult to control' them. They should be fed and cared for by the same person from the time they are hatched until they are ready for the market In this way they will learn to come at the call of the attendant and follow him tor long distances, from the fields to the coops. If young turkeys are carefully handled by the same person they can be easily driven firom One place tar another, and when storms come on they can be quickly housed. In foreign countries turkeys are driven to market in flqcks, and we once saw a flock of nearly 300 birds being driven along the highway to the railroad station three miles from the farm, where they were to be cooped and shipped to the city market Texas is, perhaps, today the greatest tnrkey state in the Union. Breeders of this state have taken first premiums at many of the national shows during the past few yean, and the Industry has thrived wonderfully in the mild climate of the state. Turkeys in the southern state#, where range is ample and the winters are mild, grow to an exceptionally large size, twenty-five to thirty-five .pounds being a common weight for the prize bird*.

White Holland Turkeys.

EXERCISE HELPFUL TO HOGS’ HEALTH

Successful Kansas Swine Breeder Permits His Animals to Have Full Sway. One of the most successful hog feeders In Kansas uses no peas at all. but permits his hogs full range, and scatters the soaked corn from a tank wagon out upon the ground, never feeding twice In the same place. He believes the exercise Is very beneficial to the hogs’ health, but says that It takes more corn and larger feeding to make the animal ready for market This feeder buys his shouts, never keeping more than a dozen brood sows on the place, and the hogs he buys for fattening begin to arrive by late fall, when they at once are put on alfalfa In the pasture and later given steamed and cut alfalfa, which Is cured very green. His hogs go on the market by the last of June or first of July—sometimes earlier. He takes a long time to fit the shoata for heavier feeding, working up to a full feed* Ing quite gradually. f = •„> \’. v :

Experiment* in France show that ordinary sod makes an efficient filter tor sewage.

Sod for Sewage.