Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1903 — The Inter Ocean’s Guessing Lottery. [ARTICLE]

The Inter Ocean’s Guessing Lottery.

Some 100,000 people more or lees eagerly scrutinized last Sunday’s Inter Ocean, searching for something which 99,000 of them failed to find. And that was their own names among the winners in the Ocean’s big lottery, otherwise guessing contest. Something like $25,000 was distributed in prizes, to about 1000 persons, the great majority of whom received only $5 each. The guess was on the total combined vote of New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan. The correct number was 2,886,734. Three men, C. E. Geibler, of Riverside, Mo., H. C. Delcamp, of Mendon, 0., and Geo. E. Lowe, of Chicago, each guessed this number exactly and divide the SIO,OOO prize between them, Delcamp also drew a SI,OOO special prize and about $320 out of another Geibler also drew a SI,OOO special prize. If any Jasper county people got in even in the $5 list we failed to find their names. These “guessing contests,” are lotteries in all essential features and ought to be suppressed by law. Like other lotteries, they enrich a few at the expense of many, and like them leave the big end of the profits in the hands of the manipulators. They cultivate the same spirit of gambling and the same desire to get something for nothing, and to get rich qhick; and as other lotteries do leave every person who wins, whether little or much, with the same increased desire to win some more in the same way. And everyone who loses with the same determination to try again to see if! their luck won’t be better next time. They are thoroughly bad and demoralizing institutions, without a single feature that in any way compensates the public for the harm they do, By all means they should be suppressed by law, root and branch,