Gamblers Fleece College Students

GAMBLERS FLEECE COLLEGE STUDENTS

Chicago Tribune Has Article on the Subject

HOW THEY DO IT

Despite the Tribune Article It Is Not Believed Gambling Is As Prevalent Here As a Few Years Ago

There is much less gambling in Ann Arbor than one would think who reads the Chicago Tribune. Neither is it believed that there are as many students who gamble as were here a few years ago. The Chicago Tribune of Sunday contained the following article:

"The gambling octopus, with its many tentacles - poker, dice fan tan, faro, roulette, and betting- is firmly intrenched in many American colleges and universities, and faculties everywhere are now fully aroused to the necessity of eradicating the monster. At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor the authorities are finding that their efforts to drive away the gambling octopus are a gigantic undertaking. The students do not live in dormitories where they are under the more or less personal supervision of the faculty, but in private families and boarding houses, where they disobey the edicts of the university aumuch danger of being found out. The faculty has decreed that the students shall not indulge in gambling or betting. Some of the students obey the edict. With others it is about as binding as though the authorities should pass a law that the sun should begin shining every day at 4 o'clock or that snow should not fall on Saturday. "Detroit is only an hour's ride from Ann Arbor. The first week of every month, during which most of the students receive their checks from home, they slip away in large numbers every night to Detroit, where poker rooms abound. The value of the student patronage to the keepers of the tiger in Detroit is so great that representatives of the big gambling hells in that city are sent over every month to Ann Arbor to solicit the students' patronage for the various resorts. The poker and roulette drummers distribute the business cards of the gambling rooms they represent and extend personal invitations to the students and talk to them on the glittering possibilities of winning a fortune or breaking the bank in one evening's play.

"Many professional gamblers from Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee make regular visits to Ann Arbor during the school year. They organize little coteries who wish to play poker or roulette and then set up their layouts 'in some student's room, where as many collegians gather as can get into the room and play until their last dollar is gone. Some of the gamblers in the guise of book agents make a house to house canvass of the town. They get several students together and, after they have talked awhile about, the books they are supposed to selling, they propose 'a little game just to remind them of the dear old days when they, too, were in college.' It has sometimes happened that these gamblers have had to borrow or wire for money to keep from walking out of town.

PROFESSIONALS SOMETIMES LOSE.

"Some of the students, from constant practice and much dearly bought experience, have become extremely clever in handling the cards, and when they play in their own roms, with their own cards, and all of their associates as comrades, it goes pretty hard with the professional gambler who has no accomplice and who is so closely watched that he finds it impossible to work his favorite tricks. The gambler who is taken into camp in this manner by the students usually gets revenge, however. He submits to his losses with good grace, and flatters the collegians on being so expert with the cards. He tells them that they are the best players he has ever met and succeeds in getting them to promise to come over to Detroit and have a little game with some friends of his who play a nice little game and would like to have some of. the University boys join them. The students go over, and after they invade the tiger in his lair they are not allowed to go until they are plucked clean.

ALWAYS READY TO BET.

"Card playing, roulette, and dice, however, form but a part of student gambling, as betting is a popular form of the vice. Betting on the athletic contests involves thousands of dollars at every game or big field meet. On the day on which a big game is to be played there is always a large crowd of students at the depot to meet the visitors and cover their money before it is bet somewhere else. At the hotels a clerk is kept on these days solely to handle the money that is placed upon the game. "Frequently students will be so fascinated by the gambling habit that they will take chances on almost anything- the weather, the trains, or the number that will be present at a class, the number of examples that a 'Prof.' will give out, the day on which a quiz will come, or the chances of a professor 'bolting' a class. One of the most amusing of the games practiced by the boys was betting on an old turnstile that stood by the old railway station. An enterprising youth stole it, put it in his back yard, numbered the arms, and offered chances of 2 to 1 on which of the four arms would point nearest to a certain mark on it being spun. He declared that he earned enough to pay bis college expenses during the three years that he kept a book on it.

WATCH AS ROULETTE WHEEL.

"Another student had a watch of which the chink pin was removed, allowing the hands to spin freely on pressing the stem, and he took odds of three to one on their stopping at any hour the victim might choose. This game the students played during classes even, and at such odds he made quite a tidy sum from his old watch. "Some time ago when the new hot water apparatus was being installed at the gymnasium a student ran a book at one to two on the chances of there being hot or cold water on a certain day. As long as the repairs were going on he got along all right, but soon there began to be hot water all the time and the collegian had to give it up. "At a certain boarding house there is a student who runs a book on a roulette wheel made out of salt cellars and a knife, which is played between courses. As much as $10 at a time is sometimes wagered on this crude apparatus."