Alaskan Gambling

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 41, 18 February 1937, Page 4

Alaskan Gambling

RELIC OF GAUDY ERA. Alaska, which for decades tolerated gambling as an essential part of the gaudy era, has turned at last against the professional gambler. The United States Marshal’s office, aided by police in Anchorage and Juneau, announced the starting of a drive against the professional cohorts of Lady Luck. Tho suave, steel-eyed, tapering fingered gambler, quiet about his past, who appears and disappears like a ghost in a fog, now finds tho cards stacked against him. "It’s the boys who make a living that way that we are after,’’ S. S. Daniels, Chief of Police, said. Daniels ordered his police to aid deputy marshals in the drive. The first round-up at Anchorage netted 15 men, some of them suspected as professional gamblers, others merely being "customers.’’ Brought before W. S. Stump, Assistant United States Attorney, they were warned to cease gambling activities or face charges. "There is no intention to interfere with purely a social or friendly game of rummy with reasonable stakes,’’ Daniels said, "but there have been complaints that fishermen and workmen were losing their stakes _or salaries. Merchants complained men who owe! them bills were losing their money to professional gamblers. "The games have gone beyond the ‘amateur’ or ‘social’ status in to the professional class.’’ *