Evening Star Newspaper, July 24, 1932, Page 62

S — S TSN - D T3S \ THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, B. & JULY 25 1952 Fairs and Firemen’s Carnivals. By Weare Holbrook HE casinos at Monte Carlo and Havana have closed for the " Summer, the stock market is dull and the bookmakers at the race tracks are working cross-word puzzles. Old-fashioned games of chance, in which the sucker never gets an even break, have been hit hard by the depres- sion. Since the meek have inherited the dearth, mere existence has become 50 hazardous that roulette and chemin- de-fer seem tame by comparison. But there is another kind of gambling which continues to flourish despite hard times. You find it at every seaside re- sort, county fair and street carnival. Its disguises are various; they include not only simple games of chance like the paddle-wheel and the fish pond, but also dart-throwing, ring-tossing and other more intricate tests of skill. All are within the law, however, for two reasons: (a) the prizes are not cash, but objets d'art; (b) the player invari- ably gets something for his money. And therein lurks the real menace of this form of homeopathic hazard. If you lose, you win. Even the slot machines in the cigar stores operate on this be- nevolent principle. The wicked spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs have been replaced by innocuous symbols of as- sorted fruit, and you may squander your last nickel in a vain effort to prove that luck is just a row of cherries. But al- though the machine never yields a sin- gle brass slug, you always get a little package of mints every time you pull the crank. Last week when a street carnival sprang up overnight, almost on our door- step, Phoebe suggested that I take little Eustace to it. Eustace is her nephew, age 7, and still in full possession of all his faculties. “Why don't you take him?” I offered generously. “He likes you better,” Phoebe. explained “He binged me over the head with a locomotive the last time I saw him,” I reminded her. “And you remember when I took him to that amusement park. He filled up on ice cream cones and then rode on the merry-go-round until he got sick—and I got the blame for it.” “He’s older now,” said Phoebe reas- suringly, “and much more serious- minded.” She was right. After trying it once, little Eustace scorned the merry-go- round. As for the ferris wheel, he an- nounced that he could see more from the upstairs window at home. But the games of chance fascinated him. While I lingered at the shooting gallery to watch a youthful gangster slaughter 3 two-dimensional duck, Eus- tace slipped away to another booth. He was playing the paddle-wheel in a “country store” when I found him, and he had already won a can of molasses and a sack of salt. “Here,” he said, handing them to me. “I'm going to play No. 9 once more and see if I can win a basket.” The baskets contained heterogeneous assort- ments of groceries. As the wheel swung to a halt, I held my breath. No. 9 won another sack of salt. ‘I breathed again. “This is a gyp joint,” said little Eus- tace. “Let’s try something else.” HE next booth displayed a miniature race track with spring bumpers at each end and numbers along the side. A toy automobile with a roller-skate chassis shuttled back and forth between the bumpers until its momentum was spent, and the holder of the number at which it came to rest received a large round pillow made of felt and ruffled to represent a flower. “Maybe we can win one for Aunt “The gent wins the hot-cha baby!” blared the proprietor. “Lookit!” he shouted. Phoebe,” said Eustace. He placed a dime on section 3. The little car whizzed back and forth several times, then it slowed down and stopped on section 3. Eustace presented me with a lavender pillow, trimmed in pink. Opposite the pillow booth was a cane rack. “How about ringing a cane?” I suggested. I was beginning to need one. “They don’t give you the cane you ring,” said Eustace knowingly. “They just give you the prize that's fastened to it. I'm gonna see if I can get that pearl-handled revolliver.” But on the second toss Eustace won a gaudy bottle of perfumery—much to his disgust. “You try it,” he said. Putting down my burden, I paid a quarter and accepted half a dozen rings. My aim was careful, not because I wanted a pearl-handled revolver, but be- cause I wished to avoid the more bulky prizes which surrounded it. It was a re- lief when the last ring bounced off the board and left me empty-handed. “No luck,” I remarked complacently, “Hold on, buddy!” The proprietor of the cane rack thrust another handful of rings at me. “You paid two bits, and you can pitch till you win something. Everybody gets a prize.” Reluctantly I resumed my tossing, aiming at one of the more modest tar- gets. Since there was no escaping a prize, I hoped that it might be some- thing portable—a mnon-fillable fountain pen or a nice dull jack-knife, for in- stance. But to my dismay, the first ring ricocheted off the back of the rack and settled neatly over a cane from which dangled a fat pink doll. “The gent wins the hot-cha baby!” blared the proprietor, handing me the doll. “Who’s next here? Try yer luck, folks!” - In the meantime Eustace had been pa- tronizing another wheel of fortune, where he had *won a life-sized bulldog with glass eyes. “The man said youTre supposed to put it in the yard to scare away tramps,” he explained, “but if you leave it out in the rain, it’ll melt.” “Well,” I conceded optimistically, “that’s something.” I fitted the plaster bulldog into the crook of my left elbow, between the pink doll and the perfum- ery; the can of molasses, which was be- ginning to leak a little, reposed on the lavender pillow under my right arm; a sack of salt in each pocket provided ad- ditional ballast. “Don’t you think we might go home Re])m‘linglt/ze Laws of Chance Xou Can’t Losc When You Take @ Lling ai the Gambling Games of Qur Modern “We won a prize every time!” now?” I ventured. “We've really won more than our share already.” “I'd like to get something more be- fore we go,” said Eustace. “How about a nice balloon?” I sug- gested. One balloon, I felt, would be about all I could take on. But I dis- covered too late that they were merely targets for darts, and each punctured balloon yielded a prize. A wooden cuckoo clock and a Statue of Liberty piano lamp were added to our collec- tion. Lady Luck was not simply smiling on us; she was laughing hysterically. When we staggered home at last, Eus- tace was as triumphant as a conquering hero returning from the wars. “Lookit, Aunt Phoebe!” he shouted as he helped me through the door. “We won a prize every time!” ND it was evident that little Eustace had already succumbed to the lure of gambling. From street carnival games it will be only a step to radio ad- vertising contests. He will supply last lines for limping limericks, hunt for mystic numbers on soap wrappers, coms= pose 20-word essays on breakfast foods —-and although some one else will al- most always win the big cash awards, he will never fail to receive prizes of some sort or other, and his name will be on every mailing list. Thus he will grow up with a pathetic belief in the infalli- bility of his luck—a belief which is likely to be rudely shattered the first time he plays the stock market. For the stock market today is the last stand of old-fashioned gambling. Specu- lation is the only remaining game in which you may get absolutely nothing for your money. Everywhere else your chances of coming away empty handed are infinitesimal. You can't lose. School Attendance Grows THE 10 years between the census of 1920 and 1930 showed a remarkable increase in school attendance of children between the ages of 5 and 20, with the 16-year-old class showing the greatest increase. The total attendance in 1930 was just ome- tenth short of 70 per cent, while in 1920 the figure stood at 64.3 per cent. Starting with 20 per cent attending at the age of 5 the percentage mounts to the age of 11, at which age 97.5 per cent are in school At the age of 15 the percentage has dropped to 84.7 per cent and at 20 it has declined 13.1 per cent, although this last figure is practically 5 per cent petter than the 1920 figure for that age. i