Las Vegas. 4:30 a.m. Muzak oozing. Dice clacking. Slot machines whirring. No clocks. No windows. No chairs —except at the green felt tables. Ray the Shark, middleaged, middle class, Middle West, peeks at cards, puffs cigar, rubs lucky shirt, peeks again and draws another card. Blackjack! Adrenaline pumping, grinning beatificially, he multiplies his bets—and loses. Wife appears, her palms covered with grey metallic sheen from feeding coins to slot machines. "Quick," he whispers, "I'm hot. Give me the money I told you not to give me."
RAY the Shark—as he likes to think of himself—is hooked, at least temporarily. So are 86 million other Americans, who this year will bet on everything from nags to numbers, pinochle to pinball machines.* Everybody wants a piece of the action, including the politicians. In 1964, New Hampshire became the first state in this century to legalize a lottery, followed this year by New York. But even the most unscrupulous bookies, whose average "vigorish" (profit margin) is 10%, would blush at New York's 70% lottery rake-off. The fact that state lottery tickets are sold in the marbled halls of New York financial institutions is too much for some people. Texas' Wright Patman, chairman of the House Banking Committee, sponsored a bill to keep federally insured banks from selling such tickets and last week Patman fulminated against Governor Nelson Rockefeller's "lottery racket."
Not that the lotteries have proved particularly profitable so far. In New York, receipts are running a woeful 75% below estimates. Various reasons for the lag are advanced —not enough outlets, weak promotion, bad odds (1,000,000 to 1 for top prize of $100,000), and the unexciting legality of the whole thing. Some gamblers feel that their pastime has to be more attuned to the raffish ways of Moe the Gyp than to the clean-cut operation of Nelson the Rock. The mystique has to do with smoky back rooms and the smell of the paddocks, with whispered hunches and looking bored while four aces burn a hole in your hand.
The National Sweepstakes
The fuss about the lotteries is only one sign that the U.S. is on a gambling spree; gambling expenditures may have doubled in the past decade. Las Vegas, with its bargain-basement prices for rooms and floor shows and its free round-trip air fares for well-heeled customers, is now getting competition from oases in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. The numbers racket (estimated total revenue: $1.5 billion) was once known as "the black man's stock market"; now it is moving all over town. Perhaps the fastest-growing action is betting on sporting events (estimated total: $2.2 billion) with point spreads lending an edge of excitement to even the most one-sided contests.
Over the phone, through the mails, in ads and commercials comes a barrage of invitations to join the national sweepstakes; housewives do not just shop any more, they take chances on a freight car full of oranges, or a new convertible stuffed with $27,000 in cash. This sort of thing may not be real gambling, but it does contribute to a gambling atmosphere. Says one interested witness, the Nevada Gaming Control Board's Wayne Pearson: "Statistically, gambling is the normal thing. It's the non-gambler who is abnormal in American society."