Radio Script #1303

Little Talks on Common Things
February 28, 1982

Today we are again reminded that this program began thirty four years ago with references to common things. Among the common things we see today are numerous lotteries, ranging from small raffles to million dollar sweepstakes.

Lotteries are nothing new . They’re indeed older than recorded history. But they did not begin by risking money on chances as they do today. They began in casting lots to make some kind of choice. The numerous references in the Bible to casting lots reveal a custom that was older than even the oldest Bible records, a custom common in the Mediterranean world as early as the earliest Egyptian and Mesopotamia records in the hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts. In all probability lots were being cast long before any ancient people had the ability to write.

The Bible references make it clear that lots were cast for different reasons. One was to find out who was to blame for some misfortune. Best known is the story of Jonah. When the ship on which he was a passenger was in danger of being wrecked by a storm, passengers and crew cast lots to see who was to blame. and the lot fell on Jonah. Sometimes lots were cast to decide who should lead a particular enterprise. So King Saul asked that lots be cast to decide between himself and his son Jonathan and the lot fell on Jonathan.

In our day that kind of lot is usually decided by tossing a LO~S were cast to till vacancies. After the treason of Judas, Mark tells us that lots were cast among the followers of Jesus, and the lot fell on Mathias, who at once was added to the eleven remaining apostles. Lots were used to determine who should have certain possessions of deceased persons. Thus, at the crucifixion of Jesus, the Roman guard’s cast lots to decide who should have his garments.

It’s thus apparent that early lotteries did not involve financial risks by the participants. They were more like today’s door prizes given when a business opens new or reconstructed facilities. No participant pays anything. We do not know when or where paying for chances began, but it probably started in small offerings long before it grew into such giants as the Irish Sweepstakes or the larger state lotteries. We do know that lotteries were common in England in the 15th. century, before Columbus discovered America.

Lotteries conducted by government units were common during the 17th century. Before the middle of that century, the French government lottery, called the Lotterie Royale, had become so corrupt that it was suppressed, and not renewed until early in the 19th century after the French Revolution. Napoleon then reinstituted the lottery to get money for his military campaigns.

Lotteries for revenue in England were common by the time of Henry VIII in the late 16th century. Just before the American Revolution, various government lotteries in England were bringing into the royal treasury a quarter of a million pounds a year. Naturally the early colonists brought to America the European custom of lotteries. In all the colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia, lotteries were used to build roads, dig canals, and even erect church buildings. It was then legal even for an individual to conduct a small lottery to put up a barn. The custom continued after the American colonies became independent states. Lotteries were used to get funds to build churches in Wells, Maine in 1685, and in Scarborough in 1698.

Notable instance of a Maine lottery was the one conducted to build the Cumberland and Oxford Canal. That was the project, early in the 19th century, that connected Sebago Lake and its chain of ponds with the seaside wharves in Portland.

My birthplace town of Bridgton greatly benefited from that canal. It made possible the carrying of freight between the head of Long Lake in Harrison and the city of Portland. One of the boat stops was Plummer’s Landing in Bridgton, from which teams carried supplies to the Bridgton merchants. That continued until the building of the Portland and Ogdensburg R.R., later the Mountain Division of the Maine Central, in the 1870’s. When in 1823 the incorporators of the canal project found that sale of stock was too slow, they set up a widely advertised lottery that raised sufficient money to start work on the canal, which was completed in 1825.

To handle the canal’s financing, including operation of the lottery, a new Portland bank was chartered, called the Canal Bank, because the charter required that at least one-fourth of its capital must be invested in the canal project. That bank is still in prosperous existence today.

Shortly before the Revolution the proprietors of the Maine township of Fryeburg put on a lottery to get rid of their remaining unsold lots.

It was the financial scandal of the Louisiana lottery early in the 19th century that made lotteries so unpopular that states began to declare them illegal, and that became their status throughout the country until their 20th century resumption in Nevada. For a long time, even a simple raffle was illegal, but that did not stop the practice. Three-quarters of a century ago in my native Bridgton, it was customary for all stores that sold Thanksgiving chickens to run a raffle on Thanksgiving Eve to get rid of the left-over birds.

My father’s was one of a half a dozen village stores that held such a raffle. The method was throwing dice, with the chicken going to the man getting the highest score. I say “man” because I never saw a woman or girl participate in those raffles. For each chicken the raffle fee was,ten cents, and at least ten participants were usually required. To give the raffle the appearance of legality, it never began until the local deputy sheriff had arrived and cast, free of charge, the first throw. It was all a rather innocuous procedure that happened only once a year, and no individual lost very much money.

Before I had left the town, to attend college, I never saw a turkey at those raffles. But at one Thanksgiving during my college years, when I was home for the holiday, I did take part in a turkey raffle at Tony Gallimari’s fruit and variety store in Bridgton’s Post Office Square. I won a turkey, sold it back to Tony, then won the same bird again. Declared altogether too lucky,I was then banned from further participation in the game. Now, seventy years later, such a raffle is not likely to be held for any prize less than a new car, or at least a brilliant quilt.

Now consider just what must be the huge cost of postage to advertise the innumerable lotteries brought to our attention through junk mail. We receive almost weekly appeals from the Readers Digest Lottery, along with hundreds of others of lesser renown. They all urge us to put in our names without expense, but they also call attention to some product they want us to buy from them.

Attracting most attention today are the state lotteries. Television ads for the Maine State Lottery have reached the point where, from your T.V. set a man points a finger at you and says, “You can win a lot of money.” He never mentions the more obvious fact, “You can lose a lot of money.” Any participant’s chances of winning are small, and he never tells you what those chances are.

During 1980 and 1981 the Maine lottery was so plagued by mismanagement, including several ludicrous goofs, that a bill in the Legislature to abolish it captured many votes, thought not quite enough to succeed. The uproar, however, did induce the lottery commission to make several changes which resulted in a bit more state income for 1981.

If the state lottery does, then, bring even a little money to the Treasury, why is it not good for Maine? In a recent widely published article about state lotteries allover the nation, the reporter said: “A leading factor in all the state lotteries is that they are deliberately designed to obscure the odds. That is done by making payments sufficiently confusing to prevent even a rudimentary calculation of the probabilities.”

An expert gambler – and there are plenty of them around – will tell you, from a gambler’s viewpoint state lotteries are terrible. The best of them give less chance of winning than do the parimutuals at the race tracks. Even those professional investigators who favor state lotteries in principle are now telling us that Maine will never be a profitable lottery state. Its inhabitants are too few per square mile to insure any large revenue. In Massachusetts the expense of operating the state lottery is considered excessive at 45 cents of every dollar received. In Maine that cost is 74 cents of every dollar. Besides the geographical situation, it is just possible that Maine has more persons in every hundred of its population who just don’t care for the lottery.

Admittedly lotteries do seem ,to be gaining popularity allover the nation. Yet strong voices are being raised against them. Although a proposed California lottery is supported by most of that state’s newspapers, Governor Brown has come out strongly against it, saying: “I don’t think our state can be made stronger by resorting to gambling to find a way out of our financial dilemmas.”

Others besides Governor Brown have begun to attack the moral default in lotteries. That moral note is now being sounded, as well as more mundane reasons, why a sovereign state of this 200-year-old union should not be in the lottery business.

Year: 1982