Casino operations in America prior to 1932 were on a small scale. Every city and town had its back-alley dice games and smoke-filled card rooms, run usually by well-known local political figures or sportsmen. Most towns were wide open for gambling but, except for a few of the larger sawdust joints and a few elegant rug joints with a well to-do clientele, the gambling was not really organized. Each operator was on his own, and the cops and politicians had little or no idea of the earning power of online casino gambling.
If you ran a Bank Craps game, paying the cop on the beat a few bucks would buy all the protection you needed. Racketeers paid little attention to the business; the big racket money was all in bootlegging. In fact, it was the bootlegging crowd who were the sawdust joints' biggest suckers; they wagered their bootlegging profits with abandon. They were the sawdust-joint operator's delight. Then the repeal of Prohibition left the racket boys without their customary source of revenue, and they turned their attention to gambling operations.
Forms of Gambling
Little by little the bootleg mobs began to move in on the casino business and other forms of gambling such as the Numbers game; former owners like the Barn's original owner, the Baron, were pushed out. By 1934 the mobs had control and the business was organized. The politicians with their icemen were put on the pad (payroll) and the cops, at the request of the local mob, began raiding all the small dice and poker games.
Organization to a mob means monopoly. The politicians were put on the payroll, and one of their duties was to see that the cops raided all the small private dice and card games and put the competition out of business. By 1935 the country was divided into geographical sectors ruled by different mobs.
It was also during this period, from 1933 to 1935, that rug and sawdust joints sprouted everywhere like mushrooms. It was the biggest casino boom America had ever known. Every major nightclub had its back-room casino. The Miami area of Florida had more than 50 rug and sawdust joints; Saratoga Springs in New York State had 8. Every resort area and large city had at least a couple.
Gambling Operation
The racket boys had their own ideas about how gambling should be operated. I visited a great many rug joints during that period and I doubt if more than 30% were operated on the up and up. There was nearly always a dice mechanic (a cheat skilled at switching) around, ready to go into action if any big money showed. The Roulette wheels were rigged and the Chuck-a-Luck cages wired.
But there was usually at least one game in town that was honest-a sawdust joint that operated honestly not because of any integrity on the part of the operator but because this was the joint patronized by a very discriminating clientele: the racket boys themselves, and all the dice and cards cheats, professional crooks, pimps, easy-money guys and some legitimate businessmen.
Dice mechanics were at a premium. Con Baker, the greatest of them all, could switch phony dice into a game with either his right or his left hand. His fees, 10% of the winnings, netted him over a million dollars in his best year. He didn't retire wealthy, however; he died at the age of 37, dead broke
