The Faro Bank the Police Didn't See
A rival paper says Seattle's gambling is cleaned up; the Post-Intelligencer names the saloon, the four rooms and the men running a protected faro game.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Telegraph feels called upon to defend the police in their failure to suppress gambling by denying that a faro game has been conducted over Agazzis & McConnell's saloon. It says it has sent a reporter to investigate. Like all investigations of the Telegraph in this direction, the sole object was to hide the truth.
Four rooms have been running at the place mentioned under the management of gamblers with a "pull" for several days. Three of them were used as poker rooms, where the game of draw poker was played by professional gamblers and "suckers." The fourth or inner room was devoted to a faro bank. Wood and Soupiniski had the ostensible management of the rooms, but the M. A. N. crowd betrayed its deep interest in the game by acting as boosters and steerers.
The Telegraph reporter, willing to please his employers by reporting that there was no game, either failed to push his investigations to the fourth, or inner room, where the faro bank had done a lively business the night before, or turned in a false report. The exposure of the game in the POST-INTELLIGENCER has had the effect of closing it temporarily, but it will doubtless resume business at this or some other stand as soon as it thinks it can do so without the public being informed.
“Four rooms have been running at the place mentioned under the management of gamblers with a "pull" for several days.”
Vice enforcement has always been tangled with political pull and newspaper rivalries. The question of who gets protected—and who gets raided—still shapes urban policing today.
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