The Price of Being a 'Wide Open' Town
Tacoma’s city officials are formalizing a system of monthly 'bail' payments for gambling house owners, effectively legalizing the industry through a protection racket.
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.
Although Mayor Wright says that the policy of administration in regard to gambling houses has not been decided on, the gamblers have received very definite tips lately as to the amount of the fines that will be assessed and how they will be collected. For instance, a house like the Warwick that operates big outfits will be assessed $100 a month. At stated times every month, 'John McQuick' or some other proxy will be brought to the police station and a trump charge made against him. Rather than stay in a cell all night, he will put up $100 cash bail, which will be declared forfeited the next day in police court. The other big houses will put up similar amounts in the same way, and the smaller houses will pay in proportion. The system of having the gamblers put up bail to be forfeited has been agreed upon as it offers better protection to them than the plan of fining them in court; a judge might inquire too closely into the case and end by binding the offender over to the superior court on a charge of violating state anti-gambling laws.
“The system of having the gamblers put up bail to be forfeited has been agreed upon as it offers better protection to them.”
This 1904 report highlights the long, often corrupt tradition of municipal 'vice management.' Today’s debates over the regulation and taxation of casinos and online betting often echo these early civic struggles to balance public morality with the lure of easy municipal revenue.
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