The Hacker's Encyclopedia 1998/hackers_encyclopedia.iso/etc/scams/swindler.txt

Text File | 2003-06-11 | 5.7 KB | 109 lines

               BEWARE OF SWINDLERS, GAMBLING AND BETTING

                    Solemn Advice For The Young Man
                          (Published 1906)


1. BEWARE OF THE SWINDLERS.  He is everywhere and in all kinds of business.

2. NEVER SIGN A PAPER OF ANY KIND FOR A STRANGER. Make every man unknown to
   you, who desires to do business with you, prove to you, beyond a doubt,
   that his business is legitimate and that he acts within the limits of
   his authority.

3. NEVER TRY TO BEAT A MAN AT HIS OWN GAME. The sharpers at every fair and
   circus and other places where people in large numbers congregate, will
   always offer you great inducements with cards, dice, wheels of fortune,
   etc. They will urge you to bet on a certain card or number and show you
   how one dollar could have won you $20.00 or $100.00, but when you bet your
   money, you never win.

4. NEVER BET OR GAMBLE. In trying to get something for nothing, we too often
   find ourselves the victims of confidence and swindling schemes. Honest is
   the best policy and always will be.

5. NEVER try to get the best of a sharper by buying a box, watch case  or
   anything else in which you have seen him put a $10 or $20 dollar bill.

6. Deal with responsible parties, or else see that the article is worth the
   price before paying for it, and you will never suffer the mortification
   of being swindled.


                             GAMBLING AND BETTING


1. EVERY DEVICE that suddenly changes money or property from one person to
   another without leaving an equivalent, produces individual embarrassment
   ---often extreme misery. More pernicious is that plan, if it changes
   property and money from the hands of the many to the few.

2. INFLICTS INJURY. Gambling does this, and often inflicts a still greater
   injury, by poisoning its victim with vice that eventually leads to crimes
   of the darkest hue. Usually, the money basely filched from its victims is
   the smallest part of the injury inflicted. It almost inevitably leads to
   intemperance. Every species of offense, on the black catalogue of crime
   may be traced to the gambling table, as the entering wedge to its
   perpetration.

3. INNOCENT AMUSEMENT. To the fashionable of our country, who play cards and
   other games as an innocent amusement, we may trace the most aggravated
   injuries resulting from gambling. It is there that young men of talents,
   education and wealth, take the degree of entered apprentice. The example
   of men in high life, men in public stations and responsible offices, has
   a powerful and corrupting influence on society, and does much to increase
   the evil and forward, as well as sanction, the high-handed robbery off fine
   dressed blacklegs. The gambling hells in our cities, tolerated and
   patronized, are a disgrace to a nation bearing a Christian name, and would
   be banished from a Pagan community.

4. VARIETY OF FORMS. Gambling assumes a great variety of forms, from flipping
   a cent in the bar room for a shot of whiskey, up to the splendidly
   furnished faro bank room, where men are occasionally swindled to the tune
   of "ten thousand a year", and sometimes a much larger amount. In addition
   to those varities, we have legalized lotteries and fancy stock brokers, and
   among those who manage them, professors of religion are not unfrequently
   found.

5. GAMING. Gaming cowers in darkness, and often blots out all the nobler
   powers of the heart, paralyzes its sensibilities to human woe, severs the
   sacred ties that bind man to woman, to family, to community to morals, to
   religion, to social order, and to country. It transforms men to brutes,
   desperados, maniacs, misanthropists and strips human nature of all its
   native dignity.  The gamester forfeits the happiness of this life, and
   endures the penalties of sin in both worlds.

6. BETTING ON THE RACES. Look for greatness and goodness on the racetrack.
   Where is it to be found? The men who have pavedr their way to the front
   in achieving success have never been the companions of jockies or
   gamblers. Those who follow the races will live to seriously regret their
   folly.

7. SHUN THE MONSTER. Let me entreat all to shun the monster, under all his
   borrowed and deceptive forms. Remember, that gambling for amusement is
   the wicket gate into the labyrinth, and when once in, you may find it
   difficult to get out. Ruin is marked in blazing capitals over the door
   of the gambler: his hell is the vestibule to that eternal hell where
   the worm dieth not and the fire in not quenched,.

8. TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES. The youth should not forget that if he is once
   taken in the coils of this vice, the hope of extricating himself,
   or realizing his visions of wealth and happiness, is exceedingly
   faint. He has no rational grounds to expect that he can escape the
   terrible consequences that are inseparably connected with sin. If he
   does not become bankrupt in property he is sure to become one in
   character and moral principle; he becomes a debauched, debased,
   friendless vagabond.

                              *******************

     * These are passages taken from a book called, The Busy Mans Friend,
       "Things That Everyone Should Know" by Professor J.L. Nichols, A.M.
        Published by J.L. Nichols Company, Naperville, Illinois 1906.
                               ******************

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