LOUISIANA'S LOTTERY KING

DEATH OF JOHN A MORRIS, KNOWN FAR

AND WIDE AS THE LOUISIANA LOTTERY KING

New Orleans, La., - June 11. - On a Texas ranch, far from home and kindred, John A. Morris, the Louisiana Lottery king died as he had wished to die – from an apoplectic stroke. At Kerrville, in the territory tributary to San Antonio, the stroke came in the early daylight hours, Friday, May 24, and soon the man whose dramatic career embraced two continents was wrapped in the unconsciousness for which he had himself longed when the messenger of death should come to whisper in his ear.

John A, Morris was a Harvard graduate. The Louisiana story asserts that he stood at the head of his class. Whatever measure of truth this story contains, it is quite certain that the master mind of the Louisiana state lottery, the institution now dead beyond the hope of resurrection, was a man of broad and wide culture – a ripe theologian, a profound chemist, at home with the poets and the great minds of literature. His English when he chose to write, (and he wrote more than even his intimates supposed), was terse and epigrammatic. He was a critic of sound judgment and attainments. His Shakespearean lore was at his finger tips, and it was lore that came from below the surface of modern superficiality. What he knew was woven in his nature, for he assimilated all knowledge that came his way, and made it a part of himself.

                                                                    FOUNDING OF THE GREAT LOTTERY

When reconstruction days came in the South, society had not settled to normal conditions and Louisiana was more unsettled than any other Southern state. Moreover, her population, largely recruited from the south of Europe, did not look upon the wheel of fortune with the eye of the Puritan. There was no surplus morality in the state. Blue laws had no place; loose laws were in vogue, and they were unusually loose with regard to games of chance.

To Louisiana, therefore, came the future lottery king. Associating with himself kindred spirits in the world of chance, among others the nervous and nervy Charles T. Howard, John A Morris secured in 1868 from the legislature of Louisiana a charter for the Louisiana State Lottery company. The shares were $10 each, and members of the legislature were amply supplied with them. To the close of the Louisiana lottery's career in 1894, when the state drove the company out, some of the members of the legislature of 1868 or their heirs held stock. They knew a good thing when they saw it, and they held on to that which was good.

The first scheme of the Louisiana lottery was to give, each month, a capital prize of $30,000, with other financial "possibilities" aggregating $112,500.

There were 100,000 tickets at $2 each, aggregating $200,000. If all tickets were sold, the profit was $87,500 per month, exclusive of expenses. Honesty was the best policy for the company, for, as some man of experience has said, he has tried both policies, and found that honesty was the best by all odds. At any and all events, the master mechanic of this new road to fortune, John A. Morris, insisted that every drawing should be honest, because in honesty lay all the profit. The chances against the ticket buyer were enormous, but "give him that chance" was the motto of the company, and the buyer got the chance. It was an axiom among the lottery managers in those days – it is an axiom still – that "wise men run, lotteries and fools buy tickets in them." But the fools outnumber the wise men, and all the fools bought tickets. Soon the capital prize was made $75,000, and the aggregate monthly "output" of the company was $251,500. Then there were 100,000 tickets as before, but they cost $5 each. So the company's gross profit was $248,500 per month, provided all tickets were sold. All tickets were not sold, however, but 90 per cent of them went into the hands of the fools. The lottery, of necessity, continued to prosper. Then the last grand scheme was devised. The regular monthly drawing was to have a capital prize of $300,000 with other "trimmings" aggregating, in round figures, $550,000.. There were still 100,000 tickets, but they rose to $10 each. The gross profit each month, therefore, was $450,000 in the event that all tickets were sold. And nearly all of them were sold. The census of fools who wished to buy tickets was taken with each change in the scheme, and, from the lottery's standpoint, it showed, in every instance, a "gratifying" increase. Besides this regular monthly drawing, when the capital prize was $300,000, there were two grand semi-annual drawings – one in June and one in the December Christmas season, when the capital prize was $600,000, and the "addenda" made a grand total of $1,051,000. The tickets were still 100,000 in number, but the price advanced to $20 each. So, if all tickets were sold, the company gathered in 2,000,000 and paid out, in round figures, $1,000,000. The gross profit was, therefore, $1,000,000 in these grand "semi-annuals.."

All this time the Louisiana State Lottery company was dominated by its master mind, John A. Morris. Every drawing must be scrupulously honest, he said, and so it was. The ticket buyer got his chance – albeit a slim chance – for a prize, and though he played against great odds, he got a "square deal" – the identical deal which the company advertised.

It is not easy to figure what the profits of the lottery were during its existence in Louisiana. A fair estimate is that it made $40,000,000 from first to last. John A. Morris' contract with the original company, organized in 1868, provided that he was to receive seven-twelfths of all the profits. If the very modest estimate of $40,000,000 holds good Morris' share was fully $23,000,000. Fairy stories have been written with regard to the amount which Morris drew out of the lottery – romancers have told of $100,000,000 and other financial impossibilities, but conservative men know that all such figures were guess work, pure and simple.

                                                                                HOWARD'S BLACK BOOK

The local manager of the lottery for many years was Charles T. Howard. Howard was a Bashi-Bazouk, ever in the saddle, and ready for a brush with the enemy. With a long memory for friends and an equally long memory for foes, he is said to have kept a black book, in which were inscribed the names of those who had proved treacherous and untrue to the company, and many is the aspiring statesman in Louisiana whose ambitious head fell headlong into the basket of Charley Howard's vengeance.

It is of John A. Morris, however, that the local public speak when the lottery is a subject of discussion. For many years he planned and plotted alone, and it was under his management that the money rolled in golden, silvery and currency streams into the coffers of the lottery. In one year the dividend declared amounted to 170 percent. And all this time, a surplus fund was accumulating with which to make a fight for a new charter when the year of expiration came. This surplus fund amounted to $6,500,000, and every dollar of it was wiped out in an endeavor to get a new lease of life. Estimating the population of Louisiana at 1,000,000, this was $6.50 for every man, woman, and child in the state. Yet John A. Morris grasped ashes when he reached for solids, and the Louisiana State Lottery went the way of all flesh – died in the state which had given it birth. A fitful effort was make to transfer the business to Honduras, but within the past few months Congress passed a new law preventing the importation of tickets from Honduras, and Florida, where the company had its American habitat, adopted a law which made fugitives of the company's employees. And all is now dead – the master mind, the lottery and all. The wreck and ruin is complete. That which was once master of Louisiana is not but a memory – the civilized world said it should go and when it started down hill, gave the lottery an accelerating kick. Sic transit gloria mundt.

John A Morris, at the mention of whose name every well informed Louisianian involuntarily drops into reminiscence, was no ordinary man. Born within a stone's throw of the city of New York, his life history embraced two continents. In England he was as well known as here. There he had a stock farm, bought or leased from Lady Brooke, the Prince of Wales' favorite, known as the "Babbling Brooke." In Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Egypt, and Palestine, he had traveled, till even the guides to the Matterhorn knew him by name, and welcomed his coming. He had seen all of life – too much of it to be happy.

This "lottery king" had no vices. He never drank even the mildest wines; smoking he eschewed as a deadly poison; gambling was not a part of his personal creed. Though he had a large stable of horses he never wagered a dollar on the turf. In his domestic life he was singularly free from any tendency to flash and display. His mind was of a philosophic turn. Those who knew him intimately and who had in insight into his true nature saw years ago that melancholy hard marked him for her own. In the midst of the gay throng, while his face did not betray it, his words showed the spirit of the blaze; he had worn out life's pleasures by having known and enjoyed them all.

His charities were simply limitless. He knew how to do good, and good only. A score of young men he educated each year – a legion of relatives shared his bounty. Every poverty-stricken wretch that reached him came from him richer. His life was one continued round of goodness to his fellows. Yet he was never happy – the shadow of the lottery was upon him always, and it was a shadow that never dissolved. Suns might come and suns might go, but the shadow went on forever. And he beyond all other men, saw it, knew it, and felt it.