Anti-gambling Reform in America
Anti- gambling campaigns were initiated and sustained by the merging of evangelical reformers and pragmatic politicians.
This was the age of populist reform, rural stirrings of righteousness, and anti-drinking sentiments that were to culminate in passage of the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale of liquor.
However, the confluence of moral reform and political expediency was evident in New York City's campaign about policy games.
Dr. Charles Parkhurst, pastor of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, had long railed against the evils of gambling from the pulpit and from his position as president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime.
The good doctor was generally considered a crackpot whose reputation had been sullied because of his presence at a 'dance of nature' where the nude parlor girls played leapfrog.
However, Dr. Parkhurst's society found an ally in William Travis Jerome, a minor justice who enthusiastically joined the gambling crusade not only by issuing warrants against policy houses but by accompanying the raiding parties.
With the wholehearted support of Dr. Parkhurst and his society members, Judge Jerome, pledging to close policy games, was elected district attorney of New York in 1901.
A month after his election, with the support of the new district attorney, agents of the anti-gambling society raided the offices of Al Adams, the acknowledged king of policy games and head of the multi city policy syndicate called the Central Organization.
Adams was arrested and released. Like most charged with gambling, he expected to plead guilty and pay a small fine.
District Attorney Jerome, however, was determined to make an example of Adams and informed the press that a sentence of prison for the policy king would be the first salvo in a vigorous anti-gambling campaign.
After protracted legal proceedings in 1903, Adams was sentenced to eighteen months in Sing Sing prison. This sentence effectively discouraged policy game operators in New York and elsewhere.
After his release from prison, Adams did not return to policy writing. No other individual was able to gain control of policy gambling; other cities cracked down on policy games, and many operators left the business for other gambling ventures.
According to Asbury, noted historian and author of Sucker's Progress, 'by 1905, policy playing was definitely declining, and within another ten years it was no longer an important phase of American gambling.'
Opposition to gambling was a by-product of these socio-historical trends.
Although reformers failed to stamp out gambling, they did succeed in driving the games underground, denying them respectability and thus delaying significant middle-class participation.