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The Spread of Gambling in Twentieth-Century United States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4155651 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard O Davies (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 203-204 |
| Publication date | 2019-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaz248 |
| OpenAlex | W2947840240 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
At the beginning of the twentieth century, gambling existed largely as a popular, if illegal, activity. Antigambling groups won the political battles, but those seeking opportunities for risk taking were nonetheless readily accommodated. Horse racing was permitted in a few venues, but telegraph wire networks made action on the sport of kings accessible nationwide. Gambling on baseball existed in urban areas, largely the province of bookmakers who operated with the tacit blessing of law enforcement. Runners for numbers rackets were part of the daily scene in working-class neighborhoods of major cities, and on autumn Saturdays college football fans challenged the skewed odds offered by syndicate-sponsored parlay cards. Dice and card games flourished openly in western mining towns, less obviously in other regions of the country. At midcentury, Senator Estes Kefauver's committee focused attention upon gambling's ties to big city machines and organized crime. By this time, however, casino gambling was firmly established in Nevada, and in 1963 the establishment of the first state lottery by the New Hampshire legislature changed forever the ongoing national debate: gambling had become a state government–sponsored legal enterprise. At the start of the twenty-first century, forty-four state lotteries flourished, and full-service casinos—in cities large and small, on riverboats, and on isolated Indian lands—had opened across the nation. The last gasp of opposition occurred in 1999 with the tepid final report by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which gave lip service to traditional antigaming arguments but in effect raised a white flag of surrender
Elite · Law enforcement · Legislature · Opposition (politics · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · American History and Culture · American Sports and Literature · Gambling Behavior and Treatments · Law
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |