It built magnificent racing parks all over the country, and
by means of enormous purses it lured the people to come,
and then it organized a gigantic shell-game, whereby it
plundered them of hundreds of millions of dollars every
year. Horse-racing had once been a sport, but nowadays
it was a business; a horse could be "doped" and doctored,
undertrained or overtrained; it could be made to fall at
any moment -- or its gait could be broken by lashing it
with the whip, which all the spectators would take to be
a desperate effort to keep it in the lead. There were
scores of such tricks; and sometimes it was the owners
who played them and made fortunes, sometimes it was the
jockeys and trainers, sometimes it was outsiders, who
bribed them -- but most of the time it was the chiefs of
the trust. Now, for instance, they were having winter-
racing in New Orleans, and a syndicate was laying out
each day's program in advance, and its agents in all the
Northern cities were "milking" the pool-rooms. The
word came by long-distance telephone in a cipher code,
just a little while before each race; and any man who
could get the secret had as good as a fortune. If Jurgis did
not believe it, he could try it, said the little Jew -- let
them meet at a certain house on the morrow and make a
test. Jurgis was willing, and so was Duane, and so they
went to one of the high-class pool-rooms where brokers
and merchants gambled (with society women in a private
room), and they put up ten dollars each upon a horse
called "Black Beldame," a six to one shot, and won. For
a secret like that they would have done a good many slug~
gings -- but the next day Goldberger informed them that
the offending gambler had got wind of what was coming
to him, and had skipped the town.

There were ups and downs at the business; but there
was always a living, inside of a jail, if not out of it. Early
in April the city elections were due, and that meant pros~
perity for all the powers of graft. Jurgis, hanging round
in dives and gambling-houses and brothels, met with the
heelers of both parties, and from their conversation he

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v?