The NY Times published a nostalgic look back at the widespread illegal gambling on the "numbers" that preceded the introduction of a legal state run lottery, which eventually competed away the illegal game. It's a story of both market design, to produce a trustworthy lottery that could be run by criminals, and a story of how a legal market eventually replaced it (although, as I recall, only slowly...)
The Daily Lottery Was Originally a Harlem Game. Then Albany Wanted In.
The numbers were a sprawling, black-run business for decades.
"In the early 1920s, Casper Holstein, a black man from the Danish West Indies who worked as a porter for a Fifth Avenue store, liked to study the “Clearing House” totals published in a year’s worth of newspapers he’d saved. The Clearing House was an operation that managed the exchanges of money among New York City banks on a daily basis. It occurred to Holstein that the numbers printed were different every day.
"Until then, lottery games existed, but the winning numbers were often chosen in unreliable ways that could produce rigged results. According to the 2010 book “Playing the Numbers,” Holstein came up with an ingenious solution. Using the Clearing House totals to produce a random combination between 000 and 999, he came up with a daily three-digit winning number for a new kind of lottery game. His invention became known simply as the numbers.
It was an immediate hit and quickly created a sprawling underground economy that moved through Harlem and other black communities in the U.S. For 60 years, the numbers reigned supreme as New York City’s pre-eminent daily lottery game — until 1980, when the state decided it wanted in."
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And here's a 2013 story, about how the numbers hung on for a while, but its customers got older and older:
Relics of the Bygone (and the Illegal)
The numbers game is dwindling, even in Harlem, once its stronghold, but it’s not obsolete.
"Back then, there were an estimated 100,000 numbers workers and more than 8,000 arrests a year. In neighborhoods like Harlem, the game became an element of black and Latino identity and culture. Black leaders called for black-owned rackets in the 1960s, and there were conflicts with the Mafia.
Several years later, with the state lottery offering a similar game, runners and numbers bankers openly protested in Manhattan. They feared the legal game would wipe out the rackets and their jobs. They were, for the most part, right."
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I have an unreliable memory that I can't now confirm online that when I matriculated at Columbia University in 1968, the local weekly Harlem newspaper (probably the Amsterdam News) didn't publish any financial information except for a single number, which I recall not as the clearinghouse numbers described above, but something like the volume of trade on the New York Stock Exchange the previous day. I remember naively inquiring why this should be the one number reported in a weekly newspaper, and it was explained to me that its last digits were the weekly number. (I think it was published on the front page, but looking online at old photos of the Amsterdam News front page I don't see it.) If anyone has a more reliable/correct memory, I'd be glad to hear of it.
The Daily Lottery Was Originally a Harlem Game. Then Albany Wanted In.
The numbers were a sprawling, black-run business for decades.
"In the early 1920s, Casper Holstein, a black man from the Danish West Indies who worked as a porter for a Fifth Avenue store, liked to study the “Clearing House” totals published in a year’s worth of newspapers he’d saved. The Clearing House was an operation that managed the exchanges of money among New York City banks on a daily basis. It occurred to Holstein that the numbers printed were different every day.
"Until then, lottery games existed, but the winning numbers were often chosen in unreliable ways that could produce rigged results. According to the 2010 book “Playing the Numbers,” Holstein came up with an ingenious solution. Using the Clearing House totals to produce a random combination between 000 and 999, he came up with a daily three-digit winning number for a new kind of lottery game. His invention became known simply as the numbers.
It was an immediate hit and quickly created a sprawling underground economy that moved through Harlem and other black communities in the U.S. For 60 years, the numbers reigned supreme as New York City’s pre-eminent daily lottery game — until 1980, when the state decided it wanted in."
************
And here's a 2013 story, about how the numbers hung on for a while, but its customers got older and older:
Relics of the Bygone (and the Illegal)
The numbers game is dwindling, even in Harlem, once its stronghold, but it’s not obsolete.
"Back then, there were an estimated 100,000 numbers workers and more than 8,000 arrests a year. In neighborhoods like Harlem, the game became an element of black and Latino identity and culture. Black leaders called for black-owned rackets in the 1960s, and there were conflicts with the Mafia.
Several years later, with the state lottery offering a similar game, runners and numbers bankers openly protested in Manhattan. They feared the legal game would wipe out the rackets and their jobs. They were, for the most part, right."
*****************
I have an unreliable memory that I can't now confirm online that when I matriculated at Columbia University in 1968, the local weekly Harlem newspaper (probably the Amsterdam News) didn't publish any financial information except for a single number, which I recall not as the clearinghouse numbers described above, but something like the volume of trade on the New York Stock Exchange the previous day. I remember naively inquiring why this should be the one number reported in a weekly newspaper, and it was explained to me that its last digits were the weekly number. (I think it was published on the front page, but looking online at old photos of the Amsterdam News front page I don't see it.) If anyone has a more reliable/correct memory, I'd be glad to hear of it.
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