Press: Liberality on Lotteries

Three years ago a Buffalo, N. Y. autoworker named Clayton Woods bought an Irish Hospital Sweepstakes ticket on Gregalach in the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree. When Gregalach came in second, Clayton Woods was richer by $886,360. Cried he: “I’ll buy that horse Gregalach and keep him in a velvet stall.”* To most newspaper readers, stories like Clayton Woods’s are of lively interest. Nonetheless, it looked for a time as if the U. S. Press might not be allowed to print this most familiar form of human interest feature. After the Derby of 1931, when more stories about lottery winners burgeoned in the newspapers. Republican Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown pointed a monitory finger at a Federal statute which makes lottery information unmailable, under penalty of $1,000 fine and two years imprisonment. Press Associations, always quick to bow to Washington orders, promptly ceased handling lottery news. In November, the New York Dally News defiantly printed the names of ticket holders in a lottery on the Manchester Handicap. Nervously the Times and Herald Tribune followed suit in editions which did not pass through the post office. For the next two years papers that carried stories about lottery winners were careful not to offend the scruples of Postmaster Brown by omitting them in mail editions. Democratic Postmaster General Farley, unlike his predecessor, has a sporting background. He likes sporting people, goes to races and fights. For nearly ten years he ran the New York State Boxing Commission. Last fortnight Postmaster General Farley took steps to make sure that there would be no dearth of news about winners on this year’s Grand National by announcing that the Post Office would follow a ”liberal policy” in construing the statute about lottery information. That let down the bars. Even the New York Sun forgot its hidebound caution long enough to print the lists of U. S. ticket holders in the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes. Last week, when Miss Paget’s Golden Miller won the Grand National at Aintree, U. S. newspaper readers once more enjoyed in full the vicarious pleasure of seeing someone else win a lot of money. In Woodside. L. I., lived the biggest U. S. winner—Mrs. William Meringer, whose ticket on Golden Miller was worth $150,000. She got her ticket, she said, from her Austrian husband. William Meringer told an unlikely story of how he had come by it. Into the Bronx restaurant where he worked as chef there had walked one evening a sleek fat man who had called for a dish of hasenpfeffer, Chef Meringer’s specialty.* After he had eaten three plates of it, he sent for the cook, gave him the sweepstakes ticket for a reward. Chef Meringer said he planned to send his son William to college. In Baltimore, reporters discovered a grocery store proprietor named David Dusell who had won $3,400 and explained why he was not surprised at his good fortune: “Two years ago I won $5,700 at Bowie on a parlay ticket and in 1905 I won the same amount.” In Marblehead, Mass. William H. Sweet, 61-year-old fisherman who had won $50,000, and looks like Calvin Coolidge, said he did not know what he would do with the money. Asked by a photographer to smile, Fisherman Sweet snarled: “Well, you’ll have to wait a minute. I can’t get one started. . . . “In Wollaston, Mass. Dentist Peter R. Mackinnon, when told he had won $3,400 continued to drill a patient’s tooth. Said he, “I’ve been buying tickets on everything for twelve years.” Ralph Mazzarello, porter in Filene’s Boston Store, won $37,500. Said his mother, “If Ralph spends the money for a trip to Italy that would be the finish. There wouldn’t be any more money.”

*Instead of buying Gregalach a velvet stall, Clayton Woods retired, bought himself a Canadian summer cottage, a fine house near Buffalo, where he was living last week. How much money he has left, he refuses to say. He often visits the factory where his old friends work, owns a shabby car in which he goes on solitary hunting trips. *His hasenpfeffer: Use cottontail rabbits. Chop meat into quarters. Put meat in pickling and leave for three days. Cut onions in small pieces and put them in pan until they are golden brown. Add flour. Brown the meat in separate pan. then add to onions and flour. Add “stock.” Stir in a small amount of strained tomatoes. Remove the meat from the pan. Strain the gravy. Thicken it with sour cream and flour. Pour this over meat and serve.