“The children understood, however, how to maintain their rights and to defend themselves. They declared that they had a right to distribute their papers as long as nationalist, religious, and other literature was distributed in the schools. When prohibited from wearing soviet badges they replied they would wear these badges as long as monarchist, nationalist, and religious badges are permitted to be worn. When the teacher proceeded to the use of violent methods the children declared a school strike.”
The children are also to be taught how to engage the teacher in argument with the end of confusing the teacher and turning the schoolroom into a discussion. To the history lesson the child learns in school the local Communist group must oppose the proletariat version. While the child is learning one version of history in his day school he must learn another on Sunday in the “Red” Sunday School.
On page 27 the manual states, “To the history of the bourgeois we oppose the history of the proletariat. In the matter of religion, we must not oppose religious teaching by ridicule. Instead we must enlighten the children on the origin of religion and on the history of its development into an instrument of power—a tool of the rich against the poor, the ruling against the subject classes.”
The Young Communist’s International strongly recommends games and sports not as an end in themselves, but to build bodies for fighters. The advantages of rambles and open-air hikes are also shown. Girls are urged to participate in games as well as the boys. “The Red army needs women fighters as well as men,” their manual states on page 40.
The Young Communists are also urged not to ignore the Boy Scout movement, but to build up a similar organization of their own. They are urged to retain the methods of the scouts but reject their aims.
“We give the children actual military tasks,” the book of instructions to leaders declares on page 42. “It is also necessary to train the children for conspirative or illegal work, the transportation of literature, courier service, the use of codes or secret signals for conveying information or for communication.”
“Enlightenment,” “Our Hikes and Rambles,” “Propaganda on Excursions,” are other topics in the handbook.
Then there is a chapter on fairy tales. “Unfortunately,” writes the author, “there are only a few real proletarian fairy tales and the folk tales are difficult to use, even if the brave prince is called a ‘worker’ and the enchanted princess is a ‘factory’ girl who is released by the noble prince-proletarian.”
The noble “prince-proletarian” is an entirely new and altogether wonderful conception.
As a substitute for the fairy tales the children are guided into acting out and making up their own tales, such as this one which was given in Berlin and is contained in the book for Toronto leaders.
“A door in the rear of the hall opened and a number of children entered, holding a demonstration with red flags and singing the song, ‘We Are the Young Guards.’ The demonstration marched to the platform, while the boys and girls detached themselves from the march and sold their papers to the audience. Suddenly one of these children was arrested and brought to the police station. His papers were taken away from him and as he refused to go away without them he had to remain in police headquarters.
“In a school at the right of the stage, the children told their teacher of the arrest. The teacher commented, ‘That is quite right. He had no business to be selling such a paper.’
“Then the children hold a meeting. They decide to strike until their young comrade is released. The teacher comes into the almost empty room and asks the few ‘scabs’ who have remained where their schoolmates are. They tell him that there is a strike. The teacher goes to the police on the left of the stage and begs them to give up the little prisoner. He is released and his papers are returned to him. Then all the children join in a procession of triumph, singing the ‘Internationale’ and all the others join in.”
The Young Communist groups are only two months old in Toronto. The most advanced is the Finnish group under Mrs. Custance, who was for fourteen years a teacher in the English public schools before she went into communism by way of woman’s suffrage and social reform work. Mrs. Custance is a kindly faced, earnest woman, very full of her subject.
At present her group is studying the life of the bee and contrasting it with the life of human beings.
“They study the communal life of the bees and all their different workers and contrast that with the artificial life of human beings,” Mrs. Custance said. “The bees kill their non-producers. Of course we do not teach the children how the useless members of society should be disposed of. They are too young for that. We let them make their own inference.”
The conduct of the schools under Mrs. Custance is decided by the children themselves as much as possible.
“The children must realize and appreciate this freedom without it becoming simply play,” Mrs. Custance declared. “Our idea is that every one should be useful. The usefulness of the individual should be not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of all of society. There should be no very, very rich and no very, very poor.”
“How about Christmas?” I asked.
“No. Of course the children will not celebrate Christmas. It is really a survival of barbarism. We teach that nearly all the old holidays are survivals of old pagan feast days.”
“What holidays do the Communist children observe, Mrs. Custance?” I asked.
“March 18th, the anniversary of the Paris Commune, May 1st, Labor Day, and November 7th, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.”
That’s all. There isn’t any Christmas. And, as yet, there isn’t any Thanksgiving.
Betting in Toronto
The Toronto Star Weekly
December 29, 1923
On the Mexican border there is a tough dusty town. It has saloons, “queer” hotels, gambling houses and short-order restaurants on both sides of a dusty street. High-powered motorcars stand wheel to wheel at the curb with battered Fords, and Mexican ponies are hitched in between.
On the edge of this tough town is a tough racetrack where twelve horses are standing, taut, jerky and nervous, in front of an elastic barrier while a jockey tries to bring up a horse that is wearing a strange-looking hood like a Ku Kluxer to his place in line facing the elastic.
“Come on son. Bring that thing with the blinders up,” the starter orders from his perch overlooking the line of horses restlessly footing in the sand.
“Bring him up, I tell you. Move over. Don’t crowd there. Hey you! It’s you I’m talking to. Move that dog over. Move him. Now bring him up, son. Now!”
The barrier snaps up in its awkwardly angled jerk. A bell rings. And the horses are off in a pounding mass topped with color that stretches out into a race as they line out at the first turn.
The horse with the hood on, that made all the trouble at the barrier, is running last, hopelessly beaten and going steadily back in the dust while the race pulls away ahead of him and the jockey flogs with his whip in disgust.
Another good thing has gone wrong.
“Ten on The Dictator in the sixth at Juarez,” he says to a neighbor in a bowler hat.
“On the nose?” asks the man in the Christy [hat] without turning around.
“On the nose,” says the man with the racing paper.
Two thousand miles to the north a group of men stand against the wall of a building across the street from the City Hall in Toronto. One man is reading a racing paper.
Two thousand miles to the south at that very moment, The Dictator is galloping doggedly through the dust that is raised in a cloud by the twelve horses that are far out ahead of him. His jockey is saying to himself, “This is a swell skate. This is the thing Charley said he’d put a nice bet on for me if I’d ride him.”
Meantime in Toronto bets will continue to be placed on The Dictator, or Flying Frog or Runyan’s Onion or whatever the particular good thing’s name happens to be, until some time after the horse has been led back to the stall.
The particular form of betting that has been described is called betting on the nod. It requires no apparatus, receipts, betting slips or tickets. All it requires is confidence, a feeling of mutual trust between the bettor and the bet-taker. It goes on year in and year out to the extent of thousands of dollars a day in Toronto’s regular betting public, and it is almost impossible to check. There is no evidence.
But the small bettors on the nod are the smallest part of the public that have been hit by The Dictator’s defalcation. They form one percent of Toronto’s betting public.
A well-known Toronto horseman who is on the inside in racing affairs states that there are 10,000 people in Toronto who bet on the races every day, month in and month out.
A former bookmaker puts the figure at from nine to ten thousand. Both men know their business.
Over $100,000 is played each day in Toronto with bookmakers the year around according to one of these men. For years Toronto has been known all over the world as the biggest betting town in North America.
“But that is changing now,” the horseman states. “The big money players are leaving. They are driven out by the pari-mutuel machines and the government tax.”
Ten or fifteen years ago, A. M. Orpen’s place operated in the Coffin Block, opposite the Peacock Hotel. With Moylett and Baillie’s, it was the biggest of the old Toronto betting places. Commissions of $5,000 were not uncommon in those golden days of Toronto betting.
Now there is no bookmaker in Toronto who will handle a $5,000 bet. But you can still lay a bet of $1,000 or $2,000 although the bookmaker will place it out of town. Practically all the big money bet in Toronto is wired to Montreal, according to those in the know.
The man who bets with a bookmaker in Toronto is up against a stiff game. The bookmakers pay the pari-mutuel prices as telegraphed in from the outside tracks—with a limit. When you read in the paper that O’Grady’s Lady won at the odds of $52.50 for a $2.00 ticket at Latonia, you may have registered the wish that you had bet on the Lady and idly wondered how it was done.
But no matter how much you had bet on the estimable female you could not have collected more than $15.00 for your $2.00 bet.
The bookmakers have a working agreement that they will make a limit of $15.00 to win on a $1.00 bet, $6.00 to place, and $3.00 to show, no matter what the horse pays. If the horse you bet on won at 200 to 1 you could not collect more than $30 on a $2.00 bet in Toronto.
As a matter of fact if you only bet $2.00, you would have to deal with one of the smaller bookmakers and these have a $10.00, $4.00, and $2.00 limit.
The bookie’s answer to any protest on this limit is that nobody has to bet if he doesn’t want to. You can accept the conditions or leave them. As a result, really long shots are absolutely eliminated.
In addition the bettor is up against the handicap of not being able to bet an entry. In other words, when two or more horses are coupled in the betting, the man who is betting must name the horse he expects to win with. If any other horses in the entry win, he has lost his bet.
A bettor cannot play the field either. No bookmaker in Toronto accepts bets on the field. If he places a bet on a horse which is in the field, and a field horse other than the one he has named wins, he loses his money even though he would have to accept reduced odds if his horse should win.
It is a rocky road for the bettor. But the bookmakers are more or less organized, they are doing an illegal business with constant risk and they figure on making things as much in their favor as they can. And as they say, “Nobody has to bet with us that doesn’t want to.”
Some bookmakers have been known to relax some of their rules in favor of old clients, or men prominent in betting who object to the entry and field rules as absolutely unjust.
Who are the 10,000 regular bettors of Toronto?
According to the men who know, they are of all classes. Professional men, doctors, lawyers, clerks, secretaries, truck drivers, office boys, businessmen and laborers.
Toronto bookmakers have few women customers. The old hackneyed cliché: “You know stenographers are the bookmakers’ biggest clients,” does not apply here. If it applies anywhere.
“Women are heavy bettors at the Woodbine,” a man high up in racing affairs told me. “But they do not like to bet on the horses when they are out of town.”
Few Toronto bookmakers like to handle bets from women. None of the big commission men who handle bets for Montreal books will accept a bet from a woman.
Most of the key operators in Toronto at present are commission men. They work on the basis of two and one-half percent commission on the bet. Eighty percent of these commissions are placed in Montreal.
Ninety-nine percent of the betting that is done in Toronto today is done on a cash basis. The old halcyon days of Abe Orpen and Moylett and Baillie, when bookmakers’ statements were only rendered once a week on Monday morning, are gone.
“Of course, I could still get a $500 bet down in five minutes without putting up a cent,” a widely known turfman explained to me. “But the old credit days are gone. It would be done to me as a favor. Not as a matter of business.”
It is a great web of wire that stretches from the southern racetracks all over North America at this time of year. It has been estimated that more men are employed in the betting business in North America than work in the steel business. And it goes on under the surface.
Toronto is a famous betting town. But if you do not follow the races, you never see any betting. If you happen to be a bettor, you see betting everywhere. That is, if you look for it. Rather, you see signs of betting.
At the corner of Adelaide and Bay streets, a shiny sedan stops against the curb. The driver sits unconcernedly at the wheel. Beside him on the front seat is a lantern-jawed man in a soft hat. They are evidently waiting for someone.
If you watch long enough, you will see a man detach himself from the passing lunch-hour crowd and step up to the window of the sedan. He steps away and goes on. Another man steps up, then hurries along.
Perhaps fifteen people pay the car a visit. Then it moves along to another corner. There the process is repeated.
That is the rolling bookmaker. He has done and still does a good business in Toronto. But it is a piker’s business, and the police have spotters out who take the car numbers. A number of these betting shops on wheels have been arrested during the last year.
Then there are the bookmakers who operate behind the cigar counters of certain restaurants, in certain cigar stores, ice cream parlors and poolrooms. These men are mostly accepting commissions for larger bookmakers.
The bulk of the bookmaking betting done in Toronto is done right in the offices, factories or stores. Every office building where any number of men are employed has its own bookmaker’s agent. He is an employee in the building and gets a commission of two and one-half to five percent on every bet he accepts.
When a bookmaker’s agent accepts a bet, he gives a receipt for it and then telephones the bet in to the bookmaker, who at present, if he is an operator of any magnitude, is probably located in a private house where he can conduct his business undisturbed.
Sometimes an agent for a bookmaker calls at an office or factory regularly each day. But oftener the agent is an employee. That cuts down overhead expenses. They are the bane of the bookie.
New Orleans is the track where most Toronto people play the money.
“That is because you have the books there and the prices are much better than on the mutuel machines,” an old-time turfman who has the reputation of being one of the shrewdest horsemen in Canada stated.
“Toronto bettors are nearly all form players. In the old days this had the reputation of being the town where the most shortpriced winners came in of any in the country. It is the money that is bet that makes them favorites. This has always been a shrewd betting town,” continued the man on the inside.
“How many of Toronto’s betting public have made money on this last year’s wagering, then?
” I asked.
“None of them,” he answered positively. “Not a one makes money on the year. They can’t do it.”
“How about racing information?” I asked.
“It is almost entirely false,” he answered. “I have had the people who are putting out sure tip information come to me at the Woodbine and ask me for a horse in a certain race. Just for my opinion. Then this same information would come back to me as being special inside stuff from the stable.”
As far as I was able to discover there is no one selling tips on races in Toronto at present. Toronto bettors like to do their own selecting.
There are plenty of touts after the Toronto trade, though. Their usual form of procedure is to write a letter to some person whose name they have obtained. The letter says that the writer has a brother in the So-and-So stable and this stable has a real horse that is going to be sent out for the money in a field of palsied selling-platers some day next week. The man who gets the letter is urged to play $10 for the writer on this certainty.
On the day of the race a wire comes giving the horse’s name. The tout usually has at least three horses in the same race and sends out about thirty wires.
The trick has varying forms, but the principle is the same—get somebody else to bet money for you just because you tell them to. There is always someone willing to do it.
All big betting is doomed in Ontario, according to the horseman quoted before.
“Three years from now there won’t be a fifty-dollar machine at the Woodbine,” this man said sadly. “The big tax of ten and one-half percent is putting the big bettors right out of business. They can’t buck it. Attendance at the Windsor track has fallen off forty percent. Money bet has fallen off fifty percent and handbooks in Detroit have increased one hundred percent.”
Racing for the big bettor, the man who bet his hundreds and thousands at a crack seems to be doomed in Ontario. The giants of the old days are passing. But the 10,000 remain faithful in spite of what they are up against.
Dateline- Toronto Page 49