Just a small one today. I was doing a little research and this popped up and I thought it was interesting!

If you thought illegal clubs were fly-by-night operations slapped together hap-hazardly, take a look at this.

In a 1940 trial against William Johnson, one of Chicago’s bigger gambling syndicate operators, it was discovered that there was a “school” conducted for people working in the casinos.

The “student” being questioned said he worked first as an untrained “shill” for the Southland Club for $4 a day. The use of shills in illegal casinos was very common. Just as today, gamblers tended to stay away from empty craps tables. Whether from superstition (an empty table must be “cold”) or from the desire of comradery, players tend to go where the action is. In these small clubs with sometimes very few patrons, shills would play on slow tables with little or no players. They would make a lot of joyful noise and for some weird reason would ALWAYS seem to be winning (funny thing there).

But for the gambler looking to climb the professional ladder, the Chicago syndicate offered “gambling school”. As this witness testified, he was able to be promoted from shill to dice dealer after attending a two week summer session, followed by a three-week spring training course. After graduation, he and the other 12 classmates were promoted and given a salary of $1/hour, which equated to $7/day, almost double the shill rate.

Knowledge is Power!

If interested, here is the original Freeport Journal Standard article from September 1940:

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