Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/69



South State street, in blocks near 35th street, there are colored men who stand on the sidewalk and pick out faces from the human stream flowing by. They saunter carelessly out and meet these faces and speak words addressed to the ears adjusted behind the faces. These words usually are: "Try your wrist to-day? Try your wrist?"

The immemorial game of craps calls for wrist play. Of course. It is entirely a matter of luck or fate, unless the dice are loaded, but the sidewalk cappers in South State street assume that it takes a skill of the human wrist to throw the requisite sevens and elevens that are necessary to what is technically known as a "killing." So they ask, "Try your wrist?"

"Billy" Lewis for months has been running a place between 3510 and 3512 South State street, called the Pioneer club, where craps and poker are the attractions. The entrance is between two store buildings. A capper is usually in front day and night. From early in the afternoon till far in the morning players dribble in and out of this passageway, usually one customer at a time, occasionally two or three customers together, but generally everything looking quiet and orderly, though the attendance of the Pioneer club in the rear goes as high as seventy-five and 100 men when the "going" is good.

This is not the only craps and poker enterprise