Illustration: a dossier collage of maps, photographs and redacted case files. Not an archive object.

Gambling and the wire

Off-track betting and the race wire in primary records: the 1916 Landis inquiry, Annenberg and Continental Press in court opinions and Kefauver Committee testimony, the wire-company cases, Costello's Louisiana slot machines, the Justice Department's gambling laws of 1950 to 1961, and Library of Congress photographs.

Illustration, not an archive object

This section files the primary records of off-track betting on horse races in the United States and of the wire services that carried the results, from a federal judge’s inquiry in Chicago in 1916 to the Wire Act cases of the 1960s. The records are court opinions, Kefauver Committee testimony and exhibits, Justice Department addresses at the National Archives, a House conference report, three 1916 newspaper pages, and Library of Congress photographs marked no known restrictions. Each page quotes its own record and says what was not read. Testimony and committee staff exhibits are labelled as such; they are not findings.

The federal statutes are filed in the Laws section and are not repeated here: the Johnson Act of 1951 on gambling devices, the 1951 wagering taxes, the Wire Act and the Travel Act of 1961, and the 1970 illegal gambling business statute, with the Supreme Court’s 1968 decisions in Marchetti and Grosso. The whole printed Kefauver hearing volumes are filed in the Kefauver Committee section; the testimony pages below carry their own page ranges.

The race wire, from Mont Tennes to Continental Press

The Day Book, 2 October 1916, 3 October 1916 and 4 October 1916: Chicago newspaper pages on Judge Landis’s inquiry into gambling by Automatic telephone, Mont Tennes, and the General News Bureau, whose service “was cut off.”
Thomas F. Kelly, 18 October 1950: Continental’s general manager on the General News Bureau, Annenberg’s Nationwide News, and the 1939 handover to Arthur McBride.
Wayne Coy, FCC chairman, 20 June 1950: Continental’s 23,000 miles of leased circuits and the carriers’ tariff clauses; and the Senate Commerce Committee report he quoted (S. Rept. 81-1752), which found that Continental had “a near monopoly in the transmission of racing news.”
Edward J. McBride, 7 October 1950: the law student who said “I own the Continental Press Service.”
Committee staff exhibits of December 1950: Exhibit 40 (summary of evidence and ownership dates), Exhibit 43 (chronology, 1945-1950), Exhibits 41, 41-A, 42 and 44 (network charts and the witnesses the committee could not serve) and Exhibit 49 (the wire in Las Vegas).
George Kelly, 19 December 1950: the Illinois Sports News scratch sheet.
The Garden State wigwag testimony and Exhibits 51-52: signalling results from a tavern roof across from a New Jersey track.
The Seven Gables statement, Exhibit 35: slot machines and a horse book at a tavern in Morris, Illinois.
The wire in other cities: Miami (Part 1, Richard Ervin), East St. Louis money orders and the Pioneer News shares (Part 4-A), New Orleans (Part 8, Western Union), Las Vegas (Part 10, William J. Moore) and Reading, Pennsylvania (Part 19).

The Annenberg case

United States v. Molasky, 1941: the Seventh Circuit opinion on the Consensus Publishing indictment of 22 August 1939, which named Moses L. Annenberg; he was dismissed as a defendant before trial.
United States v. Ragen, 1942: the Supreme Court reinstates the convictions of James Ragen, Sr. and the Kruses, and calls Annenberg “the dominant figure” in several horse-race betting corporations.
A Tacoma Times page of 12 August 1939 on Annenberg’s tax indictment is a post-1930 issue whose rights are pending and is not filed. No primary record of Annenberg’s own plea and sentence has been filed.

The wire-company cases

Hamilton v. Western Union, 1940: a Youngstown distributor loses its injunction; the affidavits describe the Annenberg organizations agreeing “to close and terminate the entire business.”
McBride v. Western Union, district court, 1948 and Ninth Circuit, 1948: Continental Press sues to restore its Morse wire in California and loses on appeal.
Southern Bell v. Nineteen Hundred One Collins Corp., 1955: the Florida Supreme Court upholds the state’s “anti-bookie law.”
Kelly v. Illinois Bell, 1963: the Illinois Sports News keeps its wires under the Wire Act’s news exemption.
Telephone News System v. Illinois Bell, 1963 and the Supreme Court’s affirmance, 1964: the Wire Act’s cut-off provision upheld against a racing-information telephone service.

Costello’s Louisiana slot machines

Frank Costello, Part 7, 13 March 1951: “It was a mint machine, known as a slot machine.” The committee’s contempt report on Costello, S. Rept. 82-199, does not give this account; the testimony is the only source filed for it.
Farm Security Administration photographs of slot machines in Louisiana, 1938: Raceland, a Raceland barroom and Pilottown. No record ties them to Costello, Kastel or any operator.

The federal response, 1950 to 1961

Attorney General McGrath, February 1950: gambling as a private business “cannot operate on its present gigantic scale without corrupting what it touches.”
H. Rept. 81-3111, September 1950: the conference report on the gambling-device bill that became the Johnson Act.
McGrath, August 1951: registrations under the gambling-device law, and the wire service as “the lifeblood of nationwide, illegal bookmaking activities.”
United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 1953, United States v. Kahriger, 1953 and Lewis v. United States, 1955: the Supreme Court on the gambling-device act and the wagering tax.
Attorney General Kennedy, May 1961: the statement for the bills that became the Travel Act and the Wire Act.
Rewis v. United States, 1971, Martin v. United States, 1968 and Sagansky v. United States, 1966: the courts read the 1961 laws.
United States v. Carrelli, 1973-1974: a federal gambling case file from Cincinnati at the National Archives, of which only the first page was read.

Photographs

The Library of Congress photographs here are marked no known restrictions. Besides the Louisiana slot machines: slot machine players in Las Vegas, 1940, a bookie at Warrenton, Virginia, 1941, and two prints of a police raid on a gambling place on E Street, Washington, 1925 (second print). The Kefauver Committee’s own photographs of the wigwag roof (Exhibit 51) were not printed and are not filed.