Gambling in American History

See Craps and Other Dice Games.

Public opinion changes on a daily basis in the United States. Perception can slowly shift until practices that were once illegal, or at least taboo, become acceptable and even commonplace. This trend can be illustrated by the recent nationwide explosion of gaming and sexually oriented businesses. Like gambling, a formerly marginal activity now epitomized by glamorous and family-oriented resort casinos, segments of the sex industry have transformed themselves from seedy operations operating without license to socially acceptable and upscale operations that cater to members of both sexes. Nowhere is this transition more evident than in Las Vegas, where the nexus between the casino gamer and the “new” sex industry has replaced the nexus between the miner or military recruit and prostitution of the late 1800s.
Brothels operated openly throughout Nevada from its earliest existence. In 1881 county commissioners were given the authority to regulate and tax or prohibit brothels, and 1907 city councils were given the same authority. In 1971, the state legislature banned prostitution in any county with a population of 200,000 or more. At the time, this law applied only to Clark County, where Las Vegas is located.  Actually most of the brothels had been effectively closed because of military orders first issued in 1942 from nearby Nellis Air Force Base declaring the brothels off-limits.
Historical records suggest that the law banning prostitution in Clark County was the result of two major influences. First was the potential involvement in the Las Vegas area of Joe Conforte, the notorious owner of Nevada’s largest brothel, who was opposed by the Las Vegas area gaming community. Second was the belief that maintaining a “good image” was essential for gambling and the exploding convention and tourism industries. In effect, prostitution had to give way as a perceived threat to dominant business interests.
Several, but not all, small counties throughout the state continued to allow prostitution. The economic realities of sparse tax revenues and the notion that prostitution depressurizes things – that is, takes the pressure off of wives and daughters in rural communities – helped maintain a status quo that accepted brothels in rural Nevada. In larger communities, Nevada’s brothels were simply not as powerful as the industry’s gaming community. Any conflict of interest between another Nevada industry and gaming would invariably be resolved in favor of gaming.
Legal prostitution has not grown much in the last thirty years. For example, there were thirty-three brothels open in Nevada in 1971. Today there are thirty-six brothel licenses, although three are only open part time. Most of the brothels are relatively small, and there are only a few hundred licensed prostitutes within the whole state.
When most people think about the sex industry, they usually think about prostitutes and perhaps individuals involved in the adult entertainment or pornography businesses. The scope of the sex industry is much broader, however, than a stereotypical prostitute.
The adult entertainment segment of the sex industry is nationally an $8-billion institution that is becoming a significant part of popular U.S. culture. Like gambling, the adult entertainment industry has changed dramatically over the last three decades. Technological advances such as cable television, videocassettes, and DVDs have allowed individuals access to a wide variety of adult entertainment in the privacy of their homes. Expenditures on adult entertainment are larger than those on Hollywood movies and larger than the revenues for recorded popular music. “Strip clubs” in the United States have seen even greater growth. The number of female exotic dancers grew from fewer than 15,000 in 1980 to more than 300,000 in 2000. It is apparent that the industry’s growth is linked to a changing popular culture that tolerates, if not embraces, traditional vices such as gambling and divergent sexual activities. There is no doubt that sex is being used throughout the United States to sell many consumer items and to promote television ratings.
Sex also sells in Las Vegas. Topless reviews are still common at major strip casinos, but more economically significant are “gentleman’s clubs” and high-priced outcall and escort services. Las Vegas has maintained its reputation as Sin City. This reputation is based, in part, on a belief that the community has a diverse and extensive sex industry. There is no doubt that the Las Vegas sex industry substantially contributes to the local economy. There are approximately 1,500 to 2,000 illegal prostitutes and between 2,000 and 2,200 active exotic dancers who work and live in the metropolitan area. These numbers often swell on key convention and prize-fight weekends to nearly 3,000 illegal prostitutes and nearly 3,500 exotic dancers.
Prostitution did not disappear from Las Vegas (when it was legislatively banned) in 1971. Illegal prostitution still flourishes despite efforts by local police departments to keep it under control, particularly in the Las Vegas Strip area. The county has implemented an “order out” ordinance that strongly discourages prostitutes from working in or near the Strip casinos. This ordinance has forced low- to medium-level prostitutes who had traditionally worked the Strip’s bars and streets into walking high crime areas elsewhere.
It is estimated that street prostitutes in Las Vegas each make between $25,000 and $60,000 per year. Outcall entertainers average between $65,000 and $100,000 per year, depending upon skill and work schedule. Most outcall entertainers work up to four evenings per week. Most do not stay in the business for more than three years. High-priced prostitutes average between $100 and $500 per client interaction. Private referral escorts cost between $500 and $10,000 per day depending upon the individual entertainer and client. The casinos often arrange the services of these women. There is evidence of one woman who was paid in excess of $250,000 for one weekend’s work by a high roller at a major casino.
The largest segment of the sex industry in Las Vegas is the gentlemen’s clubs that employ exotic dancers, commonly known as strippers. The number of gentlemen’s clubs in the United States roughly doubled between 1987 and 1992. There are now nearly 3,000 clubs in the United States employing between 250,000 and 300,000 women. The Las Vegas area has over 30 gentlemen’s clubs. Their annual revenues range from $500,000 to more than $10,000,000. These clubs span the gamut from old run-down operations to up-scale full-service operations that include food and gambling.
The growth of the local clubs has been fueled by four major developments. First is the rapid growth of convention business. This growth has created a substantive increase in the visitation of professional males aged twenty-five to fifty-four. Second has been the substantial investments made by local operators to upgrade their establishments in line with other major cities throughout the nation. Only in the last decade did the major operators make facility investments and physical changes to reflect the national trends in upscale clubs.  Third, there has been a growing acceptance of upscale gentlemen’s clubs by a larger segment of the nation’s business community. Last, the relationship between the casinos and the clubs has improved, and a codependence has developed to form a variation of the network prostitution system of the pre-1980s. This relationship recognizes that these clubs provide an entertainment venue that is sought after by many of the casinos’ key customers. The clubs provide a safe outlet for many of these important casino customers. For legal prostitution, casino customers can easily take the one-hour cab ride to visit a Pahrump brothel (outside of Clark County). Nevertheless, many casino customers believe they can procure sex at local gentlemen’s clubs. As such, casino hosts have developed relationships with individual gentlemen’s club managers to enable them to provide their customers with the services desired.
The upper tier of Las Vegas-area gentlemen’s clubs independently contract with women for their services. The dancers pay to dance at the local establishments. The fees vary significantly depending on the club’s policies and the time of day and the day of the week. Weekend nights (8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.) are generally the most expensive times for dancers to work. Additionally, high-traffic conventions such as COMDEX (a computer dealers’ exposition) increase the rates that clubs charge dancers. The typical dancer is paid between $35 and $75 per night plus tips and fees to work, but at top clubs a good dancer will make between $300 and $1,200. The number of dancers increases by over 40 percent on most weekends in Las Vegas. The majority of this weekend increase in dancers is a result of out-of-state dancers who work only the weekends. The traditional economic concept of supply and demand is clearly at work in the Las Vegas community. These services exist to satisfy the demand.
The major difference between the prostitution network today and that of 1981 is that the managers of the gentlemen’s clubs have replaced the prostitutes in the network. Additionally, these establishments have substantially more power than in the past. This is not to suggest that all exotic dancers are prostitutes. Yet, like gambling, the gentlemen’s club is about an illusion of winning. Sure, sometimes gamblers win, but mostly they lose. The dancers understand this illusion concept as well. Some dancers will perform a sex act for money, but others will not.
The casinos recognize that it is in their interest to have high-class prostitutes and escorts available – inconspicuously – for their customers.  Publicly, casinos denounce the evils of prostitution; privately, they recognize its importance to their customer base and support its continued existence. Nevada’s economy was built upon the legalization of activities that were considered vices by the rest of the United States. As the nation becomes more like Las Vegas, Las Vegas becomes more like the nation, and what once were vices are now only minor variances on the norm.

See The Kefauver Committee.

Grant Sawyer came to the governorship of the state of Nevada somewhat accidentally, but once in office he set about his job with defined purpose. During his eight years in office, Sawyer directed the restructuring of gambling regulation in the state, defended the sovereignty of the state against an abusive federal Justice Department, championed integration of gambling casinos, and championed civil liberties for Nevada citizens.
On 14 December 1918, Grant Sawyer was born in Twin Falls, Idaho. His parents were doctors, but they were divorced when he was very young. He remained with his mother and a stepfather in Idaho. The home was staunchly Baptist, and young Grant was encouraged to go to Linfield College in Oregon. At the Baptist college he gained a love for history and political science. He felt that the social rules imposed by the school were too much for his tastes, however, so he moved to Nevada where he could be near his father (who had moved to Fallon) and attend the University of Nevada campus at Reno. In Reno he became plugged into Nevada politics. After graduation he won the sponsorship of U.S. senator Pat McCarran and went to Washington, D.C., with a job in the U.S. Capitol. He also attained a spot in the student body at the George Washington University Law School. His stint in law school was interrupted by World War II service in the Pacific. He finished legal studies at Georgetown Law School and then returned to Nevada and politics.
Although he was certainly expected to be a McCarran loyalist, McCarran’s very conservative politics did not suit Sawyer – just as a Baptist college that banned dancing had not suited him. McCarran was allied with Senator Joseph McCarthy in his Communist witch hunts, and Sawyer simply disagreed with those politics. But national policy was not that important to his first political jobs. He moved to Elko, Nevada, where political opportunities were open. He became active in the Democratic party and was elected to the post of district attorney. In 1956 he sought a post on the University of Nevada Board of Regents. Although he was not successful in the election, he received an appointment when the size of the board was increased. In 1958 he decided to seek statewide office. His father urged him to seek the attorney general post, as the position was being vacated by the incumbent so that he could run for governor. That man was the very conservative Harvey Dickerson, a protégé of the late senator McCarran. On an impulse, however, Sawyer filed to be a candidate for governor. His political sense was right. The Democratic party in the state had turned away from McCarran conservatism, and Sawyer was a much more dynamic candidate than Dickerson could hope to be. Sawyer won the primary and then faced the very popular Republican governor Charles Russell. Russell was finishing his second term in office, however, and Nevada had never elected a governor to serve three terms. Besides, 1958 was a good year for Democrats everywhere. Sawyer was elected governor by a small margin.
Sawyer immediately put together a legislative package for reforms in gambling. His bill called for the creation of a Nevada Gaming Commission to replace the state taxation commission as the “supreme” gaming regulatory agency. The Gaming Control Board would then report to the commission. Members of both the commission and the board had to be nonpartisan and not involved in any politics. The legislation passed. At Sawyer’s direction the commission created a black book, officially called the Book of Excluded Persons. Sawyer was very aware of the work of the McClellan Senate Committee and its attacks on racketeering in gambling. He knew that federal officials were looking at Nevada, and he wanted to make sure that the federal government knew that state officials did not want organized crime interests to play an active role in casino gambling. The black book included a list of notorious persons who would not be allowed to set foot in any casino property in the state.
Sawyer was a strong supporter of Sen. Jack Kennedy in the nomination campaign and in the presidential election of 1960. He was excited to see Kennedy inaugurated and was happy to see Robert (Bobby) Kennedy selected as attorney general.  Sawyer had reason to believe that they understood Nevada and that they would support his efforts to keep the state’s gambling industry clean. It was not very long, however, before Robert Kennedy put Nevada in his sights and aimed to destroy gambling. Robert Kennedy revealed to the state attorney general a plan to deputize all fifty-six assistant attorneys general in Nevada as federal assistant attorneys general. Then Kennedy was going to conduct a simultaneous raid on the cages of all the casinos in the state. Sawyer’s civil liberties inclinations enraged him, and he was on the next plane to Washington, D.C., as soon as the Nevada attorney general reported the plan to him. There Sawyer confronted a Bobby Kennedy at his office in socks and a tennis sweater. He found Bobby to be condescending and extremely arrogant. There was no resolution of anything, and Grant Sawyer simply went to the White House and demanded an audience with the president. The president listened seriously, promised nothing, but Sawyer felt he had made his point. In a symbolic gesture one Nevada assistant attorney general was deputized by Bobby Kennedy, and there was no raid.
Sawyer did not contend that all was well with Nevada gambling. He knew that the commission and the board would have to be tough. He backed them to the hilt when they disciplined casinos for improper activities. He supported them when they revoked Frank Sinatra’s casino license because he had hosted a member of the black book at his casino and then refused to cooperate with the board when he was called to appear to be disciplined.
Nevada was selectively segregated all through its early casino era. Sawyer recognized that this was wrong, bad for business, and certainly adverse to the interests of the gambling industry in Washington, D.C. In 1963 he supported civil rights leaders in their effort to integrate the casinos. He brokered the deal that precluded a march on the casinos by African American activists, in return for the immediate opening of all casino resort facilities to persons of all races without discrimination. When it appeared that there might be race riots in Las Vegas two years later, Sawyer personally drove into the west-side neighborhoods of Las Vegas and met the residents one on one. The residents knew where he stood on civil rights matters, and they supported him in keeping the community peaceful during a troubled time.
Sawyer was also instrumental in beginning the interstate cooperation with California that led to growth limits and environmental protection policies for the Lake Tahoe Basin.
During Sawyer’s second four-year term in office, the state had a popular new lieutenant governor named Paul Laxalt. When Sawyer sought a third term in 1966, he had several disadvantages: He was running against Laxalt, and he had made important enemies due to tough policies on civil rights, gambling, and other issues. Ironically, his opposition to Bobby Kennedy spilled over into opposition to J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s attempt to tap telephone lines in the casinos searching for evidence of organized crime involvement. After Sawyer condemned the actions, Hoover let key people in the state know that Sawyer was being soft on criminals. Laxalt won a close victory.
Sawyer retired from public office. He founded the world’s largest law firm specializing in gambling law = Lionel, Sawyer, and Collins – in Las Vegas. He also became the chair of the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Sawyer died in Las Vegas on 24 February 1996.

The Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation (SGC) was established under the Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation Act of 1994. The corporation consists of seven persons appointed by the lieutenant governor of the province. Three of the persons are nominated by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. The SGC operates four casinos.
On 26 January 1996, Saskatchewan opened its first permanent casino – Casino Regina. The casino facility is located within the historic Union Station railroad building in downtown Regina. The casino provides 25,000 square feet of gaming space and entertainment space, with 500 slot machines and forty-one table games, a poker room, restaurant, lounge area, and bar.
The province added three additional casinos on lands of First Nations peoples later in 1996. The Gold Eagle Casino opened on 1 March in North Battleford. It has 8,800 square feet for gaming with 159 machines and 14 tables. The Northern Lights Casino opened on 6 March in Prince Albert. It is an 8,000 square-foot-facility with 229 machines and 15 tables. The Painted Hand Casino is in Yorktown. Its 1,500-square-foot facility with 108 slots and 16 tables opened on 14 December. The three First Nations casinos employ 414 persons. They are operated by the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority under an agreement with the provincial government.
Casino Regina has generated many positive economic benefits for the province. A report prepared by the Saskatchewan Tourism Authority and released in January 1997 (the most recent statistics available) found that on an annualized basis, the casino generated C$54.3 million in gross output, with 1,112 full-time and part-time positions and $21.5 million in wages. The impact of the casino has been equivalent to the hosting of two Grey Cup Canadian professional football championship games. The report suggested that the casino attracted 101,000 nonlocal visitors who came to Regina specifically to gamble at the casino. While visiting the casino, each one spent an average of $167. Also non-Saskatchewan visitors spent an average of three nights in Regina and spent $41 each night for lodging (Saskatchewan Tourism Authority 1996).
In all there were 1,426,000 casino visits, with only 37% of these coming from Regina residents and another 17 percent from other residents of Saskatchewan. Neighboring provinces of Manitoba and Alberta produced 42% of the visitors. Fewer than 2% of the visits were by persons from the United States or overseas (Saskatchewan Tourism Authority 1996).
When the casino was planned an agreement was negotiated with the province’s charity casinos to allow them to have slot machines. The Regina charity casino had been operating at the Exposition Park. It was first known as Buffalo Buck’s and later as the Silver Sage. It agreed to have machines and give 37 percent of the revenue from the machines to Casino Regina and the Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation. In 1997 the Regina charity casino agreed to close its doors in exchange for a share of the profits of Casino Regina. Also, when Casino Regina opened its doors, the SGC made an agreement with Holland Casinos, a Netherlands government corporation, for that entity to train the staff and oversee the opening of operations. Holland Casinos received part of the casino revenues as well as a fixed fee for its services.

The independent nation of St. Vincent is in the Windward Islands of the West Indies. It has 120,000 residents on an island of 120 square miles. It offers casino gaming at the Emerald Isle Casino, about 30 miles outside of the capital city of Kingstown.

St. Martin is an island in the North Leeward Islands of the West Indies. The area is a shared dependency of France and the Netherlands, with the Dutch referring to their holding as Sint Maarten. Along with other tropical amenities the island offers casinos on both national sides. Most of the casino gaming, however, occurs on the Dutch side. Casinos are found in the town of Philipsburg at the Cupecoy Beach Resort, the Holland House Bay Beach Hotel, and the Maho Beach Hotel. The largest casino is at the Mullet Bay Beach Hotel. Renovated in 1984, it offers 9,000 square feet of gaming space. The other casinos each have approximately 5,000 square feet per casino.
During the season the Mullet Bay facility is extremely crowded. Players often have to wait in line in order to get a seat at one of the 26 tables (19 blackjack, 3 craps, 3 roulette, and 1 big six wheel). Additionally, there are 265 slots in the facility, which is patterned after a Las Vegas-style casino. Junket activity to St. Martin’s is restricted, as operators seem not to have the capital necessary to accommodate big high rollers. Limits are too low. Attempts to entice the high rollers with appeals suggesting that they could avoid tax-reporting requirements on the island were not too successful. The majority of gamers remain hotel guests on both sides of the island. Local residents are allowed to gamble but not on a regular basis. The gaming tax is a fixed sum paid to the government annually.

St. Kitts and Nevis are two islands in the North Leeward Islands of the West Indies. Together they constitute one of the smallest countries in the world. Its population of 48,000 occupies 100 square miles of land. The Jack Tar Village Resort in the capital city of Basseterre has its only casino. Other casino licenses may be granted by the Minister of Finance to any bona fide person owning a tourist hotel of over 100 rooms.