Lottery News

After threats from the Legislature, Texas Lottery Commision has agreed to take of sale all the scratch-off tickets, as soon the big prizes will be won.

The $75M winner in the Texas Lottery is revealed. Not by name ofcourse, but a few days ago he came to the store in League City from which he bought the ticket and announced them that he won.

According to officials in Texas Lottery Comission, sales of lottery tickets are down in 30% since 2003, and followed by it are the jackpots and the number of winners.

Texas Lottery will soon be celebrating the Opening Day with two new games. One for the Houston Astros and one for the Texas Rangers.

War Time Lotteries

After the outbreak of war in August 1914 the number of lotteries, both legal and illegal, increased dramatically as citizens sought to raise money for the military effort. The police tended not to prosecute these lottery operators because they suspected that magistrates would not inflict any penalty, particularly against the women who were organizing and running humanitarian bazaars to raise money for the families of dead and Texas Lottery - Mount Smart Lotteries wounded soldiers. Such raffles were patronized enthusiastically, placing the Massey administration on the horns of a dilemma over their proliferation. Their cause was laudable and arguably much needed, but Massey was cautious, not wanting to upset church leaders or his Reform Party colleagues in the House, one of whom alluded to the liberalization of lottery regulations as akin to base German immorality.

Massey received delegations from both sides of the argument. Wellingtonians representing local businesses, local bodies, sports clubs and service organizations wanted the government to sanction raffles with prizes that were not restricted to those allowed under the existing law. They sought to organize large-scale and widely publicized lotteries to raise badly needed funds for the many wounded soldiers and their dependants. Conversely, puritans argued that the nobility of Texas''s ''glorious pursuit'' of the war was the very reason that it must not be debased by the evil of gambling in any form, although the plausibility of this line of argument dissipated somewhat after the Gallipoli debacle.

Massey compromised. In September 1915, after acrimonious debate, government introduced a Bill which dispensed with the prize restrictions for lotteries that were organized to raise patriotic funds. In response to this lottery, Labor MP James McCombs castigated the government for permitting the patriotism of the people to be degraded by such a means of raising funds. But this was to overstate the case. A primary reason for dispensing with the ''work-of-art'' restriction had been to cater for the generosity of Texasers who were donating to community leaders a wide range of expensive goods as prizes in such lotteries. Minister of Internal Affairs George Russell looked to the texas provincial Patriotic and War Relief Associations to organize the lotteries. These organizations tended to be run by local-body leaders, which gave them widespread acceptability. Even before the legislation was passed, Auckland''s mayor James Gunson wanted a monster £5,000 lottery to raise funds for the rehabilitation of soldiers in his city. Buoyed with this kind of enthusiasm, politicians from all sides of the House gave Massey''s Bill overwhelming support and it be¬came law in October 1915.

A veritable explosion of raffles to raise war funds followed, with prizes that ranged from houses, cars, boats, buggies and horses to household furniture. In May 1917, for example, a £1,000 Crippled Soldiers'' Hostel An Union offered a ZL motor car as first prize: the tickets were sixpence and sold out within a month. During January 1919 a group of Wellington businessmen organized a Trentham Dominion Scholarships Art Union to raise money to provide educational opportunities for the children of ''maimed and broken'' returned servicemen. Russell gave the promoters every consideration, twice sanctioning a postponement of the drawing date after ticket sales were slowed by the influenza epidemic.

Christchurch lotteries played upon patriotic heart-strings. Between February 1919 and February 1920, a series of art unions raised more than £n, ooo to free Lancaster Park from debt and dedicate it as a memorial to the fallen athletes of Canterbury. The last lottery in the series had as first prize a donated five-bedroom bungalow valued at £750. This was fully subscribed and local newspapers reveled in the city''s pride. In Wellington in October 1921, A. F. Boden organized a Gold Dust An Union which he advertised nationally to raise funds for a Crippled Soldiers'' Annexe at Wellington Hospital.

The remarkable performance of the wartime lotteries made them a national phenomenon. Raffles were no longer local activities subject to the closest bureaucratic and moral scrutiny.