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The reconstructed city government, prompt to follow so lucrative a lead, clanped on an additional license tax of $5,000, so that those gamblers who cannot meet $10,000 licenses are as much under the ban of the law as ever, while those up to the $10,000 mark shuffle the cards and pluc the pigeon under the broad aegis of the reconstructed constitution and nigritudinized laws of the great State of Louisiana.
Four	Houses	At $10.000 License Fee
Now, I	have been to these gaming	houses,	watched their procedures,
and learned	from divers sources their	operation and	influence.
In the	first place there are but	four of	them,	the $10,000	licens<
being too heavy for the minor establishments to meet, and the interest of the licensed houses leading them to such extreme vigilance in the repression of unauthorized gambling that it may be said that no other places of the sort exist in the city.
Private interest is proverbially more eager than governmental; and so, while the reconstructed rulers of these beautiful regions, gorgedwith their licenses, might not be over-active in seeking illegal gaming, surveillance of the gamblers themselves is inescapable
The "El Dorado11 Club
And now let us enter one of these institutions, which owe the legality of their existence so much to the pious efforts of the Radical pulpit North to bear down the decency of the South, and set the imbruted black and venal carpet-bag vagabond in the high places of the State. But let us enter.
- We will take the "El Dorado" first; for all, be it known, have fancy names, in which connection a pleasing little tale is told. It seems that on the opening of the "El Dorado," some of the fraternity, then abl~ut to set up an opposition establishment, applied to a scholar to furnish them with a more killing name than t'other place had.
With an entire acceptance of the situation, Eruditus suggested the "Golden Fleece," which received at first immense applause. On second thought an amendment was offered the striking out of "fleece1 as being an ill word, of unsavory suggestions in a gambling comparison and with the adoption of that amendment we lost the whole title, that of the "Polka" being afterwards assumed.
Building Description
And now for the "El Dorado."
It occupies the whole of an immense four-story building. It fronts on two streets, and on either has half—doors, which sweing to and fro in the middle of the door-way so as to leave a space of some three feet above and below.
By this means you cannot exactly see into the place as you pass along the streets; but the click nf t-ho	,
and bang are perfectly -fVoe -p	chips	and rattle and swearing
the outer way?	fr°m any obstruction in their course.to


New Orleans and Louisiana Document (058)
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