The Political Economy of the Antebellum Lottery
Abstract
This paper traces changes in the “political economy of the lottery” during the antebellum period by following the emergence and trajectory of several large lottery brokers. Brokers usually emerged in the north during the first decades of the nineteenth-century, and got their start by consolidating the existing lottery grants within their states of origin. After consolidating control of the ticket supply within their home territory, they expanded outward, purchasing out-of-state grants to generate a steady supply of tickets for their profitable businesses. The trajectory of the brokers’ business activities suggest a choppy but discernable shift in the geographical distribution of lotteries: in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century they purchased the majority of their lottery grants from northern states, but over time, as public opinion and new forms of capital mobilization rendered lotteries obsolete in the region, this supply of grants ran dry; in a quest to establish a new source of tickets during the 1830s, brokers turned their attention to the south, and to a lesser degree the west, where lotteries became decidedly more common.
The Political Economy of the Antebellum Lottery
Park MGM, Las Vegas, NV
This paper traces changes in the “political economy of the lottery” during the antebellum period by following the emergence and trajectory of several large lottery brokers. Brokers usually emerged in the north during the first decades of the nineteenth-century, and got their start by consolidating the existing lottery grants within their states of origin. After consolidating control of the ticket supply within their home territory, they expanded outward, purchasing out-of-state grants to generate a steady supply of tickets for their profitable businesses. The trajectory of the brokers’ business activities suggest a choppy but discernable shift in the geographical distribution of lotteries: in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century they purchased the majority of their lottery grants from northern states, but over time, as public opinion and new forms of capital mobilization rendered lotteries obsolete in the region, this supply of grants ran dry; in a quest to establish a new source of tickets during the 1830s, brokers turned their attention to the south, and to a lesser degree the west, where lotteries became decidedly more common.