This day in The Saratogian in 1916

Wednesday, July 26, 1916

With the Saratoga racing season starting next week, it’s time for the annual announcement from Saratoga Springs that gambling houses will not be allowed in the city.

The front page of today’s Saratogian includes an announcement from Saratoga County District Attorney Lawrence B. McKelvey.

“It ought not to be necessary each year for the officials to issue a warning against any attempts to open gambling houses in the locality or any other forms of violation of the law,” McKelvey writes, “But there is such a tendency on the part of some people to assume from year to year that such actions will be overlooked that we consider it best to warn all persons in this public manner that not a single gambling house or place where any games of chance are played will be permitted to open in this city our county.

“No further warning will be given and any place suspected will be raided and the persons found therein detained as witnesses, the proprietors being charged as common gamblers.

“Any person having information of the opening or proposed opening of any such place is invited to report the same confidentially to the superintendent of police, if the place be within the city of Saratoga Springs, or if it be without the city limits, and at any other place within the county of Saratoga, to the district attorney.

BIENVENIDO

“Saratoga is attracting an especially large colony of Spanish speaking visitors this season,” The Saratogian reports, but this is no cause for alarm in the Spa City. This colony is wealthy and plans to spend a lot of money in town this summer.

The track and city are benefiting from the fact that “economical conditions are at an unparalleled stage of prosperity in both Cuba and South America,” but Latin Americans can’t spend their money in European resorts because of the war that has been raging on the continent for the past two years.

Cubans are especially welcome because “they invariably stay at least several weeks and in many cases all summer.” A list of Latin American guests at the Grand Union hotel alone fills a good sized paragraph in today’s paper.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Charlie Chaplin’s short subject The Vagabond is the co-feature at the Broadway theater tonight. The theater ad reminds readers that Chaplin is earning $670,000 per year through his new contract with the Mutual company. The feature attraction is The Suspect, “A Powerful Drama of Russian Bureaucracy” starring Anita Stewart.

Harold Lockwood stars in The Masked Rider at the Broadway Palace, while the Lyric features Richard Buhler in A Man’s Making.