Gambler's Progress

Fifty years ago in southern Indiana lived an Orange County farmer named Ballard, who had five sons. One of them, Edward, early showed enterprise. He used to deliver the laundry which his mother did for people who were taking the cure at neighboring French Lick. Soon he was graduated into a saloon in adjoining West Baden, next became a croupier in a gambling room run by a Negro in the West Baden Springs Hotel. In his mid-twenties he bought the gambling club for himself. After a decade or so more, he bought Brown's Hotel in French Lick and converted it into a gambling casino, known thereafter simply as "Brown's."

Situated across the street from the great French Lick Springs Hotel belonging to Indiana's late Democratic Boss Tom Taggart, Brown's prospered. Spring and autumn, businessmen and politicians of the Midwest flocked to French Lick to drink Pluto water, rest, golf, enjoy themselves losing money at Brown's. Illinois' politicians still confer there regularly.

Edward Ballard had a gambler's impulsive temperament, but in running his casino he was shrewd and businesslike. No local resident was ever permitted in his gambling rooms, no liquor was ever allowed, all patrons had to wear evening dress, no employe was permitted to wager a nickel. One year Gamester Ballard made $1,000,000. He bought the West Baden Springs Hotel, and later, with a Detroit gambler, Robert ("Silver Bob") Alexander, also opened a gambling place at Miami. After a time Ballard withdrew from the Association. In the same era he plunged into the circus business. He bought Hagenbeck & Wallace Circus which was about to go on the rocks, soon picked up other circuses -- Sells-Floto, John Robinson, Golmar Bros., Al Barnes. He became Ringling Brothers' biggest rival. Before Depression hit he sold his circuses to the Ringlings, was rated 30 times a millionaire.

Depression cut into the revenues of Ballard's French Lick and West Baden business and one day in August 1934, realizing that he was over 60, he came suddenly to a decision. No Catholic, Ballard on the inspiration of the moment presented his huge circular West Baden Springs Hotel (once valued at $3,000,000) as a gift to the Jesuits, to be turned into a college. Before the day was out he called his cousin and employe, Norman Ballard, into his office and sold him Brown's and the Gorge, a neighboring gambling place. By nightfall Ed Ballard was a retired businessman.

Last week, Edward Ballard, retired, had a son a senior at Yale, a daughter in the Bennett finishing school (Millbrook, N. Y.), and he and his wife were enjoying their usual autumn holiday at Hot Springs, Ark. In a bedroom of the fashionable Arlington Hotel he met the one-time associate of his Florida days, Silver Bob Alexander. That afternoon the double zero of life's roulette wheel came up for Gambler Ballard: Alexander, 33, was said to be down on his luck, bitter against Ballard, whom he had unsuccessfully sued for $250,000 for breach of contract. Pat Piper, a Chicago bookmaker in the next room, was struck by a piece of plaster when a bullet crashed through the wall. When detectives broke down the door they found Ballard seated in a chair with a bullet through his heart, Alexander dying, a suicide.

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