Numbers racket
T n his autobiography, Malcolm X, the 1 American gangster who became a black power leader in prison, recounts how he graduated from petty drug peddling to `running the numbers' and then rape. The numbers racket is an established mainstay of the American criminal underground, supplying a steady income alongside pro- stitution and drugs. The ghetto poor are en- couraged to bet — illegally — on the last four figures of some stock exchange index for the day. They can win by this sums distantly comparable to the profits made by the organisers, and certainly far more than they could hope to make legally. This is not to suggest that Rupert Murdoch's 'Port- folio' game for the Times has anything in common with the methods of fundraising by Joe Bananas and Malcolm X: one crucial difference is that the 'numbers' player must choose his own number, whereas the Times `Portfolio' player is spared even this exer- tion.
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