ns of music which float up into the street from them. The Broadway
saloons are owned by a few scoundrels, many of them being conducted by
the same proprietor. A writer in the New York _World_ was recently
favored with the following truthful description of these places by one of
the best known proprietors:

"A concert saloon is a gin-mill on an improved plan--that's all, my
friend. I don't pay the girls any wages. They get a percentage on the
drinks they sell. Some saloon-keepers pays their girls regular wages and
a small percentage besides, but it don't work. The girls wont work
unless they have to. Now, my girls gets a third of whatever they sell.
The consequence is, they sell twice as much as they would if they was on
wages. You never can get people to work faithfully for you unless they
can make money by it. The liquor is cheap, and I don't mind telling you
its d---d nasty, then we charge double prices for it. Now, I charge
twenty cents for drinks that a regular gin-mill would sell for ten. Then
there are a lot of drinks that the girls takes themselves, which we
charges fifty cents for. They don't cost us more than four or five, but
after a girl has said what she'll take, and a man has ordered it, he
can't go back on the price. Then hardly any man stops at less than two
or three drinks here, when he would take only one at a bar. The lights
are the same as they would be anywheres else, and the music don't cost
much. Then there's other ways to make in this business. But you don't
want to know all about the speculations. There's keno, for instance.
The keno business is attached to lots of saloons. You see the girls
manages to get young fellows that come here--like those hounds
yonder--pretty full, and then they says: 'Why don't you try your luck in
the next room, and go shares with me?' So the fool he bites at once, and
goes in for keno. Of course luck goes against him, for he's too drunk to
play--O, the game's a square one--and he finally comes back for another
drink. The girls then takes care that he doesn't go away till he's too
drunk to remember where he lost his money. Even if he goes away sober,
he seldom splits. I'll give the fellows that much credit. Bad as they
are, they seldom splits."

The concert saloons derive their names from the fact that a low order of
music is provided by the proprietor as a cover to the real character of
the place. It may be an old cracked piano, with a single,