The purpose of this article is to analyze the aspects of the problem: the economics of the numbers game. The problems that exists in the underprivileged areas of the U.S. have been studied and analyzed by social scientists in the hope that understanding their background may help supply some solutions. One of the problems that falls into this category, a product of the hopelessness and emptiness prevalent in the lives of people living in the slums, is that of illegal gambling. Millions of dollars of federal money are poured into urban areas to be spent on welfare, employment, and training. In turn, the poor divert millions from their incomes into illegal gambling, primarily into the numbers game, into the purchase of narcotics, and into paying exorbitant interest rates to loansharks. Directing and controlling all these activities is the organized criminal syndicate. If America is concerned with poverty, then it must also be concerned with organized crime for the urban poor are the principal victims of it. Today, the primary source of funds for organized crime is through illegal gambling. Gambling profits finance the other major interests of organized crime, including narcotics, prostitution, loansharking, bootlegging, and labor racketeering.