"STOP PERMITS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 87, 13 April 1933, Page 8

"STOP PERMITS."

LOTTERY GAMBLES.

CITIZENS' STRONG PROTEST.

DEPUTATION TO MINISTER.

Strong protests at the granting of permits to liold lotteries,, in tie Dominion were made to Mr. JA. Young, of Internal Affairs, this afternoon "by a deputation of citizens "who ■waited upon him at the Ministerial room at the G.P.O. The. deputation, which included Archbishop Averill, was introduced by Dr. J. J. North, president of the Council of Congregations.

Dr. North said the deputation came along, once again .to . bring under the Minister's notice a development of the perennial lottery question. The Minister's ears had been vexed . with the pros and cons of. it. before, and were likely to bo still more vexed, because the question would never be settled until it was settled right. There was, as the British Government had long ago discovered, only one right , side to an issue that was threatening the national wellbeing. Slightly Concealefl. It had pleased the present Government-, the speaker said, to continue these slightly concealed lotteries. The new trade was intercepting shoppers in every street, and diverting money needed for backs and stomachs to bits of paper with a 10,000 to one chance of a prize. Mr. Lang's New South Wales gamble, the Irish folly, Tattersalls, the Dantzig sweep and others received gratuitous advertisement through the publication of prizes won .in the dominion. Money for these was mostly * smuggled out of the country. There was a trade done in this smuggling of investment money out of the Dominion. What was lost to the Dominion no one could calculate. But the sum was bound to grow from month to month, through the advertisement given by the publication of winners, and by the appetite created by the persistent licensing of our "art unions." At a time when the Dominion required to use all its resources it "was bleeding both its purse and its energy in this way. "We are here to urge that you stop, as you Can, this leak in the dyke," said Dr. North. National Lottery Scheme. "We are also alarmed at the proposal said to be sponsored by a considerable number of members of Parliament for the establishment of a national lottery. The British attitude is known to the world. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald, Mr. Baldwin, Viscount Snowden, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and the Archbishop of Canterbury have all of them recently pronounced themselves against lotteries. That New Zealand should take its politics from the other Governments and not from Westminster is to us unthinkable. We can conceive few degradations that could be inflicted on this country more desolating than the establishment of a national lottery. The constant frauds inseparable from the business, the necessary rivalry with oversea schemes, the ever-enlarging appetite for lottery tickets, the drying up of the springs of philanthropy, would in our opinion woimd this nation to the quick. These weighty reasons bring us here to-day. There is one sure cure—stop your permits." Others who spoke strongly in support of the request were Archbishop .'Averill, the Rev. Lawson Marsh, and the Ven. Archdeacon Mac Murray. (Proceeding.")