BETTING AMONG WOMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 14626, 24 July 1911, Page 7

BETTING AMONG WOMEN.

The report of the Lancashire and Cheshire branch of the Anti-Gambling League states, inter alia:

Tho enormous profits reaped by some newspapers and the professional betting men make their task a difficult one; but the Government are very sympathetic, and we wish to show that they have the support of all moderate men, who feel that the time has come when this serious national evil must bo checked. That profesionals gambling has made gigantic strides is ovidenoed by the fact that whereas a century ago in Great Britain and Ireland there were only about 20 bookmakers carrying on business as such, there are now in 1911 some 30,000 men getting their living wholly or partly in this way. The evil is spreading alarmingly among women and children, and is restricted to no particular class of society. By means of foreign lottery circulars, newspaper gambling competitions, football coupons, sweepstakes, girls' betting clubs, and children's bookmakers, the traffic is being carried on in such a way as must inevitably weaken the fibre of the national character if some efficient counteracting influence is not brought to bear immediatelv.

Bishop Welldon, the president of the branch, was the chairman of tho meeting, 'and in proposing the adoption of the report he said that about the prevalence or the seriousness of the evil of gambling there could bo no donbt. It seemed to be a law of human nature that, as disasters, so moral evils rose and fell, and as one diminished another increased. Thus it was that as intemperance declined hotting and gambling seemed to become worse. They arose from tho lovo of excitement, and in somo degree from the love of gain, and they beset all classes of the community, especially perhaps young men and women ; and there was evidence to show that tho evil of gambling was growing among women. Public sentiment was rising against gambling and its causes. Tho newspapers which had, at tho n*!: of a serious pecuniary loss, refrained from publishing inducements to betting were in a hip:h decree benefactors of society. For his own part, he looked forward to making tho lines of the betting fraternity harder and harder. These* pests of .societymust, sooner or later, be extirpated. Ho looked forward to the time when tho publication of betting odds would bo prohibited by law, but in the meantime, since legislation could not go in front of public opinion, it, was the business of tho league to raise public opinion to an appreciation of the evil. The great principle upon which he insisted was that citizens had no right to make their living by the demoralisation of their fellow-citizens.