The Totalisator.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8153, 31 March 1906, Page 5

The Totalisator.

The fallowing article on the totalisator is 'culled frcm the Palmers ton North Parish Magazine, edited by Rev. C. C. Harper:—"ln view of the approaching race meeting we think a fewwords about the totalisator not out of place. In our opinion the totalisator is a terrible evil, and has proved itself so. Everybody who thinks much about the morals of our country knows that gambling is one of our most serious social evils ; and nothing has ministered to, or is ministering to, the gambling instinct so much as this machine. The ■totalisator has lifted gambling, in the public estimation, out of the position of a vice, which must only be indulged in on the quiet, to a respectable amusement, which is shared in by men, women, and children of all ranks of life. . j "It is usually contended that as people will gamble they ought to be protected from the results of their own folly and the fraudulent efforts of unprincipled men, and that the machine does this. To a certain extent this is true. But now look at the other, aspect of the question. " To-day we lind nearly everybody, of course, putting money on the machine, and not being ashamed to say afterwards how much they won. We have often heard men and women of the highest integrity remark after race meetings that they paid expenses, or only put so much on, and came off so much to the good, &c. And everyone considers it to be part of the day's outing. We would ask many of these, ' Would you lay that amount with a bookmaKer ?' Most decidedly they would not. But now consider the matter in a plain and true light. If a man bets with another he is matching his wits against the other man's. If the other man is a professional bookmaker the man who bets knows his risk; if he wins he wins fron one who can afford to lose, and deserves probably to lose for making his living largely at the expense of fools. If a man bets with one whom he knows to be a fool or ignorant, and particularly if he cannot afford to lose, and wins his money, he is beneath contempt, and no honourable man or woman would do such a thing. But now, when it comes to the machine, those who put their money on are taking their chance, and exercising their skill to improve that chance of taking money from, amongst others, the poor, the ignorant, or the fool, and feel no qualms of conscience at doing so because the whole transaction is impersonal ; they do not see or know their victims, and everyone else is doing the same.

" The same reasoning holds good in reference to Tattersall's and other sweeps conducted on a large scale. And one result of the legalised and socially accepted respectable methods of gambling, is that it has come to be generally accepted from quite childhood amongst all ranks of society, that you have a right to your neighbour's money if you can get it in any vray except by direct theft. The deplorable results of gambling in destroying the dignity of labour, making people live in the feverish desire ot acquiring wealth rapidly and without effort—in short in sapping the truest life and strength of the * community—is patent to sober thinkers. And we shall never see any improvement until we relegate gambling to its proper place as a "disreputable vice, of which we must be ashamed, and which, if we practice at all, we must practice in private. "In our opinion the abolition of the totalisator, even if it re-establishes the bookmaker, will do more than anything else to improve matters."