THE GAMBLING EVIL.
LAND SPECULATION CONDEMNED. [by TELEGRAPH.— PRKSS ASSOCIATION J Wellington, Wednesday. THK Hon. Geo. Fowlds delivered an address last night at a meeting of the Congregational Union, on gambling, declaring that tliis evil was as widespread in the Dominion as in other countries. From 1892 to 1907 totalisator investments liad increased from £506,098 to £1,857,095, while in the same period permits were reduced from 234 to 139. Anyone, he said, who gave attention to the subject must admit that gambling was a canker responsible for more degradation, misery, and crime than any other evil wo had in our midst. They were sometimes told that all business was gambling, and that farming wae gambling, but talk like that was the veriest twaddle. The very worst farm of gambling, to his mind, was that which was taking p'ace in kind values.
Mr. Fowlds said that until they got clear from gambling in land values, by taking some , decisive action to eradicate it, they would not have a community that would be entirely free from gambling m oats or over cards or races. The result was that this evil 'had its poisonous" roots deep down in. the fabric of society. It was 'doing more to demoralise : people than almost anything, even drink. In trying to minima Be tlie gambling evil they must try to make social conditions as satisfying to the whole nature of man ■as possible. Something . had been done during the last eession of Parliament to try to cope with the evil. A Bill was passed, which was an enormous advance on anything previously accomplished. The Bill had practically made illegal any kind of gambling, except on the racecourse, and he believed that a form of gambling hitherto fostered in the workshops and aactories of the Dominion Was new practically a thing of the past. The position was that the gambling evil had to be coped with in two or three ways, first by, educating public opinion, then by circumscribing its limits, but , above "all trying to improve the social condition of the .people.
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13672, 13 February 1908, Page 6
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345THE GAMBLING EVIL. New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13672, 13 February 1908, Page 6
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