CHANCE AND CHARITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19377, 12 July 1926, Page 6

CHANCE AND CHARITY.

FORMS OF GAMBLING VARY. DEGREE OF THE HARM CAUSED. VIEWS OF REV. JASPER CAL.DER. "The best way. to decide for yourself whether anything you are doing is right or wrong is to ask yourself, 'Does it feel wrong?' " declared the Rev. Jasper Calder last evening in an address in which he dealt with what he termed the "hysterical outbursts of the extremists of the Church" concerning the raising of funds for charitable|purposes by means of surprise packets and other forms of gambling, xMr. Calder declared that it was childish to place surprise packets, bran tubs and art unions under the same heading as the worst forms of gambling and condemn them all together. * After making it plain that the views he was expounding were him own and that he was not speaking on behalf of the Church or any branch of it. Mr. Calder said one of the worst forms of gambling was in stocks and share*;. In America, millionaires gambled in wheat, the food of the people, while benzine operators attempted to corner the market and extract a further sixpence per gallon at the expense of the truck-driver and motorists generally. The most obnoxious form of gambling was playing cards for money. "I could no more invite people to sit down at my table and play cards for money than 1 could strike an innocent child," Mr. Calder said. " Because I am more skilful at cards I deliberately try to take their money. I could not do it. And then there is gambling on the totalisator and through the bookmaker. The bookmaker is sometimes put in gaol, not because betting is in itself an evil, but because betting in a different way from the Government way on the totalisator is an evil. The law is an ass. And the drunken motorist, who might narrowly avoid running down a child in the street escapes with a fine. "How people who have passed the sixth standard can compare the surprise packet or the bran tub with the sharper or the racecourse trickster I do not know," Mr. Calder went on. "The instinct to take a chance is characteristic of the AngloSaxon race. It was the gambling spirit, tho, spirit to take a chance, that led to the deeds of bravery recorded in our history. In everything you do there is the element of chance. The element of chance decided which of the New Zealand boys who were in the ballots were to stay at home and who were to be sent out as cannon fodder. In placing your insurance you are guarding against chance." Mr. Calder asserted that in New Zealand in any one year there were not 100 persons who could honestly claim that their downfall was due to gambling. Excessive gambling had not such a hold on the people as had been claimed, and he asked any of his hearers to point to any home which they could say had been ruined through gambling. Mr. Calder closed his address by advising those who had never had a bet not to make a start. To thoso who bet he gave the advice to watch themselves, while to the "plungers," the men who were caught in the vortex of gambling, he made an appeal to pull themselves up before they were irretrievably gone. OBITIGISM OF GAMBLING. ' v • THE VIEWS OF MR. FLETCHER. The view that, while many employers cheat workers out of their wages, many workers cheat themselves out of their own wages through gambling and drink, was expressed by the Rev. Lionel B. Fletcher, in a sermon at the Majestic Theatre last evening. " Almost every day," he said, " I have something brought before me that makes me think of the tremendous poverty and want' in this lovely city of ours. I think of high rates, iniquitous land prices and the big rings controlling the prices of vital commodities. That is why I hated the surprise packet schemes. I would to God that the Y.W.C.A. had said that it would rather starve and go bankrupt than touch a penny made by such a means. "Gambling debauches," continued the speaker. " I saw poverty-stricken women, caught in the maelstrom and spending money on those footling packets which should have been spent on food and clothing for their children. We see the same thing on race days when people who owe money spend their wages by backing horses. They are cheating themselves out of their own wages. "If you can't go into society," he said to the girls of the congregation, "without playing cards for money, let society go to the devil." To the boys he said, "Young men should be able to take an interest in sport without backing it with hard-earned money. Gambling has utterly blasted sport and is pulling out the very foundations of the nation."