GOVERNMENT AND LOTTERIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22398, 20 April 1936, Page 12

GOVERNMENT AND LOTTERIES

Sir, —The Government has the goodwill of the people, and my very good.? will, for what it is worth. Its basic principle was expounded by the Hon. Walter Nash last week in a singularly clear speech. Its central sentence was that "Work must be the title to wealth." That principle carries as a necessary consequence a set antagonism unearned money and to speculation. ;' carries with it a declaration of war a tinst all that breaks the mutuality o life or that hinders the co-opera-i. i of all the people in the service of ti j common good. But gambling is ti ) most exaggerated form of speculate n that there is, and, because it carries as the shadow of the happy winner the discomfort of the loser, it is anti-social. It is viewed with the utmost suspicion by all Governments with a Qjjum to an outlo'ok. Very well. This Government comes into power at a Cftie when an Act that allows art unions • to 1 distressed artists, and miners possessed of mineral curios and valuables, has been stretched to cover cash lotteries which are hawked at every street. My point is that such a Government cannot wink at such a perversion, and at such. a contradiction of its own settled principle. The Government has come into power hard upon the discovery by the Chief Justice that there is a flaw in the Act that disallows the remission of money to foreign lotteries. This flaw has resulted in the departure of something like a quarter of a million to Hobart, to feed the coffers of a capitalistic gambling monopoly. The Government is there to fight monopolies. But this, in its social effects, is the worst of them all. The point was made with the Hon. Mr. Parry that that dangerous leak should be stopped. But the deputation was not encouraged to hope that it would be. Further, the Government has com® into power hard on the findings of the British Commission. Those findings stigmatised the big lotteries as demoralising extravagances. That commission stopped the greatest aid the lotteries have, that is, the publication of prize winners in the dailies. But on that concrete point, on that swift way of hitting this capitalistic gambling monopoly in Hobart. Mr. Parry was ominously silent. Against his attitude the clear voice of the Minister of Finance rang out. We hope that his attitude is not final. Philip Snowden's words should have weight since he belongs so thoroughly to the school of political thought to which Mr. Parry is attached: "The evil of gambling and betting is so terrible, aitd is such a menace to national morality and well being, thnt all the moral and religious forces of the country should put forth every effort to destroy it. If it is allowed to continue and grow it will defeat every movement for social and moral advance." The deputation did not ask for the millennium the day after to-morrow, but it did ask that the Government should make an end of certain abuses which are flagrant, and that it should do what it can to restrict the vico. J. J. North.