SECTARIAN GAMBLING AND THE CHURCHES.

NZ Truth, Issue 66, 22 September 1906, Page 3

SECTARIAN GAMBLING AND THE CHURCHES.

TO THE EDITOB.

Sir,— You would be doing the community a service if you drew attention to the exaggeration, humfoiig and Pharisaical cant of certain spiritual agitators m connection with several minor forms of gambling. If the Council of the Churches and its supporters were m earnest, if they were honest, -or wished strongly to suppress gambling, they would, instead of attacking minor forms of gambling, strike at the evil m high places where it is most strongly entrenched, i.e., on the Stock Exchange, m connection with company promoting, andj above all m connection with land speculation. What is spent on the totalisator m one year all over the colony is not one hundredth part of what is spent m land gambling, and m attempts to corner some other equally important necessary of the people. Land gambling alone, whether regarded from the standpoint of its economic effects, gi.Jrop.. its effect upon character, is wrwroul!'' arrival ! as an evil. It outweighs all other minor forms of __ gambling. Land gamibling is not a voluntary thing like the totalisator. It is involuntary, all who buy a freehold, all who lease land, .all who pay rent, against their will are forced to support and subsidise land gambling. Land gambling extends to rent. The builder has to charge so much because Mr Land Speculator has. to be paid so much. It extends to the food supply and clothing of the people, the shopkeeper has to charge so much because the cost of his goods is partly made up of tlie speculative value, i.e., rent,' besides interest, which he has to pay. In every direction the cost of living is increased. Land speculation is the greatest gambling evil m the community. Everyone encounters it. Some 50 or so building sections, on one of which this house stands, were sold twelve months ago, every section of which must have been bought by speculators, for practically every section is again for sale, of course at an increase of price, though nothing has been done to -improve .them.. This is only one case m a hundred m this same city. This is m only one centra of the colony. This gambling, or speculation, has been going on for years and years. And yet if we judged the puritan Council of the Churches and its supporters by their pretentions they are entirely ignorant of it. Ell, Atkinson, and North affect to see great inconsistency m the State legalising the totalisator. But what about the State's greater inconsistency m legalising land gambling. And what about their own greater inconsistence iri fighting shy of, and dodging it. Here is the most desperate gambling made respectable by the law, and by the consent or apathy or ignorance of this same "respectable" social purity Crowd, and the Church all the time remaining dumb. Judging by the attitude assumed the Council's definition of gambling is a most/queer thing ; for instance an investment through the totalisator is gambling, and investment, however, m oil shares, on the Stock Exchange, in r an insolvent estate, or m a land deal, this is not gambling, it is a "business speculation,"' "commercial enterprise." The latter is highly moral the former is grossly immoral. Well might Christ revoke of such. Ye are like unto whited sepulchers which indeed appear beautiful outward but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanliness. Even as ye appear outwardly unto men righteous, but within are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.— l am, &o, ANTI-FRAUD,