The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1903. THE GAMBLING EVIL.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 12720, 17 November 1903, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1903. THE GAMBLING EVIL.

Yestekimy morning we recorded, -on the authority of a Southern contemporary, the fact? that a lady bookmaker haa made her appearance on a New Zealand racecourse—to wit, Milton,—and that with her book and pencil she had done so brisk a business as to cause her masculine competitors to scowl at her with envy. Of course, if it can be claimed that bookmaking is a decent and reput able business, women have as much right to enter into it as they have to take up any other calling. On the whole, however, it would appear that the law of t<his country does not regard the bookmaker with much favour. It might almost be said that the law is positively hostile to him. The Sate, certainly, is -against him, if for no better reason than that he is a rival in a business which the State has.endeavoured to make exclusively its own. In short, while the "tote" is fostered and protected the "bookie" is barely tolerated, and is only permitted to wax fat on sufferance. That being so, apart altogether from the moral aspect of the question, one shudders to think that the emancipation or woman should have tempted her into so sordid an arena as the betting ring of a racecourse. The symbol of emaneipateo. woman has yet to be evolved. Who knows, if the Milton example "catches on," but that it may yet,be discovered as a Woman Aggressive,, standing triumphant on a betting stool with a,pencil for a sceptre. Looking at the matter from-tv moral point of view, the matter assumes serious proportions. It indicates the tremendous growth of the betting evil. The spread of this evil has of late years attracted the earnest attention of reformers, bub, as the Melbourne "Age" declares in the course ot an article on the recent V.R.C. mcct 1 ing, "the pubic lias never yet cried out for the suppression of betting as it has agitated for the suppression of the liquor traffic; and until it is equally in earnest, betting will coninue to be a fashionable and demoralising amusement to high and low. The enprmous increase in betting among all classes is most to be deplored. Though fifty years ago clergymen were pretty regular attendants at race meetings in the English counties, and one or two of them ran their own. horses till the Bishops interfered, to-day a meeting is never held at Ascot, Epsom, Doncaster, or Goodwood without the racecourse preacher, us conspicuous a figure as the tipster and the' bookmaker. No fewer than forty-three services were held at Doncaster last year, and as the people leave the course great numbers of tracts and Testaments are given away. Sergeant Ballantyne tells us in his gossiping memoirs that he ence had the curiosity to ask the proprieto'1 of a notorious gambling hell how he managed to make the money hi , did, and he received for answer —'Oh, 1 don't know, but Providence has always seemed to watch over my undertakings.' " And if the generality of people do not endorse this decidedly irreligious proposition, there are at least some who make strenuous efforts to justify the prevailing passion for gambling.. These people are perfectly in accord with Mrs Battle's famous reflections on Whist in the Essays of Elia. They agree with her that playing a. game of whist for love is a melancholy business that can only be excused when we have the toothache or a sprained ankle, and can put up with an inferior spring of action ; and it would be mockery to treat an assembly of healthy vascular sinners as though they were a lot of valetudinarians too weak to" bear to be tempted. Lecky, the historian of European Morals, whose death has created a. vacancy in literature that will not readily be supplied, has recorded his opinion that even gambling is not without excuse, since "it fosters among is votaries it kind of moral nerve and a capacity for bearing losses with calmness." We cannot say we are very much impressed with the defence, which the desperate end of too many gamblers bears witness against. Mrs Battle's opinion is no doubt the opinion of society at large. The popular doctrine may be concisely summed up in the declaration: "Playing for nothing is no play at all; but playing for modest stakes, according to the means of the player, is just as en-

joy able and affords just as much nervous excitement as playing for heavy ones, because, as a rule, the enjoyment is derived not solely from the amount won, but from the act of winning it." Ifc dees not occur to them that if, as they claim, the enjoyment is derived from the act of winning, and not from the amount won, their own argument is on the side of the anti-bettors. The fact remains that gambling is a bLighting evil, and that its baneful influence is spreading throughout every section of the community. Some idea of its hold in Australia be gleaned from the statement that at the inquiry now going on in Sydney one bookmaker admitted in the courselof his evidence that his turnover would average £250 to £300 a day, while another member of Tattersall's Club did such a splendid business with women exclusively that "it was difficult to get near him." If the betting ring is to be invaded by the beautiful sex in this fashion what hope is there of any abatement of the evils of gambling? And now New Zealand has gone one better, or' rather, one worse, by providing a shining example of the logical outcome of it all—the lady bookie!