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New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IV, Issue 202, 7 June 1894, Page 4

That the next session of Parliament will see a strong effort made to oust the totalisator we think there is little reason to doubt, but to tip before the event we would like to prophesy the effort to exterminate will fail. The machine has many opponents as well as many supporters, and an article which appeared some little time back in the columns of the Dunedin Star shows that the Southern journal is opposed to the totalisator. In fact judging from the tenour of the article, the Star is rabidly opposed to the machine. It considers that the Gaming and Lotteries Act, • ostensibly designed to suppress gambling, is little else than “ a disgrace to the statute book, as it specifically authorises this vice in a most dangerous form, and by methods which especially present attraction to the very class it is essentially desirable should be removed from opportunities of temptation.” This is a heavy charge against the machine, and one that requires a little more proving than is done by the Star. The statememt is made that there is more inducement given to young people with limited means to bet with the totalisator than there was under the old system. But that is palpably untrue. With a bookmaker you can bet in halfcrowns, but with the machine the tickets are generally £ 1, so there must be more inducement given to the small bettor by the old rather than the new system. And a further argument advanced for the suppression of the machine is ‘‘there is no necessity of knowing anything about horses, nor of understanding the sport in any degree.” Where the argument lies in this, goodness knows. If one does not know anything of horses he stands no more show of winning on the machine than in any other way. He only knows that a certain horse is starting at an outside price, and the same knowledge is obtained under the old system by the odds declared by the Ring. The Star advances the statement that many a promising career has been blighted by the machine; but it is one thing to say that and another thing to prove it The tax which the Government derives from the totalisator is called “ blood money,” but surely it is better for the country to get that money than that it should be monopolised by a few ringmen. “ There is no doubt that this gaming machine will die hard,” writes the Star, and it is right. With the public obtaining the true odds, the Government an appreciable revenue, and the race-courses transformed into ordinary peaceful resorts instead of babels of “ 10 to 1 bar one,’ there is every reason for believing it will die very hard. It is infinitely preferable to the old state of things, and the fact that its advantages are being seen and acted upon at the present time by our Australian brethren will not strengthen the hands of the machine’s opponents. A popular accusation against the machine is that it has taught women to bet. To

those believe this we commend the following clipping which - appeared in a Sydney journal 4 • Frequenters of our courses cannot help noting that the female punter is becoming more numerous. The sight of women in the ring is not an edifying one. In England they have become a perfect nuisance, and the woman punter fossicking about to get the latest information, or wheedling the bookmaker to lay an extra point, just to oblige a lady, can now be seen in shoals. Yet there are no totalisators in New South Wales or England I