GAMBLING—WHAT’S THE HARM?

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 371, 18 May 1926, Page 4

GAMBLING—WHAT’S THE HARM?

Sometime ago a pamphlet was issued by the Christchurch Council of the Christian Churches. By kind permission we reprint it in part. Sport is a good thing tor men and nations Those who are responsible for this pamphlet claim to he sport:

men. They are concerned with the fact that Gambling kills sport. If anyone doubts that statement, let him approach the Rugby Union with a suggestion for sweepstakes on next season's competitions. The reception of his suggestion by that body will clear his mind. Or let him recall the football scandals in England, and the base-ball scandals in the States, which were wholly created by the introduction of gambling into those popular forms of sport. Sportsmen are afraid of gambling. THE VOICE OF THE WORLD

To begin with a very general fact. The experience of all nations is contained in their laws. With one consent the law r s of the nations put gambling under some form either of restraint or of repression. The reason lies in the fact that it contains in itself something dangerous to national life. The Courts have refused to regard gambling contracts seriously. They have refused to enforce them. It is worth recording that in spite of the poverty following the Napoleonic wars, the rising of public funds by lottery, which had been common, was banned. Success in obtaining large subscriptions was held to be no compensation for the economic and moral loss involved. British legislators have consistently declined to make revenue out of the gambling habit. If anyone doubts the attitud* of the New Zealand Law on the subject, basing his doubt on the existence under restricted license of the Totalisator, there is a simple te3t he can apply, bet him start a two-up school in the Park, or a casino in Colombo Street, or let him raffle a motor car. and he will speedily find himself in the criminal 's dock. Every gambling transaction is placed under suspicion by the attitude of the Governments of the world. CLEARING THE COURSE. That there is harm in gambling is generally admitted, but there is a tendency to call art unions, lotteries, and tote investment* by some milder

name. It is contended that in these cast's the act is morally indifferent so long as a man can afford the small sums he risks. That contention cannot Is* sustained. It differentiates between the rich and poor, and that is a differentiation which no democrat can countenance. Multitude* cannot afford to risk anything on gambling. If they gamble they rob themselves anil their dependents of necessaries. If gambling is wrong for the majority of the people, how can it 4)*> right for the leisured and the rich? It cannot be allowed for one moment that the wrongness of gambling consists in inability to afford losses. If it did, winner* could never be wrong, however much time and strength they wasted. The wrong is not to be found :i “nicely calculated less or more,” but in the act itself. It is objected that in business, money is risked on uncertain events. It is, of course, true that there are risks attaching to all things future, and these risks have to be encountered in business. But no business man deliberately creates risks. It is his w’liole concern to reduce risk to a minimum—and through insurance, which is bast'd on a law of average, he can often completely cover his risks. It is one of the great aims of science to eliminate risk, and to enthrone knowledge. But in a gamble risks are artifically created, and to reduce them is to cheat. The crux of the matter is the harm of transferring money from one pocket to another on the basis of absolute chance. THE HEART OF IT. There are only two ways in which property may be legitimately transferred from one man to another. The one is by barter, the other by gift. We leave gifts out of consideration. In barter or sale an equivaJent is given. Both buyer and seller receive benefit, and life for both is enriched. The attempt to get property without giving value for it, is at the root of all the economic wrongs from which the word is suffering to-day. If men gave value for all (outside the gift* that they got the millennium w'ould be here. The unearned is the curse of society. But gambling gains are never earned. No equivalent is given. Men find themaeßee rich or poor for reasons that are unreason itself. Their riches are undeserved, and so, foo, is their poverty.

The ln*art of the gambling problem then is found in the fact that it is inc&rned money that Is at issue Nothing is given for something. This, as w*as remarked above, is the heart of the whole economic problem. It is small wonder then that such a Labour leader as Mr Arthur Henderson should declare that: “Gambling is a greater foe to Labour than ail the forces of Capitalism. ’’ Gladstone said, bluntly: “It is damnable. W f hat can be the fun of getting othei people’s money without earning it?” John Ruskin. the leader of a great school in economics, puts it thus: “By far the greater |»art of the suffering and crime which exist at present in modern Europe, arxes simply from people not understanding this truism —not knowing that produce or wealth is eternally con nected by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labour They somehow hope to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law' of life, and to feed where they have not furrowed, and he warm where they have not woven.” v DEAD SEA FRUIT. If gambling is a barefaced defiance of a central law' cf life, the effects of it may be expected to be deadly. W r e proceed to detail them: 1. The effects on the man. The gambling habit takes its toll of a man s character. It affects his efficiency. The lure of the unearned creates in many a fevish excitement through which they lost* grip. A decline in interest is a decline in real efficiency, and that is an inevitable consequence of the formation of a gambling habit. The victims of the mania are rendered impatient of the slow but wholesome methods of industry and thrift. A man who finds himself poss**ssed of a week’s wages through a lucky guess about horses, is sun to find his estimate of values disturbed, and the honest way of earning is depreciated in his eyes. He is in danger of becoming a mere Micawtier, spinelessly waiting for something to turn up. Charles Kingsley, for all his passionate love o? hoist's, said: “I turned from the racecourse because it tempted me to bet, and betting tempted me into the company of passions unw r orthy not merely of a scholar and a gentleman, but of an honest and rational bargeman and collier.” Judge Bring, of the Coin-

monwealth, said: 'Then* is hardly a newspaper but in it you see tl.at some young man has been brought to downfall by yielding to the cursed fascination of gambling. You talk about drink. It is not responsible for half the crimes that belting an 1 gambling are.” Judge Cooper, of this Dominion, said: “A very large proportion of the crimes of forgery, embezzlement, and breaches of trust, are committed by those who have become victims of the gambling habit. Our welfare is being menaced and the tone of the community lowered by the prevalence of the habit. Men and women should learn that gambling is vicious and immoral, and against the best interests of home, family anti state.” An Australian Bishop breezily said the other day, “There are few things which make a man such a thorough :*ad as the desire to do his companions out of their money.” SOCIAL EFFECTS. 2. The social effects. Gambling destroys the mutual character of life. All normal transactions bless him who gives and him who takes. The buyer and seller, the worker and the employer, are both benefited by a deal. So is it, too, in normal amusement. In gambling alone there is but a single benefit, that to the winner, and there is blank loss to the loser. Herbert Spencer put it: “Gambling is first gain without merit, and secondly gain through

another’s loss.” It is therefore not consistent with any social code or with brotherhood, it is the most wretched form of leflsh individualism. The gambler pre-eminently the exploiter of his fellows. It has been truly said: “It Involves a conscious and deliberate departure from the general aim of civi.ised society, which is to obtain proper value for money.” There is nothing that holds hack social reform more surely than the gambling habit. Social reform has a great objective, and that is the elimination of gains for which the community has received no value. Hut a community which gambles is involved in that very condemnation. Gamblers are tied up with the most wretched form of capitalistic excess. Bismarck deliberately applauded gambling bcause it took the keen edge off the demand for larger liberties. Christian men haw to consider further the question of stewardship in relation to money. The possessions of men are not their own in the sense that they can do as they like with them. They have also to return an affirmative answer to th * ancient question, “Am 1 my brother's keeper?” They have to consider not merely the personal effects of an action, but the social effects. Ganibing is personally a vicious habit. It is socially dangerous, in the highest realm it is the negation of religious ideals.

OUR COUNTRY. The bearing of all this on national life is obvious. National life is the sum of individual life. A nation in which gambling is entrenched is a nation whose efficiency is lowered, whose readiness for social advance is dangerously checked, and whose morals are pitched low. When Machiaveili was asked what could be uone to lower the vitality of a neighbouring state his reply was, “Teach them to gamble.” The enormous volume of gambling indulged in is a menace to N**w Zealand. Nothing cun be more ominous than the grip of the racing clubs on the Parliament of this country. We believe, as it has been said, “that a day is coming in the history of the British race when it will he ■een that betting invoves as real a dishonour to tin* Idea of humanity as slavery itself.” That day cannot come too soon.