34° 



The Review of Reviews. 



October 1, 1906. 



ton Racing Club, who would be expected to know 

 more of the position of the gambling evil in New 

 Zealand than supporters in Victoria, to show the 

 seriousness of their misstatement, in asserting that 

 the totaiisator had abolished bookmakers in New 

 Zealand. 



Not only do bookmakers flourish and increase 

 under the State-licensed machine, but it has brought 

 into being a large army of racecourse followers and 

 hangers-on, without any definite occupation, but with 

 no productive power, whose effect on the community, 

 apart from their moral contagion, is the same as that 

 of the tick on a sheep. These men go through life 

 producing nothing, doing nothing useful, with no 

 ideal but to grow rich without toil, and to get some- 

 thing for nothing, and with no thrift or any of the 

 virtues of the poor. Their moral fibre has been eaten 

 away by contact with the machine that makes gam- 

 bling easy and encourages it. For every one of this 

 class that the country carries it is so much poorer 

 liiiancially, and such a class of men is a menace to 

 the social progress of the race. 



Nor has the totaiisator abolished what the sup- 

 porters call " the disgraceful frauds formerly perpe- 

 trated on the public." It is easier for an unscrupu- 

 lous racehorse owner to defraud the public with the 

 assistance of the respectable machine than without 

 it. A great many of the horseowners of New Zea- 

 land are themselves bookmakers, whose business and 

 means of livelihood are defrauding the public. A 

 great proportion of the jockeys who ride the horses 

 can be, and are, bought shamelessly to-day, and to 

 such an extent are such frauds perpetrated on the 

 public that it is notorious amongst the frequenters 

 of racecourses, and even amongst the public who in- 

 vest on the machine, that it is the e.xception to-day 

 for a race to be run upon its merits. 



Anyone whose business in life takes him often into 

 the criminal courts of the colony cannot fail to notice 

 the effect of the gambling spirit on the moral charac- 

 ter of the community. Next to the drink habit it is 



the most potent source of crime in the colon)'. Not- 

 a Criminal Session passes without at least one case 

 coming up that would not have been on the list but 

 for the victim having been caught in the net of the 

 vice of gambling. It may possibly be that such men 

 would have fallen without the totaiisator, and would 

 have found other methods of indulging the passion 

 which proved their undoing. But granted that that 

 were so, has the State a right to licence machinery 

 to make easy a vice that is causing the ruin of so 

 many of its citizens.' The victims of the gambling 

 habit, moreover, are not so much freaks, as a crop. 

 If the State offers facilities for gambling and puts 

 an indulgence in the vice within easy reach of all the 

 community, year by year a certain and regular per- 

 centage of the manhood of the State will be drawn 

 into the vortex of ruin. This manhood could be pre- 

 served for a useful purpose to the State if the State 

 did not lend its assistance to the vice that degraded 

 and ruined it. The State, of course, will never be 

 able to enforce abstinence from betting by Act of 

 Parliament if the conscience of the community, or of 

 a considerable part of the community, is not roused 

 to an appreciation of the demoralising effect of the 

 gambling vice. But that is no reason why it should 

 encourage gambling by providing a State-licensed 

 machine to make an indulgence in the vice easier and 

 further reaching. The social policy of a State and 

 its social laws should be framed so as to make it 

 easy for the individual to choose the moral path, 

 and hard for him to choose the wrong. The laws 

 of the State should not pander to the baser feelings 

 and desires of the less moral classes of the com- 

 munity, least of all to the passions of the parasite 

 section of the community who make the burden jf 

 every honest man the more grievous. Even the 

 average man is too low a standard for the legislator 

 to look to. The State should frame its laws on a 

 high ideal, and with a view to the highest and best. 

 " The nation that flies the flag of its morality at half- 

 mast to suit the murmurings of the riff-raff dies as 

 the fool dies." 



SOCIAL REFORM ITEMS. 



Auckland Parliamentary Assembly, a society 

 which is conducted for the cultivation of platform 

 powers and the discussion of social reform, etc., 

 opened its sessions in August. Mr. T. W. Lees 

 acted as Governor, and announced the discussion of 

 matters ranging from an Imperial Council to educa- 

 tional matters, compulsory- assurance against old 

 age. and Government control of public utilities. My 

 copy is from Mr. G. M. Fowlds. 



One of our subscribers, A.B., of South Makeretu, 

 N.Z., suggests that members of our League should 

 wear a short length of inch ribbon striped red and 

 white — red for righteousness, white for puritv— a 

 clean social life. He says : " The wearing of the 

 ribbon would give all wearers opportunities of dis- 

 cussing the needs voiced in each month's ' Review.' 

 To me the ribbon covers a wider field even than 

 meeting places. It would make the individual 

 known. ' Let vour light shine.' " 



