1. Many forms of chance are inseparable from the individual enterprise. There are what may be called natural chances chances, arising from the uncertainties of the seasons, from rainfall, heat, hail, storm, flood, lightning, land-slides. Such chances must be taken both by the small enterpriser and by the large. In an earlier condition of society natural chance almost dominated industry, and it still remains and must always remain an important factor to deal with. There are political chances, as war and riot; as legislation on money, tariffs, credit, and business relations. These are caused, it is true, by the action of men, but it is a collective action out of the control, to a greater or less degree, of the individual—absolutely out of the control of most individuals. Men of greater political influence can to some extent control these chances, possibly in their own favor. There are chances of carelessness causing fire, explosions, wrecks on misplaced switches, and involving penalties and losses that must be met. There is the chance of physical or mental collapse, as the sudden insanity or the sudden death, unforeseen and unpreventable, of one performing responsible duties. Sickness often wrecks the plans and the fortune of a whole family. There are economic changes, such as those in methods of production, in machinery, in methods of transportation; such as the growth of fashions or the growth of population changing demand in some directions and for some materials.
Average of chances in each industry
Some of these chances are more connected with money-lending, others with manufacturing; some with agriculture, others with commerce; but all are present in some degree in every industry. In the broadest view they are not chances, for on the basis of experience it can be foretold that they will occur to some one; but no individual can tell when and how they will occur to him. A general average of chances in different lines of business causes some to be called safe, others extra-hazardous. The chance is averaged and added to the profit or gain of that industry, for an extra-hazardous industry must in general afford a higher average of profit in order to induce men to engage in it. It is folly to take a risk without ascertaining its degree, so far as general experience enables one to choose. But inasmuch and in as far as the gains and losses fall unequally upon different individuals, income depends on chance.
Other chances artificial and avoidable
2. The essence of gambling is the attempt to gain by taking chances that are not the unavoidable incidents of productive enterprise. The chances just enumerated are not sought, but avoided as far as possible; yet they must be borne by some one, and the burden must be distributed throughout society. There are unquestionably many kinds of chance-taking which differ from these in economic, and therefore in moral quality; but it has taxed the ingenuity of philosophers to lay down an abstract definition of gambling that would permit ready and certain distinction in practice between gambling and legitimate chance-taking. Typical gambling is the transfer of wealth on the outcome of events absolutely unpredictable, so far as the two gamblers are concerned. Examples are the shaking of unloaded dice or the honest dealing of a pack of cards. There can be no doubt of the entire lack of a productive economic basis in the betting on prices carried on in so-called bucket-shops by ignorant persons having no connection with the market of real things, and seeking to get something for nothing as a result of mere chance.
Cheating and gambling
Cheating is not a necessary mark of gambling, although the cruder kinds of dishonesty, such as the loading of dice or the collusion of horse-owners or of horse-jockeys to deceive the betting public, are so common that they seem often to be its essential feature. Gamblers recognize fair as opposed to unfair methods. Fair gambling is a kind of minor morality within the immoral field of gambling, like the honor found among thieves. Gambling bears somewhat the same relation to legitimate chance-taking that play does to labor. The chance-taking in gambling has no useful purpose or result outside itself. The gamblers constitute themselves a little fictitious economic circle, and they transfer gains and losses on the turn of events that have no practical objective result within their circle except to determine the direction of the transfer.
Various cases of a mixed nature; partisan bets