The professional gambler does not glory in his calling. He does not call a convention for the purpose of conferring with the scientific men of the age; nor does he demand a corner in the world’s “fairs” that he may exhibit his implements and methods. His occupation asks concealment, and thus makes the features of the face carry at last the strange evidences of the hidden art.
The many fashionable people who play cards for a little money extract from the game a little amusement, but a certain per centum of those who thus begin so modestly move on to a financial and mental ruin. The taste for games of chance grows as days pass, and the one who played a little passes on until he plays much. Soon the heart, mind and face are those of the gambler.
The gambling room is based upon fraud. The philosophy is simply that of craft against innocence. It is a well known fact that a large part of the human race is simple-minded. These can be preyed upon by those who have made craft a study. Many persons are weak and innocent enough to be caught in a trap. The professional gambler belongs to a form of humanity which will spend life in betraying persons younger and less suspicious than itself. A large part of the human race possesses innocence enough to enable them to be betrayed. The gambler thus makes his fortune by wrecking the trust men have in each other. He picks the pockets of the simple of heart.
The game of the professional gambler is not one of chance. They cannot afford to use a fair game of chance, because nature would be against them half the time and loss and gain would be equal. All those games played on the railway and in the “den” are the gambler’s own games. They are doctored so as to fall, like loaded dice, in his favor. For the young man to play with a gambler is to be beaten. Fairness is a virtue for which the gambler has no use. If he loved fairness he would work at some trade or turn farmer. Luck may help a man for a day, but it will go over to the other man to-morrow, for it is no respecter of persons. The only help that will stand by a gambler all the year through is fraud.
It is difficult to measure this vice, but it is so great as to merit from all civilized States immediate destruction. Like the opium habit, it must be checked by law. When the police will not enforce an existing law, they cease to be police, because the word “police” implies the care of a city, the study of its welfare. It is a bad condition of wool-growing when wolves are employed to guard sheep.
David Swing
McIntyre