PRELIMINARY REMARKS—FOOD FOR REFLECTION.
Only gamblers defend gambling. Those who play faro, roulette, hazard; those who buy mutual pools or “puts and calls;” and even those whose instinct for gaming is satisfied with a partly legitimate business, go on with their practices without an analysis of their actions. It is the object of this work, not only to trace the history of gaming, so far as is recorded, but to expose to the mind of the most casual reader the sophistries upon which the art of gambling is based. In other words, the author will show that if men seek for happiness in games of chance they find sorrow; if they hope for gain, they fall into penury; if they flee from care, they suffer unending perplexity; if they be honorably ambitious, they forfeit all public regard.
It is a sad fact that ethics—the science of human duty—had reached its summit long before the Roman Empire was founded. The philosophers of Africa and Asia taught to the students of Greece all that this work can teach to English-speaking people. Aristotle classed the gambler with the thief and robber, and so just was the mind of Alexander’s preceptor, that he hated even usury. If man studied ethics, with any other purpose than for mental relaxation, there could be no gambling; there could be none of the gross selfishness and competition which shames our civilization, and in reality gives to the barbaric spirit of conquest that relief which it finds in gambling.
We have, then, only to repeat the warnings of the sages of the world, and to reinforce them with the history of the gaming vice in all ages. Thousands of years have elapsed since man learned that gambling was morally wrong. Why, then, does he gamble? Because he does not know that all wrong is a source of unhappiness. No man wishes to be unhappy. All men are unhappy; they seek peace. In the fact that argument has failed to carry home to the human mind this conviction, that gaming cannot give peace, the author finds his reason for writing. Only by patient iteration of the principles which Aristotle accepted, and only by a persevering recital of the evils which gambling has wrought on men, can it be hoped that the young student will accept as a truth, without personal proof, that doctrine which, to prove, would cost his fortune and his happiness.
Why, then, is gambling wrong? Why did Aristotle denounce it? Why does the young man of to-day need further proof that gambling is wrong and disappointing—why does he lose years of time, hazard his respectability, acquire dangerous habits and diseases, and regret the experiment he has made? To answer these questions requires this volume.
Blackstone cleverly calls gaming “a kind of tacit confession, that the company engaged therein do in general exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes; and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer.” This statement, which has stood the criticisms of centuries, leaves to the gamester the unhappy knowledge that some one in his company is to be destroyed. Instead of sitting at an entertainment, then, he is a pall-bearer. He carries away the dead because he himself is not dead. To begin, therefore, the gambler who thinks must have throttled pity. He knows it is a funeral; he is so selfish that he cares only for his own welfare. When two or more men gamble, the winners win and the losers lose, but there is no productive labor; therefore, nobody profits except it be the owner of the premises who has put his building to an unproductive business—a business closely allied with other vices that at once rob their agents of honor, health and fortune. Commerce, when flying almost in the face of nature, will, if successful, benefit man and alleviate his needs, but the gambler spends his time and his energies in that which (as this work will carefully show) is of enormous evil. It is more than a waste of time. It is more than a waste of money. It is more than a waste of health. It is more than a waste of thought. For gambling, as Charles Kingsley has said, is almost the only thing in the world in which the honorable man is no match for the dishonorable man. The scrupulous man is weaker, by the very fact of his scruples, than he who has none. When a man begins to play he may have a high feeling of honor, but what right has honor to sit at a gaming-table? There’s the rub. When he wins he will consider it folly not to extend the hours of play, and will begin an expense that he did not indulge before. With greater expense, he will be keener at the game—more zealous to win. But he will lose anon, and further anon his losses and gains will be equal. Then his increased expense—the luxury of late hours, with dinners, carriages, and personal service—must be paid from the income that was deemed insufficient to support a more modest mode of life. As this manifestly cannot be done, recourse in hope must be had to the gaming-table once more, where, with losses and gains so far equal, the increased disbursements must be made good. To win, the tricks of the gambler must be used; friends must be inveigled to their ruin; advantages must be seized; a sight of the opponent’s cards must be used for whatever it will win, and one step after another gradually reduces the player to a condition in which he secretly knows he is a rogue. Others about him have long known it. The true philosopher knows it the moment the “high-minded player” sits down to the game.
But ignorance does not depict a scene so deplorable. The gambler in his best days, is lured by a brighter vision. He does not value money, and gathers that reward which comes from a princely generosity and a reckless patronage of all who desire to serve him. But of real humanity he has none, because his business, veil it as you may, is robbery. The man who plays against the gambler is called a “producer,” and what can that mean but fool or victim—a victim whose greed is his ruin. Despising respectable men who play with him as greedy fools, the gambler must oppose honest men (who will not play) as foes. Hating all men, he must hate women; therefore marriage is rare among the “profession.” If he secures a fortune, so that he may “retire” from hazard, it will be seen that he owns and enslaves both men and women, and never aids the emancipation of society. Sensualism and materialism are his characteristics. If he loves power in his community, it is for private aggrandizement. The hand of society has been against him; he cannot forget it. Reform would be forgiveness, and the gambler never forgives. True respectability would be forgetfulness of the past, and the gambler never forgets. Such is the successful gamester—the “retired gamester.” And to secure that much of success how many thousands of victims are in his train? His charities are a sham, like the subscriptions of Monte Carlo on Riviera; like the proffered relief to flood sufferers by the Louisiana lottery. While the wail of the unhappy and the lost is heard at the wheel, the cruel game goes on without mercy. The very existence of these splendid dens of dishonesty and inhumanity, are a menace to men.
But success in this crime is as rare as success in any other. The ordinary gambler does not “retire.” He dresses extravagantly, he lives in ignorance, he pursues the existence of an ape. The mere sensualist sins and repents, but the reformer who toils with the drunkard and the fallen woman despairs of the gambler. He lives his short life, and dies alone in his garret or in prison. His fellow-gamblers are glad he is dead. They say he was unfit to live, and they know.
Of all acts, gambling induces most often to suicide. It is believed that the number of “the profession” is not relatively large considering the total population, yet the suicide of the professional gambler is a matter of the most frequent note. In England eight persons out of 100,000 kill themselves in a year. At Monaco, a solitary gambling establishment, one hundred suicides were reported in one season. The German tables of play have sent thousands out to death. The reason why a gambler should kill himself appears to him in the aspect of lost honor. If he joins to this a loss of money—the only thing for which he has striven—he cannot summon fortitude to live. He goes out of the world, impelled by a just nature, that thus removes his life from the earth which he has encumbered.