Gambling
Cards
In miscellaneous gambling, cards, harmless in themselves, are still prominent. The game of Bridge amongst the wealthier classes is responsible for reproducing many of the vicious situations we read of in the chronicles of our forefathers. While Queen Victoria was lying dead, one very prominent female society leader could not be got to abstain from this form of gambling even for a brief space. At the aristocratic mansion over which she presides guests must play. One young man of moderate income suggested that his means were quite unequal to such hazards as the hostess and her friends were accustomed to, but he was given to understand that he could play or leave. He unhappily chose the former alternative, and in a few hours lost half-a-year’s income. There are hundreds of smaller imitators of this woman, whose husband ranks high in the political world. The disgusting position is frequently created of young girls, not discouraged from gambling by their parents, losing money which they have difficulty in paying to men with whom they are not otherwise well acquainted. In speaking to a young lady who moves in society circles, and on inquiring with due diffidence as to her knowledge of gambling among the friends of her family, she said, without the slightest hesitation, “Oh, every one we know gambles.” One of the speakers at the council meeting of a ladies’ association, of which Lady Trevelyan is president, said that a society lady, on a friend observing that £150 a year seemed a small allowance for her daughter, replied that the latter was such a good Bridge player that she easily made £1000 a year.
Amongst the poor, where horse-race betting does not prevail, cards, to which juveniles are largely taking, as well as automatic machine gambling, are often made the vehicle for disposing of their small means.
The Stock and Produce Exchanges
A very large proportion of the business done upon the Stock Exchange is nothing else than gambling. No stock passes. It is merely gambling in the rise or fall for differences. Here, as elsewhere, neglect, for which the whole nation is to blame, has allowed matters to get into a groove, and great difficulty will be found in getting out of it. In another chapter suggestions are made, and if the proposed remedy is necessarily a serious one for those whose business is to a great extent founded upon an illegitimate basis, some of them at least feel that the present system is indefensible, and the following pathetic extracts from a letter written by a member of a leading Stock Exchange firm merely express the conscientious misgivings of the best class of men there—misgivings which are more or less shared by all but the hardened gamblers of the establishment:—
The evils of speculation, in common with many more fellows here, I much deplore; but at the same time, when three-fourths of the business is of that nature, what is the alternative to most Stock Exchange men? Either starvation or gaining a livelihood by means which one’s conscience tells you to be wrong; and human nature is not proof against the temptation. That is the naked truth, not to mince matters; and God knows it is an awful fact, to those who give any thought to these things. I am perfectly certain that the majority of Stock Exchange men loathe the business, and would be glad to get out of it. The subject is never absent from my mind. I have felt in a great strait over it for years. God grant that I may get out of it somehow; but how, He only knows. It seems queer to write like this to a stranger, but you have struck such a chord of sympathy that it is a relief to unbosom one’s mind.
The above remarks also apply to the produce and metal exchanges. The misery caused in Lancashire and elsewhere by American gamblers cornering the cotton market is calling the attention of merchants to this branch of the subject, and with a little goodwill on the part of the Governments concerned there should be no insuperable difficulty in framing regulations which will greatly hamper, if not destroy, the possibility in future of such proceedings.
Condition of the Country
Thus in England, at the commencement of the twentieth century, the world of society, commerce, finance, and athletic sport is saturated with gambling, more or less veiled or entirely open. Individual and family ruin from it in all classes is frequent; and there are thousands of cases stopping short of this, but entailing, besides material loss and suffering, the lowering of the moral and mental nature, thus affecting the intellectual and religious fibre of the people. But the evil to the nation does not stop here. Until lately, at all events, the highest Courts of Law, as well as the lower ones, did not escape the indirect taint, and even now politicians and office-holders, who would be ostracised in Japan, continue to allow themselves, and very often their households, to be deeply involved in gambling transactions in their homes, their clubs, and with low practitioners of the race-course ring, their children in numberless cases copying the evil habit. A young heir to a peerage, a candidate for a seat in Parliament, whose father is considered to be a great political light and would wish it to be supposed that he is not without reforming zeal, although fencing with the question of the betting ring, boasted to a companion of his sudden acquisition of £2000, laughing at the idea of having worked for it, and explained that it came from the bookmakers at one meeting. The public services are corrupted, particularly the Police and the Post Office, the latter institution rendering many unnecessary services to the gambling system, in the profits of which it largely shares, and not making the special efforts which we see in the United States and elsewhere to hamper professional gambling. The nation as a whole is, it may be hoped, too healthy in a moral sense to allow a further continuance of this social plague without a great effort to grapple with it; but the bitter experience of the nineteenth century demonstrates how futile it would be to rely solely, or even to any great extent, upon the unaided attempts of educational persuasion to root it out. These, indeed, must not be relaxed, they must be increased and multiplied, and should be supplemented by more extensive and systematic endeavours, aiming at improved conditions of life for the poor, and further amelioration of health, and opportunities for recreation; but betting and gambling should also be made, as they can be made, by amended and better applied legal regulations, far less profitable, and more difficult, dangerous, and disgraceful, whether for the rich or the needy. There need be no real interference with the liberty of the subject; for that liberty, regarded in a true light, should not confer any licence to trade upon the ignorance, weakness, or folly of others, which is the characteristic of all gamesters, and not least of those belonging to the professional betting system.