inextricably mixed, it is wise to adopt a line of expediency. The gambler
should at least pay the same dues as the genuine investor. To ensure
this no contract should be made enforceable or legal unless made upon
Government stamped paper. The real buyer of £500 would not complain of
having to pay 2s. or say 1s. per £100 to the National Exchequer; but
the dealers in a £2,000,000 gambling contract would think twice before
incurring a first definite outlay of £2000 or even £1000 cash down. A
similar regulation would be desirable for the Produce, etc., Exchanges.
In this way, by a perfectly equitable legal enactment, the wings of
outrageous speculation would be clipped. An additional improvement would
be an extension to all stocks and shares upon the lines of the principles
of the Bank Act 1867, 30 Vict., c. 29. Prior to its passing, gambling
in the shares of Banks had become a scandal, and a danger to credit. It
provided for contracts setting forth the distinctive numbers of Bank
shares, so as to prevent sales of shares of which the sellers were not
possessed. In the produce markets similar requirements could be insisted
on to bring about a corresponding result.
N. _Industrial Gaming unconnected with Trade_
_Illegal Games._—The legislative remedy here should be to abolish the old
interdict of certain special games, and to make all games of combined
skill and chance illegal when played for money. But this would be a
counsel of perfection which, in the present state of public opinion,
would have no chance of being carried out. If, however, the words were
added, “_by players of unequal experience and skill_,” it would give the
Courts power to penalise the rooks in all such glaring cases as their
victims should place in the hands of the authorities. Nor does there
seem to be any reason why the old idea of restrictions as to amount
should not be made good use of. There would be an enormous balance of
advantage if it were declared illegal for a person to obtain during any
one day a sum exceeding £10 by gaming, or for minors to gamble at all.
The flocks of pigeons would to some extent be protected, however little
the rook minority liked it, and society should benefit in every way. Such
a regulation would sweep away the scandalous immunity enjoyed by rich
men’s clubs; and, considering the widespread ruin for which they are
responsible, and the present disgraceful unfairness of the law as between
the poor and the wealthy, its application should work an incalculable
improvement.
_Playing with Gaming-Machines._—The Courts now seem disposed to construe
the question of a modicum of skill more severely in this connection as
children are so largely affected, and from what has been said above it
may be hoped that the automatic machines are doomed. The above remarks,
however, with regard to combined skill and chance and restriction of
amount, apply here also to a certain extent, especially with regard to
their use in clubs. The difficulties will be great of applying such
regulations to gambling in private houses until the moral sense of the
community becomes more keenly alive to the penalties of sorrow, ruin, and
degradation which are the sad sequel of its neglect.
_Lotteries and Sweepstakes._—The Lottery Acts now existing might
have been fairly efficient if it were not for the difficulty, delay,
and expense in having to obtain in certain cases the leave of the
Attorney-General before proceedings can be taken. This especially
applies in the matter of newspapers which benefit by advertising the
lotteries. They are protected by 8 & 9 Vict. c. 74, the provision in
which needs modification. There is still much, however, to be desired in
the efficiency of administration, which cannot be fully attained until
the farcical practice of allowing the law to be broken for charitable
purposes is given up. Some years ago the Scotch authorities openly stated
in reply to a remonstrance that in such cases no interference would be
made. This lache has been to a large extent followed in England, and when
the National Anti-Gambling League pointed out to the late Mr. Adrian
Hope, the Secretary for the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond
Street, that the great raffles intended to be held at the Coronation
Bazaar at the London Botanical Gardens were in contravention of the
law, he merely declined to drop them, and said that one of the Judges
had bought the first ticket for the chief lottery. Questions had to be
asked in the House of Commons before they could be stopped, after the
illegality had been acknowledged by Ministers.
To sum up under this head, the Post Office should have increased powers
and inducements to destroy lottery matter, and to confiscate and
appropriate for the benefit of the Rowland Hill Memorial Fund, in which
the Post Office is so much interested, all lottery remittances, whether
British or foreign; the question of the Attorney-General’s fiat for
prosecutions should be reconsidered; and the police authorities should
be stimulated to institute a regular and impartial campaign. How grossly
the weapons of the law in regard to lotteries have been neglected may be
illustrated by a statement made in a Treasury prosecution at Clerkenwell
Police Court in June 1904, to the effect that one of the most important
statutes, 4 Geo. IV. c. 60, was extremely difficult to find, not being
printed in the ordinary book of statutes, and was not found in any
magisterial text-book.
_Press Competitions and Coupon Gambling._—So numerous are the devices of
the baser organs of the press, and even of some which find it difficult
to hold out against their competition, that no reform of the law is
likely to be effective without some enactment making the offering of
prizes illegal beyond a certain small amount; which compromise can hardly
be avoided, because the best of these newspaper competitions offer
undoubtedly some educational inducements. Those which are merely gambling
vehicles should be suppressed. The bad position here again rests upon
the foolish old dictum as to a modicum of skill covering a quantity of
gambling. For instance, an unfortunate decision of the High Court in
_Hall_ v. _Cox_ (1 Q.B. 1899), held that guesses at the numbers of the
next Registrar-General’s return (although any competitor could purchase
any quantity of the newspaper, filling in a different number for each
one, thus making it an extensive gamble at will) did not constitute a
lottery, because a certain amount of skill could be exercised by the
study of previous returns. This led to numerous imitations, one of
which was guessing at the future circulation of a paper, which had the
additional journalistic merit of acting as a good advertisement. Amongst
many, one poor and foolish artisan acknowledged that he had purchased
considerable numbers of the newspaper, and its great increase in
circulation by the device shows how many credulous persons were willing
to gamble under the shelter of the law.
Two brief sections should meet the difficulties under this heading:—
1. Make all such competitions in which there is a material element of
chance illegal.
2. Make it illegal for any publication to offer in any one edition a
prize or prizes of the aggregate value of more than £5 for any purpose
whatever.
_Gambling in Clubs._—With regard to the law as to betting in clubs,
allusion has already been made to _Downes_ v. _Johnson_ (2 Q.B. 1895) and
a recent decision of Mr. Justice Bucknill which appears to follow upon
the lines of that most unfortunate and harmful judgment. The alteration
of the law needed here (none should be needed but for the interpretation
put upon the words “person using” and “any other person” in section 30 of
the Betting Act of 1853, as meaning persons in authority in the place,
in the _Powell_ v. _Kempton Park_ case) is to so alter the section that
the proprietors or committee of a club shall not escape responsibility
for individuals, like the bookmakers in a race-course ring, carrying
on betting businesses. Merely a clear definition of “persons using” as
including such individuals is needed. This would bring all these betting
establishments, some of which merely pretend to be social clubs, into
the category of betting-houses, which are common gaming-houses; and if
this were supplemented by a section as previously suggested, following
the idea of the statutes of Anne and 18 George II., making the gain
by any one member of a club of a greater sum than £10, on any game or
chance whatever, upon any particular day, an offence entailing the same
consequences, a heavy blow would be struck at gambling clubs of all kinds.
As to other gaming in clubs, chiefly card-playing, the reader who plods
through the long technical judgment of Mr. Justice Hawkins in _Jenks_
v. _Turpin_ (13 Q.B.D.) will be chiefly impressed by the feeling that
the police authorities systematically fail to make use of the existing
laws, which is indeed the fact; but this is owing in great measure to
difficulties in obtaining evidence, and the natural reluctance to order
raids while the gamesters have the power to retaliate in case of failure.
When elaborate preparations have been made at the cost of much labour,
time, and expense, heavy bribery will often obtain the needful warning
even from within the police force. The great clubs are seldom or never
touched, and until a special department is formed at Scotland Yard under
an able and determined chief, with absolute power of instant dismissal
and punishment and liberal reward in dealing with his subordinates, our
social life will continue to be poisoned with the evils of club gambling.
If this were done and the old £10 limit named above once more revived,
and greater power conferred to punish the players as well as the club
committees and proprietors, club gambling would dwindle and the career
of the professional gamester become less profitable and more precarious,
while fortunes and incomes now thrown away would be applied to fruitful
and honest purposes.
_Petty Gambling._—In the matter of petty gambling what is needed is not
so much amendments of the law (the enormous demand for playing-cards
seems, indeed, to make the reimposition of a tax advisable) as its
assiduous application by the authorities. It is now so diffused,
unhappily owing in great part to the habit the nation has fallen into
of looking upon gambling as a venial vice, if vice at all, that their
task may well seem endless; and in this connection the most effective
legislative enactment, for petty gambling is very widespread amongst
juveniles, might well be some considered scheme compulsorily providing
for teaching the young in primary and secondary schools how wrong it is
and what evils it leads to. The materials exist for enabling this to be
done in a very incisive manner, and by the time such systematic lessons
have permeated the rising generation their elders may become as ashamed
of indulging in betting and gambling as they may now be said to be of
drunkenness.
THE PRESS AND GAMBLING
It remains to say a few words about the press, which is largely
responsible for the great evils of gambling, particularly of the
professional betting system, under the plea of devotion to sport,
which even the Duke of Devonshire seems to consider is being overdone,
according to a recent speech made by him in public. The prohibition of
the betting odds was strongly urged upon the Select Committee of the
House of Lords. It would be a fatal blow to bookmaking, for nine bets
out of ten are now made without agreement with the bookmakers as to the
figures, but depending upon their subsequent publication as reported
from the starting-post. The betting men put forward advocates before the
Committee who pretended to think that such legislation would not reduce
betting, but the best test is the frantic opposition which the bookmakers
offer to the proposition. It is earnestly advocated by men like Mr. Le
Blanc Smith of Oxford University and others interested in the purity of
sport. The Committee say in their Report on Betting (Report and Evidence,
No. 389, 1902; Evidence, No. 370, 1901; Index, 173 and 114, 1902): “There
can be little doubt that the almost universal practice of publishing in
newspapers what are known as ‘Starting-Price Odds’ greatly facilitates
betting upon horse-races”; but, as they considered it to be in the nature
of news, and a protection against fraud, they were not prepared to
recommend the suggestion. It may be pointed out, however, that although
no doubt the odds published are often correct, there is a regular system
arranged between the bookmakers and the baser press organs for quoting
unreal odds to lure on the public, which was exposed three years ago
in an amusing controversy between two London newspapers. Moreover, the
prevention of the swindling of some of the foolish public by bookmakers
seems a poor reason for permitting the continuation of a practice which
so materially assists in the demoralisation of hundreds of thousands of
the populace. Considerable pains have been taken to ascertain privately
the feeling of the better class of newspapers upon this subject, and it
is found that they would welcome such a prohibition, provided it be made
universal, as it will actually benefit all respectable journals. Their
circulation is reduced by the public being led to spend their “press
money” upon the so-called sporting or betting papers, the number of which
is legion, many of them making great incomes of thousands per annum;
besides which a considerable number of the less respectable newspapers
issue during the racing seasons editions printed literally for nothing
beyond the result of horse-races, and in the winter of football matches,
the ordinary matter which has remained in type enabling them to escape
from the meshes of the new bye-laws as to publications consisting wholly
or chiefly of sporting—betting—information. Parliament will have to make
up its mind some day to deal with this aspect of the betting question,
and to say that the liberty of the press is not liberty to debauch
the public and to share in the proceeds of doing so; that if Lord
Beaconsfield was right, in his time, in stigmatising the Turf as a vast
engine of national demoralisation, and if its powers for evil are now
far greater than in his days, the press shall not continue to bolster up
the system by publishing the odds, and sharing in its ill-gained profits
through the medium of advertisements.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it may be said that when such time arrives the conviction
will also be held by the people of the United Kingdom that the
professional gambler in the stock and produce markets, whose operations
it is not always possible to challenge as being entirely unconnected
with commerce, should at least have his huge dealings hampered by a _pro
rata_ tax, the incidence of which would not interfere with _bona fide_
purchases and sales; that our police forces must be saved from becoming
as corrupt as Tammany Hall through bookmakers’ bribes, to which several
of them are well on the way; that the great Department of the Post
Office must not continue to swell its revenues by using its organisation
to assist the corrupt business of betting, even granting it special
facilities, whatever may be alleged to the contrary—in particular,
with regard to the telegraphic service, in which overt temptations to
the servants in its employ are continually resulting in its having to
prosecute them in batches, notably the younger ones among them, in
the name of public morality, but practically for the protection of
this bookmaking system which the Post Office, as its intermediary for
deposits, assists and fosters in its work of breeding criminals and
cheating fools; and finally that those individuals who, without the
vestige of any mercantile basis, prey upon the credulity and vices of
their fellow-countrymen should be looked upon as _hostes humani generis_,
so that the bookmakers shall be treated as criminals and punished, not by
fines but by imprisonment.
Then, perhaps, also, the habitual private gambler of means and position
will find every public career and honour withheld from him, and this
great Christian nation will approach the plane of morality now occupied
in this respect by our allied heathen empire of Japan.
THE REPRESSION OF GAMBLING
By B. SEEBOHM ROWNTREE
In seeking remedies for the acknowledged national evils of betting and
gambling, it will be well to consider what are the causes that have
probably chiefly contributed to the present deplorable state of things.
Amongst the wealthy or well-to-do there can be little doubt that (_a_)
the thoughtless following of fashion, (_b_) the desire for excitement and
a sense of “life,” and (_c_) the craving for gain without labour, are
the main incentives to gambling practices. The same causes, though in
differing degrees, and finding expression in somewhat differing forms,
appear also to lie at the root of the matter amongst the artisan classes
and the labouring poor.
So far as concerns the following of fashion, the unwillingness to hold
out against the customs of one’s comrades, and to go against the stream,
human nature is the same in rich and poor, and there is no remedy for
this failing but improvement of the moral stamina of the individual.
With regard, however, to the desire for excitement and a certain fulness
of life, there are causes operating which differ widely in the cases of
the rich and the poor. The monotony of the rich is a monotony of surfeit.
They have means to satisfy all their material needs, and the very fact
that they need not strive after anything brings satiety into everything,
and with it the craving for excitement. And excitement in abundance may
be found in gambling. This has been well put by Dr. Robertson:—
What we want is life, “more life and fuller.” To escape from
monotony, to get away from the life of mere routine and habits,
to feel that we are alive—with more of surprise and wakefulness
in our existence. To have less of the gelid, torpid,
tortoise-like existence. “To feel the years before us.” To be
consciously existing.
Now, this desire lies at the bottom of many forms of life
which are apparently as diverse as possible. It constitutes
the fascination of the gambler’s life; money is not what he
wants—were he possessed of thousands to-day he would risk them
all to-morrow—but it is that, being perpetually on the brink of
enormous wealth and utter ruin, he is compelled to realise at
every moment the possibility of extremes of life. Every moment
is one of feeling.
In the case of the poor, on the other hand, monotony of life arises from
the very absence of the external advantages of the wealthier. The young
man, after a day of monotonous toil in some uninteresting occupation, has
too often to come home to his small and overcrowded house in a dingy back
street, where his only living room is one which must serve the purposes
of kitchen, nursery, parlour, and dining-room, and where he can find no
relief from the noisy children. His mental horizon is extremely limited,
and he has hardly any intellectual interests. He cannot afford the forms
of recreation that would be indulged in by his unintellectual brother
among the richer classes of Society, and yet he has the same desire for
“life.” He thinks to get it cheaply by betting.
Again, the desire of gain without work is common to all classes. With
the well-to-do and the professional, it may take the reputable form of
speculating in stocks and shares—a large proportion of a sharebroker’s
business is notoriously for speculative clients; but the poor also may
succumb to the temptation, though on a humbler scale. The writer heard
recently of a woman who had her family to maintain, and who, with but
one shilling in the world, staked it on a horse in the hope of mending
matters.
If then the causes of gambling are so widespread, and are due to
conditions all but universal in this country, can anything be done in the
way of remedy?
Undoubtedly much may be done in the way of legislative and administrative
steps, the right direction of which is indicated in the Report published
by the House of Lords’ Commission.[11] It is important that we should
urge upon Parliament the need for laws upon these lines.
But apart altogether from legislation—though at the same time tending to
ripen public opinion for more stringent laws—a good deal may be achieved,
and it is the object of this paper to make suggestions in this direction.
Unquestionably the first thing which those should do who are desirous
of suppressing the gambling evil is absolutely to dissociate themselves
from any form of it whatever, commercial or otherwise. Even those who
play cards for insignificant stakes, or who place very small amounts upon
horses—amounts so small that it is practically immaterial whether they
win or lose—are nevertheless severely handicapping themselves in any
effort they may make to check the gambling curse. They undo the influence
which they might exert upon children, workmen, or employees, who notice
that they indulge in gambling transactions, but do not notice, or at any
rate soon forget, that these transactions are extremely small in amount.
The influence of would-be reformers must be unreservedly opposed to the
evil, even in those forms which are apparently harmless, for it is just
these which are the first links in a chain which may eventually bind some
weaker brother hand and foot.
The writer is aware that in urging the avoidance of gambling in
commercial transactions he exposes himself to the objection that
gambling and commerce are apparently inextricably associated. He
does not, however, seek to maintain that any hard and fast line can
be drawn, transactions on one side of which are to be described as
of a speculative or gambling nature, and on the other as legitimate
business. He is aware that in every business there must be some amount
of speculation, just as there is every time that we decide whether we
shall or shall not take an umbrella when we go for a walk. He is aware,
too, that in business much depends upon the special circumstances of the
case and the spirit in which the transaction is undertaken, but he would
nevertheless urge the importance of reducing the speculative element in
business to the lowest possible point, rather than the adoption of a
policy which introduces needless uncertainty as to the future.