THE GAMBLER AND THE LAWMAKER.
The steady increase of gambling, with the steady decrease in the morality and reliability of those who indulge in it, continues to excite apprehension among those who are responsible for the successful conduct of business enterprises. The following editorial from the Christian Work and Evangelist is to the point, and also shows how the law-making body of a great state protects and bolsters up the gambling business:— It is certain that the betting habit, like that of drink, is coming to be more and more regarded as a disqualification for any service where honesty and faithfulness are prime requisites. In the words of Captain Goddard, "Once a man gets the betting fever in his blood he is not to be trusted." In an interview in the New York Times on this subject, Mr. Henry P. Lyman, President of the American Surety Company, is quoted as saying that twenty-five per cent. of the defalcations of the time are due to race-track gambling. "Every day or so," says Mr. Lyman, "the company is called upon to make good for some young fellow who had bet money that didn't belong to him on horses that lost." Among the recent instances of the ruin wrought by the betting passion, cited by Mr. Lyman, was that of a young bank clerk with a mother and sister dependent upon him. Becoming infatuated with horse-racing, he neglected his work, abstracted money from the bank to the amount of $1,400, and is now serving a term in the penitentiary for his crime. Another case is that of a railroad man, who held a splendid position. He became addicted to9betting on the races, and stole $14,000. He fled to Mexico, but was captured and brought back. He is now serving a term in the penitentiary. Cases parallel to these may be found almost daily in the criminal news of the daily press. There is something about horse-racing which seems to coarsen and deprave all engaged in it. As conducted on the professional tracks, it is a sport in which deception, fraud, false pretense, and every species of cunning and trickery have been brought to a fine art. It is probably true, as often averred, that race-tracks can not be maintained without the betting-ring adjuncts. It certainly proved to be so in New Jersey, where a strict and impartial enforcement of the anti-gambling law was followed by the immediate closing of the tracks at Guttenburg, Monmouth Park, and other points in the state. But we do things differently in New York. When the people of the Empire State voted prohibition of pool-selling and other forms of gambling into the state constitution in 1896, a complaisant and ever-ready Legislature, at the bidding of the racing trust, made up of rich horse-owners, politicians and "sports," enacted what is known as the Percy-Gray law, which "took the starch out" of the anti-gambling amendment so far as racing enclosures are concerned, while it left it in full force outside of those enclosures. The result has been the ridiculous, unjust, and outrageous situation which now prevails, wherein it is made a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment to perform an act on one side of a fence which is practically declared innocent on the other. Such laws are building up a business which can only debase and ruin the bodies and souls of men and women. They make virtual slave marts where men's souls are bartered for gold. With the gambler and the law-maker banded together, we have a conspiracy against morals which must make demons laugh.