p. 134 | AMERICAN GAMBLING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 3, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 9

AMERICAN GAMBLING.

If there is any evidence that this generation of Americans is prone to follow the Devil on the downward road to perdition, it is to be found in the multiform popular devices for getting something for nothing, or in other words, in the widespread passion for gambling. Not only in the large cities where vice has its temples, but in many quiet villages, and in some of our academies and colleges, the faro bank and poker tables are ruining some of the most gifted and prominent men of the time, corrupting their hearts and habits, teaching them to be tricky and false, and leading them straight along to the ruin which follows thieving defalcations and breaches of trust. Even in New Hampshire there are scores of men who are to-day broken in fortune, in ambition, and reputation, simply because of their strife for riches at the gaming table, where only he who is cold-blooded enough to be a professional cut-throat ever succeeds in amassing a fortune.

And yet this kind of gambling which shuns the daylight, and flourishes only behind bolts and shutters, which is outlawed by statutes and public opinion, which only the heartless succeed in, and only the shameless confess to be addicted to, comes as near to being an honest occupation as almost any other. The gambler with cards is generally a cheat, but he has this in his favor, that, as a rule, he does not claim to be anything else. He says to the man who plays with him, “I intend to get your money without giving you anything in return,” and whoever bets that he is sharp enough to carry out his intentions, does so with his eyes open. The victim, of course, expects to win, but when he has lost his last dollar, and perhaps hundreds that belong to others, he has only himself to reproach. He has known from the start that he was engaged in an illegal, dangerous, and disgraceful business, in which he could expect no favors and no quarters; and when he thinks it all over he is forced to the conclusion that he has fared quite as well as he deserved.

Next to the card table come the lotteries, beginning with those which control some of the Southern State governments, and openly defy the laws of the United States, and ending with the cheap copies by which pious people “whip the Devil round a stump” at church and charity. Some of these are cheats of the worst description, and some, perhaps, are managed squarely; they are all organized for the purpose of appealing to men's passion for gambling, and conducted to get money without returning an equivalent. They all rob their patrons, and in nine cases out of ten gather their receipts from the ignorant and the poor, who have no money to spare.

A twin sister of the lottery curse goes out in the shape of the prize-package, which is the bait used to lure people into the meshes of traders who have merchandise to sell that cannot be sold at the prices asked upon its merits. This, too, appeals to people's desire to “try their luck,” and is a species of cheap gambling which finds victims by the thousand among those whose circumstances should induce them not to fool away their money. It is a game of chance. Generally this game is a cheat at both ends. The prize is not what it is represented, and the wares which it helps to sell are frauds. Whoever buys prize candy in order to get a chance to find a gold ring, even when lucky gets glucose instead of sugar, and brass instead of gold, and most of the men and women who are induced to pay $5 for clothing and groceries by an agreement that some one of them shall draw a piano or a chamber set, are obliged to wear shoddy and eat adulterations for the rest of the year, while even the fortunate prize-winner listens to hideous music, and sleeps on a rickety bedstead, until he wishes some of his enemies had his good luck.

Still worse is the mania for gambling in stocks, which corrodes the conscience, frenzies the brain, and petrifies the hearts of the men and women who constitute the speculators of Wall and State streets. This is an eminently respectable curse which attacks all classes. It haunts the parlor as well as the bar-room, roosts over the doors of the strongest banks, occupies a front seat and oftentimes the pulpit at church, and makes paupers and thieves out of the most gifted and the most trusted in the community. It is recognized as a legitimate occupation, and the man engaged in

it is neither cast out nor loses his seat at the communion table as long as he succeeds.

And so it is along the line, and in all conditions of life,—a frantic struggle to get money without working for it, a reckless trusting to luck, a desperate staking of everything upon the honor of professional sharpers, tricksters, and cheats. And worst of it is, there is little or no attempt to check this mad rush to destruction. We have no lack of reform organizations for the suppression of intemperance, no lack of preaching to correct the evils that grow out of our divorce system, and as much as we care to be, we are lectured upon the propriety of our dress and manners; but this widespread and many-shaped gambling curse exists and extends in the silence that gives consent, provoking scarcely a protest anywhere, and an earnest movement for its suppression nowhere. It ought to be otherwise, and some day it will be, or we shall have a country in which honesty and fair dealing are strangers.—Mirror and Farmer.