SOMEONE MUST LOSE—Gambling has now become the largest illegitimate business in the United States. A recent poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion has shown that 45 per cent of our nation’s adult population will confess to participating in some form of gambling, while the records of the California Commission on Organized Crime suggest that the annual profit in gambling is well over two billion dollars. Senator Estes Kefauver estimated that the gross amount bet yearly would exceed the combined profits of the United States Steel Corporation, General Motors, General Electric, and the top 100 manufacturing enterprises of the nation.
The word “gambling” suggests to the average mind a movie scene in Monte Carlo. Or in some sort of vague way, we think of the national lotteries of the British Isles, where the chance of winning is about 1 to 450,000. But in post-war Germany, children coming from Mass at the great cathedral in Cologne stopped to buy tickets, hoping to win a bicycle. Profits such as that are supposed to be all right, because they were to be used in repairing the building!
Then again, there is our own Las Vegas, where an elderly lady sat with a sack of sandwiches as she kept slot machines going. This was “legal” gambling.
In southern California, the Santa Anita race track has managed to root itself deeply into the community life; the track has contributed well over $10,000,000 to charities. Among its gifts are such items as annual contributions to the community chests of all nearby communities; thus such agencies as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America have become the beneficiaries of one of our greatest gambling organizations.
Certainly, gambling has become a big business. But just what is to be considered as “gambling”? We use the word occasionally as if it meant the taking of a chance, the accepting of a possibility of risk. Thus we say that it is a gamble to walk down the street, or that life itself is a gamble.
But in a court of law, gambling is defined as involving three necessary elements: (1) a consideration (such as money) is given for the right to participate, (2) a game is used in which the outcome depends largely upon chance, and (3) a prize in some sort of value is paid to the winner. Thus business ventures, insurance programs, even marriage, become matters of risk, not gambling. For the term “gambling” is to be applied to wagering, to using a game and granting prizes; it involves the losses of some to offset the gains of a few others.
In this light, gambling is quickly seen as a menace to personal character. There are those who suggest that gambling should be made legal, that the desire to gamble is inherent among man’s instincts and cannot be denied. But then, let us legalize burglary and murder as well, for these crimes are merely the results of antisocial drives!
The beginning gambler soon experiences certain subtle changes in his character. He no longer believes in earning his own way; he has lost his faith in hard work. He lives in a world of whimsy, the realm of the long-shot dream. No longer does he believe in cause and effect, in law and order. It is morally wrong for a man to subject his character to such deteriorating influences.
Our nation was built upon the Christian principles of brotherly love, of mutual concern. But the gambler knows that winning requires that someone be the loser; his winning must be purchased at the expense of another. Close friends will not gamble, for they do not wish to exploit each other!
But gambling is not the only evil of our world; modern society holds closely to its evil trinity of three gods: gambling, alcohol, and prostitution. These three go hand in hand, and the gambler will quickly come in contact with the other two. Each shares its converts with the other two, and each cooperates to keep the other two in business.
Finally, gambling must be recognized as wrong because it corrupts our society. The legal gambler and the corrupt politician have ever been close friends. Some would suggest that gambling should be legalized because its taxes will help to support our government, but gambling is a social leech, it has no product of value to offer. The revenues of the gambler have first been created by some legitimate business venture, and should have found their way to another. The money received by the gambler means less business for the grocer, the clothing store, the gasoline station.
Then too, the fact is that gambling always corrupts government. The report of the Senate crime commission indicated that 20 per cent of the gambler’s “take” is used as a fund to corrupt public officials. Responsible public officials always agree that wherever illegal gambling is conducted openly, it can be done only at the expense of the corrupted character of public officials.
At one time former Mayor O‘Dwyer (New York City) proposed that legal gambling be permitted in New York State. Governor Dewey made a powerful response:
“It would be indecent for a government to finance itself so largely out of the weaknesses of the people which it had encouraged.… The entire history of legalized gambling in this country and abroad shows that it has brought nothing but poverty, crime, and corruption, demoralization of moral and ethical standards of living, and misery for all of the people.”—The Rev. GEORGE C. DESMOND, Minister. The Methodist Church, Hillsdale, Illinois.
TO THE POINT—Sunday morning, in a Vermont town, my last day in New England, I shaved, dressed in a suit, polished my shoes, whited my sepulcher, and looked for a church to attend. Several I eliminated for reasons I do not now remember, but on seeing a John Knox church I drove into a side street and parked Rocinante out of sight, gave Charley his instructions about watching the truck, and took my way with dignity to a church of blindingly white ship lap. I took my seat in the rear of the spotless, polished place of worship. The prayers were to the point, directing the attention of the Almighty to certain weaknesses and undivine tendencies I know to be mine and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there. The service did my heart and I hope my soul some good. It had been long since I had heard such an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren’t really sins at all but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this church.—JOHN STEINBECK, in Travels With Charley, the story of the “rediscovery of America” on an automobile trip.
