ANTI-GAMBLING

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 30, 5 February 1913, Page 2

ANTI-GAMBLING

RESULT OF EIGHT YEARS' WORK OUTLINED BY REV. J. J. NORTH. tn the course of his farewell adcVees .last night, the, Rev. J. J. North referred to the social activities in which he had engaged during his stay in Wellington. He explained that hia interpretation of Christianity as a Religion of Incarnation made sympathy with all that touched social life imperative. Christ's hatred of stumbling-blocke, he maintained, must be snared by all who use, His name. There was, he noticed, ,a tendency to cry, Cuibono?, There were not a few who spent ink in niaintaining the agitation, and legislation had failed to better things. He proposed to review in a handful of words the resultJs of eight years' work in the arena. Eight years ago certain billiard saloon* in this city, he stated, were owned by bookmakers, and their offices in ma^iy cases opened off the saloons. Tho city license was unblushihgly used as a cover to illegal fote-odds betting. A brief agitation, liberally supported by the local pres3, had cleared out that nuisance, for the City Fatlibrs made haste to make bookmakers ineligible for 6aloon licensee. Eight years ago bookmakers' officea were publicly conducted, and the crush in their vicinity on race days constituted a block to traffic. These sharpens were now. walking offices of uncertain location. Eight years ago tho principal race clubs ' of the country added to the confusion by engaging in extensive credit betting on the machines, and cases were on record where their credit betting was sb huge that they could not pay cash dividends. That was ttpw (in theory, anyhow) a sheer Impossibility. Eight years ago there were about 100 race clubs in New Zealand whicli, existed because of the public appearance of the bookmaker. There were non-totalisator clubs, omd their race .days reached into the vicinity of 200 a year. These clubs were now either dead or dying, for no "bookie" could now cry the odds from end to end of this land. With the prohibition of the public ■ appearance of the pencillers, coursing received A death blow. Athletic sports, by day and night, which were in some towns gambling carnivals, petered out, and bona fide sport was given a fair run. Then there was , tho pony menace. Enough dirty work with pohies was done at Miramaiv and the Hutt to stir the nether regions. That was Australasian experience. His friend Mr. Judkins, of Melbourne, had urged him to i?ive the ponies no rest. A deputation and an open-eyed Government did the trick. Pony racing, save for fun, will probably never vex our" coiL Eight years ago it w^as possible for any group of men to form a race club, and race (with gambling conveniences) as often as they chose. The then Premier, estimated that when things were at their Worst there were 800 raceways a year in New Zealand. ' Legislation now prevented any increase on the Very liberal allowance of 250 days for trotting and racing, an allowance exactly equal to the proportion of days to population obtaining in, -New South, Wales, Theee results s'eeined to Mr. North to render the Cvi bon.o? cry a little obsolete. He did not pretend that he was any other than a very humble i participator. The results seemed to him to bo priceless. That much remained to be done wus too obvious for remark. The t'otalisator, with its swollen totals, was a men ace, and' the reformers of to-morrow nfust stay it. It was, h« cjaimed., an undemocratic endowment of the stables of a handful of fich folk, and was. the direct occasion of much social misery and ineptness- , The position he took up was that a State coiilll, 1 and ought, to destroy middlferAen ' and middlemachines^ Tho private bet wais beyond legislation. • The public occasion was not. No natibn could carry the incubus that was strapped , to our back without flagging in ,j the race. » The achievements. m the past made him con* template advance in the future with a, quiet confidence.