INCREASED GAMBLING

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 5

INCREASED GAMBLING

WOMEN'S PROTEST

The following is the text of a letter which has been sent to the Prime Minister by the Women's Social Progress movement protesting against increasing the facilities for gambling: — "The Women's Social Progress movement is deeply disturbed by the fact that in such a time as this Parliament is being asked to debate a measure which amounts to increasing the facilities for gambling throughout the Dominion. The qualities which these days of national testing demands of the people are just the qualities which gambling does not arouse or encourage but rather undermines. We feel, therefore, that cur members of Parliament should not be required even to consider rendering such a disservice to the best interests of the country as the Bill will undoubtedly rentier ' if■ it is allowed to become law. "The publication of dividends will serve only to inflame the fever for investment on the totalisator while tho proposal to use tho Post Office as a suboffice and postal clerks as agents for a betting machine is a degradation of a public utility which exists for the service of the community's business and social requirements. "Feeling, as we do, that the public mind should not be subjected to the suspicion that high and responsible officers of the Crown are seeking to encourage gambling, we view with alarm the statement made in the House that 'the Police Force is behind this Bill, and that the head of the Post and Telegraph Department is four-square behind it." "We fervently express tho hope that you will do your best to prevent this measure from finding a place among the statutes of the Dominion."