THE GAMBLING EVIL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 70, 21 February 1908, Page 3

THE GAMBLING EVIL.

The Hon. G. Fowlds, Minister for Education, speaking at Wellington last week, referred at length to the gambling evil, and put in definite form his ideas on a much debated subject. The Minister said they were sometimes told that all business was gambling,ithat farming was gambling. but talk like that was the veriest twaddle. It was just because people were getting confused as to what gambling was. There was a clear line of demarcation between this sort of business and gambling. SPECULATION IN LAND. The very worst form of gambling, to his mind, was that which was taking place 'in land values' When gambling in grain or anything that was produced by human labour, *a man was gambling with something that could be increased., so that anyone trying to corner a market was always liable to have his speculation spoiled by the production of more. But with land values the case was different, as they were limited in quantity, and were, lalso, an absolute necessity in human life. And until they got clear from that form of gambling by taking some decisive action to eradicate it, they were not likely to have a community that would be entirely free from gambling in oats or over cards and races. The result was that this evil had its poisonous roots deep in the fabric of society, and was doing more to demoralise people than almost anything—even drink. The fact of the matter was that gambling was a reversion to barbarism.

RECENT LEGISLATION.

A good deal of the gambling going on was really a reaction against the monotony of life, so that, in trying to minimise the gambling evil they must try to make the social conditions as satisfying to the whole nature of man as possible. Something had been done during the last session of Parliament to try to cope with the evil, and the Bill passed then was an enormous advance on anything previously accomplished. It had practically made illegal any kind of gambling except on the racecourse, and he believed that the :form of gambling hitherto fostered in the workshops and factories of the Dominion was now practically a thing of the past. The position was that the gambling evil had to be coped with in two or three different ways. First by educating public opinion, then by circumscribing its limits, and above all by trying to improve the social condition. The nation that gave itself up to gambling, he said, was on the down grade, and was passiug f ro m a stage of civilisation to one of barbarism.