The Daily News. THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1901.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXIII, Issue 190, 22 August 1901, Page 2

The Daily News. THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 1901.

A FRESH GAMBLE. ♦ An effort is being made to increase the facilities for gambling by means of tbe totalieator. This is being done by giving the people an additional chance of winning money by paying dividends on the firs!: an i second horses. The totalieator is working quite enough evil as it is generally used, without extending its sphere in this manner, and we feel gure if this course is generally adopted tbe opposition to the machine will becomo very much s'ronger than it is at present. The Lyttelton Times, in an article on the introduction of the new system at Christ- j church, writes very strongly on the subjeots. With our contemporary's remarks most right thinking people will agree, particularly as regards the decadence of racing during tbe past few years since the introduction of the totalieator. Our contem-i porary says: the machine amounted to no less a sum than £16,395, an increase of £5391 on the amount received at the corresponding meeting last year, and if we assume that the bookmakers experienced a similar improvement in business it will not be too much to say that the money lost and wen on the races reached a total of at least £20,000, The increase in the total was mainly due to the new method devised by the Jockey Club of payiDg out dividends on both the first and eecond horses. The insidious experiment encouraged a much larger number of people than were ever deceived before to believe that they had at last mastered the problem of making money out of the totalisator. They imagined they were given two chances instead of one, and that they had only to go on long ehough to come out on tha right side. Of course, the members of the Jockey Olub will say, as they have said bsfore, that the money is not lost to the community ; that it is merely transferred from one set of pockets to another, and that even the losers have the satisfaction of knowing that they have contributed pomething towards the promotion of sport and improvement of the breed of horses, Tfee plain truth, however, is that 10 per cent, of the money invested in the totalisator yesterday a sum of £1639 was irretrievably lost by the public. If tbe gambling should go on at the eame rate durißg tho two remaining days of the meeting, the community, to say nothing of the money abstracted by the club in other ways and by the bookmakers and a small army of harpies l , will by Saturday evening be £SOOO poorer for its holiday. Probably we should be rather below the mark if we estimated the cost of the week's junketing at Riccarton, the amount actually withdrawn from legit imat-e and reproductive chancels, at £IO,OOO. What the community ob'ains in return for this expenditure it is extremely difficult to see. The good old fable about improving tho breed of horses will nos survive a comparison bat.wean tho animals that ran at Riccarton yesterday and those that to:k port in the Giand National Meetings of ten or a dozon years ago. In order to attract largo fields and large lotaHsator investments, the Jockey Olub has cut down the fences! until they can now bo negotiated by almost any weedy thoroughbred that has proved a failure on the flat. The weight-carrying steeplechaser, that was of some ÜBe ofl the racecourse, has very nearly disappeared, and his successor, speaking generally, is neither a thing ; of beauty nor a. joy for ever, The i

totalisator, in fact, has had no better influence on the horsfs '.than it has on the men, and if it much longer it will bcing'lthera both .into j irreparable disrepute."