GAMBLING AND PROSPERITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 January 1939, Page 9

GAMBLING AND PROSPERITY

(To the Editor.) ' Sir, —Not long ago we were told that the increase of the rate of marriages and the tremendous increase in betting on the totalisator (£6 millions odd) are sure signs of increased prosperity. Marriage, says the inspired Book, is honourable in all, and instituted by God Himself. Can that be said of the totalisator-..and the gambling it gives rise to? Thousands of men are getting ruined every year. The above figures prove that £4 per head of population is spent on gambling on the “tote." The “tote” now beats both alcohol and tobacco for expenditure. Fully one-half of the adult popuplation must be adicted to gambling on the totalisator. and their number is steadily increasing. Thousands of women and children are going short of food and warm clothing because the husband and father spends every penny he can spare on the “tote.” If that is a sign of prosperity, then the less we have of it the better. I have known or heard of married men quite sober and industrious who were the victims of the gambling on the totalisator, whose wives and children had to suffer want of necessaries because the . totalisator claimed their share of the man’s earnings. I have known some of these men tearing themselves loose by a supreme moral effort, while others went down to poverty and ruin. Vice, when it is left unhindered, even protected by the law of the land, as the totalisator is, effects its own cure by ruining its votaries both economically and morally. Are we to wait till nearly the whole nation becomes the victim of the gambling mania? Or take time by the forelock and so drastically reduce totalisator permits as to reduce its evil effects to a minimum. What is the use of reducing imports in order to balance payments while the totalisator is doing its fell work among all classes of the community.—Yours, etc., HANS C. THOMSEN. Masterton. January 14.