HOW PRETENDING TO BE VIRTUOUS COSTS THIS COUNTRY £1000000 A YEAR

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 33, 27 January 1939, Unnumbered Page

HOW PRETENDING TO BE VIRTUOUS COSTS THIS COUNTRY £1000000 A YEAR

When Depressed, Take A Look At New Zealand’s ‘Remarkable Gambling Customs And Get A Laugh

@ Every year, a sum estimated _ _at:£1,000,000 leaves New Zealand for investment in overseas lotteries. ‘ @ It goes.to Tattersalls. in Tasmania, the State lotteries of.New South Wales, the Golden Casket in Queensland, and the Irish Sweep on the Derby and Grand National in Britain. @ There is no actuarial basis for the. figures, as the investments are surreptitious, but this is the calculation of experts. @ And one million pounds -each year is a large sum of money. Spread. it over 20 years and you will have a tidy sum in the State Treasury. | EGALLY, there are no bookmakers in New Zealand, but if one told .a New Zealand fifth-stan-dard schoolboy this he would probably say in Americanese: ‘*Oh, veah!’’

And experts also calculate that, though £6,000,000 to £7,000,000 is legally invested on herse-racing through the tetalisaters, just three times that amount is invested illegally through bookmakers. if ever a country was in a muddle over its gambling : laws, if-ever a country was a source for gales of laughter for its prim eye-shutting towards the unpleasant facis, it is New Zealand. And the State-which is the people in the final upshotwhen it learns that one of its citizens has been lucky and has won, say, £20,000 in an overseas lottery, behaves like an old-fashioned matten confrontead with the arrival of another life on the earth. One would gather, when the £20,000 prize arrives, that the State did not know where it came from, One would gather, from the State’s modest attitude, that the stork had brought it. Yet cach year the one million pounds goes out of the coun-

try; and each year hospitals, Karitane homes, . maternity nursing institutions, orphans’ homes, children’s health camps and dozens of other institutions see it go with wistful eyes. " SOME DAY NEW ZEALAND WILL REALISE THAT £1,000,000: 1S-A GOOD DEAL OF MONEY TO PAY JUST FOR THE SMUG PLEASURE OF SHUTTING JTS EYES. it Can’t Be Stopped FEW people would say there is much good in gambling. It is a vice, just as smoking and drinking are vices. It cannot be defended, but at the same time it cannot be stopped. ©

All that happens when it is made illegal is that gambling goes underground, Its. reots flourish in New Zealand, its branches reach across the Tasman, its fruit . is plucked in Australia. The ‘‘Record"’ believes that it is no use New Zealand trying ‘any longer to shut its eyes towards the facts. Either gambling should be rooted out completely, or it should be properly supervised and controlled and the people should get the profits. : The ‘‘Reeord’’ believes that since the first of these courses has failed, the State should take the second.

THE _ principle of the State lottery is rapidly becoming more and more widely accepted. , New South Wales does it. Every few days a new one is drawn. The State, in many countries, supports or econnives . atit.. = : """Patis,:? the Irish Sweep, the Caleutte, Sweep on the result of the, Derby, the famous Christ mas gordo at Madrid, all have Some measure of support. From all of them the State derives some revenue. Points against: There are. plenty. The morality of gamb- | ling is yuestionable, has always been questioned. The eco nomic wisdom of lotteries has been questioned. Points for: There are plenty of those, too. Often in the past, States have resorted to making their loans in the forr of lotteries. The lender (or the applicant for the loan) accepts some low rate of interest in return fo1 the chance of winning a financial prize by a system of drawing numbers, Tt is a system which speeds up the raising of an internal loan, as a gift coupon scheme speeds up the sale of packets of cigarettes. States which resort to this system find it profitable enough. As Old As Time . LOTTERIES are as old as the nightwatchman’s abbreviated weather veport. They were not unknown to the ancients. In more modern times they have a fascinating history. In the Italian Republic of the six. teenth century, the lottery principle was applied to encourage the sale of merehandise. In Franee it became very popular, and soon assumed an important place in Government finance. ; In England there were atthorised lotteries as early as (Turn to Page 2.)

$1,000,000 A YEAR FOR VIRTUE---cont’d. from Page 1

1569, and annual Government lotteries from 1709 to 1824, under special statutes, although there was, as there is in New Zealand to-day, a general statutory prohibition. The British Government was prepared, without camoufiaging them as art unions, to call a spade 2 spade and a lottery a lottery, and to raise money openly by this means. Nor all lottery proposals have " been made in dead earnest, nor have all the prizes cited -been in cold cash. Warm femininity has been held up as prize-money, and that no farther from our own times than 1734. 5 In that year a ‘‘Bill’? was drafted for a charitable lottery for the relief of the distressed virgins in Great Britain. This was the preamble :- ‘"‘Whereas by the melaneholy disuse of holy matrimony in these kingdoms, an infinite number of his Majesty’s female subjects are left upon the hands of their parents, in the unnatural state of virginity, to the prejudice of the commonwealth,

the unsupportable burdening of private families, and the unspeakable affliction of the said females, And whereas all ordinary methods to prevent or remedy so great an evil have hitherto proved ineffectual; be it enacted for the better hindrance thereof in times to come, and for the necessary encouragement of propagation, which we ought particularly to attend to upon. the prospect of an approaching war, that all the virgins in Great Britain from 15 to 40 shall be disposed of by lottery in the manner here set forth :- The first two prizes were of £100,000. Tke second prizes were Fisted:

Beauties ..cccee 100 Pretty girls ..... 5,000 Agresables ...-. 10,000 Wits — ..pcccccve | 10 Huswives .... 5 Ladies of quality . 5,000 The lowest prizes were :- Women of fashion and. breeding .. 300,000 Good players at quadrille .... 12,000 Misses of great accomplishments . 30,000 Special breeders, most of them parsons’ daughLc) 1,700 Saints ......0.. 20 Good conditioned girls, alias friskieg we eee eee 106,000

Everyone who won a prize had to keep the same, and everyone with an estate of £100 per annum could participate, *‘except it be idle and useless persons, such as courtiers, attorneys, deans and prebends, fellows of colleges, poets and the like, who are expected to serve their country this way, since they do it no other.’’ One Ticket Only But no one could have more than one ticket except peers, privy councillors, judges and members of parliament, who were allowed three, and the bishops ad libitum.

And so on-the ‘‘Bill"’ affording the author a _ vehicle for "many sly digs. . The lottery was, in fact, during a great part of our history, as familiar a factor as the income taxis to-day-and productive of as many jests-although, perhaps, not such bitter ones! EEN the Government assumed control as it did in> 1699, clearing away the private lotteries as ‘‘publie nuisances,"’ things went excellently for a time, until abuses erept ingambling on ehanees, ‘‘insurances’’ against drawing blanks, and so on, and then the lotiery fell into disgrace. But it was largely because people became-more and more used to the idea of direct taxation; the more modern British lotteries, in which the Irish Free State Hospital Sweepstakes led

the way in 1930 (if one excepts the lotteries in Tasmania and Newfoundland), seem to have been attended by remarkably few abuses, ZN New Zealand to-day the present system of art unions is a mild form of State biannual distributions of the profits to deserving charities. . But the publie realises that they are not the sound and profitable investments that overseas lotteries provide. Flow well the public realises this is shown by one interesting piece of information. The chief contributor to the Tasmanian lottery of Tattersalls ig Victoria. Next on the list comes New Zealand. THEY COULD HAVE US THAT MILLION.