dissipated life.
We have chietiy considered the derationalising
influence of the anarchic element of chance which
is the nucleus of the process. But, regarded as a
mode of transfer of property, gambling involves a
union of several anti-social desires. The desire to
take unearned gains is, as we have seen, itself
immoral, for such gains of necessity imply an
injury to some other known or unknown persons,
nor in the case of gambling is the damage thus
done to the character of a winner mitigated by the
knowledge that those from whom he wins have
sought similar unearned gains at his expense. In
many natures the possibility of such facile gain
quickens the latent instinct of avarice, one of the
most insidiously disintegrating influences in human
society, inviting as it does complete self-absorption
14 BETTING AND GAMBLING
and an entire loss of sympathy with the material
interests of one's fellows. The brooding infatuation
of the habitual gambler chills human sympathy
more certainly than any other practice, inducing
not indeed enmity or active animosity so much as
a callousness which views the misfortunes of others
with placid indifference. It is just this absorption
upon selfish ends in reference to incidents fraught
with emotional strain that is prone at once to
break down the wliole fabric of the moral character
and to dethrone the reason. For as man is only
moral and rational as a being who stands in orderly
relation to other similar beings in human society,
so a practice based on a virtual denial of this social
order is the arch-enemy of human personality : in-
stead of a man we have a self-absorbed emotionalist.
" In the making of a bet — a man resolves to repress
the use of his reason, his will, his conscience, his
affections ; only one part of his nature is allowed
free play, and that is his emotions." ^
The passion of gambling, once settled in a man,
seems to take physical root in him and to be almost
as difficult to expel as drink, opium, or any other
acquired physical vice. In extreme cases, it is
often held, gambling tends to absorb all other
interests, even swallowing up its associate vices.
This, however, is not the normal case. Gambling
commonly consorts with drink : gambling-houses are
commonly places for the sale of alcoholic liquors, and
wherever the law permits, or can be evaded, drink-
shops are betting haunts. Professional gamblers are
^ W. D. Mackenzie, The Ethics of Gambling, p. 64.
THE ETHICS OF GAMBLING 15
doubtless sober when they ply their craft, for skill
and cunning are requisite in most kinds of " mixed "
gambling : a broker " cornering " the market, like a
bookmaker handling a sudden shift in the odds, or
a card-sharper with suspicious dupes, needs to have
his wits about him. But it is not as gamblers but
as tricksters that these men need to be sober, and
as they require sobriety in themselves they desire
the opposite in their dupes. Hence, the business
of gambling is often done in an atmosphere of
alcohol. This is not, indeed, invariably the case.
The temperament of some people is so sanguine and
so prone to reckless play that no physical stinmlant
seems necessary. But in Northern European
peoples drink is usually necessary to induce that
instability of judgment and disregard of the future
which are conditions of gambling.
The statistics of crime prove beyond all cavil
that gambling is the king's highway to fraud and
theft. This is not merely because it loosens general
morality and in particular saps the rationale of pro-
perty, but because cheating is inseparably associated
with most actual modes of gambling. This does
not imply that most persons who bet are actually
cheats or thieves ; but persons who continue to be
cheated or robbed, half- conscious of the nature of
the operations, are fitting themselves for the other
and more profitable part if they are thrown in the
way of acquiring a sufficient quantity of evil skill
or opportunity. The " honour " of a confirmed
gambler, even in high life, is known to be a very
hollow commodity, and where there is less to lose
16 BETTING AND GAMBLING
in social esteem even this slender substitute for
virtue is absent. What percentage of " men who
bet " would refuse to utilise a secret tip of a
" scratched " favourite or the contents of an illegally
disclosed sporting telegram ? The barrier between
fraud and smartness does not exist for most of them.
Serious investigation of the gambling process
discloses the fact that pure gambling does not afford
any economic basis of livelihood, save in a few cases
where, as at the roulette-table or in a lottery, those
who gamble know and willingly accept the chances
against them. And even in the case of the roulette-
table the profits to the bank come largely from the
advantage which a large fund possesses in play
against a smaller fund : in the fluctuations of the
game the smaller fund which plays against the bank
is more likely at some point in the game to be
absorbed so as to disable the player from continuing
his play. If a man with £1000 were to play
", pitch and toss " for sovereigns with a number of
men, each of whom carried £10, he must, if they
played long, win all their money. So, even where
skill and fraud are absent, economic force is a large
factor in success.
Since professional gambling in a stockbroker, a
croupier, a bookmaker, or any other species, involves
some use of superior knowledge, trickery, or force,
which in its effect on the " chances " amounts to
"loading" the dice, the uon- professional gambler
necessarily finds himself a loser on any long series
of events. These losses are found in fact to be a
fruitful cause of crime, especially among men em-
THE ETHICS OF GAMBLING 17
ployed in businesses where sums of money belonging
to the firm are passing through their hands. It is
not difficult for a man who constantly has in his
possession considerable funds which he has collected
for his employer to persuade himself that a temporary
use of these funds, which otherwise lie idle, to help
him over a brief emergency, is not an act of real
dishonesty. He is commonly right in his plea that
he had no direct intention to defraud his employer.
He expected to be able to replace the sum before
its withdrawal was discovered. But since not only
legally but morally a person must be presumed to
" intend " that which is a natural or reasonable
result of his action, an indirect intention to defraud
must be ascribed to him. He is aware that he is
acting wrongly, as well as illegally, in using the
firm's money for any private purpose of his own.
But in understanding and assessing the quality of
guilt involved in such action, two circumstances
extenuating his act, though not the gambling habit
which has induced it, must be taken into account.
A poor man who frequently bets must sooner or
later be cleared out and unable, out of his own
resources, to meet his obligations. He is induced
to yield to the temptation the more readily for two
reasons. First, there is a genuine probability (not
so large, however, as he thinks) that he can replace
the money before any " harm is done." So long as
he does replace it, no harm appears to him to have
been done : the firm has lost nothing by his action.
This narrower circumstance of extenuation is sup-
ported by a broader one. The whole theory of
c
18 BETTING AND GAMBLING
modern commercial enterprise involves using other
people's money, getting the advantage of this use
for one's self and paying to the owner as little as
one can. A bank or a finance company is entrusted
with sums of money belonging to outsiders on con-
dition that when required, or upon agreed notice,
they shall be repaid. Any intelligent clerk in such
a firm may be well aware that the profits of the
firm are earned by a doubly speculative use of this
money which belongs to other people : it is employed
by the firm in speculative investments which do not
essentially differ from betting on the turf, and the
cash in hand or other available assets are kept at a
minimum on the speculative chance that depositors
will not seek to withdraw their money as they are
legally entitled to do. In a firm which thus lives
by speculating with other people's money, is it
surprising that a clerk should pursue what seems
to him substantially the same policy on a smaller
scale? It may doubtless be objected that a vital
difference exists in the two cases : the investor who
puts his money into the hands of a speculative
company does so knowingly and for some expected
profit ; the clerk who speculates with the firm's
money does so secretly, and no possible gain to the
firm balances the chance of loss. But even to this
objection it is possible to reply that the revelation
of modern finance in such cases as the Liberator
and the Globe Finance Companies shows that real
knowledge of the use to which money will be put
cannot be imputed to the investor in such com-
panies, and that, though some gain may possibly
THE ETHICS OF GAMBLING 19
accrue to him, such gain is essentially subsidiary
to the projects of the promoters and managers of
these companies.
It is true that these are not normal types of
modern business : they are commonly designated
gambling companies, some of them actually criminal
in their methods. But they only differ in degree,
not in kind, from a very large body of modern
businesses, whose operations are so highly specu-
lative, their risks so little understood by the in-
vesting public, and their profits apportioned with so
little regard to the body of shareholders, as fairly
to bring them under the same category. In a word,
secret gambling with other people's money, on the
general line of " heads I win, tails you lose," is so
largely prevalent in modern commerce as perceptibly
to taint the whole commercial atmosphere. Most
of these larger gambling operations are either not
illegal or cannot easily be reached by law, whereas
the minor delinquencies of fraudulent clerks and
other employees are more easily detected and
punished.
But, living in an atmosphere where secret specu-
lation with other people's money is so rife, where
deceit or force plays so large a part in determining
profitable coups, it is easy to understand how an
employee, whose conduct in most matters is deter-
mined by imitation, falls into lax ways of regarding
other people's money, and comes in an hour of
emergency to " borrow " the firm's money. This
does not excuse his crime, but it does throw light
upon its natural history.
20 BETTINa AND GAMBLING
Publicity and education are, of course, the chief
instruments for converting illegitimate into legiti-
mate speculation, for changing commercial gambling
into commercial foresight. This intelligent move-
ment towards a restoration of discernible order and
rationality in business processes, by eliminating
" chances " and placing the transfer of property
and the earning of industrial gains on a more
rational foundation, must, of course, go pari passu
with other movements of social and industrial re-
forms which aim simultaneously at the education of
individual personality and the reformation of the
economic environment. Every step which places
the attainment of property upon a sane rational
basis, associating it with proportionate personal
productive effort, every step which enables men
and women to find orderly interests in work and
leisure by gaining opportunities to express them-
selves in art or play under conditions which stimu-
late new human wants and supply means of satisfying
them, will make for the destruction of gambling.
THE EXTENT OF GAMBLING
By John Hawke
Growth of Betting
The most disquieting feature in the consideration of
the state of the country with regard to this habits
is its sprea d among the wac;e-earning class es. By
them it was little practised when itfirst~T)ecame
systematic in connection with horse-racing among
people of better means. Groups of the latter class
lost money and fortunes long before the fashion
took any general hold of very considerable numbers
of the aristocratic and wealthy classes. Betting -i
took place principally at the race meetings. There
were grand-stands upon some of the race-courses
many years before the close of the eighteenth cen-
tury, probably the largest being the one at Doncaster,
erected in 1779 at a cost of £7000. It was not
until ten years later that a regular market for
credit betting was established by the institution of
Tattersall's Subscription Eooms ; and, that the
original purpose of the grand-stand was only for
viewing the races, is made clear by the contem-
porary records. At Ascot Heath, a separate wooden
shed had to be used by those who wished to bet.
21
22 BETTING AND GAMBLING
Even as late as 1833, although the Epsom stand
was the largest in Europe, the betting market was
kept away elsewhere, upon the hill. Six years
later, complaints having been made of the betting
market being held in the grand-stand at Doncaster,
to the annoyance of the spectators, especially ladies,
arrangements were decided upon for the future to
form an enclosure for betting outside the stand.
Similar precautions had previously been taken at
Goodwood. Betting was transacted at Newmarket
at betting posts, where rings were formed on the
heath. Betting was also carried on away from the
courses at premises belonging to Tattersall's in Lon-
don (which, however, in 1839 consisted merely of
a small apartment, with only 300 members on the
books), and in the vicinity of the course at the
Newmarket Subscription Eooms, where there were
only 57 members, other than those belonging to
the Jockey Club. There were also special rooms
hired at Doncaster, York, and Liverpool for mem-
bers of either of the above clubs to bet in. A
chronicle informs us, in the reign of William the
Fourth, that although the number of spectators at
Newmarket seldom exceeded 500, mostly of the
highest classes, the majority on horseback, the turf
was becoming more popular in 1836 and the
attendances larger.
It will thus be understood that the general
public, for a long time entirely excluded from the
privileged betting circle, could only take part in
the business by the connivance of some of the pro-
fessional men having the entree. In 1849, how-
THE EXTENT OF GAMBLING 23
ever, the Newmarket authorities, seeing the feasi-
bility of largely adding to their funds, arranged that
a small subscription should confer temporary mem-
bership of the Newmarket Eooms. This caused
many complaints by the old habitues, and it was
found necessary, in view of the dubious standing of
some of the new-comers, to modify the credit
system, and to insist upon daily settlements. The
cash gaming of the race-course indulged in by the
great bulk of race-goers was not betting, but was
carried on by means of roulette -tables, lotteries,
sweepstakes, and other adjuncts of the gambling-
booth. The Select Committee of the House of Com-
mons (1844), in reporting against the miscellaneous
race-course gambling, clearly did not anticipate that
the grand -stands and enclosures would take the
place of these other methods, and become sources
of great profit as places used for gambling by bet-
ting, and that the abolition of booths would merely
result in the transfer of the gamblers to the en-
closures or rings, as may be seen by the following
paragraph from their report : —
Your Committee cannot consider the establishment
of gambling-booths on race-courses as in any way an
essential accompaniment to racing, and they feel that
they cannot too strongly express their opinion that all
such practices ought to be entirely and universally dis-
continued. If there is in any place a real demand for
races, money enough is sure to be subscribed for plates
and stakes to be run for, and if at any place sufficient
sums for these purposes cannot be raised without the
aid of gambling-booth rents, the races at such places had
much better be left off.
24 BETTING AND GAMBLING
Sixty years have gone by, and race -course pro-
prietors acknowledge that the loss of the present
gambliug-ring rents, or entrance fees, would put a
stop to three-fourths of the race meetings in the
kingdom.
Legislative enactments followed the Parlia-
mentary Eeports, and to a great extent swept away
the miscellaneous gambling, which was only to
make way, unhappily, for the more subtle form of
turf betting. For years before the middle of the
nineteenth century, many of the proprietors of
public-houses (or persons in collusion with them),
and of specially hired offices in the great towns,
had been in the habit of using their premises for
the purpose of accepting betting money, and, after
a time, relations were established between them
and some of the credit-betting professionals belong-
ing to the clubs and subscription rooms. This was
how betting by those away from the race-course
continued, and even increased in volume, notwith-
standing the effect of the Betting House Act in
1853, which, immediate as it was with regard to
these betting offices, was partially neutralised by
the change of location brought about when the
new railways were beginning to convey large num-
bers at a moderate expense to the course, and by
the laying on of the telegraph offering the means to
others of rapid communication with the betting men
at the race meetings, for gambling purposes, by those
unable to make the journey.
The time was one of transition, and legislators
appear to have overlooked the fact that the miscel-
THE EXTENT OF GAMBLING 25
laneous booth gambling having been previously
suppressed, their enactment putting an end to
ready-money betting establishments, then chiefly in
towns, would only result in their virtual transfer to
every race-course and so-called club. There had
been a great deal of irregular and surreptitious
cash betting upon the race-course, but it was not a
generally recognised system. It was one that had
gradually grown. The bookmaker with a satchel
taking money in advance and giving tickets, was
unknown on our race-courses in the forties. Later
on it was particularly recorded that at the Chester
Cup race of 1852, one large bookmaker took a great
many £5 notes, and the practice was then coming
into fashion. It was, however, to laxity in applying
the law that the ready-money, or deposit, system
owed its subsequent continuation and increase in
volume, for there is no doubt whatever that the
Act of 1853 was considered at that time to apply
to the evil in race-course enclosures as elsewhere,
A recognised contemporary authority wrote : " The
fatal facility induced by the open deposit system is
nipped in the bud " ; and another, " Cash betting
stopped upon the passing of the Act." The tempta-
tion, however, to race managers to wink at wholesale
infraction of the law was very great. Entrance fees
to the enclosures promised to become their financial
backbone, and to enable them to add enormously to
the value of the stakes and cups. And it was
found that to permit ready-money betting was to
turn a few score of entrance fees to the rings into
thousands. That the practice was even many years
26 BETTING AND GAMBLING
afterwards considered illegitimate is shown by the
Jockey Club notice in the Racing Calendar of
July 23, 1874, and the official notice at Good-
wood by the Duke of Richmond, "No ready-money
betting will be allowed upon any part of the course
or park," in the Calendar of the same date.
An Account of the Present Increase
Betting
It is not necessary to follow in any detail,
beyond this period, the growth of horse-racing, and
the practice of betting connected with it which had
now become a national foible. The foregoing sketch
was desirable for the understanding of the subject,
owing to the absence of any other authentic con-
tinuous record, and by the fact that the masses of
the nation had not become a gambling people as
compared with foreign populations, either in other
ways or in this, until long after the introduction of
the sport. The above review of the past takes us
up to the year mentioned (1874), when the failure
of a prosecution, owing to the interest or prejudice
of the Newmarket magistrates, for permitting ready-
money betting in the rings, finally opened the
fiood-gates of the system, which now, aided by
railway, telegraph, and press, spread over the
country in an ever -increasing volume, and from
tens of thousands of sources in city, town, and
village drew its main increment from the money-
making and wage -earning classes. Hardly any
]^ortion of the country, any section of the popula-
THE EXTENT OF GAMBLING 27
tioD, was free from the blight. The bookmakers
multiplied. The wealthy and the idle squandered
fortunes on them; the toilers brought their sovereigns
and half-crowns in myriads. A large portion of
the press battened upon the advertisements of
prosperous betting men. Servants of the state in
high legal positions, devotees of the race-course, and
others of subordinate station, gave decisions as to
the construction of the law so framed as to put no
check upon the spread of professional betting ; and
horse-racing became a trade instead of a sport.
The enormous money interests honeycombed it with
dishonesty. Sometimes owners, and more often
trainers, jockeys, touts, and betting men, arranged
which horse should win, according to the exigencies
of the betting market ; and, not unfrequently,
poison played its part when it was necessary, from
the trade point of view, to prevent an animal from
first passing the winning - post. The very atmo-
sphere of the turf was pestiferous ; it corrupted
everything of it and connected with it. The
pretence that it was any longer a noble sport was
only countenanced by the fashion of titled people
patronising it. The ancient plea as to its improv-
ing the breed of horses became a byword as the
number of yearling races increased and the length
of the courses was reduced. The pregnant sentence
in the Eeport of the old Committee (1844) of the
House of Lords was forgotten : " The Committee
would consider the advantages of horse-racing more
than problematical if they were to be unavoidably
purchased by excessive gambling and the vice and
28 BETTING AND GAMBLING
misery which it entails." The streams of small
bets swelled into rivers, and the rivers filled an
ocean swamping the land. The twenty or so book-
makers of the beginning of the century grew into
an army of twenty thousand. Many made fortunes;
nearly all made a living. Those who confined their
operations to the race-courses might be said to do
less harm than those who offered facilities away
from the course, only that they usually acted in
relation to these latter as the wholesale dealer does
for the retailer. One of these retail men who was
not given to boasting {Chamherss Journal, 1898)
admitted that his business had a turnover of
£250,000. It must be remembered that the
individuals in the streets are merely the journey-
men of well - to - do bookmakers. During last
year, amongst the many thousands of fines for the
offence, evidence was given — and there are scores
of similar cases — that a lad of 16 was one of
several servants of a master bookmaker, who
mapped out the district amongst his subordinates.
From unofficial but perfectly reliable sources,
hundreds of items of information quite as striking
as the above could be given, but they are unneces-
sary in view of the statements of officials and
others made before the Select Committee of the
House of Lords (1901-2). Briefly summarised,
the evidence showed that the practice of betting
had grown to such an extent amongst the working
classes that it was quite commonly carried on in
factories and workshops by agents of the book-
makers, and outside of them by the street betting
THE EXTENT OF GAMBLING 29
men. In speaking of the former method, one of
many testimonies was given by the Lord Provost
of Glasgow, who said that betting was carried on
to an enormous extent in the great workshops
there ; while an idea of the latter can be obtained
from Police Superintendent Shannon's statement that
in Lambeth alone 441 persons had been proceeded
against in the previous year, the fines amounting
to £2000. The evidence proved also that it was
not confined to men, but had spread to women and
children ; that it caused the neglect of wives and
children, disregard for parents, and carelessness and
indifference in their occupations, frequently result-
ing in embezzlement from their employers ; that