The enduring dilemma of chance: Vice, social control, and the persistence of the gambling impulse

“ We don’t think gambling will ever be eliminated. We don’t think the public wants it to be. It is a human appetite, like sex and liquor, and no sumptuary legislation can wipe it out. But gambling corrupts law enforcement officers. While wagering is illegal and undercover, this is inevitable. When cops take bribes from bookmakers they feel they do no essential harm. ”

“ The pages of history are dotted with evidences of gambling in every age. Gambling has passed through a million forms. In our present day life it is looked upon by the general public as a sport.
It is the purpose here not to dissertate on gambling as a moral and commercial evil alone, but to show that it is nothing today but another asset of the Vice Trust, stolen out of the not too plethoric pocket of the sucker public. ”

“ The futile and ineffectual results which, during the last two hundred years, have invariably followed all drastic repression, are clearly demonstrated by hard facts; at the present time speculation, gambling, and betting all flourish as they never flourished before.
In open combat, the strong arm of the law is resistless; but there is no possibility of its ultimate triumph or power of eradicating the desire of gaming from the human mind ”

“ Thus gambling, wagering, and all gambling and wagering contracts and transactions are illegal as against public policy, since they are repugnant to the well-being of society, fraught with vice, pregnant with demoralization, and corrupting alike to the youth and to the aged, as they inspire a hope of reward without labor. ”

“ The word “game” (q.v.) is applicable to most pastimes and many sports, irrespective of their lawful or unlawful character. “Gaming” is now always associated with the staking of money or money’s worth on the result of a game of pure chance, or mixed skill and chance; and “gambling” has the same meaning, with a suggestion that the stakes are excessive or the practice otherwise reprehensible, while “wager” and “wagering” are applied to money hazarded on any contingency in which the person wagering has no interest at risk other than the amount at stake. ”

“ In England, so far as the general public is concerned, gaming at cards is to a large extent superseded by betting on sports and pastimes, or speculation by means of lotteries or like devices. The legislation against betting eo nomine began in 1853. In the Betting Act 1853 it is described as a kind of gaming of late sprung up to the injury and demoralization of improvident persons by the opening of places called betting houses and offices, and the receiving of money in advance by the owners or occupiers or their agents on promises to pay money on events or horse races and like contingencies. ”

“ 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 non-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 employed [17] in businesses where sums of money belonging to the firm are passing through their hands. ”

“ We have confined our people in the dark, and they are gambling to break the tedium.
Consequently, when we consider the responsibilities of citizenship for the spread of the gambling disease with a view to devising some cure, we shall have to begin by assuming that prohibitive Acts will not carry us very far. We can stop bookmakers or their agents receiving bets in the public streets or any public place; we can turn them off race-courses and refuse to recognise any enclosure as sanctuary. ”

“ Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon mere hazard. The husbandman renders produce for his gains; the mechanic renders the product of labor and skill for his gains; the gambler renders for his gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, downright cheating. Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. ”

“ But a distinction in principle must be made between gambling and legitimate risk-taking. The chances enumerated above are not sought, but avoided as far as possible; yet they must be borne by some one if productive enterprise is to continue, and the burden must somehow be distributed throughout the community. Gambling is, however, a kind of risk-taking which has a very different economic and moral quality. ”

“ Gambling creates the hazard, making the gain or loss of income depend on an event that is not a necessary part of productive enterprise. Typical gambling is the transfer of wealth on the outcome of events absolutely unpredictable, so far as the two gamblers are concerned. Examples are the shaking of unloaded dice or the honest dealing of a pack of cards, and the betting on prices in so-called "bucket-shops" by persons having no connection with the market of real things, and seeking to get something for nothing as a result of mere chance. ”

“ It is the endeavor to get money by dispensing with labor, to make it without honestly working for it. It entails widespread ruin and degradation. Its consequences are often of the most appalling character. When the gambling spirit is once aroused, like drunkenness, it becomes an overpowering appetite, which the victim becomes almost powerless to resist. Gambling is in itself evil, apart from its deadly effects. (a) It proposes to confer gain without merit, and to reward those who do not deserve a reward, (b) It proposes to benefit us while injuring our neighbor. ”

“ It is not, for instance, true that skill, judgment, or self-command is of the least assistance at the roulette-table or at rouge-et-noir. The fact that these qualities are so commonly regarded as serviceable to the player may be cited as a conspicuous evidence of the derationalising influence of gambling even in the case of those who do not gamble. For in reality they are only useful in proportion as the game is not pure gambling.
The curious cunning expended in devising [8] “systems” and the attention to multifarious incidents of “luck” indicate a genuine inhibition of the reasoning faculty. ”

“ Any system may win for a time, but all must lose eventually. In a game of pure chance, luck is everything; and in the long run that must equalize itself. In the meantime the bank is gaining a certain steady profit, and the maximum stake is placed so low as to prevent any extraordinary event from inflicting a serious loss upon it. I have discovered that I am no gambler, since I do not care to play unless I think I have a certainty of winning. I can quite understand any one being interested in constructing various systems to play by until the discovery comes that none are infallible. ”

“ It does not so manifestly sin against the canons of justice as do other bad modes of transfer,—theft, fraud, sweating,—for every one is said to have an equal chance; but it inflicts a graver damage on the intellect. Based as it is on an organised rejection of all reason as a factor, it removes its devotees into a positive atmosphere of miracles, and generates an emotional excitement that inhibits those checks which reason more or less contrives to place upon emotional extravagances. The essence of gambling consists in an abandonment of reason, an inhibition of the factors of human control. ”

“ Card Playing.—The old-time absurdity of making certain games illegal, because they were the ones chiefly used as vehicles for gambling and left little room for skill, seems to have resulted in throwing upon the Courts the difficult task of deciding what other games come near enough to this class to share their disabilities, and to have culminated in shaping the law in a direction very unfortunate for public morality, so as to present a modicum of skill as a sufficient leaven to create immunity for a very large element of chance. ”

“ This last fact is generally recognised: all gamesters denounce betting on “certainties.” Again, both on the turf and the stock exchange chance may be reduced or even eliminated by an actual manipulation of the forces so as to yield a result favourable to the interests of some of those who pose as gamblers. But when the result supposed to rest on chance is known or controlled by any sort of skill, fraud, or force, the case is not one of pure gambling; for though it is a matter of significance that gambling commonly keeps company with cheating, the latter is not gambling. ”

“ He has the servants, or steward, or some partner, in league with him, to fleece every unwary player whom he inveigles to a game. He deals falsely; heats his dupe to madness by drink, drinking none himself; watches the signal of his accomplice telegraphing his opponent's hand; at a stray look, he will slip your money off and steal it. To cover false playing, or to get rid of paying [Pg 15] losses, he will lie fiercely, and swear uproariously, and break up the play to fight with knife or pistol—first scraping the table of every penny. ”

“ In seeking remedies for the acknowledged national evils of betting and gambling, it will be well to consider what are the causes that have probably chiefly contributed to the present deplorable state of things.
Amongst the wealthy or well-to-do there can be little doubt that (a) the thoughtless following of fashion, (b) the desire for excitement and a sense of “life,” and (c) the craving for gain without labour, are the main incentives to gambling practices. ”

“ Educationalists and other reformers who would exorcise the gambling habit must look deeper for its origin and early sustenance. The fevered excitement of the gambler is part of an exaggerated reaction against certain excesses of orderly routine imposed upon the life in which he lives. The dull, prolonged monotony of uninteresting drudgery which constitutes the normal workaday life of large masses of people drives them to sensational reactions which are crude and violent. ”

“ And yet avarice enters into the gambler’s character. The pleasure of possessing does not explain it, because if every gambler were to be made as rich as Crœsus he would gamble the more. I am inclined to believe that the workman gambles to charm ennui away from his doorstep, and having begun he goes on partly in the hope that he will recoup himself for his losses, partly to continue keeping ennui away. Roughly, the same motives influence the other gambling class—the clerks and the other wage receivers who would fain believe that they are paid “salaries.” ”

“ The gambling disease is marked by a moral and intellectual unsettlement, by an impatience with the slow processes of legitimate accumulation, by a revolt against the discipline of steady growth and sustained action. The gambler lives in a state of unnatural strain. Like an insane person, he stands on the threshold of a grandiose world the high lights of which throw the sober realities of the real into shadow. Moreover, his vice develops the self-regarding instincts into hideous and criminal proportions. What is all this but saying that it cuts away the roots of good citizenship. ”

“ A gambling mechanic finds his labor less relishful as his passion for play increases. He grows unsteady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to promises; what he performs he slights. Little jobs seem little enough; he desires immense contracts, whose uncertainty has much the excitement of gambling—and for the best of reasons; and in the pursuit of great and sudden profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin, leaving all who employed or trusted him in the rubbish of his speculations.
A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his profession, will court its exciting duties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys the industry—for no man will drudge for cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred; or practise a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indifference, he makes or loses five hundred in a night.
II. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits and affections. Home is a prison to an inveterate gambler; there is no air there that he can breathe. ”

“ A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated avaricious selfishness. ”

“ We have chiefly 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. ”

“ It may also strike them that the gambling laws may be reasonably amended in such a way as to make betting profitable to the State, as it is now in almost every other country in Europe, as well as in the Colonies, and at the same time to do away with the evil and temptation which besets the working man in what is termed street betting.
To abolish betting altogether, as some faddists would have you attempt, is known by all practical people to be impossible. ”

“ The gambler avoids, as a rule, the named illegal games and turns to others. Blackstone remarks upon his infinite shifts and the varieties of his expedients, so that to pass laws especially applying to some games only merely drives him into other courses.
The true principle is that no game in itself is illegal, but that the gambling upon it may be. While the present laws make special regulations and enforce specific penalties upon certain games, others which may easily be as noxious cannot be dealt with. ”

“ Open gambling has been placed under the ban of civic reform. While the policy shop, the lottery and other less dangerous methods of swindling have been effectively stamped out of most cities, the "bucket shop tiger" continues to rend the ambitions of young and old, dragging them down to forgery, embezzlement, suicide,—or that which is quite as bad,—broken spirit for legitimate endeavor. Under the circumstances the sympathy of the public should be with the movement to drive "bucket shops" out of business, to close them along with all other gambling institutions. ”

“ In the next town, possibly only a few miles off, the other extreme will prevail: gambling dens and saloons, although both illegal by the laws of the State, will be allowed to carry on their business unmolested by the police, on the payment of regular monthly fines; there will be a quarter of legalised ill-fame, as in any Japanese city, and public women will be inspected and certificated as in Paris. ”

“ Another magistrate giving evidence before the same committee, said, “It is a scandal to the Government, thus to excite people to practise the vice of gaming for the purpose of drawing a revenue from their ruin. It is an anomalous proceeding by law to declare gambling infamous; to hunt out petty gamblers in their recesses, and cast them into prison; and by law also to set up the giant gambling of the State Lottery, and encourage persons to resort to it by the most captivating devices which ingenuity uncontrolled by moral rectitude can invent.” ”

“ The very nature of that system of gambling called stock-market or cotton or produce exchange speculation showed at once the sharply- defined disparities and discriminations in law.
Common gambling, so-called, was a crime. The gambling of the exchanges was legitimate and legalized, and the men who thus gambled with the resources of the nation were esteemed as highly respectable and responsible leaders of the community. For a penniless man to sell anything he did not own, or which was not in existence, was held a heinous crime and was severely punished by a long prison term. ”

“ It is a wholly different thing to hold that Congress, which cannot constitutionally grapple directly with gambling in the States, may compel self-incriminating disclosures for the enforcement of State gambling laws, merely because it does so under the guise of a revenue measure obviously passed not for revenue purposes. ”

“ I made a bet, lost it, got stuck, and feverishly played in my last dollar.
This gambling habit is the curse of a thief’s life. He loses his last dime and is forced to go out in haste for more money. Like a mechanic broke and out of a job, he takes the first one in sight. He has no time to pick and choose, or calculate carefully what he is about; he must eat, and the minute he goes broke he gets hungry. Gambling keeps him broke, forces him to steal small money on short notice and take prohibitive and unnatural chances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ OPINIONS OF EMINENT MEN ON BETTING AND GAMBLING
The late Chief-Justice Russell.—“Street betting is a most undesirable practice. A state of things exists which, if it can be stopped, ought to be stopped.”
Mr. Justice Wills.—“When I first came upon the Bench I used to think drink was the most fruitful cause of crime, but it is now a question whether the unlimited facilities for illegitimate speculation on the part of people who have no means of embarking on it are not a more prevalent source of mischief and crime even than drink.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ Professional betting is not confined to horse-racing. Lists are habitually issued in connection with other sports, particularly football. It is gambling which causes the rush for the football editions of the halfpenny journals, and, notwithstanding the efforts made by some of its principal patrons, leading officials of the football world have been found taking part in the disreputable gambling arrangements of sporting newspapers. There are numerous instances in athletics, such as foot-racing, of the proceedings being reduced to a farce by the bookmakers, who controlled the runners ”

“ The temperament of some people is so sanguine and so prone to reckless play that no physical stimulant 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 property, but because cheating is inseparably associated with most actual modes of gambling. ”

“ When the double fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are the more noticeable because exceptions.
V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevitable cause of dishonesty. Robbers have robbers' honor; thieves have thieves' law; and pirates conform to pirates' regulations. But where is there a gambler's code? One law there is, and this is not universal, pay your gambling debts. But on the wide question, how is it fair to win—what law is there? What will shut a man out from a gambler's club? ”

“ In conclusion it may be remarked that gambling is not the only offence of the gambler against public morals. Many of them shun drink, and only indulge in occasional excesses in this direction, but all of them, without exception, are frequenters of immoral houses. When a gambler makes a haul his first impulse is to repair to the bagnio, where he finds creatures who will welcome him when he is flush. The debasing nature of gaming is shown in the one fact that the money won is largely spent in the indulgence of guilty pleasures. ”

“ It degrades the mind, it demoralises the whole moral being, and, if not renounced, means everlasting ruin.
This is no time for smooth words. Gambling is a growing evil in the land. Women and children, as well as men, have become entangled within its meshes, and are being dragged down to perdition. ”

“ Though the transfer of property by gambling not merely feeds the passion but imports grave moral injuries of its own, it cannot be said to originate gambling or to [10] be essential to the play of the interest in chance or hazard. The folly and the social injury of gambling grow with the proportion of the stakes ”

“ Although the Committee do not look upon betting as a crime in itself, they yet deplore the spread of a practice which, when carried to excess, they consider opposed to the true interests of sport, injurious to the general community, and apt to degenerate into one of the worst and most mischievous forms of gambling.
5. The Committee consider that the increased prevalence of betting throughout the country is largely due to the great facilities afforded by the press, and to the inducements to bet offered by means of bookmakers’ circulars and tipsters’ advertisements. ”

“ If the player dropped any sum, from five cents to twenty-five cents, into the slot, he stood a chance to win about ten times as much as he put in, and the prospect of such a huge percentage upon a small investment fascinated poor people and boys and girls alike. One boy was known to have lost as much as three hundred and fifty dollars in a week through this form of gambling, having resorted to theft in order to obtain the wherewithal to gamble. ”

“ The debate over Internet gambling has generated strong public interest. While most types of Internet gambling are prohibited under federal law, many sites are based in foreign countries and have fallen outside the jurisdiction of American enforcement agencies. Because of the largely unregulated nature of this business, however, sites often fail to block access to children and lack effective safeguards against fraud. Internet gambling can be addictive, and this addiction has hurt many people and their families. ”

“ Last year, a record 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, ripping a hole in families across every community in the Nation. More than a thousand of those who died were teenagers—sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and friends who still had their whole lives ahead of them. We cannot let that continue. My Administration is drawing on evidence-based strategies to prevent substance use and to intervene early so we can help keep America’s young people healthy and safe. ”

“ Drug and alcohol abuse in America annually create staggering societal costs and prevent millions of people from reaching their full potential at school, on the job, and in their communities. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that approximately 14 million Americans use illegal drugs and 17 million Americans are alcoholics or abusers of alcohol. To improve the well-being of our Nation and to protect our people, we must continue to make the prevention and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse a national priority. ”

“ Alcohol and drug abuse disrupts families, threatens the safety of our neighborhoods, and ruins the lives of countless men, women, and youth. During National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, we recognize the damaging effects of substance abuse and renew our support for individuals battling to overcome addiction. The theme for 2006, "Join the Voices for Recovery: Build a Stronger, Healthier Community," urges all Americans to help prevent alcohol and drug abuse and to promote treatment and recovery options. ”

“ New data show that illicit drug use amongst young people continues to decline, and that we are making good progress in our efforts to help thousands of Americans renew their health and hope.
Substance abuse is a serious challenge for our Nation. Addiction breaks hearts, destroys families, and keeps our citizens from fulfilling their God-given potential. The drug trade also enriches our enemies and brings crime and violence to our streets. ”

“ The most effective way, however, to reduce the cycle of youth drug addiction and the crime it causes is to reduce demand. This effort begins at home; and it depends upon the active participation of families, schools, and community organizations in education and outreach programs that clearly communicate to children the dangers inherent in drug and alcohol abuse. ”

“ We want them to get the help they need. We have no choice but to help these people that are hooked and are suffering so they can recover and rebuild their lives with their families.
We’re committed to pursuing innovative approaches that have been proven to work, like drug courts. Our efforts will be based on sound metrics, and guided by evidence and guided by results. This includes making addiction treatment available to those in prison and to help them eventually reenter society as productive and law-abiding citizens. ”

“ We must and are focusing so much of our effort on drug demand reduction. We must confront the culture of drug abuse head-on to reduce demand for dangerous narcotics. Every person who buys illicit drugs here in America should know that they are risking their futures, their families, and even their lives. And every American should know that if they purchase illegal drugs, they are helping to finance some of the most violent, cruel, and ruthless organizations anywhere in the world. Illegal drug use is not a victimless crime. ”

“ Cut off the gambler’s nose and ears, hold up his name to public contempt, and drive him out of the country, that he may thus become an example to others. For they who play must more often lose than win; and losing, they must either pay or not pay. In the latter case they forfeit caste, in the former they utterly reduce themselves. And though a gambler’s wife and children are in the house, do not consider them to be so, since it is not known when they will be lost. ”

“ I might emphasize the fact that gambling in stocks and farm products often leads to embezzlement, larceny and suicide, for these are the fruits of speculation when it becomes a disease. But I prefer to put my argument against gambling upon the broader ground that it is, in all cases, a demoralizing influence, whether the gambler wins or loses. ”

“ The unsuccessful gambler is one of the worst of wrecks. He runs his little course of dissipation, dishonesty, cheating and swindling. He is over-matched and eliminated by the bigger, keener, self-controlled gambler, who eats him up as the big spider eats up the little spider. Hanging around saloons, [Pg 360] begging for a little money with which to bet, doing the dirty work of the bigger gamblers—that is the fate of the little gambling cast-off. ”

“ We join all Americans in saying that we will no longer tolerate the destructive impact that drug and alcohol abuse have had on our homes, schools, workplaces, and highways. With strong resolve and creative leadership, we can protect our communities from the preventable dangers of substance abuse and restore dignity and character to millions of men, women, and children who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. ”