Gamblers and Gambling.

REV. H. O. BREEDEN, LL.D., Editor Christian Worker, Des Moines, Iowa.

HE spirit of gambling, like the terrible breath of a noisoma

pestilence, pervades society. It is the blighting curse of modern American life even as it was the bane of English society in its halcyon days. Charles James Fox, and even Wilberforce, did not escape it. From the palatial mansion of the wealthy gambler in the chamber of commerce, to the thoughtless if not unprincipled young man that throws dice at the cigar counter; from the "bookmaker" at the fashionable club race track, to the ragged, smutty urchin who flips coppers in a back alley, the gambling spirit is the same, and the gamblers are identical, save in raiment and acumen, unless, indeed, we attribute to the first mentioned, a much larger degree of moral turpitude.

The genus gambler is a hydra-headed monster. In his vulgar trappings, he is the common "three card monte man who traps the unwary at county fairs, or on railway trains; or the roulette and faro manipulator in gilded dens whom everybody looks upon as a dangerous foe to society, and a dethroner of morality. He appears to be what he is, and is what he appears to be. The professional gambler is under the ban of society. He receives no sympathy from the community. His gambling is not respectable; it is outlawed. His work has its penalty.

But the gambler presents another head. He is not now the ignoble, "outlawed professional," but the "speculator in commerce." He is clothed in "purple and fine linen." The ordinary gambler, who advertises his profession, is put off the

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'smoker," while the gambler in stocks and grain rides on a pass in a Pullman palace car. Justice is blindfold when the "monte man" is before her. His offense is indictable; but when the board of trade "angel" appears, she lifts the blind, sees who it is, and lets him pass.

The common gambler observes a strict code of honor that spurns the use of "loaded dice," but the commercial gambler congratulates himself on shrewdness in receiving "points" that enable him to "corner" the market on breadstuffs.

But the monster exhibits another head, and now he is a "pool gambler." He is an accessory of the race course and the baseball diamond, since these offer an arena for his cupidity and love of excitement. Last year he paid one hundred and seventyfive thousand dollars for the "exclusive" bookmaking privilege at the Washington Park races in Chicago. The race track and its adjunct, the city pool room, is probably the second most formidable and dangerous institution in America to-day. Its legitimate offsprings are deceit, concealment, forgery, embezzlement, and theft. Young men steal their employers' money to bet on the races; young girls sell their virtue for money to wager and for "tips." Married women leave their families and rob their husbands at the bidding of the "pool." It is a veritable "Pandora's box, from which issue all moral evils and social disasters, only hope is not in the box."

Still another form of the gambler appears, this time in the drawing room, arrayed in richest gowns, cut décolleté and bedecked with jewels or clad in evening "full dress." He is now the society gambler. Cards, notwithstanding their bad history and evil associations, are his instruments. Progressive euchre and sometimes poker are his games. It is not money he seeks now, but excitement and the indulgence of a passion. The prizes are offered only to add spice to the diversion, just as opium in the cigarette, or the salacious and libidinous in the modern theatrical performance, -"the spice of hell." Sometimes he tries to hoodwink the uninitiated into believing that playing for "prizes" is not gambling. But the strongest moral

microscope ever known, will fail to discover the least difference between them. In the drawing room, at the fashionable evening party, a young man receives his initial lessons, and a passion is called forth and developed which demands gratification. Indulge it he must even though it takes him among vilest associates and into most disreputable places. The downfall and utter ruin of many an otherwise noble young man dates its beginning from the decisive hour when he was seduced by the mistress of some elegant home into playing progressive euchre in the social circle.

But the gambler sometimes enters the sacred portals of the church, clothed as an "angel of light," and opens up his paraphernalia at the church fair or bazar, directing a "raffle" or organizing a "lottery." He often deceives the “ "very elect" with the specious plea that the end sanctifies the means, and the holy place transforms the "creature." A hog, of animals most unclean to a Mohammedan, strayed into a mosque and polluted the temple, driving the priests almost wild with consternation. But one, shrewder than the rest, solved the difficulty on the spot. The temple was so holy that when the hog crossed its threshold it was transformed into a pure and innocent lamb. Even so the animal they call a "tiger," in his lair down in the tough district of the city, undergoes a radical if not "miraculous" change and becomes a sportive, stainless lamb, "when Mary leads it into the church."

The church that tolerates, for the sake of filling its coffers with dishonorable dollars, the unhallowed methods of the lottery and raffle, deserves the curse of God and man. It is an ecciesiastical gambling den and ought to be dealt with as such. It is more "a school of vice, and instructor of incipient gamblers, an apologist for immorality," than a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Gambling is associated with and followed by a whole brood of dire evils and flaunting vices. It provokes the thirst for strong drink. The terrible reaction of an exciting "winning," or a destructive and heavy "loss," calls for a stimulant; this

enemy in the mouth" not only dissipates depression, but "steals away the brains," and goads its unreasoning victim to return to the gaming table. It not only calls for stimulants but entraps its victims in other meshes. The gambling hell and the variety theater are mutual supports. The saloon, the "tiger's lair," and the brothel constitute the devil's vile trinity of breeding and nesting holes of sin and vice in protean forms. Gambling is not only a menace to, but a withering blight upon, the home. When it becomes a rooted passion in the heart, there is no room for the flowers of domestic joy and peace. The "fires of all the finer feelings become embers" upon the hearthstone of the home which contains a devotee of the "black art."

It has been said that a woman can forgive her husband a hundred libations on the altar of the jolly Bacchus or the blind god of fortune with vastly more ease than one foul sacrifice at the polluted shrine of lustful Venus. But women should understand that in seven cases out of ten, virtue is first dethroned, the will made weak, and passion strong by slavery to gambling and drink. Why is it that gambling has obtained such a foothold in American life and flourishes almost unhindered, in its terrible sway from palace to hovel, from plutocrat to pauper? Because nearly everybody believes in it. It is certainly within bounds to say that the real root of the difficulty in suppressing this evil is that a great many people in our best society and in our churches are not convinced that there is anything really wrong in gambling. They ask, "Is it not lawful for me to do whatsoever I will with my own?" The answer from a moral standpoint should be most emphatically "No." In small matters as in great, a man is only a trustee of the property he calls his own, and his title is only valid when he uses it equally for his own good and that of his fellow man. He is not at liberty to appropriate his own property to useless and malevolent ends, to waste it foolishly, much less to use it for promoting vice. No man has a natural right to stake one penny upon a game of chance, no more than he has the right to take the loaf of bread which at the time he does not want, and tread it in the mire in

the presence of a hungry child. But gambling is intrinsically evil and only evil. The indictment against it is fourfold.

First-It fosters belief in luck and chance and superstition. It offers a premium upon witchcraft and voodooism.

Second-It insults labor and destroys motives to honest industry. The young man who won one hundred dollars on the races by risking only one dollar, or the servant girl who drew fifty dollars by a lottery ticket for which she paid but fifty cents, are both now thoroughly disgusted with the slow and conservative but honest methods of earning a living. "Why work like a slave for fifty dollars or twenty dollars per month when one can win twice that sum in an afternoon?" The first winning of a young man constitutes the most unfortunate event in life, for it weakens all laudable ambition to achieve success on skill, merit, and economy as a business man. It begins in a desperate attempt to get something for nothing, and usually results in getting nothing for something.

Third-It corrupts the whole manhood, and prostitutes the noblest faculties of the soul to basest uses. Its poison is insidious.

Once in the system, like malaria, it chills and fevers and unfits for life and shatters the constitution. It begins by demoralizing the powers of application. It then spoils men for the plain duties and rational enjoyments of everyday life. It blunts the sense of right, until the gambler comes to regard the most sacred things, even the manhood of man, and the virtue of woman, as purchasable. It feeds the passion for nervous excitement by bringing together the greatest number of demoralizing stimulants. These are intensified as the stakes increase, and the habit grows until a desperate mania, or a horrible insanity, robs character of purpose, piety, and purity, and brings the end of a blasted life.

It is the unanimous testimony of ministers of the gospel that it is far more difficult to lead a man who has become infatuated with the gambling mania to a life of uprightness and virtue than to lead a drunkard from his cups.