Lotteries and Bettin0.
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THAT the gambling habit is increasing and that it is having a profoundly demoralizing effect on the character of the nation is admitted in the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Lotteries and Betting. But it rightly recognizes that the field of ethics is not coextensive with that of the criminal law, and therefore concludes that the State cannot attempt to interfere with private gambling between individuals, and should confine its energies to prohibiting or restricting such " facilities for organized or professional gambling as can be shown to have serious social consequences." It should be said at once and emphatically that if the Commissioners, proceeding along these restricted lines, had fearlessly arrived at the logical conclusion, they would have been compelled to recommend restrictions far more drastic than those which appear in their pages. In their failure to do so, and in seeking refuge in one compromise—we had almost written " subterfuge "—after another, we cannot altogether blame them. There are many organized facilities for betting, having " serious social consequences," Which they obviously dare not touch because they are up against entrenched vested interests supported by a formidable mass of public opinion. In other cases they • shrink from prohibitions which could not be enforced and would lead--like Prohibition in America—to criminal defiance of the law. And in yet other cases they are driven into compromises and inconsistencies through a very natural dread of class legislation. If the greater part of this Report seems like a prolonged series of concessions to those whose business it is to "-exploit the gambling propensity," it is only fair to recognize that it cannot be expected to advocate far-reaching reforms for which public opinion is not ready.
There can be no two instructed opinions about the evil of ready-money street betting. The ubiquitous agents of the bookmakers who take up their positions at street corners in working-class quarters, or receive the bets of men, women and children inside factories and shops, are the means of spreading the gambling habit throughout all industrial areas. Here the Commission is confronted with the difficulty of enforcing the law. But could • it not be enforced if adequate powers were given to proceed rigorously against the root offenders, the book- makers, rather than against their unfortunate agents ? The answer could only be " Yes " on one condition—if public opinion were satisfied by the removal of the glaring class discrepancy involved in allowing facilities for credit betting to the rich and refusing facilities for ready- money betting t the poor. Public opinion would never permit. full enforcement of the law unless credit betting were also prohibited. But the Commission does not even contemplate such a change.
What then is the result ? The class discrepancy in the law which drives betting underground must be eliminated in one way if not in another ; and the authors of the Report, who refuse to permit off-the-course betting through the totalisator chiefly on the ground that it constitutes " a new betting facility different in type from any previously provided," proceed with a remarkable contempt for consistency to provide a new facility for the working classes, in the form of postal cash betting with registered bookmakers. And yet, granted a system which ex hypothesi rests upon certain concessions to organized betting, it is difficult to object strongly to this further extension, if it is true, as some members of the Commission claim, that it would discourage the worse evil of street-betting. But a majority of the Commission are not satisfied that it would, and therefore propose to legalize, not merely postal cash betting, but the deposit of bets in letter-boxes attached to the bookmaker's offices. It is scarcely imaginable that Parliament would sanction the provision of such a blatant invitation to gambling as the establishment in full view of the public of boxes bearing a " clear indication" that they are " authorized for the receipt of bets." We may picture the queue outside the bookmaker's office successfully competing with the queue outside the Labour Exchange. The remedy recommended for illegal street betting is to make legal cash betting easy and conspicuous.
It is equally difficult to understand the principle applied in the Report when it deals with on-the-course betting. Here the problem is mainly that of the new greyhound racing tracks established in industrial areas all over the country, providing continuous opportunities for betting, five, six or even seven times a week. The Commission fully appreciates the seriousness of the social evil which has thus been created, and notes the distinction between horse race courses where there are comparatively few meetings in the year and grey- hound racing courses with 800 meetings in the year. What could be more easy than to prohibit betting altogether in these parvenu institutions most of which exist in the interests of betting alone and have behind them no traditions of sport ? But the evil which the Commission thinks it wrong to permit on 800 days in a year it thinks it right to tolerate on 100 days in a year. Such is the kind of compromise in which inquirers become involved after prolonged research into the nature of British gambling.
There are many useful recommendations in regard to conditions which should be imposed on bookmakers and on the authorities responsible for racecourses or for betting at racecourses. But there is only one series of proposals in which the Commission lays aside its timidity and proposes reforms commensurate with the problem; We refer to its recommendations in regard to large public lotteries and to newspaper corn- lions. There can be no doubt that such events as the Irish sweepstakes, the first eight of which have drawn from Great Britain alone no less than £18,500,000, owe their vogue almost entirely to the publicity given in the Press. The remedy is simple. Little as we like interference with the legitimate liberty of the Press there are certain abuses of that liberty—as in the ease of reports of divorce proceedings—where the State may properly be called on to intervene. To promote the sale of sweepstake tickets by newspaper publicity is peculiarly offensive because it promotes actions that are illegal, and every argument that can be used for the suppression of divorce court reports applies a fortiori to news about foreign lotteries. Such news—subject to certain rather vague provisos—the Commission would prohibit absolutely.
The recommendation is bold and sensible. Equally wise is the proposal to illegalize newspaper competitions offering prizes for forecasts of sporting results, and to limit the amounts of prizes which may be offered in other newspaper competitions. Many newspapers through the necessity of keeping pace with less scrupulous rivals, are unwillingly drawn into practices which feed the gambling impulse and have nothing whatever to do with their proper journalistic functions. To prohibit these abuses of the power of the Press is not to interfere with its true liberty ; it is to take action against " organized exploitation of the gambling propensity."
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