INTRODUCTION.
I am intensely interested in Mr. John Philip Quinn’s book on Gambling. I met Mr. Quinn several years ago in St. Louis. I became convinced that this book is the fruit of an earnest purpose to set before the young men of this country the radical evils which so closely cling to the gambling habit. I was especially pleased with the practical notions which Mr. Quinn entertained respecting the wisest methods of reaching and eradicating the evil. While he is himself convinced of the immorality of gambling, he is conscious that the mere presentation of the moral aspect of the vice will do little to arrest its growth in American society. For the social gambler appeals to the theory of the absolute right of the individual to dispose of his own property as he sees fit. Such a man says: “Have I not just as much moral right to stake my money on the turn of a card, as I have to use it in any other form of harmless enjoyment?” This argument will be effective and even conclusive so long as society entertains its present loose notions respecting the obligations of wealth. But Mr. Quinn approaches the matter from another side. He shows the evil and disreputable associations into which the gambler is inevitably thrown. He speaks of the reckless use of money which the gambling habit engenders, and shows how helpless the average business man really is in the hands of the professional gambler. I claim to be a man of fair intelligence, and yet I felt intellectually humiliated when Mr. Quinn demonstrated to me, how easily I might be tricked out of my money, by the shallow devices to which he says the ordinary gambler resorts when he cannot rely upon what he calls “luck.” For illustration, he showed me what appeared to be an ordinary pack of cards, but by the simplest method in the world these cards had been so changed that he was able to tell the denomination of every card by glancing at the back. Of course the social gambler always asserts that he “plays with gentlemen,” but the easiness of cheating offers a constant temptation on the part of gentlemen, who are pressed in money matters, to resort to this method of relieving themselves of their financial embarrassments.
I am convinced, then, that Mr. Quinn’s book will be of the utmost value among the young people of this country. I am sure that the gambling habit is doing more to undermine the character of our young men than any form of vice in which they are likely to fall. The drinking habit has been measurably controlled. Drunkenness has grown to be disreputable. But in thousands of respectable, cultivated and virtuous households, in this land, fathers and mothers are quite unconsciously educating their boys into that pernicious habit of gambling, which will, if not arrested, destroy the very roots of commercial life.