Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-10-15
GAMBLING IN. STAPLES.

bling in staples by legislation. The Liver
pool cotton spipners have been trying to
check the speculative tendency by the
heroic remedy of closing their mills, while
at Chicago the grain gamblers hsve been
recommended to the Grand Jury as fit SUBJ
jects for Indictment. There is of course
no doubt about the extent of the evil
which is done by the gigantic gambling
operations of the present day. Whole
crops are often made Improbable to the
producers by the speculations of middle
men who have not one dollar invested.
Production is not only robbed of its leglti-
mate earnings in this way, but the great
public-the consumers forced to pay
two or three prices. The artificial strin-
gency of the market has no other cause or
effect than the enrichment of compare
lively few men, VINO are themselves nom
producers, and whose entire influence upon
the market is prejudicial and sinister.
Through the operations of this class manu-
facturers, after investing heavily in plant
and raw material, have frequently been
ruined, while the producers have practically
become their slaves, and are obliged to-
look to them for information as to the
future prices of corn and wheat And
everywhere these same gamblers have or
eanized il the great cities, and have seized
upon the principal productions of the
locality, whatever it may be. In San
Francisco they have well earned the op-
probrium of public plunderers, and it is
notorious fact that there have been scores
of greater scoundrels in the Stock Boards
than ever found their way to the Peniten-
tiary.
But though the evil these men do is enor-
nous though they are pestilent vermin
who suck the life blood of community !;
though it is impossible to show that they
effect any compromising good it is almost
hopeless to think of getting rid of them.
And the reason of this is that they cater
to general and in fact universal passion
for gambling. Be it wheat or corn or cot
ton or mining stock, the public persist in
supplying grist to the mills of the gam
blers. If the latter had to depend upon
their ewn resources they could not last a
week, but they draw upon the greed and
folly of the public, and their drafts are al
ways honored. At present we believe it
would be utterly impossible to stop gam
bling in staples by the law. When every
body wants to do thing, the law becomes
powerless. In the South all attempts to
check the barbarous practice of duelling
have failed. In the shotgun regions of
Mississippi it proved equally impossible to
obtain convictions of men who had COM
mitted political outrages. Before the gen.
eral opinion of society the law is impotent,
no matter how severe its provisions may be.
In the case before us there is no ground
for supposing that a different result would
be reached. The men who gamble In
crops and mines are enabled to persist
through the public sanction of their
methods. The secret of this sanction is
that nobody realizes the possibility that
he himself may be injured. Everybody
believes that he himself will be fortunate,
and that the others will have to bear the
burdens of the losses; and as everyone
desires to be rich, and to be rich as rapidly
as possible, the temptation of stock and
grain gambling is irresistible. But this is
not all. It is one of the most curious and
humiliating traits of the average human
character to gauge the morality and legiti-
macy of actions by the magnitude Of the
operation. All criminal legislation is
based upon that popularity. Men pun
ish only small wrongs. The legal maxim
de minimais non curat lea is as false as
any legal sophism extant. 1t is the little
evils which the law does care for the
large ones it does not try to grapple. A
man who steals horse or breaks into
house or snatches purse is tolerably
sure to be sufficiently punished. But the
man who plunges the whole community
into affliction by putting up the price OF
grain, or who steals millions by some
villainous manipulation of mining stocks,
is not only not proceeded against, but is
applauded and cheered by the public, and
received everywhere as every able man."
How many of our millionaires have OBJ
tanned their wealth through speculations
which were knavish and immoral through.
out? How many of them owe their social
elevation to actions which if confined to
smaller area would have brought them to
shame and disgrace 1t is the magnitude
of the operations which dazzles the eyes of
the public, and they are unable to see any
thing wrong in the methods by which a
great fortune is made. Nor is there any
prospect of a change in this connection
Human nature develops very gradually.
The great advances made during the last
fifty years in the means of communication
have thus far, it is to be feared, done more
to fortify audacious and reckless gambling
than to encourage sober industries. The
products of the whole world are now
known almost from hour to hour in
the centers of commerce. Combinations
can be made with swiftness never before
possible. And the mere fact that this en-
largement of the area Of action makes the
stakes played for larger than ever, assures
the continuance of the speculation which
producessuch mischfevous consequences. 1t
is therefore in vain that attempts are made
to check gambling Of this kind by legisla-
ton. Experiments of that sort are pre-
destined to failure. Until the world has
been elevated to the hight OF extending
the democratic principle to criminal ad-
ministratiop, it will be useless to think
of reform in this direction. The gamblers