Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-01-27
BANKRUPTCY OF CHARACTER.


The State of Louisiana is the one State
of the American Union which runs the
equivalent of faro game in the interest
of public revenues. The people of that
State know, perhaps as well or better than
the people of any other State, that the
vice of gambling is the certain road to dis
Indignation of public character. 1t knows
that this vicious spirit exists. 1t not only
panders to it, but energies and encour-
ages 1t by establishing lottery in the in
terest of its public revenues. In view of
this situation, we are sometimes sorry that
the State of Louisiana did not succeed in
disengaging itself from the American
Union, and become little, vicious, one
horse, faro-dealing, bunco-steering, rotten
borough.
Careful estimates convince US that the
people of California are spending $780,
900 month, or $9,6OO,OOO per year, in
lottery tickets. The return viii not ex-
coed $4,000 per annum. Thus the in
dustries of California are taxed $500, 1000
year to support vice-producing system
of a sister State; and yet the most repu-
table journals of the City of San Francisco
will publish the drawings of the Louisi-
ana Lottery, wholly unmindful of the dia-
bohcal Generalization of that institution
on the young men of this State.
A gambler is the natural enemy of
human society. Sugar-coat his character
as you will, put as much varnish on the
logic as you may, the gambler belongs to the
dangerous, perishing classes. He is not a
producer. He is not only not a producer.
but he destroys the productive energy of
every one who comes within his baleful in
fluence. The man who runs faro bank,
equally with the man who patronizes the
bank, has in his character no element out
of which great commonwealth can be
created. If there was no element of soci-
ETY. better than the patron of a faro game
the civilization of such a community
would fall back to its predatory stage.
The members of such civilization would
tattoo their bodies, go naked if in warm
climate, or dress in rude skins in cold
climate And yet an American State, a
member of the great Republic, claiming
Independent sovereignty as State, goes
into business equally nefarious with faro
h. 6
United States to enter its gambling den
by taking stock in its public lottery
scheme. The generalization in that State
is perfect. The necrosis of the vice must
be consuming the very anatomical struct-
ure of the State itself. 1t advertises
broadly its bankruptcy both of purse and
character bankruptcy which can only
become worse both as to purse and as to
character by the system it practices.
Nothing could more fully disclose the
decay of high manhood than for State,
in its sovereign capacity, to open bucket
shop of this sort in the interest Of its
public revenues. 1t is in accord with
the traditional fitness of things that it
should do so. 1t has made no progress in
public education, in public morals, in the
science of government, in manufactures, or
in industry of any kind for half cent
ury. 1t is the one American State
of which it may be said that civilization
has come to the arrest of dead standstill.
1t presents the one case on the American
continent of arrested development. Even
Mexico with its mongrel life of hybridized
admixture of Aztec, Spanish and negro,
has made a more respectable advance
ment. but Mexico is still below the line of
submergence wherein public lotteries
would be impossible. We can tolerate
the thought of public lottery in associa-
ton with Mexico. There, government
is unstable, and popular government in its
incipient experimental stage.
The case would not be so bad if the
enfeebled state of public morals in Louisi-
ana could be confined to the boundaries Of
that State, but unfortunately the virus of
that immoral plague spot is spread over
the entire United States, and journals
claiming to be reputable accept the fee of
an advertisement to assist in its diabolical
work.
In this connection, it is competent to
INQUIRE whether the publication of the
Louisiana drawings is not a violation OF
State law, and we shall pursue this inquiry
to its legal conclusion.