The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-16
ARRAIGNS TELEGRAPH GO.
MORAL MAGNITUDE OF THE
 QUESTION AT ISSUE.

Involved in the Movement In New York
 Relative to the Western Union Com
 pany and the Pool Rooms-Extract
 from sermon by Rev. Dr. smyth at
 Center Church Yesterday.
 During his sermon yesterday morning at the Center church in this city the Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth preached from the sixteenth chapter of Matthew and nineteenth verse, After formal
 and scholarly introduction and general on the text, Dr. Smyth said:
 Tn order that I may practice what l preach, and that may speak definitely and specifically, if only in Illustration of what l am preaching. l wish to refer to one special and gigantic evil now regnant in this country. I shall bring
 into the pulpit a moral issue which has been brought into the focus of publicity prominently during the last two weeks. I refer to the collision of the Western Union Telegraph Co. with
 the gambling syndicate which is doing such a demoralizing and wicked work among the common people of this cour-
 try. I will refer to this subject both on account of my conviction of the moral magnitude of the question at issue, and because of it's consequences reaching far beyond those immediately concerned. 1 speak of it without hesi- tation, and because I know of what I have seen, and for every aspersion
 which I cast, or which I shall make, could produce competent evidence in any court of justice in the land. Some
 ten years ago, with body of gentle- men with whom I was associated,
 was actively interested in securing the passage and placing upon the statute books of the state of Connecticut two
 laws aimed at the most demoralizing forms of popular gambling. For the past ten years I have watched, and
 have known much concerning the exc cution and operation of those laws. I
 will speak first of that form of gam
 bling which is known as policy playing, a form of gambling which first drew
 my attention here in this city, because found that even the children of some
 of our public schools were pawning their lunches to engage in this form of vice. From that day to this I have nev-
 CT ceased, upon all occasions, to fight
 that evil. I know the connection be-
 tween the Western Union Telegraph
 company and that form of gambling. know that the nurse of all this wretched
 and immoral business has been the live
 wire of the Western Union Telegraph , company. I know that when I went and sought their assistance in aid of the authorities for the suppression of this evil we received not a crumb of bread but a stone. They sheltered themselves behind the technicality of their legal rights They sent under the cover of this legal technicality twice a day, regularly. a code dispatch known by all concerned to be for the aid and abetment of felony And to this day they never have relinquished their covetous and immoral grasp upon these wages of sin. I received with gratitude
 the statement of one honorable director of the company, a Yale man, and a member of the Yale corporation, who says that if he had known of it he would not, as a director, have stood for 1 it a moment. I am sure he would not. But the facts in regard to it are in evidence. You may not know that this form of gambling has it's victims large 1 ly among those who are men of small salaries and wages. and who have ac- ] cess to the tills of merchants, and who are handling other peoples money. You may not know, but the police attest 1 that it is a proven fact, that a very large percentage of the defalcations, {, larcenies and robberies, which are the curse of our modern life, come from
 among those who practice that form of gambling. If the board of directors of
 this corporation need other evidence
 than that which has been offered in New { York city of nature revealing such operations, there are some others in ! this city who would gratefully give 1 them the information. do not hesitate i to assert that that company has been,
 and is now. and continues to be, in