I shut my eyes on the bookmakers, and I only spare attention
for the myriads who make the bookmakers' existence possible--who would
evolve new bookmakers from their midst if we exterminated the present
tribe to-morrow. It is not the professional bettors who cause the
existence of fools; it is the insensate fools who cause the existence of
professional bettors.
Gambling used to be mainly confined to the upper classes; it is now a
raging disease among that lower middle-class which used to form the main
element of our national strength, and the tradesman whose cart comes to
your area in the morning gambles with all the reckless abandonment that
used to be shown by the Hon. A. Deuceace or Lady Betty when George the
Third was King. Your clerk, shopman, butcher, baker, barber--especially
the barber--ask their companions, "What have you done on the Lincoln?"
or "How do you stand for the Two Thousand?" just as ordinary folks ask
after each other's health. Tradesmen step out of their shops in the
morning and telegraph to their bookmaker just as they might to one of
their wholesale houses; there is not a town in broad England which has
not its flourishing betting men, and some very small towns can maintain
two or three.
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