Religion: New York Lottery

U. S. reform governments have no greater friends than U. S. churches. But political or economic reform is not always synonymous with moral reform. Though the churches cheered the Roosevelt New Deal into office, they were grievously disappointed when the Administration sponsored Repeal. To a lesser degree New York City’s New Deal—the Fusion administration headed by fretful, fiery Fiorello LaGuardia—was backed by the clergy. Last Week this support also proved a bitter disappointment to the churches. Mayor LaGuardia was playing with the idea of a full-blown, out-in-the-open, Municipal Lottery!

For unemployment relief New York currently needs $50,000,000. Mayor LaGuardia proposed a stiff tax on business. This raised such a whirlwind of opposition that he dumped the question in the lap of the Municipal Assembly, forced it to act quickly by cutting off all relief payments for four days. Last week the Assembly voted three taxes which needed only the Mayor’s signature for enactment. First was a 1/10% tax on gross business receipts above $15,000 a year. Second was a tax of 15% on amounts paid in Federal income taxes. Third was a euphemism for “lottery.”

A Municipal Supplemental Relief Association would be set up in which public memberships would be sold at $2.50 each. Twelve trustees would run the Association without pay. At least 103 “officers” for the Association would be chosen by lot, their “salaries” to run up to $50,000 a year. Practically, these lucky “officers” would have nothing to do but collect their “salaries” in a lump sum. Of the Association funds, 44% would go for relief, 44% for “salaries,” 12% for operating expenses.

Contrary to both State and Federal statutes, the lottery seemed by the end of the week to have few friends, little chance of survival. Churchmen leaped up to denounce it, well aware that they could take credit for having killed it. The Brooklyn Church and Mission Federation began circulating petitions against it. The American Protestant Defense League called it “immoral and degrading.” The Society for the Prevention of Crime threatened to take legal action and Lawyer Samuel Untermyer said that two reform organizations had asked him to represent them against it in court. To Mayor LaGuardia went protests from the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, The Bronx Clergy Association and Liberal Episcopalian Dr. Walter Russell Bowie who wired: “It would be depth of unwisdom to give civic encouragement to that passion for gambling which can be so sinister in its personal and social consequences.” The New York Presbytery called it “subversive to the morals of our people.” The Greater New York Federation of Churches condemned it as “a measure which would carry incalculable moral costs.”

Said publicity-loving Rev. Dr. Christian Fichthorne Reisner of Broadway Temple: “I love Mayor LaGuardia as I have loved few public officials. . . . But I hate like hell this damnable lottery system, and I’ll fight it to the end. . . . The 2,000,000 Protestants in this city don’t know how to express themselves, but they will before we get through with this matter.”

The World-Telegram quoted Acts, I: 23-26 which ends: . . . and they gave them lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and lie was numbered with the eleven Apostles. The Times thought the lottery “degrading, humiliating and destructive.” The American was piously against the plan. But the irrepressible Daily News was all for it because “there’s no fun in a sales tax, a business tax, or a subway tax, but there’s lots of fun in a lottery because every ticket buyer has a right to dream of winning. . . . We hope that Mayor LaGuardia, who has shown plenty of guts in the past, will not be frightened by the squeamish squawks he’s hearing now from clergymen and others. . . . The same people now squawking against the lottery are those who said public sentiment was against Repeal, and then were proved so very wrong when the votes were counted.”

Roman Catholics, who always ” fight vigorously against any proposals to legalize birth control or liberalize divorce laws, had nothing to say publicly against lotteries. Their Church’s attitude is that under proper circumstances gambling is not sinful. Indeed the Papal States used to run lotteries as do many Catholic nations today.* And to a realist there is slight moral difference between a cash lottery and a raffle such as many a church, Catholic and Protestant alike, employs to raise money for pious causes.

Mayor Thomas Semmes Walmsley of New Orleans, where U. S. lotteries last flourished legally and where they still run illegally, commented: “The poor are the greatest contributors. We have found that they even use relief funds to play lotteries.”

But Mayor LaGuardia, a nonchurchgoing Protestant, was much less impressed by the moral points made against the lottery by excited clergymen than by the legal points made by cool-headed jurists who were positive the law could not last a week in the courts.

* Cuba, Spain, Mexico, France, Irish Free State, Italy, Panama, Belgium, Argentina.