A Lewiston minister, assailing slot machines and punchboards from the pulpit, declared yesterday that “gambling is a form of the larger problem of greed” and that it is morally, economically and socially wrong.
The Rev. Merritt W. Faulkner of the Methodist church predicted that Lewiston voters would outlaw both slot machines and punchboards in the coming special city election Nov. 14.
Gambling is morally wrong, he said, “because it is an attempt to get something for nothing. The lure of easy money and easy living has always been one of the evils against which man has had to fight.”
‘Fundamental Law’
It is economically wrong, he declared, because “in the long run, the individual who gambles and the society that allows it always end up on the short end economically. There is a fundamental law of the universe which says that the only way to have economic prosperity is to produce goods or services that are useful to humanity.”
Attacking slot machines and punchboards on social grounds, Mr. Faulkner said: “Every once in a while I hear some one say, ‘Can’t I do as I please? What I do with my time and money is my business.’ That sort of childish talk would be all right if one lived a hermit’s life, but we live in a land where the welfare of the individual citizen is the highest responsibility of the state.”
This story was published in the Nov. 5, 1951, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
