From local pulpits, a push to banish gambling

The Rev. Sherman Williams, pastor of Glens Falls Methodist Episcopal Church, liked to watch horses trot — with one caveat.

“Personally, I very much enjoy a pure and simple horse race,” Williams said in a sermon on Nov. 4, 1894. “But I have never attended a race where gambling and pool selling were the order of the day.

Williams delivered that message on the Sunday before New York voters went to the polls to decide whether to approve a new state constitution with language banning gambling.

Pool selling was a mechanism for betting on horse races without actually being present at the race. Pool-selling operations at racetracks often would handle bets on races taking place at other tracks. Gambling critics of the era argued that pool betting was a particularly addictive form of gambling.

Williams and other pastors who used their Sunday morning sermons to urge support for the new constitution said they weren’t electioneering, just championing virtue.
Williams said banning gambling was a moral, not a partisan issue.

“When I read and when I am told of the various crimes that are a natural outgrowth of this form of gambling, I say I must cast my vote against it,” Williams said, according to a Nov. 5 report in The Morning Star of Glens Falls.

No doubt the gambling provision was controversial in the Glens Falls area, where trotting-horse racing and breeding were prominent interests. Racing on the ice also was a wintertime attraction on Warren County lakes.

Horse breeders warned that banning gambling would wipe out opportunities for breeding racehorses in New York, leaving only the breeding of workhorses, which was a declining industry, The New York Times reported on Oct. 21, 1894.

It was the second consecutive Sunday that Williams had preached in support of the anti-gambling amendment, as the revised constitution was commonly described.

In the Nov. 4 sermon, he chose as his text Matthew 7:24-27, “The Wise and Foolish Builders,” with the wise building on a solid rock foundation and the foolish building on a risky foundation of sand.

“The permanency of a building is dependent largely upon the foundation,” Williams explained. “It may be beautiful in architecture, its walls may be finely decorated, it may attract the attention of men, but if the building does not have on it a good foundation, it will not stand.”

Williams said allowing gambling wrecked the foundation of society and ruined the lives of young gambling addicts.

“Some people say that if this amendment shall prevail that you will break up all the racetracks,” Williams said. “Well, then, let them go. If a racetrack cannot live on its own merits, not much loss will be sustained by its abandonment.”

Williams was not the only local pastor urging support of the anti-gambling amendment that Sunday.

The Rev. W. O. Stearns preached on the topic “Ballot Box Morals” at Glens Falls Baptist Church.
“From the apostolic precedent it becomes a duty to put religion into politics, and to put conscience into the ballot,” he said. “The church and the pulpit may abstain from party politics for many and sufficient reasons, but all the more should they lay down the principles by which voting should be directed.”

Stearns said the amendment “deserves the support of upright citizens.”
The Rev. F. H. Pierce preached on the topic “Who is on the Lord’s Side?” at the Glens Falls Society of Friends Church on Sunday morning and the South Glens Falls church on Sunday evening.

“The real reservoir out of which the force is to come to put down the greed of appetite and covetousness is a force resurrected in the church of Christ,” he said.
Statewide, the new constitution passed by a vote of 410,697 to 327,462.
In Warren County, the vote was 1,870 in favor and 1,714 against, The Morning Star reported on Nov. 15.

There was debate over whether the anti-gambling amendment would actually curb betting.
“It remains to be seen whether the new constitution will reduce the number of raffles, grab bags, wheels of fortune, etc.,” The Morning Star wrote in an editorial on Nov. 10. “There was a law against such gambling before, but it was not enforced.”

When the current version of the New York Constitution was adopted in 1938, it retained the 1894 version’s prohibition on all types of gambling. But the next year, voters approved an amendment to allow pari-mutuel betting on horse races. And over the past 65 years, voters approved a series of amendments allowing betting games run by religious and nonprofit groups, the development of the state lottery system and, indirectly, the advent of casinos run by Indian tribes.

Finally, two years ago, the state’s highest court essentially changed the scope of activities covered by the gambling prohibition since 1894 — any game where chance is a material element — to the standard applied by most other states, covering games that are determined more by chance than by skill. The ruling had the effect of legalizing fantasy sports contests that had already been operating in the state for a number of years.

 

Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star of Glens Falls for 21 years before retiring in 2017. He now is a freelance writer focusing on the history of politics, labor and media in the region.