The nation . revalent attitude of the statein a Saturday Evening Post articlein 1956, Governor Collins said: There was an attitude in our statefor a long time that, to attract thetourists who contribute so vitally toour economy, we had to give themthe opportunity to live dangerouslyand squander their money reck-lessly. . Gambling, some peoplemaintained, is entertainment, andtourists ought to have the chance togamble if they want to. Collins didnt believe that. He feltthat tourists who had been suckeredout of their last available dollar bysome of the professional sharpies thatinfested the state
The nation . revalent attitude of the statein a Saturday Evening Post articlein 1956, Governor Collins said: There was an attitude in our statefor a long time that, to attract thetourists who contribute so vitally toour economy, we had to give themthe opportunity to live dangerouslyand squander their money reck-lessly. . Gambling, some peoplemaintained, is entertainment, andtourists ought to have the chance togamble if they want to. Collins didnt believe that. He feltthat tourists who had been suckeredout of their last available dollar bysome of the professional sharpies thatinfested the state would go home 309 with a bad taste in their mouths andno love for Florida. More than that,a city which condoned gambling ex-posed its people to the influence ofbig-time racketeers, and it seemedto me that the moral welfare of ourcitizens, present and future, wasmore important than the money thegambling-minded tourists broughtin, he wrote. Laws were passed outlawing slotmachines, anti-bookie statutes were. CHAPTER THE unlovely picture of a nationcorrupted on every level by the bil-lions placed in the hands of the un-derworld by illegal gambling liasbeen described in these pages. Cor-ruption is like that ancient sin ofman, adultery; there is no suchthing as a little of it, and once policeand politicians dine at the table ofbribery, all distinctions become lostand every type of crime is fosteredand condoned. Joseph Manners putit this way in his testimony beforethe New York Crime Commission: Seldom do police or other publicofficials accept :i bribe in murder orrape cases. Rarely have whole gov-ernments been tainted by corruptionarising out of crimes of , once corrupted in areas of com-mercial illegality, the corrupt officialmust continue his illegal operationswith the Syndicate even when it en-gages in most vicious underworld vio-lence, such as gang murders or beat-ings of defaulted dehtors. The climate that has been createdin this nation is undeniable. We havepretende
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