NEARLY A MILLION

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 251, 23 October 1945, Page 4

NEARLY A MILLION

'IX/'HEN three years ago in the midst of war's alarms the totalisator '' returns at race meetings in the chief centres began to rise sharply a ready explanation was available. "It's the Americans," was the general comment. "They throng every racecourse and they bet heavily. Wait till they go, and down will go the figures again." The Americans went, to the Solomons, the Marianas and Tokyo, but instead of dropping the betting figures went on rising, until at this Labour week-end nearly a million passed through the totalisator windows, £221,604 more than last year, an increase of nearly a third. This extraordinary rise has taken even totalisator controllers and racing clubs by surprise, especially, as betting on the course represents only a portion of the total wagering on each meeting. It is not easy to account for the expansion. Wages are higher than they were even two years ago, but on the other hand few people are earning the overgrown incomes which many received during the "American occupation." Many of the soldiers are back, and seek a little surcease from the nerve-racking years in the temporary excitement of the course. Civilians who felt diffident about attending in the war years now feel no such inhibitions. These are factors, but the principal reasons, no doubt, are higher earning, the consequent greatly increased total of money in circulation for which the normal avenues of expenditure are more or less closed through lack of goods to buy, and the steadily increasing numbers of people who do not work on Saturdays. Increased volumes of goods available to the public would reduce the racecourse inflow, but until they are available it seems not unlikely that, in spite of the fact that the Dominion is to have another hundred days of racing a year, returns will-continue to show expansion. The Government takes its full share from the totalisator, in its taxes of 10 per cent on the total, plus 5 per cent on the dividend, while the racing club absorbs 2 J per cent, making a total draw-off from each pound invested of 3/4 i. From every six pounds which the public passes through the windows taxation takes one, and it does not take much calculation to prove'that "the public pays." But they are very, and increasingly, ready to do-that, so that at least one of our "national industries" seems likely to flourish, in spite of the difficulties which are besetting most of the others.