THE PROPRIETORS AND BETTING.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18013, 4 March 1924, Page 9

THE PROPRIETORS AND BETTING.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PKESS." Sir,—You suspect that the literary taste of the Council of Congregations will be hurt by a reference to a " 'Bus." You may rest assured that the sight of an editor, who requires a written guarantee that letters to "The Press" are not sent to other journals, running after a controversy that was waged in one of those other journals, has wrinkled the cheeks of quite a few of the members of the Council of Congregations. If that isn't missing a 'bus and losing both breath and dignity in an attempt to catch it up, why, 'buses are never missed.

Your ask for a reasoned analysis of a literary gem of yours. Sir, I promise you that analysis the day after a Professor of Economics endorses the delicious "Press" dictum, which is likely to go down to history, that "there is really no economic case against betting." You side-step my definite challenge in a way your readers can appreciate.

The efforts of the two morning editors to fuzz the issue raised by their employers, the proprietors, should be noted. Gloucester street harps on the size of the majority in.a certain clause. Gloucester street finds that a majority of one is quite crushing when it happens to be Mr Massey's majority. Cathedral square ache's for a theological discussion on the "sin" of gambling. Meanwhile the proprietors, with their bland request for permission to enter into an open alliance with illicit gamblers, and with their further request to be allowed to enter into the tipster business, wait at the bar for sentence.

Both issues are urgent. The proprietors' success will encourage milkmen and butchers to go in for a door-to-door tote-odd business; and if a parallel be taken betweeD this most overpapered of cities and countries, and those other cities and countries that enjoy the privilege of running a tip business, the conclusion is that we shall be soused with the insincere and provocative cant of the tipster. There are plenty of people in New Zealand gently nurtured on "The Press" idea that "there is no economic case against betting," who have lost interest in loaders, and in cable news that isn't horsey, and for whom a Turf Press will quickly spring up—if, that is to say, public apathy lets the proprietors win. —Tours, etc., J. J. NORTH. [Our correspondent's case rests upon his two main propositions: (1) that the non-publication of dividends has enormously reduced tote-odds betting; and (2) that before the publication of dividends was prohibited the newspapers employed armies of tipsters and published " endless- '* straight-tip editions. It is his duty to show that these propositions are not entirely untrue, and we shall be glad to give him space to do so. As to his first sentence, it. was not the "literary taste" of Mr North's colleagues which we thought might be shocked by parts of Mr North's letters, but their sense of what is good manners.—Ed. "The Press."]