BETTING IN ENGLAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18991, 12 October 1923, Page 2

BETTING IN ENGLAND.

“ IMPORTANT NATIONAL INDUSTRY.” WELLINGTON MAN’S VIEWS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, October 10. Mr A. R. Atkinson, formerly a Wellington member of Parliament • and New Zealand correspondent of the Times, and a wellknown advocate of liquor prohibition, who returned to-day from a visit to England, had a few words to say to a Post reporter on the subject of gambling. “Tho social phenomenon that most deeply impressed mo in England was the development of tho betting mania,” he said. “Once a luxury of tho well-to-do, it now seems almost to have become one of the necessaries of the poor, and both morally and economically it threatens disaster to the nation unless some very drastic antidote is applied. Two sentences from a statement made by Sir Robert Kindersley, a director of the Bank of England and tho founder of the national savings movement, will suffice to make both these points good: 1. Nothing, in my opinion, interferes so much with the efficiency of the groat mass of tho people as the present betting disease which is spreading like a cancer throughout every class of the community. Evidence is not wanting that betting is responsible for at least as much, if nob more, misery ,in tho homes of the country than is drinking. 2. Tho space given to horse racing in the popular press suggests that it is far the most important of the national industries. Racing news and tips for the next event are. the most loudly advertised features of the evening papers, and most of them make much of paddock wires from their special tipsters. There is also an immense host of publications which live on tips and nothing else. In the Caledonian road I counted nine contents hills outside a newspaper shop. One of them was monopolised by tho taxi-cab murder and seven by belting tips.. Even a Conservative Government will have to do something to prevent this hideous cancer from getting a fatal hold.