THE TYRANNY OF FOOTBALL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2651, 4 January 1905, Page 53

THE TYRANNY OF FOOT BALL.

A report on the subject of football ia about the last thing one would expect from a Consul, yet such a report has been published by the United States Department of Commerce and Labour. It is supplied by the United States Consul at Hull, and the subject is "Football m England." . Aftei. pointing out that while in America, the chief complaint against the game is that it takes up too much of the college student's time, is too costly, too dangerous, and generally demoralising to the student, in England it ia the working men who are said to be injuriously affected by the game, and he quotes two English magazine articles on the subject. In the first the writer considers the craze for football as a sign of "the. decay of industry." "All over the country," /he says, "the evidence accumulates that they I (the working men) are the victims of the present-day tendency to leave work to take care of itself so long as ever-increasingi opportunities can" be secured, not for rational leisure, but for pleasure-seeking." He goes on to remark on the suspension of work for several days following a bank holiday, and . "the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of getting any work don» for at least a week after the holidays. Work, in fact, is held in such low esteem that ' any and every excuse ' is deemed sufficient to set aside its obligations. Another writer is even more severe. Large employers of labour in certain countries are, he says, "powerless to command the interests of business against those of football." Matter* of such importance as the launching of a ship or the completion of an important order within contract time have frequently been delayed by a cup tie, and large establishments are occasionally closed in the middle of the ! week because the men want to go to football. In most cases these men are skilled workmen, who Gan command employment at good wages, and the employers can do nothing but put up with the tyranny o6 : their employees. "If a man, or half a." dozen men are absent from their posts oiil a Wednesday or a Saturday, nobody asW where they are, or if they are ill or deaci it being taken for granted that footballE somewhere has taken them away." A mar.-; does not ask for leave. If lie wants to see 4 a certain gam© he goes, and nothing morea

is said, about it. The 6onsul finds that the objection to football in England is that it .interferes with bifsiness. The interest taken in the game, he points out, can be measured by the space given to it in the ■ newspapers, amounting on Monday mornings *o a page and a^half. "From this it will be seen," he concludes, "that football is a much more serious subject in England than in the United States.'' The report is certainly a testimony to the thoroughness of the United States Consular service.