Thames Star. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1931. A HELPING HAND FOR SPORT.

Thames Star, Volume LXV, Issue 18244, 18 July 1931, Page 2

Thames Star.

SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1931. A HELPING HAND FOR SPORT.

"With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."—Lincoln.

With, the rest of New Zealand the' sports of racing and trotting have been feeling the pinch o£ adversity. That this should be so really goes to show that they are closely bound up with the life of the community. The turf had its heyday along with everything else in the post-war years but in these more straitened times it has to tighten its belt with the rest. It may sound paradoxical, but this parallelism of the sporting with the general economic life of the country is a sign of the fundamental health of the sport (says the Wellington Dominion). Were racing to prosper while all else languished, it would be a sure indication that it had secured an unhealthy hold. It would be exerting the same sort of. tyranny as drugs do, the addict sacrificing essentials to satisfy a consuming appetite. But the facts show that racing does not exert an excessive pull on the community purse. Indeed, the totalisator returns seem to have decreased in greater proportion than the shrinkage in the national income. Hence it would appear that most people bet on the free margin above their ordinary and necessary expenditure, as they have a perfect right to do. As that margin has been reduced by circumstance, so they have curtailed their totalisator investments. Such a conclusion is reassuring because there can be no doubt that the sport has been regarded by a large and quite sincere section of the public with dubious and often condemnatory eyes., If it can be maintained, as is suggested, that the great majority of those who attend meetings do not lose their heads over racing or prejudice essentials on its account, then all fair-minded men, who are in a majority in any British community, will not brook narrow interference with the pleasure and pastime of sportsmen. Of course, there will always be addicts, but that applies as much to tea-drinking as to racing. Whatever may 'be deduced in a general way from the decreased patronage by the public, there can, however, be no question that curtailed revenues have propounded knotty problems for the clubs. The solution of these has more than a domestic interest within the sport itself since the country is concerned with what represents a substantial industry. On the 'financial side the State looks for over half a million | annually in, revenue from racing

apart from indirect returns from transport and the Posts and Telegraphs. The turf also gives employment directly to a considerable number and indirectly to others through its consumption of variout commodities. Nor should its imponderable value on the psychological side be overlooked, in granting its public an occasional holiday from the cares of the workaday world, relieving a strain that is too taut in these anxious times. In the aggregate a great deal is dependent on racing—much that could not at short notice be easily supplied • in some other way —and its ability to carry on therefore becomes a wider consideration than is generally supposed. From this it follows that the sport should not be borne down by burdens beyond its strength to carry. The present may be no time to plead for a lightening of the tax load, although it is writ large on the figures that the rate of taxation has already reached and passed the economic limit and the stage of decreasing returns arrived. Although the totalisator tax was doubled last year and the amusement tax substantially raised, the State revenue yield from racing under all heads will this year be seriously diminished. It is a fiscal danger signal that should not be lightly ignored. The ■Racing and Trotting Conferences which met in Wellington this week are well schooled in self-government and have always shown a due sense of their responsibility. They will no doubt take such measures as are within their scope to meet a difficult situation but are entitled to look to the Government for sympathetic collaboration. In the past they have given real and substantial pledges of their concern for the national interest and thus have secured their title to a like consideration. If tax relief is at present out of the question, at least the Government and Parliament should lend a friendly ear and helping hand to enable the clubs to increase the public use of the totalisator at the expense of the bookmaker, thus at one stroke assisting the sport and the Treasury while reducing illegal betting to a minimum. ,