BETTING IN ENGLAND.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1400, 6 September 1923, Page 6

BETTING IN ENGLAND.

DESCRIBED AS APPALLING. Canon Peter Green, of Manchester, speaking on the authority of 36 years’ uplift work among the working youths of the nation, startled the Betting Tax Committee of the House of Commons by sweeping declarations regarding the extent of betting. “If your description is accurate,” said Mr H. S. Cautley. K.C., chairman of the Committee, “the amount of betting is appalling!” Canon Green: The middle class man has no idea whatever of its extent. Bookmakers make enormous profits, and betting is incomparably the greatest evil in the country. Mr Cautley: Then some action ought to be taken to stop it. Canon Green declared that there is extensive betting in nines, workshops, mills, offices, and working men’s clubs. “In every works,” he added, “a man acts as agent 10 the local bookmaker. Betting is prevalent among women. The latest development in this direction is betting by domestic servants. “Betting is responsible for 20 per cent, of the reduction in the national output, and is the greattst came of bad work. Nothing could be worse than the present pos't'on. “As soon as a man takes up betting he seems to lose every rational inleiest in everything else. In at least 100,000 cases during the year betting leads to crime, and to 10 times that number of cases of demoralisation. “1 ascertained that out of 300 men in one engineering factory 296 regularly indulged in betting. “1 had it from a bank manager •that banks do not as a rule prosecute defaulting clerks, but sack them. He also informed me that the most prolific cause of the downfall of young clerks is betting.” Experiments. Canon Green again surprised the committee by his assertion that he found the worst results in betting arose from backing the favourite and the best from backing the jockeys. He explained that he arrived at this conclusion after making experiments. “Even under the most favourable conditions the return in the long run is only 20 units for every 70 units outlaid,” he said. "The football coupon gives 100 to 1 for 10 correct results, but the odds actually work out at more than 59,000 to 1.” Bishop Welldon, Dean of Durham, who gave his evidence earlier in the day, assumed a vastly more mode rate attitude than Canon Green. He admitted that he once had a bet on sculling at Eton, but added that this was the only bet he ever made in his life. Not A Sin.

“I do not think betting a sin in itself,” he said, “but it may easily become a sin. It seems to me to be almost parallel to drinking. It becomes sinful or immoral when it is carried to excess and a man hazards money he cannot afford to lose.” Bishop Welldon expressed the opinion that those people who are totally opposed to betting are enemies to reform, because they estrange the great body of modern Christian opinion without which reform cannot be carried out. “I do not want the committee to understand that I recommend anybody to indulge in gambling,” added Bishop Welldon. “On the contrary, I would like to see betting done away with, if it were possible. I find betting prevalent all over the country and among all classes, but I do not know that it is very prevalent among the clergy.” Schoolboy Bets. Dr. Lyttelton, formerly headmaster of Eton, illustrating the influence of public opinion on the actions of citizens, related how when he was a boy at school there was a great wave of betting. “I indulged in betting,” said Dr. Lyttelton, with a smile, “and even in the most discreditable form by joining with a school fellow in an attempt to make a book with which to delude our other school fellows. “I have since asked myself why I did it, and I am convinced that it was because public ordnion at that time was rotten on the subject. "I do not think betting in its most restricted sense is very wrong. It provides a certain amount of mental exercise and somet.'rr es stops disputes.”