" AN ACT TO PUT AN END TO NATIONAL HYPOCRISY
IN TrIFI MATTER OF BETTING." FRIENDLY foreign critics accuse us of an extra- ordinary muddle-headedness in our treatment of moral questions ; unfriendly, of gross hypocrisy. When we consider the way in which the State deals with the acknowledged evils of betting and the ruinous effects of this particular form of gambling on the British working classes, we can hardly wonder at such criticism. Consider the situation for a moment. We pass with great solemnity enactments inspired by the principle that though the State cannot go so far as to make wagers penal offences, it can and ought to prohibit the establishment of gambling and betting houses, gambling and betting in public places, and the offering of incitements to, and facilities for, betting in such public places. That is the principle on which the State is supposed to proceed, and in the opinion of the vast majority of the nation it is a sound one. Yet how do we apply it ? Not only do we tolerate public betting on race-courses, on certain highly technical grounds, but while we strictly enforce the law to prevent bookmakers plying their trade in the streets or in shops, we allow the most open and ardent incitements to betting to appear in that most public of public places, the columns of a newspaper. Betting can have all the publicity it desires provided only it is in a newspaper. We drive bookmakers off the streets, but absolute im- munity is given to newspapers to advise people how to bet and to give them facilities for so doing by the publi- cation of betting odds, betting tips, betting news and betting advertisements. Though the bookmaker's tout is strictly prohibited, no one dreams of preventing the news- boys from pressing newspapers, with their " Finals " and their " Tips," upon the public. Yet such newspapers are often in effect nothing but instruments for gambling trans- actions. As long as it is contained in the columns of a newspaper, no one interferes with the machinery of betting. The newspaper literally teaches the public how to bet. It advises them in its editorial columns as to the way they should lay out their money, and in its advertisement pages very often gives the names and addresses of bookmakers who, with the assistance of the State Post Office and the State Telegraph system, will afford them all the con- veniences of a gambling house in their own homes. Further, the Post Office, by setting up special telephonic and telegraphic facilities on race-courses, does all it can to make the work of the bettor and the bookmaker easy.
To render the situation still more topsy-turvy, or, as the hostile foreign critics would say, still more hypocritical, we find that in the capital the newspaper which specially de- votes itself to betting tips and incitements to betting, and is regarded by the general public as the chief " helper and server " in the matter of gambling, is also an organ devoted to the cause of political philanthropy. The Liberal Party considers itself specially pledged to concern itself with the moral improvement and welfare of the working classes, and every earnest member of the Liberal Party would declare that his party was devoted to the moral improve- ment of the masses in a sense quite unknown to its political rival. Yet the most widely circulated Liberal evening paper of the metropolis is, as we have said, daily engaged in giving facilities for betting, and " lives, moves, and has its being" in an atmosphere of " Tips " and " Finals." Not only is its circulation founded upon " Captain Coe's " and " Old Joe's " stimulating advice to all and sundry to put their money upon this or that horse, but it manages to spread its incitements to betting throughout the country by purveying to other newspapers advice which is deemed specially precious by the gambling community. Still more astounding is the fact that this business of providing facilities for betting is not carried out by persons who constitute what might be called the cynical and worldly wing of the Liberal Party, but by its leading " high-soulecl " philanthropists. The Star is controlled not by a groupof Liberalworldlings, who hold, as no doubt many such persons do hold, that democracy has nothing to do with philanthropy, religion or morals, and that the working man should be allowed to go to the devil in his own way. On the contrary, the most widely read, most efficient, and most popular of betting newspapers in the metropolis is owned and controlled by the following proprietors : (1) The Daily News Company—that is, a company which publishes a newspaper the special boast of which is that it publishes no betting news and no incitements to betting, and refuses to do so on the ground that betting is immoral in a high degree and demoralising and ruinous to the welfare of the working classes. (2) Members of the great Quaker philanthropic family of Cadbury, who are also the chief proprietors of the Daily News. (3) The Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust, an organisation which, it is understood, was founded in order to improve the moral and material condition of the poor, and to render that social service which, apart from business and economic conditions, is due from man to his fellow man.
How the rest of the funds of the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust are invested we do not know, but in the case of the Star, at any rate, social ser- vice directly takes the form of supplying working men with facilities for ruining themselves and their families by putting their money upon horses. Every evening " Captain Coe " and " Old Joe," and the rest of the prophets maintained or quoted by the Star, tell us in the hoarse and cunning whispers of the betting tout that we shall have a " moral " if we will only put our money on this or that horse. It is a commonplace with magistrates that the majority of the embezzlements and fraudulent appropriations of funds by clerks, cashiers, and others are due to betting transactions, and it has happened on one occasion at least that the guilty man has clearly owed his downfall to the influence of the Star tips. For example, last summer a Liberal M.P., Mr. Markham, had to prosecute a postman for the theft of a cheque for £150. The man, his wife declared, had been in the habit of following the betting tips provided by the Star, with the usual result. That is the kind of social service done by the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust through the medium of its newspaper, the Star.
Clearly this is a situation—or shall we say a moral cesspool of hypocrisy, cant, stupidity, self-righteous- ness, and muddle-headedness ?—which ought to be cleaned out and got rid of. We know perfectly well that it is not possible to prohibit or penalise betting between man and man, but surely we can and ought to proceed upon the lines already adopted—that is, the lines of preventing incitements to betting, and of stopping facilities for betting in all, and not merely in some, public places. We have hitherto deliberately left open a huge gap in the fence by allowing the newspaper press to provide facili- ties for betting and to make their £20,000 or £30,000 a year by so doing, while we drive, and of course quite rightly drive, the small bookmaker off the streets—a sordid and unfortunate creature who very probably does not make, after he has paid blackmail in one form and another, a pitiful 30s. a week. Surely we ought to fill up the gap without further delay. To put ourselves right as a nation in this respect is in no sense difficult. All that is wanted is an Act making it illegal for newspapers to publish betting news, betting tips or other incitements to betting, and betting advertisements—that is, the advertisements of the bookmakers who carry on their business abroad. The Act would. in effect put all newspapers in the position which is now so honourably held by the Manchester Guardian and one or two other papers. The Act would not, of course, attempt to stop horse-racing, and, again, the newspapers would be left perfectly free to describe the races and chronicle as news which horses had won or lost. All they would be prevented from doing would be turning themselves into Gambling Hells, by incitements to betting and by giving facilities for betting involved in the publica- tion of odds. Next, the Act, the short title of which might well be "An Act to Put an End to National Hypocrisy in the Matter of Betting," should prohibit the Post Office from receiving and sending telegrams connected with bet- ting or from distributing the circulars and other literature of bookmakers and betting touts.—We would allow the postal authorities to obtain from a judge of the High Court an order to open sealed envelopes if they were believed to contain betting circulars, and, in cases where the suspicions proved true, to destroy the same without delivery.—Further, the Act should prohibit betting on other events than races, such as football matches, and also should strictly prohibit those newspaper competitions which are, in fact, nothing but gambling lotteries. This can be perfectly well done without interfering with legiti- mate newspaper competitions such as acrostics, the solving of chess problems, and so forth. The result of such a Bill as we have sketched would not be to set up any im- possible puritanical standard of morals or to prevent individuals who desire to do so from making wagers. Again, it would not place any impediment in the way of the perfectly legitimate sport of horse racing. It would merely destroy facilities for, and so prevent, that most objectionable form of betting and street gambling which is now carried on through the instrumentality of the Press. The wretched lads and men who now ruin themselves by betting on "finals," in the majority of cases have never seen a racehorse or attended a race meeting. They are merely betting as men bet on the numbers on the roulette table. They look to " Polyphemus," " Jumper Junior," or " Gone to Glory" to win the race just as the roulette gambler looks to this or that number or this or that card to turn up.
Why should not the present Government undertake legislation of the kind we have described ? Assuming, of course, that the Act were fairly drawn, and that it were enforced impartially upon newspapers of all kinds, we do not believe that the leading newspaper proprietors would oppose such legislation. At present there are a great number of newspapers which, though they publish betting news and betting tips under the stress of competition, are from the purely business point of view by no means anxious to fill their columns with such matter. They would rather be without it, provided that a large section of their readers were not drawn away by other newspapers giving betting news and betting tips. The analogy is that of early closing. The shopkeeper does not mind early closing pro- vided all the traders and shopkeepers are included, and that a rival does not seize business by standing out from an agreement to close. For ourselves we have little doubt that by preventing newspaper betting the Government would immediately confer not only a great moral but a great economic boon upon working men, and would thereby improve their position far more than by many of their so-called schemes of " social reform." It is calculated that the wage-earning classes squander some five millions a year in betting, and unquestionably by far the greater part of this sum is " put on" through the instrumentality of the newspapers and of Press tips. We do not, of course, suppose that the whole of this money would be well spent if it were not spent upon betting. A large part would no doubt be wasted in other ways. But it is perfectly safe to say that a good deal would be better spent and that none could be worse spent than now in newspaper betting.
We must never forget that betting in the case of the working men inea,ns the risking of a portion of their income so large as inevitably to place them in economic Pe- ril An artisan with from £1 to £2 a week will often risk as much as 10s. or Al. a week in betting. Consider what the equivalent of this would be for the man with from £500 to £1,000 a year ! Betting amongst the poor is a rodent ulcer, and we shall be guilty of a national crime if we continue to pretend that the giving of tips and facilities for betting in newspapers is not promoting betting in a public place.
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