The corroding influence of betting and gambling on the national
fibre was the subject of an outspoken address by Mr. J. L. Paton, High Master of the Manchester Grammar School, at Bury on Sunday last. The craze for gambling, he declared, had " undermined the wisdom, the political sagacity, and the shrewdness of the men of the North of England." In a striking passage he emphasized the irony of the situa- tion :— •
" We spent X37,000,000 of the State's money every year on education, besides the money which came from ancient endow- ments, and all that expenditure, besides the devoted services of large bodies of teachers, was being exploited by the bookmakers. If it were not for the fact that boys and girls wore taught to road and write and do a bit of arithmetic, the bookmakers' trade would be gone. The tragedy of it all was that all the efforts of the State to educate the people, the great inventions of the tele- graphs and telephones, and the well-organized postal service had been seized upon for use in the great gambling mania, and degraded to the lowest stages of degradation."
We are glad to note that the Westminster Gazette expresses the hope that such declarations, coming from a man in Mr. Paton's position, will attract wide attention. We may be allowed to commend them particularly to the attention of those Radical newspaper proprietors who combine the fervid advocacy of social service with the employment of keen incitements to betting.
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