[To THE EDITOR Or TEE "Spiscirros."1 Sin,—In common with many
of your readers, I have been greatly interested in your articles, and the correspondence to which they have given rise, on the subject of the Star's betting tips. You have undoubtedly performed a national service in exposing the canting hypocrisy of the Cadbury and Rowntree families, who loudly condemn in one of their news- papers a practice from which they make enormous profits in another.
Your indictment interests me all the more as it has a local application. One of the journals recently acquired by the Rowntree group is the Sheffield Independent. Mr. H. J. Wilson, Member of Parliament for the Holmfirth Division of Yorkshire, and a resident in Sheffield, has a very large holding in that paper. Mr. Wilson enjoys locally a high reputation for humanitarian ideas; he is an ardent temperance reformer, and is as strongly opposed to racing and betting, and gambling of all kinds, as is Mr. Cadbury or Mr. Rowntree. It is notorious in Sheffield that before he acquired an interest in the Sheffield Independent lie loudly declared his intention of excising all betting news from that paper. As a corre- spondent pointed out in your last issue, this has not been done. Mr. Wilson has evidently been muzzled, and Sheffield will probably be spared in future any further exhibitions on his part of " unctuous rectitude."
I hope you will continue your articles until you force an explanation, or at least an excuse, from Messrs. Cadbury, Rowutree, and Wilson. It is perhaps a sad commentary on the alleged independence of the English Press that you have so far been almost unsupported in this campaign. I am a diligent reader of the daily Press, but have failed to see that any newspapers have followed your lead, with the single exception of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Is it possible that our other great journals have been anaesthetised by the advertisement departments of the two chocolate manufacturers P There is just one other point that might be worth mention- ing in connexion with the Cadbury and Rowntree Press. Some time ago we were accustomed to bear a great deal from the Daily News and Morning Leader of the " gramophone Press." What is now the "gramophone Press "P Surely the Cocoa Trust, which owns the Daily News and Morning Leader, the Star, Sheffield Independent, and the Darlington Echo, and is seeking, I hear, still further worlds to conquer.—I am, Sir, Rex Moon.
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