Sta,—Your issue of August 22nd has an article written by
"a recent worker (not by choice)" in a football pool firm which seems to me to be calculated to mislead your readers, who, no doubt, have little first- hand knowledge of pools or betting. I shall run through the article in the order in which it is printed.
Tempting advertisements, if they do appear, mean little, as the pool firms have an understanding with the Ministry of Labour, whose require- ments come first. Further, the great bulk of pool work is done by people anxious to earn a little extra in their spare time. It is stated that the biggest football pool concerns are strategically sited by their promoters in areas of heavy and prolonged unemployment. I see nothing sinister in that, and, in fact, it seems eminently sensible. The promoter of any business enterprise must study many factors, and one is the supply of labour. If pool promoters did deliberately choose such areas, more credit to them, as they have thereby not diverted labour from other enterprises. Your contributor surprises me when he gives South-West Scotland as one of these areas. There are no football pool firms situated in South- West Scotland. Your contributor has failed to mention that many of the full-time workers employed in the pool business are unemployable else- where. I refer to the physically under-par, the restless, unstable type, those possessed of no technical skill or training. I shall not touch on the point raised about violation of the Sunday. Many activities " violate " the Sunday, and the list varies in length according to each individual's religious belief.
Your contributor mentions scandalised Americans and Swiss. It so happens I have just spent a yea: among Americans, and their ignorance of the existence of pools is profound. For a year I read about every well-known Arherican periodical—newspapers, reviews, magazines—and only once did I see a reference to pools, and then no opinion was expressed. Further, no one who knows anything of the States, with the wide-open gambling that exists from one end of them to the other, would try to make people believe thai- pool betting could horrify Americans. As to the Swiss I cannot speak, though no doubt it would be possible to pick out articles in their publications for and against pools. I notice your contributor glides over other Continental countries where State lotteries and casinos are in full swing. It has been remarked before that one thing shared by the aristocracy and the working man is an interest in breeding and contests of physical endurance combined with a
, readiness to back up an opinion with cash. That is something the middle classes never have had, something they apparently cannot or will not understand. •.7
I should like to take this opportunity of saying something about the working classes that has needed saying in the columns of such papers as yours for quite some time. Working-class people are human beings, and as human beings are anxious to progress, to make good in a material sense. The great majoray of them are square pegs in round holes. That is in the nature of things. Their wages are generally fixed. Now there are two ways out. Firstly, find a part-time job. I have known girls who worked in offices five and a halt days a week, worked four evenings at dog tracks and a Saturday afternoon behind the counter of a big store. These are the people who are sneered at by the middle classes. Secondly, gamble. Where a man cannot get part-time work, his only chance of getting out of the rut is by having a big win. (Here, let me say that a great deal of study and thought is put into gambling. It's about as hard work as anything elk.) The pools are a device having the support of many millions of people who contribute weekly to a fund which is divided according to skill or luck, and the winners have the best wishes of the losers. For information I may say that the average weekly, amount staked on football coupons is 3s. 6d. per person, about the price' of a packet of cigarettes or of a ticket to see a film (both American, nine times out of ten).—Yours truly, ROBERT BARCLAY. 55 Lochleven Road, Langside, Glasgow.
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