SUPERIOR VIRTUE.
THE National Review for May contains a vehement editorial article entitled " The Cocoa Press and its Masters." The editor of the National Review is angry, and not unnaturally angry, at the attacks that have been made upon Tariff Reformers by the Daily News, the Star and the Morning Leader, and the Nation, papers largely financed and controlled by members either of Messrs. Cadbury's or Messrs. Rowntree's firms. The National Review retorts with severe strictures upon the way in which newspapers supported by members of those firms have denounced Chinese slavery, while the firms themselves, according to the National Review, have in the past a bad record in the matter of encouraging slavery by the use of slave-grown cocoa. We do not agree with the strictures of the National Review in this respect. Though we think Messrs. Cadbury would have done better if they had been more prompt in dropping the use of slave-grown cocoa, we hold that they were sincere, though mistaken, in believing for many years that while they were purchasers they had better opportunities of influencing not only the planters but the Portuguese Government. They did not consider that their boycott of the cocoa would be sufficient to bring the planters to terms, and they hoped to accom- plish by negotiations what they believed threats would fail to do. But though on this matter we cannot support the National Review (while we fully admit that it has a right to its opinion, and are sure that the editor is sincere in that opinion), we feel obliged to comment at length on another matter to which it draws attention, since it is one of no small importance to the honour of journalism, and of sincerity and straightforwardness in what we may term the industry of publicity. We do not expect men to agree about the conduct of that industry, but we do hold that it is essential that it should be clear from any taint of cant, and that here, as elsewhere, men should have the courage of their opinions. If they believe that a particular line of action is contrary to the good. of the public, they have no right to make a profit thereby, or. to put it in another way, they have no right to conduct their public business in a manner directly contrary to opinions which they hold as individuals. Here is the passage in the National Review to which we allude :— " Lastly, fine professions of purity come very oddly from people who derive profit from circulating betting news. When Messrs. Cadbury took control of the Daily News it was pompously announced that they would cleanse Fleet Street.' There is no betting news in the Daily News, it is true. But it is guilty at one remove. Captain Coe's ' betting notes appear daily in the Star, and, we believe, sell that paper largely. Why not Captain Cocoa P Both it and the Morning Leader devote much space to betting and racing. And the Daily News, we have seen, owns some 9,000 shares in these two journals. Notwithstanding this, it has not been above attacking Archdeacon Sinclair bitterly because he has a small investment in a brewery company. If it is wrong for an archdeacon to draw a modest revenue from brewing, it is equally wrong for a Quaker organ to draw dividends by encouraging betting. Physician, heal thyself,' has here a distinct application.'
We are bound to say that we read this statement with profound amazement, and at once took steps to verify it,--namely, by a reference to the files at Somerset House. We had long noted with astonishment the manner in which the Morning Leader and the Star, but especially the Star, turned themselves into public gaming-tables. The Star publishes tipsters' prophecies in a specially alluring way, and thus incites the kind of people who buy it—for the most part poor men—to risk their money in gambling on horse-races. We, like many other people, contrasted the action of the proprietors of the Star and Morning Leader with what seemed to us the exceed- ingly fine public spirit of the proprietors of the Daily News in refusing to publish any tips or betting news,—thereby forgoing a considerable amount of profit, since it is notorious that newspapers are very largely bought as instruments for betting. But though we thought the action of the Star was curious, considering the names of those who were associated in the public mind with its proprietorship, there appeared to be no hypocrisy in the matter. The Star, as far as we knew, had never denounced betting as leading to the demoralisation of the people. Therefore the action of the Star might be defended as on all fours with that of the rest of the daily Press of the United Kingdom. They all publish betting news, and most of them betting tips, even though the majority of them do so in a much less provocative manner than the Star. We ourselves, though we have never taken the Puri- tanical view of gambling, have always held that betting by the working classes is pernicious because it means the risking of sums of money out of all proportion to the incomes of those who bet. There, in our opinion, is the essential evil of betting. Betting and gambling cannot be declared to be malum in se. They are only evil when they lead to waste, extravagance, and therefore demorali- sation. It is a question of degree. We fully realise, however, that there are a great many people, including probably the mass of newspaper proprietors, Liberal and Conservative, who do not go as far as this, but hold, we presume, that the desire to gamble will find vent somewhere in every community, and that it is better that it should result in honest betting than in hole-and-corner or house gaming. In fact they take what they would call the common-sense and " man-of-the-world " point of view,— that there is nothing vicious per se in a bet, that people always will bet, that they may as well bet over horses as anything else, that there is no harm done to sensible people, and that fools will always be fools. Now whether we agree with this view or not, those who hold it and act upon it cannot be called hypocrites. Those, however, who do not hold it, but believe not only that betting is a terrible source of demoralisation which no good patriot ought to encourage, but go further and actually regard betting as a vice, have certainly no right to have anything to do with newspapers which lend themselves to the encourage- ment of betting, and which, as we have said, turn them- selves in fact into public gaming-tables. What in others is at worst an error of opinion in them becomes cant and hypocrisy, or, to use the language of theology, sinning affainst the light. 0 It may be that there is some explanation which we have not been able to think of, but we cannot see how it is possible to defend the Daily News for refusing to con- taminate its pages with betting news while all the time holding shares in the Star and Morning Leader, Limited, the company which owns the two papers in question. Here are the facts. Of the 35,002 Ordinary shares in this company, the Daily News Company, Limited, holds 9,375 ; Mr. H. T. Cadbury, one of the directors of the Daily News, and also one of the directors of the Star and Morning Leader, owns 2,001 shares ; while Mr. Crosfield, secretary of the Daily News, owns 2,000 shares. It seems to us that a very fair analogy would be the following. The Spectator has taken a strong line in denouncing the publication of books likely to lead to public demoralisation,—that is, " poisonous literature." What would be said if it could be shown that the Spectator held shares in some company which was notorious for publishing this very type of poisonous literature, and that a person closely associated with the management of the Spectator was also on the board of directors of the company in question ? To take another point, we are bound to say that it appears to us monstrous that the Daily News should denounce Archdeacon Sinclair, as the National Review tells us that it does, for holding an investment in a brewery company, while itself holding an investment in a company which aspires to earn dividends by catering for the public desire to gamble.
We come now to another matter which we feel compelled to notice in this context. It appears that Mr. A. S. Rowntree, the Member for York, holds 2,001 shares in the Star and Morning Leader Company, and is a director of that company; while from the share register of the Star and Morning Leader, Limited, we also gather the fact that no less than 9,375 shares are owned by Joseph Rown- tree's Social Service Trust. We are not aware of the nature of the Trust in question, but we presume that it represents some sum of money which Mr. Joseph Rown- tree has put apart for social service,—that is, for philan- thropic work for the benefit of his fellow-men. Surely a man engaged in such work cannot be blind to the evils that come from incitements to betting in the Press such as are published daily in the Morning Leader and hourly in the numerous editions of the Star. He has only to turn to the works of a near relative, Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree, to realise the evil that is being wrought by tipsters in the Press, conspicuous among whom are those employed by the Star. In " Betting and Gambling : a National Evil " '(Macmillan and Co., 6d.) Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree writes as follows :- " Until comparatively recent years, betting and gambling were largely confined in this country to the wealthy few. Now, how- ever, the practice has spread so widely among all classes of the community that those who know the facts name gambling and drinking as national evils of almost equal magnitude. There is no doubt that the social conscience is as yet only very partially awakened to the widespread character of the gambling evil and to its grievous consequences. Like a cancer, the evil thing has spread its poisonous roots throughout the length and breadth of the land, carrying with them, where they strike, misery, poverty, weakened character, and crime."
We may add that Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree is in no sense blind to the evils caused by the Press encouragement of betting, for the book itself and its appendices are full of references to the tipsters of the Press. We may note, again, that Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree in his well-known work on " Poverty " states that betting takes an equal place with drink in the production of poverty. That being so, it seems to us somewhat strange that those who control the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust should employ its funds in the propagation of betting tips,—should hire racing touts in the name of social service.
If the members of the Rowntree family who own shares in the Star and Morning Leader Company accept what we have called the " man-of-the-world " view of betting, and repudiate the view we have quoted from Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree, then of course our contention falls to the ground. Again, if the trustees—for we presume there are trustees of the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust— take the kind of view which is taken by the proprietors of, say, the Standard, the Times, the Daily Mail, the Evening News, the Daily Chronicle, or the Morning Post, our contentions would pass them by unscathed. There would be nothing canting in their action. The proprietors of the papers just named have as good a right to their opinion on betting as we have, and as long as they hold it honestly they cannot be arraigned for anything but an error of opinion. What we cannot understand is how those who take what we may for convenience call the Rowntree view of gambling can act in the way we have mentioned. It cannot make for a healthy and straightforward public opinion in a profession the honour and good name of which we have at heart. We write on this .subject with great reluctance and regret, for we are fully aware that in their private capacity the members of the Rowntree family have done excellent public service, and are beyond doubt men of high character and real benevolence. That makes action such as that to which we have called attention all the more deplorable. Dr. Johnson told us to clear our minds of cant, but we must clear our actions of it also if we are to be in the true sense good citizens.
Previous page
