RACING DIVIDENDS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4405, 24 April 1922, Page 1

RACING DIVIDENDS.

PROHIBITION OF PUBLICATION.

CAUSTIC CRITICISM. -

In a spasm of " unco 1 guidness ” (states the " Dominion,” Wellington) some years ago Parliament forbade the newspapers to publish totalisator dividends. The theory, we take it, was that unless, it was published in the Press the young and innocent would be unaware that it was possible to make money by backing winners at the races. It was a tribute to the power of the Press, but it seems that the Legislature overestimated the results that would be achieved by the suppression of this class of literature. The attendance at the racecourse has not in the least been diminished by the absence of a statement of the totalisator dividends in the racing reports, nor has probably a single pound onte been diverted from the purchase of a totalisator ticket. What has been achieved by this piece of legislation it is difficult to see. The elimination of the dividend figures merely deprives the race-jgoing. public of a piece of intelligence that is of decided interest to them. It contributes nothing towards reducing totalisator betting, and its only object -seems to have been to pacify the anti-totalisatpr party bv making and appearance of doing something, while in reality doing nothing that had any vital effect one way or the other. This piece of political eye-wash might very, well come off the Statute Book..

To the above the “ Gazette ” may add that the State patronage of the totalisator, and the enforced exit of the bookie, has done more to popularise gambling than anyone foresaw. Thousands of women now frequent racecourses who did not do so in the days of the disreputable bookie, before the State clotbed gambling on the racecourses the mantle of respectability.- The result of most of those prohibitions ’is either to drive an evil into still more foul quarters underground, or to popularise it and induce a contempt of the legislation which brings them- into force but is unable to force the law. What may be achieved in the course of generations by such restrictions is a debatable subject, but it certainly seems impossible wi,thin one generation to mak people moral by Act of Parliament.