GROWTH OF BETTING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4617, 24 October 1923, Page 2

GROWTH OF BETTING.

POSITION IN ENGLAND. RESPONSIBLE FOR MISERY. “The betting mania in England, once a luxury of the well-to-do, now seems almost to have become one of the necessaries of the poor.” said Mr A. R. Atkinson, who returned by the Tahiti, to a Wellington Dominion reporter, “and both , morally and economically it threatens disaster to the nation unless some very drastic antidote is applied. Two sentences from a statement made by Sir Robert Kin dcrsley, a director of the Bank of England and the founder of the National Savings Bank Movement, will suffice "to make both these points good: Nothing, in my opinion, interferes .so much with the efficiency of the great mass of people as the present betting disease, which is spreading like a cancer throughout every class of the community. . . . Evidence is not wanting that betting is responsible for at, least as much, if not more, misery in the homes of the country than is drinking. "The space given to horse-racing in the popular Press suggests that ;t is far the most important of the national industries. Racing news and hips for the next event are the most loudly advertised features of the evening papers, and most of them make much of ‘paddock wires’ from their special tipsters. There is also an immense host of publications which live on tips and nothing else.