FOOTNOTES:
[7] The following is quoted from Mr. Lloyd George’s speech at Bedford (October, 1913):
“In 1851 you had in this country 9,000 gamekeepers; in 1911 there were 23,000. During that period the number of labourers on the soil went down by 600,000. The number of gamekeepers went up by 250 per cent., and the number of labourers down by 600,000. Pick up a copy of the Field and look at the advertisements there, and you will realise the extent of the evil. Here is one advertising shooting rights for estates where last year 5,000 pheasants were shot. Here is a sportsman who advertises 1,000 acres, with coverts to hold 7,000 rabbits on his estate. You try a small holding there! Agriculture has had a bad time. It has had to pass through a time of great crisis. What would have been done in any other trade if it had to face the difficulties which agriculture had? A great capitalist would have introduced new machinery, got the best labour, and would have put the whole of his energy, brain, and enterprise into restoring that industry. He would have gone, if necessary, for years without any return, and at last he would have pulled through. That is what has happened in many industries in this country. What has happened here? What has the great capitalist done in agriculture? He has trebled the number of his gamekeepers, he has put land out of cultivation, he has increased enormously the number of pheasants which have been turned on to the land.”
[8] See the “Report of the Land Enquiry Committee,” vol. i., 1913, which in its chapter on “Game” contains a severe condemnation of the practice of excessive game preserving. “The damage done by game is too serious to be overlooked. Even when the tenant farmer is fully compensated the damage amounts to a national loss.… Not merely is land under-cultivated, but large areas are altogether out of cultivation owing to the preservation of game. This land, instead of providing food for the people, provides sport and delicacies for the few, and is the source of much damage and annoyance to neighbouring farmers.”
THE COST OF SPORT
By MAURICE ADAMS
“Now Dives daily feasted and was gorgeously arrayed,
Not at all because he liked it, but because ’twas good for trade;
That the people might have calico, he clothed himself in silk,
And surfeited himself on cream, that they might get the milk;
He fed five hundred servants, that the poor might not lack bread,
And had his vessels made of gold that they might get more lead:
And e’en to show his sympathy with the deserving poor,
He did no useful work himself that they might do the more.”
Ernest Bilton.
In a tract entitled “Sport, A National Benefactor,” dedicated to the sportsmen of the nation, Mr. Henry R. Sargent gives elaborate statistics to prove that large sums of money are devoted to the maintenance of sport, while about £25,000,000 are annually spent upon it. Of this amount he estimates that wages absorb some £6,000,000. Rents of shootings and fishings, and the price of race-horses, come to £5,500,000, which sum, though “going principally to the upper classes, is recirculated in various ways,” while, “except the few pounds paid for dead horses, we have from hunting, shooting, and racing, over £6,000,000 a year paid for oats, meal, hay, straw, beans, and bran; and let it be understood that it is all British produce. No infernal foreign stuff is given to our hounds or horses, though we may eat it ourselves, and thus encourage Free Trade—that curse of our country.”
After we have thus been shown “what a gigantic medium sport is for the circulation of money—the vertebræ (sic) of our common weal,” we are not surprised that “to these facts and figures, which no sophistry can dispute and no method of statement darken,” Mr. Sargent should “draw the attention alike of sportsmen, prigs, prudes, and the public,” and should “invite the consideration of Radicals and Socialists” to the subject. For he continues gravely: “Let these political step-brethren ponder well before they strive to injure the classes who maintain our sports. Let them recognise the fact that as a universal benefactor in bringing to the poor the rich man’s money, a substitute for sport can never be found. These revolutionists should also assure themselves of the fact that never can they devise a system which will carry out the principles of Communism as practically and universally as that which has always been adopted by our resident landlords. Be it £5,000, £20,000, or £100,000 a year, which may be focussed in the one individual, he spends it all among the community. Yet these are the men who are marked for destruction by the Radical, the Socialist, and the Anarchist; and not the landlords alone, but all moneyed men, no matter of what class.”
It is small wonder, then, that the heart within him is grieved when he thinks of those bold bad men, the agitators, for they, he informs us tearfully, “as a rule, dislike the upper classes,” while those pre-eminently wicked men, the land agitators, to a man, “hate them with ferocity.” It was to gratify that hatred, as our author is assured, “and not so much to benefit either the land tenants or crofters, that agitation has been got up in Ireland and Scotland.”
“In Ireland hunting was attacked, as was openly avowed, to drive the landlords out of the country, but happily hunting is as strong there as ever, except in Waterford; and although they be not so well off as formerly, we still have the landlords. In Scotland the same game is being played by the agitators. Although they strive to hide the motive under the kilt of the crofter, they have no desire but to injure the landlords through means of attacking the shooting. Hunting was also assailed by other parties, in alleging that cruelty was practised by hunting carted deer! An outcry is also raised for the tourists, that in pursuit of their vocation they are, forsooth, to be allowed to disturb the Highland forests, and so scare away the wild red-deer, animals which the agitators know well cannot abide the sight of a human being, much less the slightest noise. What do agitators care for tourists, anyway? Then comes this raid upon racing. Of a truth, therefore, it is high time that all sportsmen, from the peer to the pantry-boy, should coalesce and defend themselves in organised phalanx against those who, with intolerance and impertinence, gratuitously assail us.”
For just consider the money spent on racing, and the number of men employed. Some 8,000 young men, says Mr. Sargent, “are employed in the racing stables of the kingdom—a number equal to that of more than ten regiments of the line.”
“When we come to consider what has been spent upon the stables at Newmarket, and other places … the amount becomes absolutely appalling! The sum has to be counted in thousands—and it runs into millions—all of which is spent in labour and material. As do the other branches of sport which I have dealt with, racing sends money flowing from the rich to the poor man’s pocket, but at the same time nearly all classes derive monetary benefit through this special branch of sport.”
One seems to have heard something of gambling at races, but our author tells us that “it is the misfortune of racing, and not its fault, that betting should be connected with it,” but he holds that “to stop gambling on the Turf, which has existed from time immemorial, is an impossibility: so no one need attempt to do so.” With the true democratic feeling engendered by the “principle of Communism” animating sport, he asserts that “no man abhors gambling more than I do, and I would, if I could, put a stop upon the shop-boys and humble classes indulging in the vice, but I would let the others do as they choose.” For the author is sure that “to interfere with any old-established institution which is working well is a most dangerous thing.” “God knows,” he exclaims in despair, “what would be the result, if these latter-day saints, who are now on the prowl, were to succeed in their attempt to interfere with racing, even if only so far as betting is concerned.”