The average middle-aged working man reads nothing but newspapers. About 50 per cent. of the workers in the large industrial towns of England, where the London morning papers arrive before 8 o'clock, or where there is a local morning paper, buy a paper every morning. They glance through it at bri fast, if it is delivered at their komes; read it going to work on the train or car; snatch a few minutes with it during the morning shift at work and usually finish reading all they want to read at the midday stop. The choice of a paper depends on whether the workman is a native of the town in which he works, whether he has any interes in religion or whether he has no interest in reading at all, but likes pictures; or, and this is the most decisive factor, what is his interest in sport.
Some workmen never buy or read a newspaper, but they are very few; their knowledge of current happenings depends on hearsay and the posters outside the news agents.
Tae Sportine INTEREST.
Next come those men who buy a. football edition of a newspaper on Saturday night and a Sunday paper containing the full reports of the previous day's matches. Their knowledge of events outside the sporting world is confined to the detailed accounts of the week's divorces, murders and scandals, supplied by the Sunday paper.
Perhaps this class amounts to 25 per cent. of the working population the ages of 20 and 50.
conversation is almost exclusively made up of criticisms on the previous week's matches and speculations on those games yet to be played. It is interesting to note that this type of sport enthusiast is maze commonly between the ages of 35 and 50, than 19 and This would almost seem to foretell a diminution in the future of the working man's past absorption in Dall games. Perhaps it is, because the young men have experienced sterner reality in conflict than that which is to be seen in these League contests.
The workman keenly interested in "sport," who regularly has a bet on his fancy in racing and fills up a coupon or two for the week-end football matches, will buy a local evening paper containing the results, a picture paper in the morn. ing with the day's programme and favourites and an exclusively sporting weekly such as the "Sporting: Chronicle" or some football weekly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.