(III) Betting is, beyond everything else, even drunken= ness itself, a cause of misery and suffering, for wives and~ children.
All clergy working in big industrial parishes, all social workers, club managers, brigade and scout officers, collectors for insurance, burial and benefit societies, rent collectors, district visitors, trade union officials, magistrates, and policemen know this to be true. The day I returned to Manchester after giving evidence before the mission, two J.P.'s stopped me. The first said, "Thirty years work on the bench has taught me that you have not yet said half'the truth." The second said, "Three years on the bench have convinced me of the truth of every word you spoke." A foreman, in a big engineering works, said to me, 'A man stops off drinking two days. Then he lies off. another, to get well. So he has only two and a half days to draw. That won't pay his score at the: pub, let alone leave anything to take home, so he speculates, If he wins, it's another drinking bout. If he loses he goes home and beats his wife, and like as not. it spreads to the whole street,. and there is a police court case on Monday morning. And then if there is spell of bad trade they haven penny, and must go to. the Guardians. It is the working man's greatest curse." I can endorse this. From the window, as I write, I can see the back windows of a block of model dwellings where there is a man who, having a decent business as preen grocer, risked everything could beg, borrow, and steal on a coup that was to have landed. £800. It failed, he went bankrupt and narrowly escaped gaol, and. for a year and four months he, hig wife, and six children have been maintained by the Guardians. What has that one bet cost the country?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.