THE COST OF SPORT

By MAURICE ADAMS

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.”

Giving Employment.

The pamphlet from which the foregoing extracts have been taken is not, as one might imagine, a huge joke, nor is it a sly attempt to pour ridicule upon sport. It was published by the Sporting League—on the executive committee of which we find the names of many noble lords and distinguished commoners—apparently with the serious intention of furthering the fifth of the League’s praiseworthy objects—“Generally to do whatever may from time to time seem advisable for counteracting the pernicious influence of ‘faddists.’” It seems that we can hardly reckon a sense of humour among the many “inestimable benefits” that sport bestows on its devotees, however much food for laughter the publications of the League may give to “faddists” and the public.

Although this tract was published some years ago, its arguments have not deteriorated with age, since we find them essentially reproduced in an address delivered in November, 1908, at the Surveyors’ Institute, by the President, Mr. Howard Martin, and commented on with approval by The Field. Mr. Martin, like the author of the tract, seriously insists on the great benefits which agriculture and business derive from fox-hunting. He estimates that on the upkeep of hunters £3,500,000 a year are spent. Shooting also involves a large outlay for the feeding and rearing of birds, and attracts much cash to the pockets of residents in the country. And, further, the prosperity due to sport radiates in all directions. Not merely farmers and farm-hands, but local innkeepers, country fly-drivers, and village shopkeepers share in the stream of wealth which sport pours forth over the country. There are even tips for the inn-servants and the porters at the railway-stations! Indeed, Mr. Martin declared that he had taken great pains to get at reliable facts and figures on which to ground his arguments, and his conclusion was that not only did hunting and the preservation of foxes generally benefit agricultural districts, but that hunting and the exercise of shooting rights indirectly benefited the country at large “by checking rural depopulation.” The Field is not unmindful of the rich physical and moral gains which the gamekeepers, beaters, and others ministering to sport, derive from a shooting-party. “They are all of them fond of sport; they like to see birds well killed, they enjoy the pick-up, they enjoy (a matter of no little moment) a good beaters’ lunch, they like a good glass of ale at the close of the day, and are better off in mind and pocket for a few hours which interrupt the routine of their ordinary life like a holiday.”

It is amusing to note how largely the anti-Budget protests of the distressed Dukes and other wealthy persons were based on the egregious fallacy that “giving employment” is conducive to the welfare of the community, without regard to the character of the employment given. Nothing, for instance, could be more absurd than the remarks made by Lord Londonderry on August 23, 1909, and solemnly reported in The Times:

“What was his position if he had to curtail his expenditure, as he was told by his Radical friends that he must do? The great interest in the property to him was the shooting and gardens, which gave employment to a large number of men. Could it be said that these two enjoyments were to him absolutely selfish? He was able to send out large consignments of game as presents, and was also able to benefit those out of employment in times of depression. Therefore that amusement was not a selfish one.”

The fact that Lord Londonderry’s shooting gives employment to a large number of persons is in truth its greatest condemnation; for though the individuals employed may be glad of the work, the community loses by the waste of time, labour, and money involved in such a perfectly futile occupation as that of game-preserving, in which every pheasant killed has cost far more than its own food-value.

Here, again, is a delightful extract from a sporting paper, October 6, 1909:

“Rearing of pheasants is a very costly matter, and one which I anticipate will be seriously curtailed in the near future if this so-called ‘Working Man’s Budget’ is passed. County gentlemen will be very hardly hit if this iniquitous Bill becomes law, and they will consequently have to effect economies in every direction. One of the very first will be in reducing their shootings, or in giving up rearing birds altogether. Pheasants which are hand-reared cost about 4s. each to feed, from start to finish. Thus it is easy to understand what sums of money find their way into farmers’ and tradesmen’s pockets for the purchase of food alone, for hundreds of thousands of pheasants all over the kingdom have to be fed for months every year. The money which is expended one way or another over shooting is quite enormous, for it must be remembered that, in addition to the purchase of eggs and food, there are wages, clothes, and fuel for keepers; there are also endless expenses in connection with rearing. When the shooting commences, there are beaters at 2s. 6d. and 3s. per day, with meat, bread, cheese, and beer. And there is the expense of hospitality to guests. Take it all in all, the old saying that each pheasant shot costs, one way and another, a guinea, is not far wrong.

“Now, who benefits from all this? The poor owner certainly does not, for it is all pay, pay, pay with him, and if he does sell his surplus birds, he will only get back 2s. to 2s. 6d. a bird. But the public gets the benefit, for they can purchase these costly-reared birds for the price of chickens. One day those people, the farmers, tradesmen, working-classes, and labourers, will wake up to what they have lost, when they find the country house shut up, and shooting, as it used to be, a thing of the past.”

No doubt all these crumbs of blessing fall from the rich man’s pocket on the happy gamekeepers, beaters, and others who are employed by a shooting-party. No doubt the country lads, servants, and porters rejoice in the tips they receive. Much money is spent on sport, and a great deal of it finds its way as wages and gratuities into the pockets of dependents, but to contend seriously that sport checks depopulation is ludicrous. It is an insult to our intelligence to argue that the country is more prosperous and supports a larger population when the land is portioned out in great estates, many of which are only farmed to the degree necessary to keep the game on the land; when the people are driven from the country-side into the town; when in Scotland whole counties have been cleared of inhabitants in order to form vast deer forests for the sport of a few rich men.

The Reality.

Of the 56,000,000 acres in Great Britain something less than 15,000,000 are actually cultivated, although there are 35,000,000 acres of cultivable land. Thirty years ago there were more than 2,000,000 agricultural labourers in Great Britain, but in 1907 they had decreased to 1,311,000. In the same year there were more than 17,000,000 acres of pasture. In “Fields, Factories, and Workshops,” Prince Kropotkin estimates that the soil of the United Kingdom would produce enough food for 24,000,000 people, instead of for only 17,000,000 as at present, if it were cultivated as thoroughly as it was only thirty-five years ago, while if it were cultivated as thoroughly as Belgium it would produce enough to feed 37,000,000.

Take, again, the question of Afforestation. The Report of the Royal Commission, issued on January 15, 1909, is a most important paper in many ways. Of special interest are the references made by the Commissioners to the responsibility of blood-sports for much of the bad condition of our woodlands.

“Considerations of sport have played an important part in determining the method of management of our woods. Clean boles, with high-pitched crowns, the exclusion of the sun’s rays, and ground destitute of grass, weeds, and bushes, are not conditions favourable to either ground or winged game. On the contrary, trees that are semi-isolated, and with low-reaching branches, and a wood that is full of bracken, brambles, and similar undergrowth, present conditions much more attractive to the sportsman, and it is these conditions that many landowners have arranged to secure. Ground game, too, has been the cause of immense destruction amongst the young trees, and thus it has, in a measure, directly brought about that condition of under-stocking which is so inimical to the growth of good timber and to the successful results of forestry. Nor is it possible in the presence of even a moderate head of ground game to secure natural regeneration of woodlands, the young seedling trees being nibbled over almost as soon as they appear above ground. So intimate is the association in the United Kingdom between sport and forestry that even on an estate that is considered to possess some of the best-managed woods in England, the sylvicultural details have to be accommodated to the hunting and shooting, and trees must be taken down in different places to make cover for foxes, and so on.”

If, then, the land of our country, instead of lying almost idle or in permanent pasture interspersed with parks and copses as cover for game, or left desolate as moor and deer forest, were covered with the small farms of prosperous peasants, like Belgium or Denmark, and the more rugged and uncultivable districts turned into national forests giving regular and healthy employment to large numbers of men, would not far better results be obtained, even from the purely economic point of view? Now we have a few gamekeepers and beaters, a few grooms, jockeys, stablemen, and horse-dealers, and other dependents of the sportsmen, and a few farmers, breeding horses and growing fodder for them, while the labourers are turned out of their native village for want of work and house-room, and drift into the already overcrowded and hideous towns which daily absorb more and more of the country, or are even forced to leave their native land altogether and seek a livelihood in lands beyond the sea, free, as yet, from the blessings of sport; then we should have some millions of free men earning an honest living in healthful surroundings, and producing a thousandfold more wealth for themselves than is distributed by the aristocrats and plutocrats, who, according to the protagonist of the Sporting League, so fully “carry out the principles of Communism.”

But it is surely needless to labour the point. The arguments of the economic defenders of sport are so grotesque that it is difficult to believe that a sensible man of business like Mr. Martin can really be in earnest in his advocacy of sport as a means of finding employment for the people.

But sports, and especially blood-sports, are not only defended on the ground that they give employment, circulate money, and confer other economic advantages on an ungrateful nation. As The Field contends, there are “assets which cannot be calculated in shillings and pence,” and the author of our entertaining tract challenges those “who, with the bigotry characteristic of all faddists,” attack the chasing of hares and foxes, or the worship of the sacred bird, to “look at the matter straight and see what inestimable benefit sport is to the nation. Should we ever lose our love for sport,” he continues, “or be prevented indulging it, we shall assuredly lose our manliness, and very likely our wealth, and then what will become of the nation?”

The word “sport” is a very loose and indefinite word. It covers all kind of healthful and innocent exercises as well as hunting, shooting, and racing. No one doubts that an open-air life is a natural and healthy life; that running and riding, and swimming and sailing, and other outdoor exercises and games, are good both for mind and body; but the “moral and intellectual damages” of all blood-sports are a very serious set-off against any physical advantages they may have.

A staunch defender of sport was once dwelling—in debate—on the glories of a day with the hounds, and describing how a ride across country in the fresh frosty air swept the cobwebs from the brain of the jaded city man and sent the blood coursing healthily through his veins. He was met by the rejoinder that all these advantages could be got by a gallop over the downs, or, at any rate, by a “drag” hunt. “Ah, but that’s not all,” he cried, “one must have the zest of running down and killing an animal, and thus satisfying a natural instinct.” The reply that such an instinct was an echo of primeval savagery, and just one of those which hinder the upward progress of the race—one, also, more completely gratified by the butcher or the slaughter-man—only provoked the anger of the sportsman, and failed to shake his rooted belief in the blessings of sport.

This doggerel, with which Mr. Sargent concludes his tract on sport, encourages the notion that blood-sports develop manliness, and that if Englishmen ceased to ride to hounds, to hunt the hare or otter, or shoot the pheasant and partridge, they would become effeminate. This superstition ought surely to have received its death-blow by the events of the Russo-Japanese war. When we hear of the rice-eating, gentle Japanese, who prefer taming wild creatures by kindness to shooting or mangling them, performing prodigies of valour apparently quite beyond the capacity of the fiercer nations of the West, it is surely time to revise our conceptions of what true courage is, and how it is nurtured.

And any manliness which might be nurtured by sport is steadily being reduced to a minimum. The author of our ingenuous tract descants, indeed, on the hardships endured by fox-hunters, grouse-shooters, and deer-stalkers, but says nothing of the noble sportsmen who merely wait till the pheasants are driven past them, to slaughter them at their ease as fast as loaded guns can be handed them, or of those who find a manly pastime in shooting pigeons let loose from cages. Shall we form a high opinion of the manly virtues of the well-to-do cowards who chase tame stags, or of the low-class ruffians who let frightened and dazed rabbits out of bags for a hopeless run for life before savage dogs? The insensibility which delights in seeing a fox torn to pieces by hounds, or which feels no pain when that excessively sensitive and timorous creature, the hare, is seen dropping from exhaustion with a pack of harriers in full cry on its track, is not an element of true manliness, but a survival from a pre-human state. In the savage state the mighty hunter was a hero because he bravely risked his life for the defence of wife and child against strong and fierce beasts that might else have devoured them, or endured toil and hardship, and encountered danger in the search for food and clothing. But in England to-day hunting is an anachronism, which survives only because land-monopoly, and an unjust distribution of the national inheritance, have led our “splendid barbarians,” in the absence of the need for work, through the pressure of social distinctions, and the want of higher mental development, to seek release from boredom and fill up an aimless life by the indulgence and artificial stimulation of subhuman instincts.

Even those sports which, like cricket and football, take the form of health-giving games in the open air, and may really help to develop manliness, are to a large extent spoiled by the rise of professionalism and gambling. The great crowds which assemble to see other men engage in the hazardous game of football, and to exercise themselves merely in betting on the players, are being trained neither in manliness nor morals. We should indeed do all in our power to cultivate manliness, but it must be the quality which truly answers to the name; a fortitude capable of enduring hardships without whining, and a deliberate human courage which realises the danger, and consciously and resolutely faces it, not the mere brute fearlessness of animal excitement, insensibility, and stupidity.

It behoves all, therefore, who have the interest of humanity at heart, and are striving to help it on its upward way, to set themselves resolutely against blood-sports in any form, as a relic of savagery and an enemy to true manliness, and to endeavour to dissociate manly and health-giving sports from gambling, and to abolish the professional. To do all this effectively we must work for the abolition of the parasitic classes; we must strive to give all a share in the national inheritance, and such an education, mental, moral, and physical, as may fit them for the work of life, and for a wise and healthy use of the increased leisure in which all should share.