The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-18
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THE LAST PRIZE EIGHT.


From the NJ i. World.
The exceptional and trauscendent rninaiushl
bf the fight between McCOole ana Alien on
Tuesday is not matter for regret, but, contra
tiwise, for rejoicing. For it plainly toreshows
the end of prize-fghting. when, as IN thls
instance the stronger party prevents the de-
feat of its favorite by overwhelming his supe-
I.ior ANTAGONIST and breaking up the fight, it
is avidenf even to the unintelligence of the
ovarage ro,,eh. that il is useless to venture
J,oney upon the success of the man who has
The smaller following no matter how far
superior to his opponent the man may be-
When this becomes clear, the weaker party
which knows itself to be the weaker will re-
frain from venturing money, and when money
ceases to be ventured, prize-hghts will cease
to be fought.
The utter brutality of this fight is useful in
another way. Prize-fghting has always been
beastly business and always properly under
the ban of the law. But in its high and
palmy days the men who encouraged them
held themselves bound by a crude code of
honor, by which, in the absence of legal pro-
lection, they generally secured fair play and
what in their slang is called the winning of
the better man on his merits. This was when
Crib. jackson, and Gully were in the ring, and
when prize-fghting, brutal as in its essence it
always is, was yet in some respects almost re-
spectacle, and when some qualities which un-
by it. But now pugilism has lost even the
pretense of being in any way manly art, and
is followed, not by the mere brutal gladiators
who were once the ornaments of the prize
ring, but by towards, sneaks thieves, and
,murderers, like this thug McCoole and this
thug Allen. There are numbers of men of
This class in New York whose existence is
palpably useless and dangerous, but who
are vet left at large and permitted, by the
ponnivance, or at least, by the sloth, of the
police, publicly to arrange for prize-fghts,
soublicly to carry out all the preliminaries of
Them, and to show themselves publicly with
IMMUNITY. After their fights have been
fought, surely there ought to be some such
increase of stringency, either in the laws or
in the administration of them, as would pre-
vent such a thing. Here are hundreds of
men in New York of whom every one knows,
and who must know of themselves, that they
ought to be hanged. Unfortunately, these
wretches cannot be hanged, in the present
state of the statute-b book, for being what they
are. But what a real boon it would be to
them as well as to the rest of us if they
could be, if not summarily hanged, at least
imprisoned and made to work as soon as they
take any overt step in the practice of their
yocations either as thieves, bullies, or mur-
derers If they would only fall foul of each
other, when they elude the police and assem-
bile for their devilish doings, and wage war to
mutual determination, there would be some
thing consolatory about it. But they are too
cowardly to do anything of the kind. Their
assaults are all made upon inoffenslve people
who have either had the fatuity to attend the
fight as spectators or who have the misfor-
tune to dwell in the vicinity of the scene of
it. They themselves are all, unhappily, left
alive at the end of the fight, to return to then
lairs and ply their vocations of sneak-thievery
and sneak-murder until another fight lures
them into the sunlight of notoriety. The
names of the chief of them are well
known to the police, and their habitat is
equally known. From them come such
later murder of Larkin, who, doubtless, on
general principles, deserved to be killed. but
who did not deserve to be murdered. Is il
impossible that these 'infected districts" of
humanity whose boundaries are not local but
spiritual should be put under a sanitary regu-
1ation at least as strict as the precautions we
adopt against the lesser evils of smallpox and
cholera? Modern civilization condemns the
old ''outlawry" whereby the victim of it was
made liable to be killed at sight by the first
decent citizen who might see him. But, at
least, these scoundrels might be placarded in
some such wise as that they might be Stunned
and excluded from all public assemblies and
from the public streets. Exposure is at pre-.
sent the only stigma which can be affixed tc
them; and that stigma it is easy to afix
But the prize fighters Observation-Disclosures
for their good as well as ours, they unques
tionably ought to be hanged-are less culpa
bile, because less accountable, than the news
papers which act as their procurers and whose
business it is to live out of their bloody trade
The men who conduct these papers at leas
know how to read and write, and they mus
know, therefore, what kind of morality they
are helping to inculcate. But, instead of the
incarceration of the savages and the suppress
sion of the newspapers which pander to them
the chief of the former are sent to the Legis
Sature to make laws for the government of the
community of which they are the scum, ant
the chief of the conductors of the latter par
lake of the innermost councils of the Presi
dent of the United States. QH0Nsqae tan
dem?