Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1885-01-15
BERGH ON RACING.
ne Entertains Very Decided Opinions az
to the Cruelty of Racing.

w tue NFueity OF tNaCiHEs
"a beautiful morning. Take seat
said Mr.. Bergh this morning to a re-
porter for the Mail and Express.
providence is wise. II knows bad
weather and politics would be too much
for us to bear, and so we have fine
weather.
you've seen that Maud S. lowered
the trotting record by a quarter of
second, Mr.. Bergh?'f
THAT makes it 2:09t, does it notp
And even that won't satisfy the racing
,ublic.''
do You consider such speeding a
crueltyp''
'tMost decidedly. 1t is cruelty from
which no benefit is derived. Why, Mr..
Bonner is no more satisfied now than
he was before the mare accomplished
the task. Now she will be expected to
lower the record again, because her
owner, trainer, and number of good
judges of this kind of achievement
think she can. II Maud S. went round
a mile in one minute, then she would
be set to work to do it in fifty-nine sec
onds.''
''Do you consider the training the
horse goes through cruel, or the race
itself?"
"Both. A horse cannot 90 on forever
lowering a record. Making an animal
do its utmost so frequently must tax
Its power and cause pain. 1t is an ex-
pense to the owner and a great exhaus-
ton to the horse. The training is un-
natural and must cause any animal a
deal of discomfort.
Are you opposed to racing general
ly, or only to the attempts to lower the
record?n
ITO all kinds of racing or unnatural
speeding of animals. In horse-racing
the jockey is armed with a whip and
spurs and the racers are stabbed and
whipped until not unfrequently they
drop from sheer exhaustion. Is not
that cruelty? And yet we have no
power to interfere. because the law
wants us to see the cruelty actually
committed
''ls there no remedy for thispn
81 am willing to acknowledge / am
powerless because the majority of the
community support it, and they support
it from vanity and gambling. Take
away the gambling from the race
course and the turf will have lost near
ly all its attraction, or like the opera
with Patti singing but not receiving
$4,000 a night. 1t will be the same as
a bull-fight without blood. As an ex-
ample, some time ago a party of
Andalasians came here and built ring
in One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
street. / informed them that if they
attempted bull-fight would stop the
affair, and that a horse would not be
allowed in the ring. They agreed to
only use paste on the rosettes and not
pins, and do away with the blood, and
what was the result? The whole af-
fair was failure, which would be pre-
cisely the case with horse-racing if
gambling was stopped"
at IS said that some owners refuse
to allow their horses to be whipped or
spurred."
4'Such an owner ought to show him
self in BunnelPs museum at least once
a day. Do you suppose that if an own
er starts horse in race, and has
bet of say $4,000 on that horses win
ming, he will tell the jockey he must
not spur or whip it? / can't conceive
such thing, and imagine the Jockeys
only instructions would be, go in and
win. An owner made the assertion
some time ago that it was natural for
horse to run like they are made TO do,
and that they like to be whipped all
round the course. Take that man and
put a bit in his mouth and make him
run round ring, at the same time
thrashing him, and see how he likes it;
and it is the same thing, only the horse
is dumb animal and cannot express
its feelings"
You grant, | suppose, these horses
are well taken care of ?"
''Such care as you or l would be
well satisfied with at the Fifth Avenue
hotel, but such as is unnatural to a
horse; and then they only receive such
care while they are repaying their own
ers. Let them deteriorate or sprain an
ankle and then see where they 60 to.
Follow one of these horses and you will
lind him by and by standing in front of
an ash-cart belonging to some one
carting refuse up to Shantytown. i
should think that these gentlemen
members of the Jockey club who say
they have the interest of the horse at
heart would be glad to have our repre-
sentative on the course to report any
case OF cruelty, but they refuse alto
gether to give us admission, and then
Hog horse all the way round. '-New
York Mail and EgpresS.