St. Paul daily globe., 1890-10-20
AMONG The HORSES.
Jockey Clubs Should Unite
and Purge the Turf OF
Humbug.
faces Are Run Incidentally
for Sport, But Chiefly
for Dividends.
Hanover and Kingston to
Be Disposed OF Under
the Hammer.
Something About Starting
Stamp Out Ringers
Whips and Tips.

The American turf has expanded to
such vast proportions that its welfare is
a proper subject for eternal vigilance"
says the Chicago Horseman. SO many
assaults have been made upon it, SO
many prophets of evil have toretold its
destruction, SO many have been the pro-
teStationS that it is irredeemably rotten.
that it beh0oves the well-wisherS of
thoroughbred racing TO view the Situa-
tion, now that the season is practically
over, with clearer vision than ever be-
fore. Two extreme classes infeSt the
turf. Those of one class never see any
thing wrong. If they dn see it they re-
fuse to admit it, and when you bring
the carrion of palpable fraud right
under their nose they accept the odor
and declare it is not bad perfumery
after all. They would have lis believe
that faro shark must necessarily be
gentleman in racing, and they clearly
proceed on the theory that the cieverer
thetrascal the greater ornament he is on
the turf. The other extreme, not less
peIniciouS nuisance, is that numerous
class OF persons who see job in every
race, who cannot conceive of man
running horses honestly, and who
howl wolf every time they happen to
make a mistake in placing a IS bet.
The turf is neither wholly depraved nor
is il 10y any means wholly clean. Be-
tween the two extreme elementS-the
peSSimistS who can see uothng right,
and the willfully blind who will see
nothing WrOng-StandS the great body
tlf racing folk xvhnsa 6ptv it ic TO-
slider the dangers that threaten, that
destruction may come neither from the
t3natic without nor the wolf within.
There is no preserFer known in this
world so efficacous as cleanliness,
aud this condition can only be ap-
proXimatpd by constant cleansing,
The trouble lies almost wholly with the
racing associations. The pretense that
racing is carried or 10y the Monmouth
Park association. the Coney Island
Jockey club, the Washington Park club,
the New York Jockey club, the Brook
lyn Jockey club. ct al, ''to improve the
breed of horses" is a wretched humbug.
mat racing is necessary to the i'm
proYement and preservation of the
breed of race horses is a self-apparent
fact, but that is not the motive of the
associations. They race inc d .ntally
for sport, but chiefly for dividends. Of
the several sources of revenue pour
ing into the Golfers of great asSocia-
ton the betting ring is river and the
others are rillS. Therefore the bpttiug
ring must bt propitiated, nurtured, cod
died, developed. and above all things
else not offended. The more
money that the public can be in
duced to pour into the ring
the more the association can
squeeZt cut Of it. In this way the asSO-
citation and the ring have common IN
terest. and why should the former nose
too keenly into the mysteries of the tat
ter? Is it strange that when the trail of
a fraud leads from the track toward the
ring it grows strangely and suddenly
cold, While If it points only to some OBJ
scure Jockey or one-horse trainer the
axe falls9 How many bookmakers have
been ruled off the turf in two years?
And does any thinking man doubt that
If every job that has sickened the hearts
of true turfmen were traced to its
source, four out of five would be found
to have been shaped by the hand that
chalks the odds? Better when a fraud
Is discovered not investigate it at all
than have an inyestigatiGn-Such as we
have more than once seen of late-tIat
gangrene, the knife" The deplorabe
extent of sprint-racing is distinct con-
eession on the part of the as
sociati0ns to the betting ring.
Big fields and the uncertain
ties of short sprints delight
the heart of the bookmaker and lend
gratifying fatneSS and amplitude to his
pocket, and-well, the more big fields in
uncertain and accidental wIliffS of races
the more he can afford to pay the asso-
citation for the privileges. Ii all races
of nj I;nfa
form might tell and the bettor have a
chance. the betting stand might not be
worth 500 day. What a satire on '.tne
Improvement of the breed of horses is
programme eff even our chief aSsocia-
ti0nS. with three or four five-and -a-half
or SiX-furlOng daShes Tor the accommo-
dation of ginger-pop horses carrying
postage-stamp weights. 1t is wrong
that there is justification for the re-
proach that less attention is being paid
TO 1.-The improvement of the breed of
horses" then to the improvement of the
breed Of gamblers. The evil of allow
ing bookmakers to own and run
horses, has been so often pointed
out that its mention is almost
SuperfiuouS. Edifying. is it not. to see
a smooth chalker posting odds and TAX
ing money against his own horse? We
grant that it is an evil not easy to eradi-
cafe, for bookmaker can secretly own
and control horses, but for the decency
Of the turf it should not be openly per-
mitted. The aSSociatiunS-for business
is buSlneSS-must be chary, too, about
offending h0rSemen. especially those
with large stables. for entries and horses
are necessary adjuncts to a successful
meeting. And so sometimes strange
things happen on the track, are passed
by, and rankle only for little while in
the hearts Of the losers. Plain words
are best, and we do not believe the real
friends of the turf are those who would
bandage their own and the public's
eyes. Denying the wrong is not the best
way TO right it. Better meet it manfully.
and grapple with it. The perpetual
press attacks, this year more fierce and
general than ever upon the racing i'll
tereSt, cannot be safely ignored. and it
Is for the associations to remove the
cause of what is pretty certain ere long
TO be made, in some of the states, the
basis of legislative deliberati0n that
may result diSastrousiy to racing. No
one cluD can be the Hercules that shall
cleanse the Augean stables. Ii is upon
the lack OF unity between the racing
associations that wrong fiourishes. The
evil that will defy any one association
would vanish under the heavy hand of
united interest The remedy lies in
the formation of national Jockey club,
as we have often pointed out, with a
strict code of laws-an organization
whose strong arm would reach out over
every track, protecting honest horse
men from sharks, and rendering it i'm
possible for the buccaneers of the turf to
merely shift their stamping ground
when once convicted, as they now do.
The plain duty of the reputable racing
associations. East and West, is-"Get
together"