The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-11-25
EDITORIAL NOtings.

Editorial NOtings.
THE Mirror and Farmer, one of our
ablest and most popular agricultural
contemporaries recent decease of
whose founder will be felt as personal
loss by thousands of farmers and other
friends all over New England-prints
strong article ag iinst gambling in stocks,
apropos of the failure of the Maverick
Bank. 1t says of its managers: But
they were gamblers. They had made
their millions at the stock board, and
they could no more stop when they had
enough aud knew they had enough
than drunkard can stop when he
knows that to go on is death. They
continued to gamble. The dice turned
against them. The stocks they bought
for rise went down. The shares they
agreed to deliver at thirty vaulted to
forty. Their millions vanished. Pot
ter and French took the funds of the
bank they controlled, leav ng in their
place worthless securities, and emptied
them into the street. They forgot
there should be honor among thieves,
and robbed each other they cheated
the friends by whose help they had
risen originally; they deceived and
duped and defrauded everybody within
their reach, and their reach was long
one. They did it all hoping and ex-
pecting to be successful, to win back
their losses, restore the funds of the
bank and protect their friends and GUS
toners, but their luck had departed"
WE are glad to see the bright young
man who will hereafter control the Mir.
ror and Farmer take such strong ground
on the subject of gambling. 1t is par
ticularly desirable that a paper which
devotes so much labor and money to
the noble horse should in marked
manner keep its skirts clear of any
share in the abasement of his nobility
to the level of an instrument of gam
bling. The horse-race is an unobiec-
tionable sport, so long as it does not
pander to mean and destructive vice.
Like Henry Ward Beecher, we see no
harm in letting fast horse 90 fast.
The horse enjoys it as well as his driver
and the on-lookers. But as it is a sport
which lends itself easily to demoraliz-
ing conditions, it should be under such
rigid regulations as to make it useless
for every form of vice or fraud. 1t is
the difficulty of so ordering it which
causes the demand for excluding every
thing like horse-race from the agri-
cultural fair. -
AS to the "honor among thieves" to
which the Mirror and Farmer refers,
it may exist-and it may be but de-
ceptive appearance, assumed as a gloss
to crime. Whichever way we take it,
there is not enough of it to secure
safety to the simple in either fast bank
ing or fast horse racing. We have, as
newspaper man for nearly fifty years
being a publisher before we were
eighteen-attended and reported in
Vulnerable races, East, West and South;
and even under the most favorable cir
cumstances, where all the managers
and leading patrons were men of I'M
blemished integrity, we have never
seen them unattended by sharpers
ready to take in the unwary youth, or
the too-confident veteran. Of course,
it is impossible to exclude these rogues
from the grounds-and it would seem in
New England to be impracticable to ex-
clude them from influence in the man
agement. AS to the races at agricultural
fairs, our experience is that as the
Southern running races, which we were
well acquainted with in our youth, were
the freest from objection, 80 the -" az
ricultural hoss-trot of the North is
the vilest and most grossly villainous,
from top to bottom, of any on the round
globe. A dog-fight in the slums of
New York is respectable alongside of
some races that we have seen at the
New England Fair, and at many state
and county fairs, within the last twenty
years. -
A LUDLOW, VT, subscriber writes us
for list of agricultural works suitable
for rural library, "such books as
would be used by any intelligent young
man or farmer" We could give him a
list of titles, selected from our own IL
brary of upwards of a thousand volumes,
related more or less closely to the sub
ject in hand; but it occurs to us that
we might not be so good judge of
their practical usefulness as some of
our readers. This correspondent wants
the titles of books under the heads of
ny General FARMING. roy Emit. ray