The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1893-11-22

ne starter dJ tne OuCtenOerg course
receives $4,000 a year, and the
common pay of starters and Judges
on other tracks is one hundred dol
lars per day. 1t is universally con-
coded that the race courses receive
their chief income from gambling
privileges and that they could not
exist without them. The book
makers as a rule pay the racing
associations one hundred dollars a
day for the privilege of doing bust
ness on the tracks, and the telegraph
companies pay as high as fifteen
hundred dollars a day for the priv
ilege of sending news from the
tracks to the pool-rooms. 1t needs
no argument to prove that all the
vast sums invested in race-courses
and the vast incomes derived from
them could not be if the interests
involved were only those of honest
and Legitimate sport. The great
race courses of the country to-day
are In very truth only a network of
gambling concerns managed by
gamblers in the interests of gam
blers, under the false pretext of i'm
proving the breed of horses.
GAS crime lers we unheslta-
thing afir lat the race-track
gambling de- of the country excel
any other agency of evil in existence
with the possible exception of the
saloons. The Louisiana Lottery
with all it's ramifcations and it's
vast wealth and power never con-
stituted such a menace to public
morality as the allied race track in
terests. We have it on undoubted
authority that over $2,89S,OOO was
stolen in single year recently by
men who had lost the money play
ing the races The New York Times
of July "a, 1898, contained col
umn article under the heading
Victims of the Race Track, giving
a long list of forgeries, embezzle-
ments and other crimes recently
committed, all attributable to race
track gambling.
"This is the testimony of the Su
perintendent of Police of New York
City: More young men have stood
here at this desk confessing their
first offence against law and ascrib-
ing their downfall to their infatua-
ton for pool-room gambling than l
would care to attempt to estimate.
Actual experience has satisfied me
that no form of gambling offers
greater temptations to young men to
take what is not theirs. AS horse
racing is conducted now, it would
be we'll for the community to stop
racing altogether. We are sending
men to prison right along on &C
count of the race gambling craze.
Homes are being destroyed and the
lives of young men blighted every
day in this city for the same rea-
SON.
"On the general subject of gam
bling Mr.. Chauncey M. Depew,
President of the New York Central
Railroad, says: GA considerable
proportion of failures in business
and 90 per cent, of the defalcations
and thefts and ruin Of youth among
people who are employed in places
of trust are due directly to gam
bling. [ have seen in my vast en-
plOyment so much misery from the
head of the family neglecting its
support and squandering his earn
ing in the lottery or the policy shop
and promising young men led astray
In small way and finally becoming
fugitives or landing in the criminal
dock, that [ have come to believe
that the community which licenses
and tolerates public gambling, can.
not have prosperity in business, re-
ligion in its churches, or morality
among its people"
"There are many other forms of
the gambling evil on which we
might dwell, such as policy gamb-
ling, widely extended and a special
curse to the poor in many of our
large cities bucket shop gambling,
a specially dangerous and formid-
able phase of the evil because car
| ried on In apparent conformity to
certain commercial usages and un-
der color of law; gambling with
cards, roulette, faro and fortune
wheels, gambling rafles and other
games Of chance, and in a score of
other forms, some concededly Grim
iual and others in the guise Of in
nocent amusement"
The men who have issued this
appeal and given the above testi
mony have not uttered an idle
alarm Gambling in all it's forms
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