The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-11-02
DE LACY AGIN, GAMBLING.


 Peter De Lacy, who used to be the King of the pool room keepers In this city. but who has been practically frog en out by the enforcement of the Ives law. which prohibits the making of bets except at the race tracks. has come out in an open letter in favor of the proposed amendment to the con stitution which will make 1t illegal 10 carry on any kind of gambling any where in this state.
 Among those who condemn the pro- posed amendment" he says, "are John A. Morris, Michael F. Dwyer, Phil Dwyer James R. Keene, James Galway and August Belmont. All these per sons are members and beneficiaries of the race track trust, combine al- most as profitable and quite as greedy as any other in the state. All but one of them are heavy bettors and en- joy advantages by which they are enabled to be often heavy winners as well.
 Their opposition, he says, is based up- on the assumption that if betting on races were stopped, the attendance at race tracks would dwindle to nothing, the tracks would be closed, and the stock farms would be abandoned. This, Mir. De Lacy says, is false pretence.
 "Mr. Belmont says" he continues, that betting on races is a vice of a very small portion of our community and that the betting man is outnum- bered twenty to one by the non-betting man at the races How does he re- concile this statement with the plea that to stop racing would close the tracks?
 "The plain fact is that the pools sold and the books made on the races at the track form the greater part of the large receipts of the trust, and hence contribute the, principal part of the money realized by the members of the trust" ,t
 He gives an interesting compilation of the receipts from the five principal tracks. b.
 This income. he says, consists of $1OO a day each from seventy book makers; per centage on mutual pools, s2,0O0; premiums over from odd cents on mutual pools, $200; cash paid for telegraph privileges to out-of-town pool rooms, $1,1OO; programs, $1,0OO; gate money, s10,OOO; bar privilege, $500, and privilege for selling fruits and oth- CT things, $500. This makes total of $22, 100 a day, and for the thirty days each track is open, s663,0oO, or for the five tracks s3,315,O00 a season. There are other chances, too, for some of these persons. .. The Dwyers, for in stance, he says, own one track and have large interests in others, name their own handicapper, and are thus enabled to fix their weights to suit their own horses. The money received from the book makers, he says, more than cover all expenses. He adds:
 "The Ives bill is said to have cost the trust $350,00O for it's passage through the legislature. The sole ob- ject of the bill was to compel the book makers to yield to the greedy demands of the trust, and to drive them to the tracks.
 "rhey are indifferent to the fact that their enormous gains are wrung from the slaves of the gambling passion; vice worse than the passion of drink, dragging thousands and tens of thou sands of men and women down to pov- erty, suffering and even death
 Have not the race track owners in their greed for money, established sep arate betting books and states for wo- men? Are not the most disregarding scenes enacted around these stands? Is 1t an unusual sight to see women on the grand stands, with their hands filled with bills, yelling, cursing and swearing at the jockeys in 8 close fin ish? Gan anything be conceived more vile than to hold out inducements to weak women, afflicted with the gambling mania, to steal their husbands money, set aside probably for the rent, and to squander it on the race track?
 "Yet these members of the Track trust, devotees of the national sport, and enthusiastic advocates of the inn provement of the noble thoroughbreds, are virtuously indignant that the law makers should propose to interfere with the vilest kind of gambling, and threaten to close their tracks and aban- don breeding unless permitted by law to amass large fortunes by such meth ods.
 "The new constitutional amendment would remove from the state the dis graceful scandal of accepting a bribe to legalize crime; put a stop to the de- gradation of women, and the ruin of men on the race track; deprive dis honest turfmen of the power to swindle tn public through crooked races; pre- I vent the Track trust from making hun dreds of thousands of dollars out of the gambling passion of the people; do away with corrupt law, which legal izes in one spot an ofense declared a felony in any other spot, and make | the turf an honor instead Of q reproach to the country. The amendment com | mends itself to the favor of the Amer ican people and should be approved by their votes." sympsthetic ExpI0AiOns.