The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-10-11
Sunday Athletics.
(From Harper's Weekly.

The racing board of the L. A. W. should have the undivided and earnest support of every individual wheelman and every athletic and bicycling club in the United States in its effort to stop Sunday racing. The day is recog
 nized in America as one on which to suspend the usual entertainments of the week; respect to tradition and sen timent ought to be sufficient to suggest it's observance to all right-thinlSing cit izens and clubs. But throwing aside all | question of the mere propriety of hold ing races on that day. the bad policy of | flying in the face of popular disappro- val should suggest itself to all those l that are interested in the continuance l of clean sport. Even promoters" of | sporting enterprises cannot be indiffer- 1 ent to the short-sightednes of pursu- ! ing course which a very large major | ity of the sightseeing public does not | approve. The mere novelty may at l tract a certain class of Sunday idlers | for a time but this class is not, as a
 rule. truly sporting one, nor one that, even in mere mercenary sense, pays | in the long-run.
 Those interested in the welfare and ! maintenance of amateur sport must | look upon such a departure with ap- prehension Considered from any point of view, Sunday athletics are menace. They do not and cannot attract either the best class of participants or of spec | tators. The pubic is apt to regard l both entries and onlookers to a Sunday athletic entertainment of questionable 1 status, and clubs and the l.. A. W. and | A. A. U. cannot afford to be considered l the sponsors for such as these. The | public may be hoodwinked for time, ! but the day of retribution follows swift 1 ly upon the deceit, and then the cause 1 of amateur sport suffers, as it is suffer- l ing at present because our cub officials | lost their heads and threw judgment to | the winds in a heated rivalry that rec 1 ognized no right save might If the best interpretation of sport for sports sake had not been ignored, we should not now be commenting on the deca- | dence of track athletics, and be spared | the spectacle of men racing as anna teurs who ought to be called profes- sionals. If sportsmen had dominated l in athletic legislation and the interests | of pure sport had taken precedence 1 over those of trade and the merS win ming of points, we should have had no | cyclists riding on salary, and no track I athletes with no visible means of sup port other than their athletic prowess l But sportsmen have not swayed ath- | letic legislation and amateur sport, SC ! far as racing, cycling and club track athletics are concerned has sustained
 a severe check in the United States. If | the setback has convinced legislators that honesty is the best and most en- during policy, there will be much to be
 thankful for. In track athletics, l be-
 lieve, the lesson has made converts
 and in cycling signs are shown daily of
 it's having borne fruit. We go by
 "booms" in this country. We had our
 athletic boom, and it ran it's course; we
 had our cycling boom, and it is now
 waning. Once we are settled to a nor
 nal condition, and view the situation
 "a tionally I have hopes of American
 hard sense coming to the rescue and de
 livering us from all unsoundness, and
 raising club athletics to genuine bona
 fide basis along with our college sport