The San Francisco call., 1898-05-09
Oakland Office San Francisco Call.

CeilVered the following prelude tonight to his regular sermon:
 There is no public or quasi public institution upon which Oakianders look with more pride than upon our Fabiola Hospital. It is one of the fair es jewels in Oakland's crown Its growth and prosperity during the years
 of its existence reflect the greatest credit upon its unselhsh promoters and upon the city, which is ever ready, I am sure, to give it generous and un- grudglng support l have been fami-
 liar with it's work for the past ten years and have freely borne testimony
 to the excellence of it's management and to its high character as an institu- tion. But there is another institution In the enVirons of our city which is the antipodes of the Fabiola, for while one does world of good the other does a
 world of evil; while one is Oakland's
 blessing and pride the other Is its shame, curse and disgrace, and 1t Is to me and a large number of our citizens source of profound regret that there should be any relation between these
 two institutions or that their names
 should be associated in any way. The
 Fabiola Hospital has everything to
 lose, the Emeryville race track every
 thing to gain, by an unholy and un-
 natural alliance even for a single day in the year.
 T am sure that I need advance no argument tonight to prove that gam
 bling Is a vice that is doing more to
 destroy our young men in California
 than any other, with a single exception
 IyIv 2,
 form of gambling to-day is that con-
 nected with the race tracks and pool
 rooms Betting is the soul of horse
 racing and a thievish desire to get
 money without earning it is the soul of
 betting.
 T do not doubt that there are a few
 men who delight in horse-racing as an
 honest sport and for the sake of the
 improvement in horsef1esh that it is
 supposed to promote; but the number
 of such habitues of the race track is
 Enthusiastically small compared with the
 number who frequent the races for the
 sake of gambling, and dishonest gam
 bling at that. How many trials of speed
 do you suppose there would be if there
 were some method not yet discovered
 by which betting on the result would
 be wholly prevented? And how many races does anybody believe to be hon.
 estIy run?
 Everybody knows that the racing at EmeryviIe and Inglesde Is a swim | de from start to finish. There is too i much money invested to allow the re- suits of the investment to depend upon chance; wherever there is pool box there is a certainty and the rare has been fixed. as the Little Pete disclos- ures showed. A tip of few dollars to a jockey will cause a horse to lose a. | race, especially if he is favorite upon | whom the fools have staked. That is 1 why sure thing gamblers wear fine linen and wear diamonds as big as walnuts and can afford to buy up a board of lady managers occasionally | just as Dick Croker in New York | bought his way into the swell clubs of the metropolis. The truth is that vice in all its forms-drunkenness lying, stealing-are inseparable ad- i juncts of the racecourse. Human birds | of prey flock to it from under the whole heaven and gorge themselves to the full. Hundreds of millions Of dol | lars are invested in the race tracks of | this country and the gambling enter prises connected herewith And it is | conceded that the Ingleside | and Emeryville race tracks receive their chief income from the gambling | connected herewith and | could net live without them. Why at | some of the great racecourses the | starters and judges receive larger sal aries than do the Judges of our State Supreme Court. The bookmakers at | the tracks pay the racing associations $100 day, and the telegraph and tele- phone companies pay $500 day for the privilege of sending news from the track to the poolrooms all over the country.
 Now as a crime breeder I unhesi- tatingly affirm that racetrack gam bling, in and out of poolrooms, Is the worst gambling evil in the land.
 'The Louisiana lottery, with all its ramifications, it's vast wealth and DOW CT, constituted no such menace to the public morality. no such source of pri- vate and political corruption. no such burden upon the commercial prosperity of the country as does the racing in tcrest In the heyday of it's success the lottery robbed the people of $34, 900, 900 in a single year, while the chance of winning it's capital prizes was but one in 70,000.
 But, according to the New York Times, the enormous sum of $2,898,372 was stolen in one year with which to play the races, to say nothing of the honest money wagered. It is estimated that $200 GOO, 900 is staked annually and lost upon them. A little while ago the Clinton ordinance proposing to limit the racing season in San Francisco to forty-eight days in the year was beaten in the Board of Supervisors by the same arguments that have induced the Fabiola managers to stand sponsors for Emeryville-for the racetrack gamblers, like hell and destruction. are never satisfied. And yet just before that ac- ton was taken Welburn had robbed the United States treasury to play the races, and just following that action 1t was developed that Widber had rob- bed the city of s116.000 of its public funds, which had gone into the insati- able maw of the same institution. And these are but monotonous repetitions q "a Ctn nf Tor