The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-11
From the New York Times.

IVY continue his racing ventures in
 W England or adhere to his an- nounced intention of reducing his breed ing stud in preparation for temporary retirement. Is in doubt.
 The ex-ehieftain of Tammany hall, 1t was announced. had determined several weeks ago on retirirement, but the recent victory of the horse Gladwin, one of Mir. Croker's own breeding may have the eff feet of keeping him in racing.
 Only a short time before the victory of Gladwin MT. croker was a big buyer at sales of English blood stock. and paid large prices for several high-bred year lings from one of the great breeding es- tabIishments.
 Should he decide to keep up the battle for turf honors, however, he will race on a larger scale next season than ever be- fore, for with the products of his own farm at Vantage. and the horses that were bought in his name at the Beresford and succeeding sales, he will have one of the largest racing establishments in En- gland. His persistence in this direction makes MT. Croker a remarkable figure in the turf world, for none save himself can estimate the amount of money that his experience on the English turf has cost him, while in the eight seasons that his colors have been known on English race courses, his victories have been few and far between.
 None of the great events that have re- warded the Keene stable, William c. Whitney, and other Americans who have raced abroad, however, has fallen to him. As a business venture, Mir. Croker's es tablishment at Vantage has been a colos- sal failure. every department having caused loss. from the kennels to the dairy farm attached to Boat house. But the losses through these are infinitesimal compared with the cost of keeping up the racing stable that is MT. Crokers chief pride Pierre Lorilard, after each season of i'll success on the English turf, care less as he was of expense would retire in disgust to wait till he had something torace,' and in later days James R Keene, with all his millions, has cut down his English racing stable to the lowest possible horses in "off years"
 From the time that MT. Croker first began racing abroad, in 1885, however, he has never wayered, though reports fre- quently have been sent out that he ih- tended to quit the turf, these reports even going to the length of stating that Mir Croker had announced his intention of re- tiring. The Vantage horses are bred to race under the Croker colors, and for the full eight years that he has been con nected with the turf of England, MT Croler has trained and raced his own stock, while each year he has gone deep- CT into racing by the purchase of promis- ing yearlings and mares for his farm.
 Added to that he has been interested in number of losing racing ventures in connection with American racing, so that in eight years he has disbursed many times the amount that his horses earned for him in his first two years on the turf, in 1893 and 1894
 At the beginning his luck was as good as it now is bad, for when, at the advice of M. F. Dwyer, MT. Croker bought a stable of race horses in the early part of 1893, he secured the best that were to be purchased, MT. Croker at once be- came a power on the turf. It is indica- tive of a amount of money that the ex- Tammany chieftain has invested in rac- ing that he paid s54OOO for three horses at the very beginning of his turf career and afterward bought others, with the result that he had s10O00O in horses before the New York season opened.
 At the sale of the F. A. Ehret stable he bought, in the name of the Manhattan stable, the colt Dobbins for $2000, the lilly Fairy for $1OO0o. The Investments was sound, however, for in his first sea- son MT. Croker's horses won a total of s94,205, and but for the one bit of mis- fortune that a single two-year-old better than Dobbins was racing this year, MT. Croker would have led the list of win ming owners for America. At that the Croker stable was second on the win ming list, the Keene stable, in which was the great colt Domino, being the only establishment to win a larger amount.
 In 1894 MT. Croker was third on the list of winning American owners, with to- tai of s75 995 won. He was phenomenally successful in his betting ventures also, and that, perhaps. may have led him to the conclusion that the turf offered op- portunity for making money. The luck that attended his first investments how