The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-05-04

expect them to stand for 1t, and It vas
that way with the fighting game. The
grafters found they could make good
thing out of it, anu they couldn't be
satisfied with it on that basis, but had
to go and ut up piking little jobs to
steal the mcuey little faster. They had
to dig around and get hold of good
old fighter and stack him up against a
raw ringer that they insisted was an
Irish champion, when as a cold fact he
was never nearer to Ireland than West
street in New York city, unless It was
Coney Island.
= Inc public got sore, of course; who
wouldn't? And the crooks pulled just
few more such things as that around
the country, and the job was done.
Boxing was deader, than any doorknob
and it looks as if it might stay so some
time yet.
Don't let anyone hand you that old
brutality gag. 1t was crookedness and
bunco that did it. There's nothing
brutal in good boxing match.
The men with red blood want to see
II, and like to see it, and it gives them
a healthy desire to go and do some
muscle building on their own account
and maybe I'm going to shock a few
thin skinned folks right here, but III
stand for that; women like to see
trials of strength, too, and they would
patronize it if it wasn't considered too
coarse for their delicate minds.
AS far as l know the average woman
of normal tendencies has a high re-
gard for strength in the male animal;
whether it's mental strength, bodily
strength or moral strength, and from
all down history's pages, women have
witnessed such exhibitions as have
been held in public Am wrong,
ladies'? l don't think so.
A man might go back to the grand
old game of fox hunting, and everyone
would agree that it was great game
"a little tough on the fox, but SOS the
abattoir tough on the hog; and then
you put the fox hunting business on
crooked commercial basis and see
how long it would last Just see how
hard it is TO this day to keep amateur
sport clean. Every now and then
there's howl that something's wrong
about it, but it is kept pretty clean.
You let the professional lads get to
running a good clean sport for what
there's in it, and see where that sport
lands; down in the gutter, where
they've put pugilism to-day, and
through no fault of the game nor the
men doing it. It's the crooks every
time.
It's just as dishonest to play crooked
games with sport as it is 70 pick pOck-
cts, and the pickpockets got to wor =.
in good many states, and finally
worked themselves out of good easy
thing. l guess it's the old story of the
golden goose, for l see a whole lot of
them at work nowadays where they
ought to have been years ago. If
some of these good retormers would
just look at the cold, clear facts in the
case and try to understand the aver
age human temperament, there would
be less talk about the brutality of prize
fighting.
Some of these people howl that it's
only done for the money that's in it..
Well, maybe so, but l want to ask
those folks just how many baseball
games, how many football games, how
many horse races there would be if
was free for all, and I'd also like to
find out just how many of the reform
ers would go on reforming if there
wasn't something in it for them. It's
fair question, and if anyone has
fair answer, Id like to hear it, I'm
willing to listen to reason, and claim
to know something about the fighting
business, and all brands of it. I ought
to, I've got trimmed enough from the
crooked kind. I'd also like to know
from some of those high and mighty
gentlemen who managed to put a
crimp into the boxing business. if it's
any worse to smash mans nose or
black his eye than it is to put an ever
lasting dent in his soul, or make his
moral nature twist up into several diff
ferent kinds of knots.