Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-09-26
CULLEN WRITES OF
THE RACING GAME
Draws a Gloomy Picture of
the Outlook Around New
York Tracks.
By Clarence L. Cullen.
Special Correspondence of The Star.
NEW YORK. September -. 1!

ny SAoAShSC - Which,
Special Correspondence Of The Star.
NEW YORK, September %. 1869.
The racing gang still feel, and will con-
tnue to feel until the inglorous wind-up
of New York's dreary-joke racing season
of 1909, the effects of the backfre walop
which Gov. Hughes dished out to them
last week, when q whole passed. of the
memory brokers' were herded up by the
governors deputies and stuffed into the
clink and kept there until bondsmen will
ing to take a chance breezed along and
got 'em out.
The chalkers who were corrailed were
vastly surprised and per-turb-ed and
things to discover that the governor
wasn't sleeping at all, as they'd begun
to believe
All of the bookies caught up with and
staked to the clutch on the arm were fell
lows who were furtiyely taking cash bets.
The evidence against them is clear and
perfect, and the head man of the govern
or's bunch Of track raiders promises
that the whole bunch will be doing time,
somewhere or another. within month.
The chalkers who stood for the pinch
are emitting the mornfulest kind of
walls about how tur-bly they're abused
and that stuff.
why. we had to take the kale,'' one
OF EN- muttered dismally after his bonds
man had got him out. I'VE got stung to
splinters by the blk bettors who bet with
their fingers. Every one of us had the
prong turned around in u.s. time and time
again. by fellows who'd been introduced
to US as o. K. We took the introducers'
word for it, and passed a line of credit
onY1la hor dnI
right. and. then, when they dropped a
few bets. why. they'd sort O. forget to
mooch down to the track the next day. or
the day after that, or at all any more,
and when we'd meet 'em on Broadway
and ask EN- how about that little change
they owed to us for their digit CANDLES
they'd look over the tops of our heads
and ask us II We didn't think there was
going to be an early autumn or whether
we thought Cook or Peary had copied
tine big nail. and that's all we got for
ours. So we had to curl up on the credit
thing and take a chance on grabbing out
the sure-enough dust. And now these
Cap Golfers working for His Whiskers
the suv'nor. crab along and put the inko-
witch on us for reaching out the mitt for
the little bits of change that percolated
our way. and and the chalker finish
ed 1t up with one of those sad Wurra
wurra walls.
1t must be handed to these murmurine
layers that the hook has been snaeyed
in EN- whole let since the memory bet-
ting gag began to operate. This town is
just stuffed and cluttered with people
who were all for that handy little plan
OF going down to the race track with a
chance of doing the chalkers both ends
from the middle. Plenty of fellows found
that they could work the edge by getting
themselves introduced to the LAYERS Then
they nudged along and made bigger bets
than they'd ever made in their lives when
they had 10 romp across with the real
currency, for it's jes' the easiest III thing
on earth to hold up few banana fingers
the thing you like. If their picks
gathered. why. they'd stink I'D to the
bookies cashiers and get the wa. ct
stuffed into their palms, and it was a fine
old world all around for 'em. But il they
lost, why, they just sort o. Cancelled the
idea of ever visiting a race track again,
and when on the following day the
chaikers waited for 'em 20 glide along
with their lost money in their hands the
stand first on one prop and then on the
other and search the horizon for signs
OF approaching rain.
Others Of the bilks worked it still more
craftily. and some of em got away with
hig bundles with their craftsmanship.
That is to say, they'd begin. after being
introduced to this or that chalker. BY
betting just fifties or Elm hundreds. and,
when they lost. they'd come across with
a clatter. and thereby make their credit
this way for spell, quite a few of 'em
began to bet up in the five hundred or one
or two thousand papers. taking the big
Young chance on gathering. A good
many OF EN- did gather this way. Then
making some more large, healthy four
figure bets. they'd Iose but they'd forget
to show up at the settling hour: thus
they'd have the bookies' hard-wrung dust
in their pajams, and the chalkers got 1t
coming and going.
The bookies who were pinched the other
day were among the fellows who had been
denied up the most by the beats and
game of doing business on the old
gimme-the-money basis. and promptly
found themselves tripped by the agents
of a governor whom they fondly sup
rosed to be profoundly immersed in
siumber.
Tis a sad world for the chalkers around
New York these days. and it's awful to
listen to EN- threatening to flag. desert
and blow this town forever and ever
more. cause they hain't nuthin' in tn
bool<in' game 'roun' here no more, tsee?
Tom Williams. the master of the
racing game in California. which was
crfmped for keeps by the California leg
islature at its session last spring. is i'm
town. telling the owners of horses that
he's going to run hull lot of racing out
In California. beginning in November
whether the legislature of California likes
il or not. But spontaneously with VIII
liams' visit come lot of San Francisco
men who emphatically remark that Mr.
Williams won't have any racing in Cali
forniS this fall or any other fall for Il
large number of years to GOMEZ and they
tack on the observation that If Williams
tries to start anything i'm the racing line
out on the coast, in the face of the clear
law recently enacted against that stuff in
California. there's governor out there
now who'll call out the National Guard
and give the soldiers real live shootin' in
structtons. to prevent any such a defiant
game. The horsemen are less disposed to
listen to the optimistic professedly op-
tmistic master of California racing
than they might be. and mighty few of
the bookmakers will go to California on