Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-04-30
andBrutaliZing
By Bishop w, A. Gambler
r." gives an Interesting comparison OF the
bull-fghts of Spain and %he ball games o
PRESS DISPATCH, dated, New York, April


brutal and deadly sport than bull-hghtng, sta
tstician here has compiled table showing the
total casualties from Spain from bull-fghting dur
ing 1911 There S72 bull-hghts held. attended
by 1000 900 persons. but only ten bu-hghters were
killed sixteen injured. The fatalities among
the animals, however. shown to have totaled
THE football casualties for 1911 were given
as thirteen killed and 500 injured. In 1903 there
were thirty-three deaths"
Of the accuracy of these figures 1 can not speak,
having no way to verify disprove them; but that
the mania for ball games which is prevalent in the
land is demoralizing and dangerous not be rea-
sonaby doubted. Young men and old men, and
very considerable number Of women and girls have
gone mad on the subject. Some disqualified for
any serious business by their absorbing interest in
games. Men who make business of sport sure
to make sport of business and with multitudes the
dominant thought by day and by night is concern
ing the results of the daily games The duties of life
are neglected in order to hurry away to local con-
tests and when the day is past the renzied disciples
of sport pore the newspaper accounts of games
at distance. They read precious little beside The
demand for news of ball games is as great as the
demand for market reports and telegraph lines reap
as much revenue from the dispatches concerning
games perhaps, they do from the kilograms about
stocks, bonds, and farm products. The amount of
space devoted to such matter by the newspapers is
index to the excessive attention paid to it by multi
piled thousands If fatal accidents attended these
games, and if gambling gathered about Them this
extravagant interest in a subject trifng and
worthy would furnish sufficient ground to condemn
them as both damaging and demoralizing Such alb
normal excitement about as unimportant matter as
games is manifestly injurious to both minds and
morals.
But many accidents do attend Them and moreover,
the background is the resort of gamblers the
racetrack once was. Nothing has been gained by the
decline of horseracing and the substitution of ball
games in which men, instead of horses. are bet
On the contrary, the immortality and unwhoesome
excitement attending the balIgames is probably far
worse than the undeniable evils of the turf.
We may condemn Spain for her bullfghts and de-
those bloody sports brutalzing; but where
in are they more brutazing than the games in which
young men sacrificed to make holiday for the
fanatics of sport in own country? No defense
extenuaton of the bullfght is intended; those horri
BILE contests deserve the utmost condemnation. But
it is scarcely consistent to the Spanard for
his fondness for the bullring and then wildly
into the balfeld whenever the gates opened for
a game
These bloody and blighting games are at their
worst when they are encouraged and patronized by
our colleges. Into the bullring only men of the
baser sort CO. but into these bal[games the choice
the ability and opportunity acquire the higher
education If these be corrupted our civilization is
deiled at its sources.
There can be little or no doubt, that intercollegiate
contests in country have killed more of the
bright young men of the United States during the
last decade than there have been base bullhghters
killed in the buLrings of Spain. Others, who have
not been killed outright have been MANNED and
SCARED for life. Still others have had their moral
tact with gamblers and gambling. Thousands have
been distracted from study the utter defeat of the
efforts of their parents to educate them Millions in
money have been worse than wasted these
tests, the gate receipts of single games sometimes
rising above $50OO00O o. the wild waste of young life
which has been made in pursuit of this folly!
Youth comes but once and when it is wasted the
afterlife suffers the harvest would suffer from the
blighting of the springtime. Life's seedtime with
multiplied thousands of young men has been thrown
away on these consuming contests.
One can hardly doubt that college authorities
are convinced of the injury done by these
games. They doubtless yield to the popular demand
for them because they feel that they unable to
resist it, and they fear that opposition to interco
egate sports would result in loss of patronage with
out accomplishing any good, few like President
Eliot of Harvard have dared to speak out in condem
nation of them, although Harvard needed not the
words of its venerable ex-president. believe Wood
row Wilson also when he was the president of
Princeton University, occasion, said some
thing about being tired of running educational work
as "a side-show of an athletic circus"
Some institutions, like Emory College at Oxford,
have fatty forbidden intercollegiate athletics and
it is worthy of remark that the institutions which
have adopted this policy have not suffered on that
account as some have supposed. There are not
few sober-minded parents in the country who want
that sort of college for their sons although there
are great number of titular fathers who allow their
sons to select the college they will attend and the
ungoverned offspring of such men generally prefer
amusement above education An institution which
is set for the promotion of culture and the making
of manhood ought not to feel itself injured by escap
ing the task of trying to educate young men of this
class.
If vote could be registered of all the parents in
the country who have sons to send to college large
majority of them would cast their ballots in condem-
1IIoof and fhoro &c