The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-26
PEGLER'S PEGS
By wESTBROOK PEGLER Lensed Wire to The AEe-HeraIdD

NEW YORK, July 25.-A young homesteader, seven years on the land in northern Montana and mortgaged to his undershirt after all. sat on a plank bench outside the arena there in Shelby an hour before the Demp- eyGibbons fight and marveled at the trifling esteem in which New York city holds the good American dollar. He understood that New York thought nothing of paying S300,000 for prize fight of 45 min utes or less, and he mentioned, in chuckling good nature, that one of his neighbors had been "sold up by the sheriff only the week before. getting a nickel apiece for his chick ems, a dollar head for horses and less than $5 a head for milch cows.
 New York, since early in June, when Johnny kilbane took guar antee of S75,000 or more for Is min utes of fidgety exercise with Eugene Criqui of France, has spent S1,3S1, 00O on seven big and middling- big prize fights.
 Golf Drew Crowds.
 The national open golf tournament at lnwood ran for seven days, with four qualifying rounds, two days of extra day of play-off competition between the two Bobs, Jones ana Cruik shank. The price of admission was $1. Later in the week the crowds were larger than they had been at first, so the attendance can only be estimated. Twenty five thou sand paid admissions for the tourna- ment would be conservative.
 But golf's gate receipts are not even an index to the amount of money spent Tn single season on the newly discovered pleasure of 6psin a m Sfn cred socks. The expenditure on golf is incalculable without access to the government returns on the income taxes of tutors and playing profess sionals, and without some trade re- port showing the amount of money put out by duffers for sticks, balls and the ever more dazzling frippery now demanded by the fashion of the game. New York Is an island sur rounded by golf. Last spring preacher in nearby New Jersey an nounced that he would sermonize on golf because golf was the only Ian guage people understood in his re- gion, where nine golf courses touched boundaries.
 Other Extravagances.
 Nor are these by any means all. The tennis tournaments are impend- ing, with their tea-dansant social at mosphere and their naughty prices. The horses have been running con tinuously since May 2, and the price of admission at the four city tracks ranges upward-far upward-from the minimum price of sass. Attend ance runs from about 4,000 day during the week to 5000 or more on fat occasions, such as Saturdays, hol- idays, opening days and the dates when big stakes are run.
 In the fall will come the world series, which interfered with the use ful circulation of s65O,00O in five games last season and which proba- bly will exceed that amount in this year of the citys sport madness.
 Meantime Benny Leonard will fight Charlie White at Boyles Thirty Acres, where 100000 people paid just a little less than $400,000 to see Jess Willard and Luis Angel Firpo in an absurd 24-minute knockout number. Leonard and White should draw at least $300,0O0. This week Eugene Criqui and Johnny Dundee will fill the Polo Grounds. Dempsey and Firpo or Dempsey and Harry Wills will have to be shown possibility of drawing a million dollars or Demp- sey won't trouble to draw on the gloves. The probability Is that on or before Labor Day.
 And later on, when autumn's lip stick tnts the sumac in the bosky dells of Connecticut and Jersey, New York will send more hundreds of of many colleges, particularly to Princeton and Yale, whose Big Three games always draw tremendous out n the well -tO-dO.