The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-11-11
Can A Fighter
 SLander His Boss
 Without Injury?
By wEsTBROoK PEGLER Geased wire To The Age-HeraId.'

NEW YORK, Nov. 9.-A man named Josef Jacobs has raised the question of whether fight manager can be slandered.
 Mir. Jacobs, late manager of Mike McTigue, known by courtesy as a fighter, has brandished certain legal istic papers at his quondam good provider, saying he would sue Mc- Tigue in the courts already for sian derous salutations emitted by Mfcky | himself. Josef displays another paper, too, purporting to be contract which Mickey spurns on the ground that it never was legal and therefore Is void.
 The quarrel between Mickey Mo- Tigue and Josef Jacobs. in itself Is unimportant, Mickey being no great fighter and MT. Jacobs having created no such convulsions in the world of finance as Jack Kearns occasioned In Montana, where three banks caved ia beneath his pressure. However, they raise a question of world stirring significance: Can a fight manager be slandered?"
 In the past 1t has always been as- sumed that man, on becoming a | fight manager, renounced good re- pute, and association with fight man agers was accepted as proof of moral
 
 ten law that birds who carry the black jack flock together. Harsh things have been said of Mir. Kearns in many American Journals of tremendous financial responsibil- ity, yet MT. Kearns has never brought suit for slander. It was James John ston, fight manager, who once told an embittered scrivener, who was clouting him. day by day in his columns: If you spell by name wrong again, I'll be sore at you"
 Indeed fight managers, in their daily communications to the press do not expect to be believed. They have long since come to accept the doubts cast on their veracity and when MT. Duck Curley, the Chicago fight man. ager, for instance, refers to himself as the ever-popular Dick Curley" he rather enjoys the rustic of the rasp- berry shrubbery in the newspaper of- fices which he fayors with his state papers.
 Dcscamps Was Played.
 Monsieur Francois Descamps did not bring suit when certain skepti- cal journalists ip their essays upon deride the hypnotic quality of his gaze, although the legend that he possessed occult powers was worth much money to him.
 Tom Jones, who handled Billy Papke, Jess Willard and Ad Wolgast as champions of their respective d. visions, was a pleader, not a glover | ing avenger when he entreated the boys to call him the "Kewanee bar tender" Instead Of the "Kewanee Barber" MT. Jones holding that bar l tending was one of the honorable professions whereas barbering was a debased trade.
 More colums are written about fight managers in the course of a year than are discharged over the Washington wires concerning indl- viduals in Congress who are sup posed, perhaps enormously, to be persons of much greater importance and finer character. Naturally, in the composition of such voluminous com ment on rather small profession, | there are some pungent not to say rancid, paragraphs. But, fight man agers get large wages for no more field. Their boxers, not themselves, cauliflower ears; their motto has ever been: Last week we win; last night, the bum, he lose" And, there- fore, many. fight managers, like the ladies of the evening, have accepted a knee-high moral status as a con- comitant with their pay.
 Mir. Jacobs now, suing Mike Mo- Tigue for $50,000 for islander, would | abrogate the established rating of fight managers in the social scale, But first, he must prove. of course, that a fight manager can be slam | dered