The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-12
PEGLER'S PEGS

In "Helrs Kitchen" there lives a young man who has never been able to ad- just a temperamental difference be- tween himself and the law. Every time he fails to come home overnight, his wife says to their little girl: Honey, stop in at the cooler on your way to papa" .-
 The boxing business might as well recognize the same maladjustment. The boxing business must expect term in a quod every now and again, some short, some not so short.
 In St. Louis, boxing has been car ried on intermittently for years by local sufferance, although forbidden by a state law. It goes along in fair pros perity and department for a time, and then there's fake fight or a ticket miX-up, the customers are hilked and boxing gets another term in the klink.
 In New York, there have been three distinct boxing laws'-the Horton law, the Frawley law and, now. the Walker law. The present one is very liberal, and if intelligent business men would interest themselves in boxing they could preserve it and make it*pay $as much money to them as the theatrical business pays to the Shuberts or the baseball business to the Giants and Yanks.s This boxing law may live through the next session of the Legis- lature, but 1t Is only a question of a few years until it will be repealed and the boxing business will land back in the guard-house. / ever since the Gans-M -McGovern fake, but has been tolerated in Peoria, Aurora and other small cities notwith- standing. Last year, by some legal lingering, boxing was restored on pro- bation in, Chicago, but 1t promptly bit the public on the leg and was slammed behind the bars agaih.
 Boxing is under technical arrest in California, the historic home of the finish fight, where bouts are now limited to four rounds. In Virginia it is a prison offense to raise fist for money or to pay to see a fight, and no champion has scuffed resin, except in the army camps. -
 I Milwaukee's boxing law must be the oldest of all, and the conduct of the business there has been singularly up- right. Minneapolis and St. Paul also have had boxing for quite a long time now.
 The reason for the trouble in New York Is quite plain. The majority of the promoters and handlers of fighters are uneducated fellows with no knowl- edge of business methods or ethics. They suddenly find themselves handling cHlorpruScS tuNOiNinS ITOHl @oV,UVO lO $S00,000. Knowing nothing about bank ing or the credit system, they go slight ly crazy from the feel of a few thou sand-dollar. bills. In short time they fall to swindling one another. which is easy to do, and then to swindling the public, which is still easier. Then the boxing business goes to the cooler again.
 Under the circumstances it is in evitable that boxing will be outlawed in Nek York again in a few years.
 The cieats and toe-plates of right sizeable horde of athletes will scuff a direct trail down the Atlantic seaboard to the Florida peninsula this spring, and the southwestern country will see little of the ball teams that formerly overran that territory, eating their way like locusts crossing field of grain. The small cities and towns of the south and southwest along meandering lines from New York and Chicago to Texas had seen just about enough, anyway. It now takes great name like Babe Ruth to draw a crowd in the south western country in spring, which may denote that the people down there have greater wisdom than the inmates of the big-league cities-or less artistic appre- ciation.
 At any rate, the Florida peninsula draws nine of the major league clubs this spring-siX from the National league and three from the American, as we'll as one team from the American association, that salubrious refuge of moribund knee-caps, pitching wings and batting eyes which have been cast out of the big circuits. This will be the Milwaukee team, which trains at Pal metto.