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AN OUT OF LINE SCHEME The St Louis papers parade a plan said to be original with Mr J D Lucas which is guaran ¬ teed to refine the American thoroughbred field It is really tho old idea of making the winner of occasional selling races the property of the as ¬ sociation furnishing the purse and the sending of such winners by the owning association after being branded to outlawry Their progeny is also by the Lucas plan to be placed under the outlaw ban The scheme will not do The law of possession is a fundamental every man has the right to do what he will with his own The pinch of tho present might force the man to do what he should not do and punish the main body of the turf by sending what it should have in the present and the future outside its limits Ownership and the right to use what one legally owns and legally operates where and when one chooses is an American fundamentalism It would be far more intelligent and less costly and clumsy for reigning turf bodies with consent to appoint a board of censors who could select horses for banishment into a second not an outlaw class The outlaw term is un American and offensive Such boards or com ¬ mittees could use judgment as to short pedi ¬ grees and individual quality and save the main body of the turf much that such a miscellane ¬ ous plan as that proposed by Mr Lucas would in its miscellaneous and bribing unwioldliness overlook and afterward regret
