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NEWSPAPER HORSE SENSE SENSEThat Sense That sensible journal the Horse Review of Chicago although devoted to the harness side of the turf now and again tells the truth in a terse and commonsonsiblo commonsensible way about the local racing situation The Review of last week commented as follows Often within the past four years we have had occasion to comment upon the peculiar manner in which the great daily newspapers treat the industry of horse breeding and the racing interests without which breeding would be dwarfed to something quite insignificant and valuable property horses as well as racing plants would be practically deprived of earn ¬ ing King capacity In addition thousands of men would be thrown out of employment Whether the editor of a great daily knows that to destroy racing is to destroy millions of dollars worth of property we hava have no means of ascertaining If he does know and still continues to lend the in ¬ fluence fluencies of his paper in aid of the destruction he is little better than an incendiary If he does not know he should be sent to school and his place given to some one who has a wider knowl know ¬ edge one who knows for instance that it costs money to establish a horse breedmg breed farm and carry it until the produce can bo raced or sold to those who will race it and who knows fur ¬ ther ether that but for the many race meetings held every year the business of breeding would soon become one of the things that have ceased to be The proposition is certainly a plain one It is as simple as that 1 added to 1 equals 2 Yet simple as it is the average newspaper editor does not seem to be able to understand it Dur Dour ¬ ing King the extra session of the Illinois legislature Senator Fitzpatrick introduced a bill which had it become a law would have given high class racing a new lease of life and prosperity in every section of the state The bill had no feature to which any sane man could object Laws of similar import are in force in other states They are designed to foster racing and breeding and are the essence of common sense Their principle is the same as that which prompts states and municipalities to invite and secure industries manufacturing and other ¬ wise by exempting them from taxation or by donating lands and cash But the laws which foster racing are better in every way for they relieve no one of just taxationnor taxation do they take money from the pockets of any taxpayer But they throw a protecting mantle at no cost to anyone around an industry that is certainly as legitimate as the buying and selling of mer mere ¬ chandise candied the manufacture of bicycles or the cultivation of cotton corn or wheat In spite of that in the face of the common sense of the case one of Chicagos Chicago great dailies gave utter ¬ ance Vance on February 18 to this piece of what can be termed ignorance anarchy or vandalism just as the reader chooses to say nothing of its apparent misstatemcnts misstatements It is cause for surprise and regret that the names of certain Chicago merchants should appear appended to a telegram asking for the passage of a bill by the legislature to legalize race track gambling The Record believes that D so doing these men are acting contrary to their own best interests and are inviting danger upon their own business welfare It is prob probe ¬ ably true that hotel proprietors and liverymen would profit from the opening of race tracks The merchants would not Nearly all the solid business interests of the city would be injured financially rather than helped by inviting here the race track gamblers touts and hangers on The assumption evidently is that the open ¬ ing King of the race tracks would liven things up as Chief Kipley Imply would say It certainly would increase extravagant and wasteful expenditure But the money which the workingman or clerk spends at the race track and a part of which the gamblers leave in hotels and saloons meaps neaps just so much money taken from the grocer the butcher and the other tradesmen The opening of race tracks with gambling attached does not by any appreciable extent increase the total amount expended in the city It simply changes the form of the expenditure What now goes in the purchase of comforts for the home or for clothes for the family or for the payment of honest debts will then go into the hands of the gamblers It should not take a long course of reasoning to show the grocer the butcher the tailor and the dry goods merchant that they have nothing at all to gain from the existence of public gambling It is hardly to their interest to give up part of their own trade and run the risk of losing considerable sums in bad debts of victims of the gamblers simply to liven up business for the hotelkeepers hotelkeeper the liv live ¬ erymen ferrymen the saloons and the disreputable re ¬ sorts The existence of public gambling also has an effect in lowering the meral meal tone of the community that must prove a serious danger to every large business house compelled to repose important trusts in employes employees Gambling leads to defalcations to such an extent that fidelity insurance companies will not go on the bonds of employes employees known to frequent betting places Why should Chicago merchants deliberately invite danger upon themselves by asking for the legalization of race track gambling when they know it must mean the downfall of confidential employes employees and the embarrassment of the houses for which they work Much has been said about holdups The prevalence of such crime tends to discredit a city in the eyes of the world and make it an unpleasant place for respectable peo peon ¬ ple pale to live in Why should any merchant favor a policy calculated to bring to Chicago the very class most likely to resort to holdup processes of getting money with which to play the races or to reimburse themselves for losses Public gambling does not pay and the business inter ¬ ests bests of the city should be opposed to its legali legal ¬ zation action by the legislature legislatureThe legislature The Chicago merchants who signed the tele stele ¬ gram referred to know fully as much as any one connected with the Record can ever learn about the situation concerning which it babbles so artlessly They know thaf haft racing even with the speculative accompaniment is fully as legit ¬ imate inmate as is the business in which any one of them is engaged They know that a season of properly conducted racing at all three of the Chicago tracks would bring into the city thous thus ¬ ands of dollars that would not otherwise come Every solid business interest would be benefited by the inflowing cash Now let us ask what business interest would suffer And while we are about it let us put these questions to the Record The Harlem race track conducted in 1897 a meeting which continued through a period of 90 days how much of an increase was there in crime in Cook county during these days over the same period of 1896 How many more embezzlements were there Unless there was an increase the entire argument of the Record falls to pieces It is an error to call betting on races public gambling for it is not such in any sense of the word But if it is granted that it is the records of other cities will prove that it does not add to crime Bet ting on races is permitted in Cleveland Colum Column ¬ bus St Louis Lexington Boston Indianapolis Terre Haute Fort Wayne Detroit and other cities If the Record will go to the trouble to secure the data it will discover that those cities are quite up to Chicago in morals It will also learn that the crimes that can bo directly traced by the police authorities of those cities to betting on races are so few in number as to be unworthy of comment The men who com ¬ mitted emitted them would have found some other way in which to display their depravity Now as to the class of men who follow the races They are not holdup men aiJy airy more than ho owner of the Record is a burglar or than the editorial writers are pickpockets Some of the best men in Chicago quite as honorable as are Victor F Lawson 01 Joseph Medill Medially go fo the races and occasionally wager a few dollars on results There is not an owner of trotting horses but is entirely outside the list of suspicious charac characid ¬ ters tears There is scarcely a bookmaker who is not quite as honorable in his dealings as is the aver ¬ age bank cashier It is charged against the owner of the Record that he is violently opposed to certain financial interests in Chicago merely because he is not let in We do not know whether the charge is true but we do know that it is made and because it is made the attacks of his paper upon those certain interests are laughed at by the public What motive prompts him to fight racing is not apparent but his method of doing it proves that while he is a moneymaker he lacks many of the essen lessen ¬ tials tails which go to command the respect of the community The horse breeders of the great state of Illinois have millions of dollars in ¬ vested in a great industry one that is as legiti legit ¬ mate as the publishing of newspapers They are entitled to fair treatment at the hands of every newspaper but the editorial we have quoted demonstrates that they are not getting it a condition by no means creditable to the press
