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ANTI-RACING LAWS. When the spot light loving citizen finds life dull and dreary, lie looks around for something to dab with the club of reform. Me selects racing as perennially, and as naturally. as the s.ip flows upward. The iniquities of three per cent, margin sales on the stock exchange, the even smaller margin on the real estate deals, the scandalous adulteration, depreciation, and substitution In almost every line of food supply, the marvellous one hundred per cent, retail profit on fish and bread, and the million other things which affect the lives of the very poor, and of the very young babies, arc passed by. and "racing" the one iniquity of the age, is selected. Tlie most extraordinary somersaults are turned, tie most miraculous funerals of individual self respect held wilh becoming pomp, and the ration ally minded man limply gasps when be finds state ment after statement printed under the ■eases of prominent men, such statements being not only lies "all wih1 and a yard wide." but magnificently idiotic lies at that. Ihe district attorney of New York gathers the Brooklyn tracks under his sheltering wing, and gravely states that a certain gentleman who never bets, would not go to the track unless. Jie could bet; there is not a crime against the Decalogue, fiom bank wrecking to infanticide, which Is not laid lieforo the door of racing, and the sensational and hysteric clergy t-it up and howl, while their more sober minded brothers Of the cloth are p*b-lii ly bewailing the depreciation of church attend ance. Is it possible the depreciation comes as a rebuke to oversealoua clerics to mind their own palp able business a little better, and let the business — which is the pleasure — of a large section of the nation alone V Once again, as in other years, the effervescence and efflorescence rose like a cloud in the senatorial and congressional glasses, and withered at a breath of common sense, as such ebullitions always die. The magnificent grant of racing to the important state fairs, the bulk of which could not be held without, tells the story. The farmers would much rather receive the freely given emoluments from th" racing associations than stand to be shot at bf the appropriation of an even larger grant from the stale. The racing tax they are sure of in its entirety, the state appropriation — judging from pis* experience — they know not when they might get. nor how much of it they might get. It is estimated to take eighty cents of every parochial charity dollar to distribute the remaining twenty cents generally about 8ve mouths alter the said dollar has been received. The recently instituted free stallions of superbly high class and pure blood, stationed at widespread sections of the state, to in ai ly forty in number. show to what extent racing has licnetiicd and will Ik neiit the equine stock in the hands of common people. The thoroughbred horse is the live germ of every type of horse, the only fountain to which each dis tinot variety can look for reinfasion or development. and. as bai been sahl over and over again, the I nitcil States i.s the only country in the world with-sat a competitor as the horse nursery of the world. Not a nation but must come to us for its re mounts, and its surplus utilitarian slock, and this will be the case for probably another fifty years. After that no one can for see. If by that time we have not built our equine supply hoaae on a rock, it will be the fault of these sat! racing fanatics who have been permitted to turn our national freedom into license, and in making a race-show of themselves, also hold the nation up to laughter. It is time the burlesque was stopped. Racing brings into every section where racing occurs from 0,000 to 00,000 daily which would not otherwise come, but would be diverted to far an ay states only too anxious to gather within their limits the full grown plant reared in the rich sad fertile east. The amount of ash invested, turned over, and paid, for employment and merchandise of all types, is beyond computation, and the racing tax to the agricultural societies alone amounts to about o0.0o0 yearly to the state of New York. This handful of meddlers are utterly InuervloM to criticism, they even lack the saving sense of humor which surely make them legislate themselves out of active existence, they have been so acctts tomed to si. mil up and talk. talk. talk, where no one rises to interrupt or differ with them, that they have become intoxicated with their own verbosity, and with the spotlight which is ils trim ■tings. If they would trouble racing and other out side issues less, and attend more to their palpably neglected spiritual duly, the modem church might be .is satisfactorily ■nrosifwl as the modern well eendaeted mceconrne, on the printed statements of many representative prelates this is far from being the case at present.— Sports of the Times, New York.
