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FOULING AND FINING. "It is of course, an old thread to weave, but when a foul is deliberate, why should the horse be disqualified as well as the boy? This matter has been thrashed out time and again, and it marks just as aw a spot as when the query mark was first placed agaainst it," says Sports of the Times. "Of course if the middle course were taken, if the question of the type of foul were left to the consideration of the stewards, as it should be, and would lie, this would mean more active responsibility to the stewards and probably another pail of slush for tho dippers of those irresponsible writers who persistently sling mud at these ollicials, slinging, it blindly more frequently than not where there is no cause, neglecting the cases where the cause is clear and patent to all practical observers, just clinging it blindly, linn in the conviction that if one slings sutlieient some of it will stick an adage old as the eternal hills, and having much of their stability. "However, if a steward accepts the position. le it honorary or paid, he should also accept the full responsibilities. Several times this season, young as it is there is no need to itemize the cases there has been rough riding which has been noticed oliicially and there have been disqualifications. In at least two of these the better horse of those behind him was In his rationally correct position, and it was the boy, not tho horse, who was to blame. When the horse was disqualified a rank injustice was .done to the record of the animal and also to all connected with the quadruped; even to those who fancied him for the race or place. "This means the drawing of a very fine line at times, but it is eminently one which should be drawn, in these days of dusting, disinfecting and furbishing in the public places, everything connected with racing. If the racing linen is to be ostentatiously washed iu the public fountains let us have a little more of it done there. Not necessarily the very dirty pieces, but those which will, by public cleansing, help the moral side of racing. "While upon this subject it may not be out of place to point out, once again, that a mere fine has still inadequacy stamped all over it. At a fine of two hundred dollars the leading jockey smiles. Half the lime his employers are understood to pay it for him, and the censured boy comes back, with a smirk on his face, to do exactly the same thing over again, tacitly telling the ollicials what duns lie thinks then. This the said officials do not appear to notice. "To set down a boy Is to punish his employers, and the public, through the boy. The only way to work the setting down cure is along the lines Sports has often suggested, having it clearly understood, each spring, that three endorsements mean the revocation of that license for the rest of the season, and grave doubts about reinstatement for another season. "If a fine be indicted do not fool witli a paltry two hundred dollars when the boy is earning something around twenty thousand dollars a year, earning it largely by the immunity purchased by these lines remember, but fine him something which will make him or his employers wink. Say oiie-tonth of his estimated earnings the first time, one-fifth the second and one-third the third time. "If this was done Insubordination and rough riding would vanish in a night. There would bo a howl, of course. Well, tlte freedom of this country renders it free for those who do not like the rule to follow some other occupation. We bond our bank clerks handling a few thousand dollars a day, we commercially cover ourselves on every side with preventive armor, but the jockeys who handle horses of inestimable value, on the success or non-success of which depends hundreds of thousands of dollars daily, in practically every city of importance in the country, these rattle brained midgets arc permitted to run loose, bondless, free from all preventive of wrongdoing or carelessness, to make ducks-and-drakes of what they control for a vital minute or two, as their dispositions, desire to "get even, or natural cussedness, may lead them. Gentlemen, believe me, this Is the Twentieth Century, not the Middle Ages."
