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ALBANYS LEGISLATORS IN A QUANDARY. Doubt if Direct Appropriations for Fairs Is Constitutional May Save Percy-Gray Law. New York. February 8. — The more the legislators at Albany consider the anti-racing bills, the less 1 reason do they see for passing them and thus disturbing the present working of the Percy-Gray law through which the agricultural associations throughout the state jet an annual appropriation. This i appropriation is the sticking point of the whole , proposition, for the 1 gislators cannot help seeing , that there is little likelihood of a continuance of this appropriation for their constituents by direct tax from any other source but the Percy-Gray law-lax. The problem which now confronts them is that if the Percy-Gray law is repealed and Ihe state is deprived of the more than oo.000 of revenu ■• annually derived from that law. any money voted So aid the agricultural societies would come out of the general fund raised by taxation and the constitutional question woujd certainly be raised by some Ni w York City tax payers. In view of the situation growing up in the legis lature the members who. for one reason or another, do not want to deprive the agricultural societies of the aid they have been receiving from the state vearly since the enactment of the Percy-Gray law. ire inclined to let existing conditions alone, for fear the change proposed by the Agnew-IIart bill would onipletely cut off from agricultural interests the liclp they have been receiving. A prominent lawyer said: "I do not want to discuss the constitutional feature of the case at his time. The constitution prohibits class legislation and It is possible that should a test of an .ict making appropriation for the benefit of the agri-•ultutal societies he made, the courts might declare it unconstitutional. "Such a decision, however, would not affect the constitutionality of the Peivy-Oray law. In other words, a test suit under existing conditions might leprive some of the agricultural societies of the appropriations they have been receiving since the •nactment of the Percy-Gray law without touching the statute, bniuse the law says nothing about •vhat disposition shall be made of the revenue it produces." Il is a certainty that this side of ihe light will have more to do with the fate of the anti racing hills than all the hysterical reform bureau clatter. Ibere is no public sentiment here against racing ■xeept that manufactured by the poolrooms and fanatics and certain papers that are enemies of llios;- at the head of racing. The chances now hxik very g x»d that the bills will be beaten in the codes ouiuuuce, which takes them up ou February ID.
