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RACING IS ENDANGERED IN LOUISIANA. Legislature That Meets Next May to Be Asked for Suppression of Betting on Tracks. New Orleans, La.. March 24. — The reform movement inaugurated here last fall has taken a definite turn in the last few days in the circulation of a petition to the coming session of the legislature to pass a law prohibiting race track gambling. This petition has already received a number of signatures and no doubt it will receive many more. Still, after it has developed its full measure of strength, it will be found that the peopl ■ arraying themselves with the reformers represent but a very small fraction of the real public sentiment of New Orleans, which undoubt -dly is overwhelmingly in favor of well conducted, high-class, racing. While Louisiana does not rank with some other sections in the breeding of the thoroughbred horse, yet breeding has always b en carried on more or less extensively. Racing has been carried on here in one form or another almost continuously for the last hundred years or more. That is. in all that period race meetings have be n given in the Crescent City or its environs with few breaks outside of the period of the civil war. In the early days the greatest hors-8 of the continent achieved some of their triumphs here at the famous old Metarie course and later at the Carrollton course. The sport has always found favor with the best people of the city. it lias afforded pleasant recreation for them as well as the general public, and besides that in recent years especially it has brought thousands of nortln rn visitors here who have spent their money freely and. returning home, have served as so many advertising agents for the growing pros-pints of this, th • metropolis of the southland. The meetings at the Fair Grounds and City Tark have always been as well conducted as any at other racing centers and the sport here has attracted a better class of horses than any other race track in the west, drawing very largely, as it has, every winter from the ranks of eastern horsemen. Naturally, touts follow in the wake of the local me tings as- they do everywhere else. But they are no more numerous here than at other racing points, such for example, as Louisville and Latonia. If undesirable, yet as a general thing they have judgment enough to remember the fact they are. in a strange land and to behave themselves accordingly. The reformers have endeavored to make much of the many hold-ups and robberies that have occurred here this winter and have laid these to the race track people. Except in two or three instances, however, the newspaper files will show that all these infractions of the law have been committed by local thugs and by negroes. The undesirable element here who tag along after the races have been under the surveillance of several Tinkertou men all winter long, brought here from Chicago and New York for that special purpose. They know that tabs are kept on them by the race track officials as well as by the local detective force and the thieves and crooks among them are not, therefore, inclined to take any chances under conditions where apprehension would seem to be almost certain. All these are matters to which the reformers do not appear to have given adequate attention. The sentiment of the community Is, however, unanimous that the half-mile track must go. These uierry-go-rounds. which are mere gambling vehicles, with no element of sport to recommend them whatever, with their all-summer racing, are unqualified nuisances. They have brought legitimate racing into disrepute, and but for their existence there would have been no occasion for a reform movement. It is not expected in well-informed quarters that the petition above referred to will have any very great weight with the legislature. And yet legitimate racing interests ought to be on guard. It was largely indifference that lost the battle in the Tennessee legislature. Members of the Cumberland Tark Jockey Club at Nashville were overconfident. They hooted at the idea that racing could be overthrown in Tennessee. They pointed with pride to the fact that Nashville was in the blue grass section of the state, that all the great breeding farms were round about there and that tiie people were unaulmously in favor of turf s|K rts. Meanwhile the reformers had been active. When the legislature met they were ready and the anti-racing law had gone so far before the race track people woke up that it was impossible to stop it. There should be no repetition of the Tennessee fiasco here. If necessary, fight fire with fire. What the better element of New Orleans desires is a law regulating the sport, with a racing commission to be appointed by the governor similar to that of Kentucky. It is certain thi.t the commission would be made up of well-known, honorable, able men, who would conscientiously seek to conserve the best interests of the sport in Louisiana. Among other things, the commission would have the power to grant licenses and dates to racing associations and to revoke the same if necessary, and also to devise new rules of racing and remodel the old ones. With i ower to grant racetrack licenses the half-mile tracks would 1k put out of business at once, for it is certain that would be the first and most important matter to which the commission wouid direct Its energies. Rut effort will have to be put fortluto secure this desired protection for the sport, and the race track folks ought therefore to get in action s| eedily and leave no stone unturned to be thoroughly prepared for contest when the legislature assembles in May.
