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AN AMATEUR VIEW OF THE CRUSADE Racing hereabouts suffered just as Intercollcgi ste athletics have suffered from overgrowth and the disposition constantly encroaching to turn a sport into a business It may be that out of tho tribulations that have come with the antiracetrack betting law will grow a chastened and diminished sport of horse racing which will be better in many particulars on its sporting side than the great In duslry it may supersedf Tho Boston Transcript prints an interview with a local raoiug amateur in which he charges that great damage has been done to American horso racing as a sport in the last twenty ywirs by offering exaggerated purses for twoyearolds and making the competition In that class the chief concern in the industry The twoyearold purses being so big induced he says u hurried forcing or horses into au extreme two yearold form which was apt to be the ruin of the horse and a very great detriment to sound breeding One result of it according to tills complainant has been a remarkable scarcity of first class threeyear olds and 1 still greater deartli of mature race horses tit to fight out such events as the Suburban and the Brooklrn Handicap Horse racing as a I sport is so easily defended that it needs no de ¬ fense but for horse racing as a combination of business sport and real estate speculation the whole dependent on profuse newspaper advertise ¬ ment and public betting it has been impossible to find extenuations enough to stand up successfully against the moral objections Whether the aboli ¬ tion of betting on the tracks will be of real value to public morals we do not know but It may provo to bo indirectly a benefit to racing Harpers Weekly
