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TAKES ISSUE WITH CANON CHASE. The Brooklyn Ctttaea prints a letter which It re-eeatly received from Canon William S. Chase urging the public to npreas itself against the passage of the Gittins hills, which, by H|lialtaf some of the Hughes anti-race track legislation, will make it possible for the racing associations of New York state to re-open their tracks and resume racing an a moderate scale. The citizen likewise comments on Canon Chases statements and takes him severely to task for them as being unfounded in fact. Besides, it points out that the public lias had ifs till of the effect of the Hughes laws and will welcome relii i. Canon Chases letter to the Citizen was coached in the following language: "The fact that the Senate Committee on Codes yesterday reported the Gittins hills to re establish race track gambling, though the majority Individual members of the • mlttee are known to be opposed to Hie hills, should arouse the public as to the danger of tlie proposed legislation. For evidently some political power stronger than the individual members of the committee directed them to report these bills. The real danger of the bills is that by omitting from the law which forbids keeping gaming and betting establishments the words any enclosure or place they permit gambling of all kinds in any open air place anywhere in the state. 973 of the penal law now expressly provides that no owner or agent of any enclosure or place shall be guilty of a crime anlesa he •knowingly lets or permit! the same to be used for gambling. "I have it upon undoubted authority of a man whoafcaw P that one of the Republican leaders of the Senate was seeking votes from Republican Sen ators for the Gittins bills. If the public is too much occupied with other things to express theanaetvea one more vigorously to their Senators against race track gambling, they may see a Legislature, which representa two bosses and not the people, repeal the laws against gambling which have reduced thefts, emlx zzlemeets and suicides and have reslored many gamblers to honest employment, anl have given wives ami children a steady income which lorinciiy was dealt d them. The proposed bills permit gambling of all kinds, so long as it is not done in any •room, abed, tent, tenement, booth, building, float, or vessel. The danger Of this pernicious legislation makes still dearer the need of direct nominations so as to have a Legislature which represents not the bosses, but the people." The Citizens comment on the letter follows; "The reverend gentleman, with that calm indifference to facts which is characteristic of certain members of the cloth, makes the bald statement that the anti-race track laws have reduced thefts, embezzlements and suicides, and have given wives and children a steady income which formerlv was denied them. A few weeks ago the people were told, on the authority of some notoriety-seeking clergymen, that a "wave of crime was sweeping over Brooklyn. That same catch penny press, the most vulgar and unscrupulous in the world, which -played up the anti-race track bills, also played up the wave of crime business. Those papers, which cater to the lowest instincts and the basest passions of the ignorant multitude, make a specialty of the moral game for no other reason than the fact that it pays. Vi 11. a Brooklyn Grand Jury after a months investigation rejxirted that no crime wave existed. Either tin re is or there is not a wave of crime." The Grand Jury said that there is not. Canon Chase in one breath says that there is and in another that thefts, embezzlements and suicides have been reduced by the passage of the Hughes anti-racing laws. The actual truth is that conditons in this city are normal as far as statistics of crime are concerned, and Canon Chase if pinned down would be as little able to prove his assertion with respect to the decrease of thefts, embezzlements and suicides as his other statement that a wave of crime lias swept over the city. He says that many gamblers have been restored to honest employment since the race tracks closed. The Canon evidently lias never read Schiller. If he had he would know that of all human passions gambling is the on. thai obtains the great c -: 1 old on a person. No statute ever reformed a gambler. The clerks, bookkeepers and small trades-ini a, wheal presumably he r» fers to as gamblers, who bet on the races at the tracks, are the chief patrons of the hundreds of handbooks that have been doing business in this town since the Hughes laws eloped the gates of the race tracks. "All these so called gamblers had honest employment before the governor undertook to make men moral by statute. The real gambler, that is to sav. the bookmaker. never denied his family a steady income, when he had it. and he generally had it. What is actually the case is this: Before tlie Hughes laws were passed the eight race tracks gave employ-meal to thousands, either directly or indirectly, and the wives and Children of these thousands, by tiie passage* of these laws, have been denied the steady incline which their husbands and fathers were formerly enabled to give them. Luck of employment, owing to the closing of the tracks, has Increased if say-thing the snarlii r of suicides, of which there were 278 in Brooklyn last year. The public today has a better understanding oj the social and economic effects of the Hughes laws, and this is why it refuses to get excited by their anticipated repeal "
