Saratoga Will Feel the Pinch, Daily Racing Form, 1911-07-25

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SARATOGA WILL FEEL THE PINCH. Saratoga, N. Y., July 24. Senator Brackctt has been trying to comfort bis local constitutents by holding out the hope that there may be racing here tills season in spite of the failure of the Legislature to pass the Gittins bill before taking a recess. But his words fall on deaf ears, for R. T. Wilson, president of the Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses, has declared In emphatic terms that there will be no racing at the Spa as long as the so-called "directors liability law" is effective. Saratogans see a lean summer and hungry winter ahead of them. Without racing Saratogans fear hard times. With the racing bills lying dormant in the Assembly many reservations at the big hotelK for tho month of August have been canceled. These changes have caused the hotel proprietors to notify trades people to cut off the supplies ordered for the racing season. In addition many employes at the hotels have been discharged. There arc several strings of race horses stabled at the track and at Horse Haven, the training grounds just outside of the track proper. The combined stable of II. K. Knapp, a state racing commissioner, and Francis R. Hitchcock, a steward of the Jockey Club, holds the greatest number of racers. Thoy are in charge of William II. Karrick. But these horses will not remain here long. Now that the chanco of racing here this summer lies locked up in the archives of the Assembly, most of the horses will be shipped to Canada. Saratoga is said to bo panic-stricken over the failure of the Gittins measure. The big hotels are practically empty and all of them are expected .to lose heavily on the season. Tho storekeepers and business men of Saratoga are facing bankruptcy, it is said, and no relief is in sight. It was hoped that the Saratoga race meeting would bo run anyway with a liberal interpretaton of the law, but tho Jockey Club frowned upon the plan as soon as it was broached. In fact the track managers decided several weeks ago to keep the gates closed if the Legislature did not afford the desired relief. Opponents of the Gittins measure . have created the impression that its passage would mean open book-making, but no such condition would have arisen. The law against "bookmaking" "with or without" writing would have made even oral betting impossible unless test cases in the courts had been decided in favor of the racing interests. It was said on good authority yesterday that the directors liability law as it stands would soon be tested from a legal point of view. New York Sun.


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1910s/drf1911072501/drf1911072501_1_6
Local Identifier: drf1911072501_1_6
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800