view raw text
NEW ORLEANS PLANS UNDEIt WAY. Montreal. Que., September 9. Upon instructions from Dr. George A. McDiarmid, president or the Business Mens Racing Association of Xew Orleans. Manager Joseph A. Murphy has begun active work in arranging the details of the winter meeting in the Crescent City. He has put Secretary Joseph McLennan at work compiling the conditions of the first weeks book and the stakes and will carry them south with him when lie goes October 1. He has notified all horsemen applying for stalls to be ready to race December 9 if the directors should consider it advisable to open on that day and also to make their plans to race after February 20 if something should arise to make this necessary. "We are preparing for every eventuality," said Judge Murphy today. "The Business Mens Racing Association has sufficient funds, a splendidly equipped plant, the prestige of two years of success and a powerful organization of substantial men. I have a set of officials, probably the best ever gathered on a race track, all of them bound to me by personal and official ties. "This would be a sufficient foundation, but on top of this I am simply smothered with offers of help from the representative breeders and racing men of the United States and Canada. Xo one realizes more than myself that a new force has arisen in racing. The thoroughbred breeding industry has pushed its head from its ashes more virile and substantial than ever. The new recruits to racing are being drawn from men of standing in their communities and under a process of or ganization are banding themselves together for the uplifting and perpetuating of the sport. There are always selfish interests in every organization but out of it all will be evolved by the sober thinkers a plan that will prevent for all time the abuses that before drove racing to the wall. Commercialized racing in the south and west has passed forever. The day when professional promoters can sit back while the citizens of the community revive racing on clean, sane lines and then rush in hungrily to share what would seem to be a golden harvest has gone down to history. This is stated absolutely without prejudice and with no allusion to any particular person, but simply as a condition which, if the test be made, will be demonstrated quickly and conclusively. In the lean years of racing the horsemen and breeders did some deep thinking and I have an abiding faith in their judgment sharpened by the lash of adversity. They hold the power in their hands to see that racing is not destroyed in Xew Orleans and I am not concerned as to which direction that power will be thrown. "The Business Mens Racing Association will race under its own rules next winter. For two years we have had the privilege of racing under the rules of the eastern Jockey Club and are deeply appreciative of the courtesy, but we are in a section over which no governing body claims jurisdiction. Several western and southern states .are ready to throw their portals open to the thoroughbred again and my officials and myself will draw rules that will be the nucleus of a new western and southern governing body."
