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AIMING AT HIGH-CLASS TURF GOVERNMENT, New Orleans, La., November 10. The appointment of five representative men of the City of New Orleans, two of them bank presidents, to act as a board of stewards in connection with Joseph A. Murphy, racing manager of the Business Mens Racing Association, portends more for racing in the west and south than appears on the surface. .... . It marks the laying of the cornerstone of a new body to take control of racing in tliat section. Mr. Murphy, in speaking of the matter, said: "Powerful interests are at work for the revival of racing in the west and south on sane and permanent lines. I can state, witltout in any manner betraying any confidences and still in full possession of the facts, that thoroughbred racing in tliis vast section is once more to be reinstated as one of the sports of the whole people." Two vital questions are being asked and that, too. sharply. First: Who is to run this racing? Second: Is it to be purged of the promoter and consequent commercialism and is it to be run as a sport or simply as an ojien-air gambling house? The answer must come through action and not through words. As the portals are opened to the thoroughbred in various states there should spring up jockey clubs, segregated from the business of racing, to control and purify it. Each of these clubs should be units that, at the proper time, could be welded into a parent organization to take arbitrary control of the south and west. This would throttle the promoter and smother commercialism at its inception. In states where racing is governed by commissions there could be a representative from each commission to the main body. The president of the Thoroughbred Horsemens Association could also sit in the counsel, if that organization is to continue to be unselfishly governed for the improvement of racing, as there is no reason to doubt it will be. The west and south never had a representative turf body and that is largely responsible for the condition of the turf in that section. An organization of clean, high-class business men, drawn from units in different communities, would not only give the sport a standing it has never enjoyed, but would prove a powerful incentive to expand the sport to places where it has never had a foothold.
