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STOCK EXCHANGE AND RACE TRACK. The stock market is worse than the race track as a temptation to the speculatively inclined. More men are ruined in stock gambling than are ruined betting on horses. Among . the thousands who bet at races only a few are plungers. Nearly everyone who deals in speculative, stocks risks amounts which would create comment in the betting ring at the track. Comparatively few gamblers in stocks can afford the losses they may incur. New York papers devote less than a half column to the suicide of Frank II. Smiley, who was an industrious lawyer, with a fairly lucrative practice, when, at fifty-five, lie inherited about 0,000. He attempted to make a large fortunte by dealing in "war brides," and when he sat down in his office and put a pistol to his temple he had dissipated his small fortune and was some thousands of dollars in debt, ruined by an inheritance. News is valued for its unusualncss. There is nothing strikingly novel in the suicide of a stock gambler. Much less frequent are suicides of racetrack plungers. The men who bet heavily at the races rarely are men of social position. They are not compelled to keep up appearances when luck is against them. Those dependent upon them are not accustomed to a fixed standard of living. The man who gambles in stocks is more often a man of social and financial standing; a man who is responsible to a family for the continuance of the scale of expenditure which has become second nature. Such a man "dead broke" is in a worse plight than the race-track plunger who Avon thousands yesterday and lost more thousands today. Judged by the opportunities it offers to weaklings the stock market is a horrible evil. It is not possible to abolish stock markets because some men will risk their fortunes in stocks and then blow out their brains if they are unfortunate. It is not possible to have a fool-proof or weakling-proof world. If men will waste their substance, and resort to desperate measures t6, escape the, consequences of folly it is regrettable, but. if cannot be helped. Louisville Courier-Journal.
